Another year, another great
GenCon gaming convention! If I haven't completely lost count, this was my 11th GenCon - first time was in 1998 and I've only missed one since. Though the representation from my usual gaming group was a bit light this year, we still had a great time, and even managed to break in a few new folks.
The weekend started off on a bit of a low note - I woke up Thursday morning with a bad sore throat, stuffy head, and a headache - sure signs of a summer cold. But GenCon waits for no man, so I broke out the
DayQuil, sucked it up, and piled in the car to
pick up my buddy Mike in Lansing. Five hours of road time passed quickly enough with
Fear Factory blaring and plenty of gaming discussion. We
checked into the hotel and headed right on into the
convention center.
The
registration line was long, but we'd both pre-registered so we got to skip all that and go straight to the Will-Call line. Having obtained badges, we headed right for the
dealer hall. If it's got anything to do with gaming (even if you have to stretch the definition a little), it can be found here. Card games, board games, RPGs, miniatures, LARP - everything is represented. There are always
a "few" dice, of course, and some
twists on old favorites. PC and console games have a solid presence too - with plenty of
advertising to
enjoy. The biggest names in the industry are always present, though some
aren't as big as they used to be. There's a ton of gamers walking around, and fortunately
they don't all stink. Plenty of
interesting sights, too. Might even see a
hero or villain around, and you can always pick up
something to defend yourself if you feel the need.
While in the hall we met up with big Demetrius and a couple of GenCon-first-timers from up in Owosso, David and Al - we'd all be sharing the hotel room, for what little sleeping happens at GenCon. We got lucky this year, though - Mike had another hotel room already booked for Thursday and Friday nights so everyone got their own bed until Saturday night.
Thursday evening was the
City of Heroes meet and greet,
kindly organized by Ms Mind on the official forums. We had a
good turnout of heroes (and villains) for dinner and some good conversation. Nice to meet some other fans of the game! I was the only one there that played on my primary server, Victory, but many of the other folks knew one another and played together. A good time was had by all, and there was even some swag handed out - bumper stickers, HeroClix minis, comics (some signed), and a few of the concept art books. It was great to meet everyone, and special thanks to those that organized and brought the free stuff!
I called it an early night Thursday, in the interest of fighting the cold, but I did get in a little playtesting with Mike on a new game he's working on. Woke up feeling much better on Friday, though still heavily on the cold medication.
Friday morning I did a little sightseeing, walking around the con. One of the most impressive sights this year was the
Serra Angel statue, which was prominently placed right near
the D&D room just upstairs from the main registration area. I stopped by
Cardhalla as it was being built, peeked in on the
board gaming, and
saw a pirate battle in the hallway.
Then it was time for my first official event - a beginner
Cthulutech RPG game. It was
run by Bob the game master for a bunch of us that had never played before in a
tiny little RPG room in one of the nearby hotels. It's an interesting setting - the world is being destroyed from within by demons (of course - that "
Cthulu" in the name is a bit of a give-away), but there's a twist in that some of that demonic energy is being used to power science-fiction-style mecha. The game mechanics seem to work very well and it's not horribly complex - although of course we were playing a simplified version given that everyone was a newbie. Bob did a great job. He came prepared with some
nice game props, and rolled with the punches as we added three more people than the event's technical maximum, asked many stupid questions, and made plenty of silly mistakes. The four hours allotted flew by, and I'm convinced we could have happily spent another hour or two had people not needed to head out to other events.
It was only early Friday afternoon when we finished that event, but I was in dire need of some rest so I headed back to the hotel and took a nap. Darn cold - normally I get by with about 4 hours of sleep a night at GenCon, but that wasn't happening this year. I did wake up in time to wander the dealer room a bit more before it closed, and then hooked up with the gang for dinner followed by a
little relaxing back at the hotel.
Friday night turned out to be
Middle Earth:Quest night. Mike picked up a copy of the game that he'll be using to demo at
Evolution Games, and we broke it out for a test run. The hotel was short on gaming space but we improvised, setting up the board on their billiards table.
We needed most of the table's space, because this game is not small. It took us the better part of an hour to get it all set up and figure out what we were doing in the first couple of turns, but then the pace picked up a bit. I played Sauron, and Mike and D were Free People's heroes. The game was a lot of fun once we got used to the mechanics, especially the battling mechanic which allowed for a decent amount of strategy (and involves no dice). In the end, the Free Peoples were victorious, thanks in large part to D's daring foray into Barad-Dûr where he defeated
the Black Riders. They did come back and smite him down, but by then the damage was done and Sauron's plans were ruined. All in all a very fun game - my only real complaint is that a maximum of four players (Sauron plus 3 Free People) is a bit limiting for a game of this size, but I suspect there may be expansions on the way that will solve that.
After the game we headed to bed. It was a rough night for me, had a hard time sleeping with the cold, and I didn't get to sleep until after 3 AM. So I ended up staying in bed until nearly noon on Saturday, recovering my strength a bit. I needed it, because it turned out to be a busy day. A little after noon I made a quick stop by the dealer room, and happened to run into Matthias, an old friend from the heyday of our Middle Earth CCG days. It was great to catch up a bit with him - you run into all sorts of folks at these cons that you never see otherwise.
Next up was a True Dungeon Mini-Quest event.
True Dungeon is an incredibly popular series of events where the entire
Marriott hotel ballroom is converted to a life-sized D&D dungeon. It's darn near impossible to get tickets to the main events, even though they're fairly expensive. I tried this year when pre-registration opened but was never able to get through. I did manage to snag a Mini-Quest ticket, though, which is a shorter one-hour introductory adventure. The other five folks in my group showed up together, and since two of them had done the event once before (and because we're foolhardy) we decided to do the Nightmare version - which basically means the DMs are allowed to actively try to kill your characters. I was a little concerned when we failed to solve the very first trap and everyone took a bunch of damage, but despite that failure we managed to complete the rest of the dungeon without losing even one of our party. The whole event was a blast, both because the people in my party were a lot of fun, and because the setup is very well done. I'll definitely do more True Dungeon events if I can.
There's
people in costumes everywhere at GenCon (and some
just accessorizing), but Saturday afternoon is especially interesting because of the costume contest. You have to wait in line for hours to get into the actual costume contest presentation, but before they all go up on stage the contestants walk through the convention center in a parade. It's
quite a
sight. I'm sure there will be many people with better camera equipment and skills posting much better photos in the near future.
Once the costume contest people had disappeared, I headed to the card gaming hall for my yearly
Middle Earth:CCG event. The game's been out of print for years, but some folks still have the product and there's a
fairly active community that
plays mostly online. GenCon is one of the few times that people can physically get together to play, so we try to make the most of it.
Six of us showed up to play a little Fallen-Wizard limited, not a format really meant to be played with the White Hand set, but we had fun with it. A good time was had by all right up until the end of the third and last round...
...at which point the fire alarm went off in the convention center. They build their alarms loud in Indianapolis, I can vouch for that. At the time, we got no explanation, just announcements and convention center people telling us to pick up our stuff and head outside. I was fairly impressed that everyone moved pretty quickly and without much disorder
to head outside. Since I'd just finished my game anyway, I just left and headed over to dinner with the guys. Later I heard that turning a few thousand gamers out into the street has its consequences - traffic was stopped on one of the streets out in front of the center when a giant Red Rover game was spontaneously organized while the fire department checked out the building. Fortunately there was nothing serious wrong - the rumor mill said it was a kitchen fire in one of the food areas - and within the hour everyone was back inside and the convention was back underway. I'm pretty glad this happened later at night when the dealer hall was closed, though - trying to evacuate that would have been a whole additional level of complexity.
After dinner, Demetrius, Brice, Al and I headed back to the con. First we stopped off at Cardhalla since it was
time for the destruction, which is always fun to watch. Then
Demetrius and his boy Brice got up close and personal with the holy warrior. Finally we wandered over to the card gaming area and got into a
Magic booster draft. I believe that's the longest I've ever gone at GenCon without playing any Magic - I hadn't even thrown down in a pickup game until this. Didn't miss it at all, with so much else going on. Maybe not playing the first 3/4 of the con was a good move, since I got a pretty decent draft and took 2nd out of 8. I figured that was good enough, might as well quit while I was ahead, so once the other guys finished we headed back to the hotel. Well, some of us did - Al met up with David and then camped out by the Serra Angel so they could get
From the Vault: Exiled cards cheap in the morning. My days of pulling stunts like that are over, but I can respect the young ones that are still crazy enough to pull it off - more power to 'em.
Sunday morning was another day to sleep in, still fighting off the cold. Everyone got up and
cleaned out the room in time to check out, then headed back to the dealer hall for one last swing through. I picked up a bunch of little gifts for people that I'd spotted earlier at various times, plus a couple things of my own - including the "
be Human" soundtrack from
Ghost in the Shell:SAC for $15, a better deal than I'd expected. After a couple hours of that, I'd spent all the money I cared to, and Mike and I packed up the car and headed home.
GenCon is always a blast. We missed some of the old guard this time out - the Rice brothers, Mike J and Tim from Owosso, Greg - but the new fellas acquitted themselves well and we all had a great time. Already looking forward to 2010!
