Lucca Comics and Games(It's hard to even write the title of this entry without hearing the chorus of the
official song of the convention in my head.)
What do you get if you take ComicCon, add in GenCon, and put them both in a beautiful Medieval walled city in Italy? Don't answer yet, because there's more. Fill it full of local citizens that actually embrace it and love it, and pepper it liberally with restaurants with the best food you've ever eaten. Now what do you have? Lucca Comics and Games, a 140,000 attendee convention that embraces all things geekly. It's really nothing like anything I've been to before. The convention basically takes over an entire small city in Tuscany, with the narrow streets of the city becoming the hallways and the open piazzas of the city (covered with massive pavilions) becoming the centers for events and dealers. Every shop in town has comics or action figures in the window or some kind of display to get into the spirit of things.
It's big, but that's not really what's so amazing about it. It's the warmth and fun of the people meshed with the beauty of the surroundings (and did I mention the food?).
Wednesday night before the convention started, Sue and I hung around while they built my showcase. This was a real honor for me--a massive glass cabinet (two actually) to display a number of the products that I've worked on over the years. The showcase was on display throughout the entire convention. We ended the day with a late dinner. Sue and I spent a lot of time that evening with another guest of the show, French boardgame designer
Bruno Faidutti. It was great to get to know him.
On Thursday, I started the show by opening the roleplaying game tournament with a silly little presentation. Each day I had a signing at the
Wyrd Edizioni booth, aided by my friends Elisabetta and Massimo. This was always a great time to meet a lot of Italian game fans. In the afternoon, I ran a short, simple little 2-hour game that we added to my schedule at the last minute. It went over really well and in retrospect, I wish there had been time to do more. Lots of people watched, and the players were all excellent. We had a translator on hand, but--although she was excellent--most of the time she wasn't entirely needed. The players' English was very good. (My Italian, on the other hand....)
Thursday night was an awards ceremony, where all the guests were given nice plaques and awards were given to various comics and games (and their creators). It would be tempting to compare it to the Origin Awards or the ENnies, but in truth it would probably be more accurately compared to the Eisners. A nice affair in a beautiful theater, with local government dignitaries and others in attendance. One weird moment of the night was when I discovered that I had actually won some of these awards in the past (for D&D 3E and Heroclix, although I wasn't given credit for Heroclix, as is often the case). I'm certain that the companies that published these games knew about the awards, and either didn't think enough of the award or the designers in question to even let me know. Probably the latter. But that's a topic for another day.
Friday's special event for me was a Roleplaying Game Design Workshop. A pair of translators were on hand and this time they were invaluable. The two-hour event went well, I think. I've done talks and Q&A sessions with a translator before and it's always challenging, mostly because you need to pace yourself to wait for the translator to do his or her job, but you don't want to break up your own flow and lose ideas and information. The convention even provided certificates for all the attendees, signed by me, at the end, which I thought was a nice touch.
On Saturday I conducted a very strange (to me) and challenging event in which I reviewed prototypes of games that people had designed. It's very difficult for someone to explain the ins and outs of their rpg in just a few minutes and its just as hard to provide meaningful feedback on what I see (or don't see). Add in a language barrier and the need for a translator in many cases and I'm not 100% certain that those that brought their games to me really got too much out of it, if I'm going to be honest. It's hard to both give and take advice in such a situation. But I enjoyed it, and I hope--at the very least--that they did too.
Sunday came and brought with it a speech and Q&A session. Again I had excellent translators at my side to help out. These kinds of events are not as big a deal at Lucca as they would be at an American convention, which was interesting because the signings in Italy were a
bigger event than they would have been at a US con, I think. I certainly don't think I'd have a signing every day in the US and expect lots of people to show up each session. Maybe because it's a big comic book show, signings are more important.
Sunday night brings the convention to a close and with it an odd tradition. This tradition is rooted in the past, when a young gamer annoyed members of the staff to distraction and they ended up chasing him around and gave him a faux beating. Now, every year, this gamer (now grown up) hides at the end of the show and the staff seeks him out, chases him down, and pretends to beat him. Artists on hand draw sketches on his (prodigious) belly. And the subject, in true gamer geek fashion, loves every minute of all the attention. It's odd, but not a bad way to blow off some steam and have some fun at the end of the show. (Not being an artist, when asked to participate, I wrote a game rule on him rather than attempt a sketch. You do what you gotta do.)
Each night was a great dinner at one of the fabulous local restaurants. Both Thursday night and Sunday night were seven course meals in a banquet fashion. It's funny to me that at a US convention (game or business), you hear "banquet" and you think of some sad little cornish hen and some half-cooked vegetables. But this is Italy, so of course the food is absolutely mind-blowing. As the courses keep coming, you think, "surely I can't eat another bite," but then the next one arrives and it looks and smells so good and the next thing you know you've eaten it.
Even lunch, from what passed for the nearby "concession stand" was impressive. Don't get me wrong, it wasn't amazing, but it far surpassed the traditional hot dogs and nachos fare you get at any convention here. I guess what might be considered bad food in Italy would be halfway decent stuff here.
The gamers and fans at the show were similar in most ways to gamers and fans everywhere, of course. Except thinner and more stylish. The nerdiest, shlumpiest Italian geek has got nothing on his American counterpart. Lots of attendees, particularly teenagers, came to the show in costume. Probably about the same proportion as you'd find at ComicCon. We saw a lot of impressive costumes, most of them manga, anime, or video game influenced. Just like here.
Throughout the show, I did a lot of interviews for Italian magazines and websites, chatted with gamers, and hung out with the convention staff, but I also got to look around a bit. The Italian comic book market is extremely strong, with both American comics in translation and a wide array of cool-looking Italian comics as well. As for games, many were on display: board games, rpgs, and video games, with all the major manufactures in attendance. More interesting to me were the local sellers, however, with games I sadly could not read but enjoyed perusing nonetheless. Surprisingly, one booth was selling old D&D stuff (not translated) and offered the best selection of rare classic stuff for sale that I've ever seen all in one place. Not just the white box and its ilk, but the rare RPGA modules like the To the Aid of Falx and Investigation of Hydell, The Dragon #1, and so on. Good stuff. But they knew what they had and priced it all appropriately, which is to say, really high. And it wasn't just books. They had the old yellow plastic D&D wallet, the coloring books, merch from the cartoon, and more. Incredible.
Lucca was a great show in every respect. It's been going on since the early 60s, and the con staff is made up, in part, of people who came to the convention as little kids. Fun, well organized, well-developed, and well-supported, it's one of the best conventions I've been to. My thanks to Emanuele, Andrea, Silvia, Gabriele, Anna, Skippy, Antonio, Cristina, and all the others who put the convention together and treated us so well. Also thanks to Massimo, Elisabetta, Sonia, and Bice of Wyrd for being good friends and helping us with the signings, the game, and more.
And did I mention the food?
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