E.V.A.-Origins 2013 Duel of Champions…The Allport Perspective-A He Said/She Said Review |

One old school gamer, one non-gaming artist, together they venture into the gaming world of the 2013 Origins gaming convention in Columbus, Ohio. I’m Mike, the old gamer on the left. I used to attend the Origins convention regularly. My wife, Jill (the artist), was making her first foray into the gaming world. We attended the convention with our two children, Duncan and Connor (see the photo with the ogre). They too were new to the convention scene.

The Origins convention has been annually held in Columbus for many years. I, along with my local gaming group, would often attend in years past. The convention went through a series of ownership changes about ten years ago and because of those changes, the overall quality of the convention has suffered. Three of the largest gaming companies do not attend or support events at this convention anymore. Wizards of the Coast ( the largest and owners of the Dungeons and Dragons RPG), together with WizKids (owners of Heroclix gaming), and Crafty Games (owners of Spycraft RPG), all prefer to attend the much larger venue of GenCon in Indianapolis, Indiana held in August.

With Origins, however, there has always been that feeling that Gamers are the most important aspect of gaming. Although the major companies were not there, I did see games from all three being run by other attendees. The show was attended by more than 20,000 people from all types of gaming. The theme of this year was superheroes. Catwoman and Deadpool (in Batman undies?) were a couple of the more notable costumes, but many other genres were there to be seen. Even a Spaceball showed up.

I felt the Convention as a whole was very family friendly, with much to offer all ages. The atmosphere felt to me to be about the gamers not the industry. I would consider returning with my gaming group in the future. Even though we currently attend GenCon as a group and two conventions in three months can get a bit expensive.

The convention still is one of the largest Miniature Gaming conventions. Their hall was as large as the dealer room that was filled with historical, sci-fi, and fantasy games.

This was just a sampling of what we saw. In the end, I found Origins a refreshing gamer driven convention rather than the Industry driven GenCon.

Now for the non-gaming-art-lovers perspective: Being married to a gamer for 17 years, there is nothing at Origins that shocked or surprised me in any way. I believe my better half felt compelled to “warn” me, for some reason, of the extreme geek-ness that I was about to encounter. I was actually rather looking forward to crossing over into his world to view the art for which I have a great appreciation for. But I will get back to that in a moment.

There is much more to see than games at Origins, as well as, I assume, other gaming conventions. The first place to which I was led was a “purveyor of fine corsets” as it proclaims on their business card: Renaissance Fashions. They had a rather large collection of corsets and, well, renaissance fashions. We are kind of into steam punk and there selection of leather corsets was vast. Rosanna helped me into one and, I must say, I liked it. I mean, look at me! Instant weight loss! Who wouldn’t like that? I’m pretty sure Mike liked it to. A wife can tell these things… You can find your own at www.renaissancefashions.com but I think the website needs work as it didn’t have nearly the selection as their little kiosk did.

More fun stuff to see on the clothing front was the huge selection of t-shirts. Oh, you witty gamers and your funny, funny sayings! The things that caught my eye were the zombie items and there were plenty of those! Being a Walking Dead fan, I couldn’t resist the temptation of having a zombie just hold me, if only for a little while…

And now for my favorite part, the art work! It was truly overwhelming how many artists were there…some so good and some not so good. There is money to be made if you have the talent. I loved all of it, good and bad, because if you have a booth at a gaming convention, you are really making time to create art, and that is not always easy to do. Some of the more notable artists were Nigel Sade, Larry Elmore, Sarah Wilkenson and Charles Urbach. I do not have any photos of those artists as I wasn’t sure if there was going to be any kind of copyright infringement issues. They all have fabulous websites that you must see to believe. My sons, however, did purchase some whimsical original artwork.

All in all, I would have to concur with my husband; this was a fun, family friendly adventure that I would definitely go on again.