Origins 2015 - Overview

Now that I'm home from Origins (and from the vacation I took immediately upon my return), I can finally sit down and recap the convention.

Firstly the overall numbers:
    37 individual plays of
    32 unique games of which
    29 were new to me.
    28 different people played with of whom
    14 I met at this year's convention.
    11 games obtained plus
    3 gaming-related accessories and
    10 comics trades purchased.

In upcoming posts, I'll be covered the games I played & purchased, but today I just want to focus on the other parts of the Origins experience: the people, the food, and, of all things, my hotel.

The Food
I make no secret of the fact that food is important to me when I travel; typically my husband & I plan vacations to take advantage of great local eats. Origins is obviously different as my focus is on gaming, but last year I had found some pretty awesome options for meals that didn't involve convention centre cuisine. But, this year, the food was somewhat disappointing, though a few standouts helped save this aspect of the con at least in part.

North Market was just as fantastic as I had remembered - I made many trips for coffee, & often grabbed a crepe from the A Taste of Belgium stand while there - the banana Nutella was as good as ever but the standout for this trip was the lemon curd & lavender sugar version (pictured above). Other great dishes from the trip were the pierogies from Barley's & the Reuben balls from the Three Legged Mare (though the rest of that meal was extremely disappointing).

On the negative side, we went out on Saturday night to a local restaurant that's apparently renowned for its Southern cuisine, especially their fried chicken (which is even featured in their mission). Unfortunately, multiple people were served extremely raw chicken, service was horrendously slow, and various checks were screwed up and took what appeared to be Herculean effort to fix.

The People
Origins has always seemed to be the con you attend for the people & this year was no exception. Last year was the first con I had ever attended solo, so I was very much out of my comfort zone. Because of that, I spent most of the time with the same people staying very much in a safe little bubble. This year, I made an effort to play with a larger variety of groups & so I met a TON of new people & had some really awesome gaming experiences. I did miss hanging out with Tiffany, Copac & Dan as much, but it just gives me even greater incentive to find other opportunities to play with them outside of the Columbus Convention Center.

The craziest thing I did this year was to offer up my floorspace to a complete stranger from Twitter who needed a place to stay. My solo hotel room is my escape if I'm all social-ed out and so I was worried in the run up to the con that I'd screwed myself by taking on a roommate. In the end, however, things worked beautifully: Tiffany R was an incredibly considerate roommate and through her I met a lot of the new people I previously mentioned. It just shows you that taking the occasional risk can be well worth it (though obviously don't offer to share a hotel room with someone you have zero knowledge/references for - in this case we had mutual friends I could refer to).

The Accommodations
Normally I wouldn't waste much space on a hotel but having stayed at The Lofts both years, I have to take a few sentences to push this particular place to anyone attending Origins in future years (unless doing so leaves no room for me, that is). It costs about the same as staying at the Hyatt, is just across the street from the Convention Centre, and the rooms are amazing. As evidence - this was my room this year: