From: stephen@cs.uow.edu.au (Stephen Lance Rogan)
Subject: CanCon '93 - Good, but...
Organization: Dept of Computer Science, Wollongong University, Australia
Date: Mon, 25 Jan 1993 04:17:55 GMT

It may seem a little early to post this, considering it still has a day and
a half to go, but as I could only make the first two days, I might as well do
it now.

I did not find out I was going in time to register for any games, and as such
only went to observe, and do some shopping. Since I wasnt playing, I also
had a look around Canberra, and can strongly recommend Sherrifs (sp) model shop
in Canberra to anyone into sci-fi and just modelling in general.

Back to CanCon, I enjoyed myself greatly. Lots of interesting stuff to look
at (the Aliens games had some GREAT boards set up, made it look really good).
The auction was fun, and *nearly* everyone was friendly and helpfull.
I say nearly because the whole thing was nearly ruined for me and my two
friends by one person yesterday afternoon.

The following is a little long, but the person involved was such an
arsehole that me and my three friends were extremely pissed off about it, so
I going to tell anyone interested enough to persevere. Please bear in mind
that it is not meant as a plug for PANZERFAUST rules, or a flame of Command
Decision. WWII is not my style of gaming, and I have only played a few games
for fun. Nor do I have anything to do woth Scott Nicholas, having only met
him for the first time yesterday afternoon.

We arrived about 12 on Sunday, and while wandering around came across a
demonstration game being run for the new PANZERFAUST rules (Armoured Fist
4th edition) by the games author, Scott Nicholas.
Since my one of my friends plays by these rules, and was interested in
most of the items on the table in general, we stopped here for a while.

After a while a rather large man came up to have a look, and in a very short
period of time was giving lectures to all present about how good certain guns
were at various stages of the war, and how he played to Command Decision
rules, and how he had modified them to be more realistic, and how most gamers
probably would like his rules because they made things a little harder, and
how he had read lots about the war since most of the 900 books in his private
library were about WWII, and blah blah, blah blah. All very boring, and 
since this is not what I had come for, I wandered off to look at other
things. I eventually gravitated back to the PANZERFAUST game, since my 
friend who is into it had stayed.

When I got back I found that this man was now going to take part in the
game, the original opponent having left ( probably from the sheer boredom
of listening to the afore mentioned man ).
All he was interested in was : What is my chance of hitting that, I dont
want the nitty gritty of the rules, what is my chance, what do I have to
roll, which do you think is the better bet etc etc.
He did not want to know what factors were being considered, or how they
were being modified and how this effected his chances.

When told that infantry could disembark from a Bren carrier, and set up to
fire in one move he looked a little dubious, saying to the games author
" You have some funny ideas about what infantry can do when the get out of
a vehicle " and then, after not being able to kill a vehicle (which even 
a person from the BattleTech game going on behind agreed he probably wouldn't
have been able to) he came to the following conclusion.

ImGodAndIKnowEverything to Scott Nocholas (the games author)
" Did you write these rules ? "

Scott " Yes "

ImGodAndIKnowEverything to Scott Nocholas (the games author)
" These rules suck, the vehicles are to strong, you might as well get
rid of the infantry and fight a naval battle "

Well, that was it. How fucking rude can you get. Full marks to Scott, who
remained quite calm. Meanwhile I and my friends were ready to tear strips of
this deadshit. Instead we decided to leave, and bought some stuff from Scott
to get him out of the situation for a little while.

What a fuckwit. He comes to a convention, sits down at a DEMONSTATION game
and decides, after not long playing, and after not taking any interest
into the workings of the game decides to tell the author that his rules
suck. Im sure if I sat down and played Command Decision for that long I
could decide that they suck as well (off the top of my head, after listening
to him talk about them, how about the fact that there is no differentiation
between turret armour and hull armour, I reckon that sucks). It was a 
demonstration game fuckwit, if the style of rules 
is too hard for you, WALK AWAY.

I have a friend who is IN the army, and he finds the PANZERFAUST rules
work for him because he finds most of the interaction between infantry and
vehicles to be very realistic. Maybe he should get 900 books and read them,
possibly what he has experienced in real life was a mistake.

Well thats it, this guys attitude was just so overbearing and offensive that
we had to leave. It is a shame that this is our last memory of the event
since the rest was well worthwhile. Other than that, a most enjoyable time,
with everone there just to have fun and meet people.

Did anybody else catch the 11.15 session of AKIRA at Electric Shadows (?)
on Saturday night ? That is another event which made the weekend
most enjoyable.

My ramblings and views totally.

Stephen Rogan, University of Wollongong.
stephen@wraith.cs.uow.oz.au