3. How did you get involved with KublaCon and how long have you been here?
In 1999, I followed my friend, Kevin O'Hare, into ManaFest, offering to coordinate RPGs or "wherever else you want me to do". Japji and Anthony welcomed me to the family, and I enthusiastically began building RPGs into a strong component in ManaFest and KublaCon. In 2004, David Gabriel stepped forward and has carried the RPG Directorship to even higher levels of quality and enthusiasm.
4. What motivates you and what rewards to you get out of being involved with KublaCon?
Friendship, appreciation, accomplishment, a sense of self-worth, the joy of providing a valuable service to the gaming community, a desire to make things better, to share with others my passion for gaming. A chance to build a new "extended family" that my wife and I can share.
5. What is your earliest gaming or game convention memory?
Craig, my older brother, fell in love with strategy board games in the early sixties. Battle Cry, Broadsides, and Dogfight, with their little plastic figures, were the first strategy games Craig coaxed me into playing with him. However, I'm the person who, when losing (which I always did to my more thoughtful and methodical older brother), would almost always tip the board over in frustration and walk off in a tearful huff.
Craig, fed up with my antics, convinced Shawn, my younger brother, to play his board games. Shawn gleefully learned to play military strategy games with his big brother, but still preferred playing army with his plastic soldiers and Craig's cast-off model army tanks. I watched their gaming activities from a distance in frustration and jealousy, wanting so much to be part of their comradeship, but unable to handle my reaction to the levels of competitiveness required to play board games.
I was introduced to RPG's around 1976 when my wife bought me the original D&D boxed set. After taking two years to figure out it wasn't a board game or a card game, I gathered together twenty friends to be introduced to D&D by the 17 year-old son of a co-worker. Luckily, five friends were interested enough to continue learning the game. I loved the game. It was based upon cooperation with other players, not competition against them.
I started attending Pacificon in 1980, following my two brothers, who had attended the previous year to play board games (Craig, of course) and miniatures (Shawn, who had attended to play board games with Craig but wandered one day into the miniatures room and never left). It was the first gaming convention I had ever been to, and frankly, I was scared witless; however, my passion for D&D allowed me to break through my shyness enough to actually leave my wife and children for three days out of every year and just have fun by myself with a group of people who seemed to be, face it, a bunch of geeks.
Scott and KC's Tom Funk
6. What is your favorite gaming or game convention memory?
In 1984, I participated in a large-scale AD&D tournament, where three groups of players - good, neutral, and evil - met one another in a battle. I was an evil fire giant who, upon being defeated by a Paladin, successfully sued for mercy, then tried to back-stab the Paladin. I was awarded "Best Role-Player" of the tournament for my begging and subsequent treachery. It was this one event that gained me fame and familiarity for the first time with Pacificon attendees. In subsequent years, I would glow with the accolades and "Well met, fire giant!" showered upon me by the other con attendees. George Rose, a member of the good party, remains a friend.
In 1988, I began hosting monthly AD&D parties at my house for my daughters and eight of their friends. By 1990, I began inviting them all up to Pacificon, renting out two hotel rooms and filling them with kids. During the next few years, I specialized in children's AD&D events at Pacificon, not only for the kids I bought along, but also for the many kids who were accompanying their gaming parents to the convention. Luckily, by the time the kids were 14 or so, they finally got up the courage to begin entering other events and I got to go back to being an AD&D player and GM.
7. What is your least favorite gaming or game convention memory?
In '82 or '83, I played in a D&D game where the GM informed me I was a horrible role player. Since I knew that all Pacificon GMs were "professionals" and therefore always right, I went back to my room and cried in shame and discouragement. I went home early that year, and almost didn't return the following year.
8. Give us a top 3 list of your favorite games and tell us your least favorite game. (and give us a brief reason for your best/worst choices)?
1. D&D changed my life. It re-introduced me to the passion I once felt as a child playing army with my brothers and the neighborhood kids. It's allowed me to meet and share my passion with many of the nicest people I've ever met.
2. Guesstures, Cranium, Hilarium, Moods, Imaginiff, Pit, Apples to Apples, and other family party games. I play these games whenever my family comes together during Thanksgiving and Christmas. This experience takes me back to the days of my childhood when my parents would play family games (Mille Bourne, Tripoloy, Canasta, Monopoly, Careers, Rummy, etc.) with their three boys.
3. I love playing City of Heroes. I play on the Guardian server with both my daughters, Jennie and Lissa, and, most importantly, my two granddaughters, Moira and Jesslyn. It's strange and wonderful following my 4 year-old granddaughter Moira around, healing her has she runs around beating up bad guys, jumping off buildings, and ice-skating on frozen lakes, talking with her all the while using our internet phone service.
I hate (ashamed of my emotional response to) playing board games, having been traumatized during my childhood by constantly being trounced at Dogfight, Broadside, and Gettysburg by my big brother, Craig. Even now, when I play Settlers with my daughters (who both picked up my brother's gift for board games), I am tempted to flip the game board in childish anger when they both repeatedly "open cans of whoop-ass" on me. (BTW, I love winning at board games, I just hate losing.)
9. Where do you currently play games and what do you play when you are there?
Since 1980, I've been playing Dungeons & Dragons every other Sunday evening from 5 till 10 pm with a group of close friends (including my big brother). We rotate homes, GMs, and party leaders to ensure that each of us gets a chance at doing something different. We have never played any other RPG.
10. If you want to tell all of the KublaCon attendee’s one thing, what would it be?
Come to KublaCon and rediscover your childhood passion for play!
Scott and Karen (KC's Dealer Room Liaison) have also tried their hand at bowling... with varying degrees of success.
Scott and Mary at GenCon SoCal