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GenCon 2014

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I made it to GenCon for the first time. I had planned to go to the whole thing this year, but I had a major presentation that I had to do near St. Louis. However, I decided to go anyway.

I did not get there until after 6:00 PM on Friday as I visited some friends near St. Louis that I had not seen in a long time.

I missed out on the Exhibition Hall, as it closed at 6:00 PM. (This was a hazard of deciding to just do it and registering when I got there.)

The benefit of this is that I was able to figure out where everything was. WARNING: The Indianapolis Convention Center is HUGE! If you have never been take advice I read last year from a first time attendee, I forget who it was. Have a bottle of water and a snack,just in case. I suggest also comfortable well-fitting shoes. I got a blister on one toe. I also suggest having a room at one of the downtown hotels and planning to stay until the morning after your last day, so you can get cleaned up as you go. The mid-west is usually very hot a humid in August, but it was very mild this year. However, thousands of bodies in a huge convention center pressed together make it very warm. I sweat through my shirt, socks, and underwear, making things very uncomfortable today.

I did not sleep more than a couple hours last night. I just laid there not sleeping, so I got up and wandered around.

The Exhibition Hall opened at 10:00 AM and I wandered all over until about 12:30 PM. I bought a d30 and battle mat from Chessex and a second set of Game Science dice, and a poster from Inkwell Ideas, and art from Jeff Easley and Larry Elmore. I saw a lot more I wish I could buy. I’ll post pictures of my goodies later.

Overall, I thought it was just too big. I think that is mostly because I had never been and a lot of volunteers did not have answers to my questions, and I showed up late Friday.

The thing I most disliked is for either $50 for a single day, or $80 for four days, MOST of the events other than the Exhibition Hall, auction, and a few others, required paying MORE MONEY to attend. This INCLUDED the organized game play. I can agree with paying to be in a fancy tournament if it has decent prizes, but pay to play just rubbed me wrong. Because I got their late Friday, it was too late to get in on most events I was interested in, so I wondered and observed. I liked that I could at least wander around and observe all the game play.

If there was a sanctioned or organized way to arrange pick up games or anything, I never found it. My impression is that a pick up game would most likely occur if your friends from your regular group, or your GenCon buddies decided to get together.

I have been to other game conventions, and there was no additional fees to join in organized play or even tournaments. I don’t know if the fees at GenCon are only secondarily about the money with a primary emphasis on trying to organize 20 or 30,000 players.

As I mentioned earlier, I wandered the Exhibition Hall until 12:30 and got all the things I limited myself too. I could never afford all that I wanted…. By this time I was starving. They have food inside the convention center, like pizza, subs, etc. I was tired of this, so I went out to the pedestrian mall outside the convention center, where they had a dozen or so food trucks. I found an excellent BBQ truck, I forget their name, but it is local to Indianapolis. If I can find the name, I will add it.

Getting food helped. I recommend not getting to the point of tired, sweaty, and hungry. I should have taken a break rather than do a marathon session of seeing all the exhibitors. I ended up very frustrated that I could not find Howard Taylor of Schlock Mercenary. I conflated the last convention he attended with GenCon and thought he had a booth. He was actually joining Tracy Hickman of XDM games, I see now that I am home. He also did a signing that I learned of about a half hour AFTER it ended. Part of that was my confusion and I did not pick up on the book signing reading the guidebook/schedule. It is probably in there correctly, I think I just had information overload.

I was cranky. I felt a lot better after I ate, but I was still sweaty and had a blister working on one toe. Solving hunger did not help. I decided I was past the point of having fun, so I headed home. On my way out, I passed Frank Mentzer who was going in the opposite direction. I had wanted to talk to him, but by that time, I did not care.

I drove about an hour and had to pull over at a rest stop and snoozed for a couple hours. After that I felt like a new man. Thus my recommendation to keep a room in a hotel nearby until the day AFTER you are done with the convention. Have plenty of clothes so you can go to your room and shower and get a nap.

