Pax Aus happened recently and it was, as always, an amazing weekend of friends, laughter, gaming and sore af feet.
The weekend started with our guild meet up on Thursday night which I have already posted about and I honestly meant to post about Pax much sooner than now but we were super busy with friends and I got deathly sick. I honestly thought I was going to die, so blogging took a back seat for a week.
Friday at Pax we went to a couple of panels, Mike didn’t come out this year so the Q&A was with Kris Straub and Jerry instead. I had zero intention of collecting pins this year other than the standard ones you could buy, until I saw Blizzard had finally turned up at Pax Aus and it kicked me in the motivator 🙂 they had a lovely Diablo pin up for grabs. It was easy to get, but limited, so it needed to be done quickly 🙂 I generally have favourite pins I get every year, this one is my top one for the year. I love love love this.
Friday mainly involved playing indie games, my favourite being so adorable – Little Reaper – I can’t wait for it to be available. The group is now obsessed with Owls and Vowels which is a mobile game for creating words and we have leaderboards and are now competing with each other.
Saturday and Sunday was mainly tabletop games, RPG and being infected by some random. We played Call of Cthulu which was actually more enjoyable than I thought it would be. We were the only group over the weekend to talk to the ghosts instead of attacking them during the game because I lobbied for being friendly, I am a spiritualist after all. We then helped them attack another creature which had never been done, so it altered our ending in a positive way.
My biggest disappointment for the weekend was gold Pinny arcade pins. The only way to get them was to find people in the wild of the event and they should have traded with you. I explained this to someone standing in a queue when we were discussing pins, they had no idea about it. That person I later found out managed to get all 4 and I only got 1 because the time I did see the other people they said they didn’t have them at that time and to see them a different time. I was super pissed. Changing the rules during a game would not fly during NHL, NFL or MBL. Harumpfh.
On the flip side I managed to get one of the most awesome pins this year from the CEO of Bethesda. They are a massive sponsor and part of the Pax experience, including the long queue hall area to get in. The queue hall theme was Fallout Reclamation Day, so just before opening time there was a countdown and then streamers burst from the TV’s. We had masks, party hats and blowers. It was awesome. We actually were close enough in the queue to be see Ash and Matthias, they dropped their space and came and stood with us which made it much more enjoyable to have people to chat to.
But back to the second best pin of the weekend. I was told it was pretty rare and hard to get, the only way was to trade with the CEO, Pete Hines who I had no idea what he looked like or where he was likely to be. After getting to a sweet roll giveaway late I was told he was standing nearby so I went over and lurked. He walked over and said “You appear to be lurking”, I blushed bright red and said, “I was told, if I was super lucky, you might be willing to trade a pin with me for one of those <pointing at rare pin>”. I traded my spare Diablo pin with him. I think game for game trade was fair. I even jokingly asked him if he was sure he wanted a Diablo pin and if it was a conflict of interest. He was so nice during the interaction. But look at this pretty little gem.
Sunday after everyone had had enough and we were unable to find a monitor we liked (our only goal for the weekend), we headed home knowing that everyone would be heading to our place after as is now tradition.
So Sunday night we had Sian, Michael, Ben, Oui and Ash over, we ate some pizza, drank some alcohol and most importantly played some DnD. We played our first campaign together which Ben is DMing. It was hilarious, I have never laughed so hard at Michael mainly being one of the most vague Turtles ever. It was brilliant.
Monday was recovery and before Ben and Oui left for home, we played Harry Potter (WOOOOO!!!), Mysterium with Ben as the silent ghost (omg it was hard but more enjoyable than I thought it would be), a couple of rounds of F*CK the card game and the mind one (you have to guess who has the next number but aren’t allowed to speak).
I went to work Tues and Wed, but on the way home my throat started hurting something vicious. By Wednesday night I couldn’t swallow and my throat was so swollen it felt closed and I had a temp of about 38 degrees, Thursday I went to the Dr with a temp of 39 and unable to breathe and at all. I was able to eat a couple of tablespoons of yoghurt only for 2 days and the nurse who took my blood said that if I started drooling I needed to go to the hospital immediately. I am blaming the random who played with us for Call of Cthulu as she was sniffling and coughing everywhere and we always avoid Pax Pox because we use hand sanitiser every 3 seconds the entire weekend!! I basically spent from Wednesday night until Friday morning thinking I was actually going to die because breathing was so difficult, which kept inducing panic attacks and making it worse. I was terrified. This meant I just didn’t want to even play WoW or blog or do anything but sit on the couch (or in bed) and not move.
I am feeling much better now though, I can breathe again except my nose is now snuffly.