Origins 2011, Day Three

I'm a bad, bad blogger. It's been almost a month since my last installment of this summary.

For the third day of the convention - Friday - I'd only scheduled three events. In part, this was to leave me some time for the exhibit hall. But also, they were large events. They were :

9AM-1PM : Clash of Heroes - DC (Mutants and Masterminds)
1PM-5PM : Space 1935 : Zeppelins Over Jupiter (Champions)
7PM-Midnight : The 20th Annual Smithee Awards

Clash of Heroes wasn't bad, but it was kind of predictable. See, I'd noticed there was a Clash of Heroes - Marvel on the schedule at the exact same time, and since my brain is capable of adding two and two, I realized there was only one way this could possibly go down. The two sessions would end up fighting one another in the end.

I got to play Batman, which was awesome, and the guy playing Plastic Man was hysterical. Plus, the players of Green Arrow and Black Canary were bickering in-character about Ollie's philandering. The whole thing turned out to be a joint interdimensional plot by Darkseid and Dr. Doom. Both groups of heroes arrived at the same time to confront the bad guys - the OBVIOUS bad guys - one of whom each team would RECOGNIZE as bad guys - and still the tween playing Spider-Man decided to take a potshot at me because "we don't know they're not villains". Well, you see me attacking Dr. Doom, genius. What do you think is happening? But then Ollie hit on Ms. Marvel and Tony Stark tried to pick up on Black Canary, so it was funny again.

Space 1935 was fantastic pulp sci-fi, and not just because I got to pick the character whose sheet had him represented by Mike Nelson of MST3K. No, our ship had an AI, Huckleberry, who had somewhat specific interpretations of the laws of robotics that allowed him to pre-emptively murder some beastmen that MIGHT EVENTUALLY attack humans. And the player gave him a sort of effeminate, Southern accent - like a slightly higher pitched, soft-spoken Huckleberry Hound, in fact. I couldn't help but laugh.

And then, of course, the Smithees - my favorite part of the con, every year. Unfortunately, this year, Man-Mountain McGurk decided to sit in front of me, so it was sometimes a challenge to see the screen around his 7 foot frame and double-wide head. Sigh. But I managed to see most of it.