I left thinking I never wanted to attempt to go back. A lot of that was brought on by being tired. After my snooze I wished I wasn’t an hour away from the convention and started thinking I might actually try to go again next year.

I now know that I will need to save up for a fancier hotel downtown for at least a couple nights, or more if I do all four days. I will need money to attend all the things I want. I will have to review the activities BEFORE it starts so I can plan what to do. As long as GenCon is in the same place, one can plan for the next year. I am also thinking that I really should go to GaryCon, since I always wanted to go to GenCon when it was still in Lake Geneva. Being a smaller Con, I am sure it will have a lot less of the chaos and frustration that a megacon has.

I’m not 100% set on GenCon next year. I will be a grandfather in January, and I expect to be spending a lot of time with my new grandchild. Five years or so  until Disney World, maybe ten until a major Con, time will tell.

RPGs

GenCon 2014

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I have always wanted to go to GenCon since high school, back when it was in Lake Geneva, Wisconsin.

I was seriously considering going this year. I have the time off and I can make the financing for a room for a few nights work without selling the debt load.

Indianapolis is only 3 hours 45 minutes from home.

I just found out today that I have to go to Illinois and make a big presentation to attract some new business. I’m not a sales rep, but I know the program, etc.

I may see about taking time off around that and swing by GenCon on my way home, just a day to say I went.

I will see how things play out.

Some family things are going on that will affect a lot of what I do between now and then.

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Origins 2014

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I just learned that Origins starts tomorrow. I have heard of Origins, but it does not stick in my mind like GenCon or other local cons.

I need to get these on my calendar ahead of time. It’s only about a 4 1/2 hour drive, only about 45 min further than to Indianapolis from home.

Real life gets in the way of fun.

If I didn’t have to be on client site to do training on Monday, I would figure out a way to go.

It also interferes with an organization that is having a picnic on Saturday that I had already planned to attend.

The good news is that my son and his girlfriend want to play some more on Sunday!

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Marmalade Dog 19 – Part II

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Last night I wrote here that I found out that the local gaming convention at WMU in Kalamazoo is this weekend.

It started at 9:00 AM and due to waking up way early, I lost track of time working on something since I was up, then having a hard time figuring out where to park to avoid a ticket from campus police, I got there just before ten.

I figured there would be a line to sign up to place D&D Next, so rather than going to the sign-up sheet first, I looked around then tried to find the table. I could not find it, so I went to the sign up sheets and no one had signed up, so I signed up and went to the table, no one was there. There was no note nothing, just a long table and the chairs around it.

I went and said something to the registration staff and the DM for all the D&D Next sessions, all using the Temple of Elemental Evil, and they said he ws not there. One of them mentioned that this was one of their smaller years. The whole event fit into one ballroom/auditorium.

There were less than a dozen vendors. One vendor advertising himself as a travelling game shop. I take that to mean he does from CON to CON. He had jewelry, used games, dice and trinkets. Most of the vendors appeared to be focused on Magic The Gathering. I never “got” the Magic card game. I still don’t so I skipped over those tables. There was one local used book store there and their had their rule books, and Science Fiction and Fantasy books there. The rules they had were “new rules”, probably for D&D 3.0 or 3.5, I did not look closely. I mentioned that and they said any OD&D and 1e books went straight to their eBay site.

There looked to be two tables of board games for whatever enough people wanted to play. There looked to be two tables where two games of Blood Bowl were going on, and there was room at the tables for at least two more games at each table. I played Blood Bowl when it first came out, my brother, Robert had it. That was over 20 years ago.

There were a couple groups playing miscellaneous games, Call of Cthulhu, a magic/fantasy RPG I never heard of, and maybe a couple others. The bulk of their RPG offerings were hosted by the PathFinder Society and there looked to be 6 or 7 PathFinder games. The PathFinder Society or else it was a vendor had three tables with two workers for selling rules books. I am not interested in laying out a bunch of money to GM another game system.

