DunDraCon 46 AAR
Feb 21 2023
My first DunDraCon at the new location (Santa Clara Marriott, next to Great America) and this is the second DDC at Santa Clara. It's a big hotel with two towers plus a bunch of rooms around a pool area (heated pool) so over twice the capacity of San Ramon Marriott. Dave P was able to get a room for Saturday night and he probably reserved it the same week. Also lots and lots of parking. There are several restaurants within walking distance (say 20 min) though they did get crowded.
Events are a bit spread out. Most of the gaming sessions were in the first floor of one tower. Seminars are in the meeting rooms of the other tower. Open gaming, dealer's room, registration are in another area. Maybe a bit confusing but we'll get used to it as time goes on.
The bar/lobby area is fairly open space and you can get food delivered there. There is a restaurant area where we had breakfast and that's a bit more closed. Staff had masks on and many attendees did too -- we were all supposed to be vaccinated and masked though mask enforcement was a bit lax and maybe it was 50% masked outside the registration area where there were less Con staff.
As usual registering for games online was easy and I got into a P session game (Friday day) and a 2xx session game (Saturday morning). The P game ran 7 of 8 hours with breaks and it was the same DDC gaming experience. I skipped the 2xx game because I was really tired.
Rainbow we did at a table in the lobby. Six people and Eric R over video call. Since the area is more spread out it was quieter so good talking instead of having to be loud like in the last San Ramon DDC.
Sunday I watched a couple of War College seminars. First one was delayed 45 minutes due to audio issues (they want to record the sessions and audio wasn't going to recording). Sessions were on Ukraine (history, culture and current war; interesting but not much on the war), India strategic situation (a bit dry and general even though the speaker is a former India military general), and using Transactional Costs theory to predict future conflict (a bit of a rough overview not sure proving his thesis). I feel War College sessions I saw were not as interesting as previous years, maybe because speakers were more college professor types than war gaming enthusiasts.
Overall it was the typical fun DunDraCon. It's interesting how little I do at DDC these years and this year I never went to the dealer's room nor the swap meet or auction. Next year maybe won't rent a room even though it's not really that much closer than San Ramon but traffic is generally better so San Ramon might be an hour drive and Santa Clara is 35 min.
Events are a bit spread out. Most of the gaming sessions were in the first floor of one tower. Seminars are in the meeting rooms of the other tower. Open gaming, dealer's room, registration are in another area. Maybe a bit confusing but we'll get used to it as time goes on.
The bar/lobby area is fairly open space and you can get food delivered there. There is a restaurant area where we had breakfast and that's a bit more closed. Staff had masks on and many attendees did too -- we were all supposed to be vaccinated and masked though mask enforcement was a bit lax and maybe it was 50% masked outside the registration area where there were less Con staff.
As usual registering for games online was easy and I got into a P session game (Friday day) and a 2xx session game (Saturday morning). The P game ran 7 of 8 hours with breaks and it was the same DDC gaming experience. I skipped the 2xx game because I was really tired.
Rainbow we did at a table in the lobby. Six people and Eric R over video call. Since the area is more spread out it was quieter so good talking instead of having to be loud like in the last San Ramon DDC.
Sunday I watched a couple of War College seminars. First one was delayed 45 minutes due to audio issues (they want to record the sessions and audio wasn't going to recording). Sessions were on Ukraine (history, culture and current war; interesting but not much on the war), India strategic situation (a bit dry and general even though the speaker is a former India military general), and using Transactional Costs theory to predict future conflict (a bit of a rough overview not sure proving his thesis). I feel War College sessions I saw were not as interesting as previous years, maybe because speakers were more college professor types than war gaming enthusiasts.
Overall it was the typical fun DunDraCon. It's interesting how little I do at DDC these years and this year I never went to the dealer's room nor the swap meet or auction. Next year maybe won't rent a room even though it's not really that much closer than San Ramon but traffic is generally better so San Ramon might be an hour drive and Santa Clara is 35 min.