They had eight double tables set up for Warhammer miniature wargaming and it looked like two or three tables were setting up to play.

They had some big screen with some sort of Star Trek game that one worker said he was excited about, but nothing was happening yet.

They also had 8 immersive stations, basically boxes with doors for MechWarrior, but nothing was happening with that. There was a big screen TV to show the action once it got started.

One of the workers said that some people usually had pickup games, but I did not see anyone else who was not involved in something. I brought my Player’s Handbook and ACKS soft cover (I helped with the Kickstarter so got my name in the acknowledgement.) and my tablet with the AD&D PDFs, and the final D&D Next play test rules. so I could have ran an impromptu or played in one had there been others there.

Since the first session went until 2:00 PM, and I was not feeling into any of the other offerings, I decided to go run some errands and pop back home to drop stuff off and let the dog out. Due to my waking really early, once I got home I felt how tired I was, so I elected to take a nap. Of course, I slept until after 2:00 and the next session started at 2:30. So I planned to go to the next session, but something personal came up and put an end to that. A day that was a good one, even though it was not going the way I had hoped, took a turn due to some real life drama.

It continues tomorrow, but I put off things I planed to do today that I have been putting off too long. My computer room is a mess and it is driving me nuts, so I need to clean up so I can focus on some campaign planning and other real life things.

I had never been to a strictly gaming convention before. Obviously it was focused on playing, which is a good thing. There were no panels or guest speakers, etc. My impressions of the whole thing are pretty neutral since the one thing I wanted to experience wasn’t happening when I was there.

I did get some good out of it. I learned of some other SW Michigan conventions, one in Grand Rapids, only about an hour away, I don’t recall where the other is at the moment. On my errands I stopped by my FLGS and picked up three spare sets of dice, if I ever manage to get some players that need dice for a session. I also looked at their board and got a picture of a group that meets regularly at WMU that might give some local leads. Local colleges should have some RPG players that might let an old Grognard play. I now know where to park for next year’s Marmalade Dog and can watch for it next year. If I sign up early, I can run a game and get a t-shirt and discounted admission.

For now, I will continue the quest to find locac players for face to face play, and explore the options for online play, like Google hangouts or Roll20. Of course, more posts about those endeavors.

RPGs

Marmalade Dog 19

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While attempting to find players within close driving distance, I checked the area D&D Meetup and they had pictures of play at a prior Marmalade Dog gaming convention, held by the Western Michigan Gamers Guild (WMGG). I knew they had it in the first few months of the year, so I checked and No. 19 is this weekend, Fri., Sat., Sun. I have always remembered to check when it is and learn it happened a week or two before I checked.

Most conventions are on the eastern part of the state in Ann Arbor or Detroit, or in Chicago, or Indianapolis for GenCon. Detroit and Chicago are both about two hours from where I live. I always wanted to go to GenCon, but never have. Not sure I can make it happen this year. Real life gets in the way. I’m trying to not talk myself out of things that might be a once in a lifetime experience when they are things I can realistically accomplish and afford to do.

It’s within 20 miles of where I live and Saturday only is $20.

I haven’t been to a gaming convention in decades, so I may go check it out. They have Pathfinder and D&D Next for RPGs. Never played Pathfinder, I understand it is a D&d 3.5 clone. I never did 3.5. I have looked at D&D Next via the playtest downloads and have the last download. It looks to be what I can tell is D&D based on my blue Box and AD&D experience. They only have 3 sessions of D&D Next, all Temple Of Elemental Evil, which I never played, all run by same DM for 6 players.

I’m not up to learning a new game or laying out the cash for new books. They start at 9:00 AM and go until 11:30 PM. I’m not up for that long, but will go check it out. Who knows, I might meet some other Old School Grognards like me for future gaming.

I will post a follow up of my experience.