GenCon 2011 In Review

Confession time. In all my years of gaming, I’ve never been to GenCon. Until recently, GenCon has been one of those “…it’d be nice, but maybe later” events that seemed interesting, but never really could get me excited to go the way that something like PAX or San Diego Comic-Con could do. The “best four days in gaming” couldn’t pull me in. The last couple of years have changed that. I’ve really gotten involved in the RPG community in a way that I hadn’t before. Twitter, mostly, but in other avenues as well. Not least writing here at RPG Musings. And to that end, suddenly GenCon had that appeal that it didn’t quite have before. I wanted to go and meet the many people that I’d met in the community, or at least as many of them as was possible. I also intended to try and play as many new games as possible while I was there, stuff that I don’t really get to play here at home. Finally, I had a not-inconsiderable list of games and products that I wanted to buy while I was there at GenCon, some of which won’t be out for general sale for a while, if at all.

I was flying out on Wednesday at a ridiculously early time of morning. Flying at 6am is never ever fun. Flying in general isn’t much fun anymore, but that’s not something to get into here. Waiting at the gate, the trip already developed a unique feel as there were a handful of people talking about the L5R CCG. Dallas was even more so, not only hanging out at the gate for gamers but sitting next to and chatting with one on the flight ot Indianapolis. I had to wait around the Indy airport for a while, but that gave me a chance to meet some people I knew from Twitter. Some of which I’d end up spending most of the weekend hanging out with, oddly enough. Eventually I shared a cab with ChattyDM and got checked into my hotel. Which I almost immediately left to walk down to wait for Drinking D&D. The walk gave me my first real taste of three constant companions at GenCon: Walking, heat, and humidity. I got in and had some food and a beer and then joined the pre-game party. Although I wasn’t playing in the game, something I was disappointed about, it was still a great time and a great opportunity to finally meet a lot of people face to face for the first time. And there were a lot of people there to meet. It was very loud and very crowded however. I’m not sure the room was really meant to handle forty or more people all at once, but it somehow managed to work. I hope to get to play next year, but it sounds like the amount of tables and participants is being cut down so I don’t feel like it’s likely to happen. In either case, I was glad I went this year.

Thursday was a very long day. Met up with people for breakfast and then met up with others waiting for the exhibition hall to open. And when it did? Mad rush. It actually wasn’t as busy or crowded as it would be in later days, but that first surge of people getting in and fanning out was pretty impressive. Probably because of all the people trying to get items that were going to be limited in quantity (such as free things). I wasn’t much different, aiming directly for the Cubicle 7 booth to pick up a copy of The One Ring and the associated map. I also got a copy of In Flames, which was also on my list of games to get at GenCon. I’ll be reviewing both games here at RPG Musings in the coming weeks. I really wanted to get the scenario book for The Laundry while I was there, but I resisted. I made my way to preorder Super Dungeon Explore and I also went and got the new Eclipse Phase book (Panopticon) and the Eclipse Phase dice bag from Dragon Chow. After rejoining some friends, we got some lunch and then headed off to play Leverage. Dave the Game (of critical-hits.com) was running an intro game, just a couple hours scheduled. It was a hell of a lot of fun. I wasn’t really familiar with either the show or the game, but it was pretty easy to pick up and Dave did a good job of teaching us how to play and making it interesting. It’s a game that I definitely want to buy for myself. After that was over, it was time for me to run a delve that I’m playtesting for a project. I had a good time running it and got some good feedback that will be very beneficial in the finished product. After that, I kind of punked out. I was exhausted, having had very little sleep in the last two days and already walked around a great deal with a heavy bag. So I went back to the hotel, picking up some food on the way and generally trying to get some rest.

Part of the reason I needed the rest? Friday was going to be an even longer day than Thursday. In no small part because I was scheduled to run an Ashes of Athas game for organized D&D play at 8am the next morning. Which meant I had to leave my hotel no later than 7:15 so I could be at the organized play area by 7:45. It was a bit unorganized, but I got my shirt and my table assignment and, eventually, I got my players. We started about 30 minutes late and the players went kinda slow, so I had to kind of summarize/skip almost half the module in the last 20 minutes. I had a pretty good time and my players weren’t bad, but I’m clearly not in the right mindset to run organized play very often. There were some complications regarding the reward I was getting for running and some miscommunication, but that’s not a tale that needs to be gone over here. I hit the exhibition hall again and picked up Dungeon World (also due for a review). I met up with Rolling20s, who was going to be running Pathfinder for me and a bunch of others. This was another game I hadn’t played before and was looking forward to trying. I actually recorded this game and will be posting it on youtube at some point, but the short version is that we had a really great time even though we failed in our mission at the end due to some absolutely miserable dice rolling. Some of us went over to the CCG hall where there was Magic: The Gathering going on with Michael Robles, Thadeous, DreadGazeebo and Momanatrix. Not knowing what was going on, I couldn’t tell you much other than they were playing Archenemy. And even if I did know what was going on? I’m under an NDA about it. Sorry guys. We were going to hit the Ennies, but we hadn’t realised that they were scheduled to be 4 hours long and we’d told Robles that we’d be going to D&D Pub Quiz at Scotty’s. This tends to be another feature of GenCon: so many things going on that you want to do, but no way to go to all of them. No matter how well you schedule or plan, you’re going to miss out. So, Scotty’s it was and it wasn’t a bad choice. Despite some problems with the weather, it was a great time. Our team (Save vs. Mazzanoble) was full of people from the Twitter #dnd crew and we rocked out on the question. Randall/Deadorcs was probably the team MVP. I’ve got a short video you can see here.

Anyway, our team placed second despite our wealth of awesomeness, but that was still good enough to win a lot of prizes and we probably had more fun than the winning team because of the way we were interacting with all the WotC crew. I walked away with Heroes of Shadow as well as the old Streets of Shadow tile set. I missed playing Slasher with a few people afterwords, but I’d had a pretty damned full day already at that point and was fading fast.

Saturday was pretty uneventful really. At least in terms of things worth reporting in a blog post like this. I slept in and missed the D&D Products Seminar. I met with some friends and wandered the exhibition hall again, though at this point I was trying to resist buying anything further. I did, however, get my copy of Part-Time Gods signed by Eloy LaSanta (I was a kickstarter backer for the project) along with the cover artists. In addition, I went back by the Posthuman Studios booth to get my copy of Panopticon signed since they were less busy. Eventually I was able to pick up my reward for running Ashes of Athas the day before, which was the Neverwinter Campaign Setting. Eventually we ended up back at Scotty’s, where I was scheduled to run Dresden Files RPG. This didn’t happen, unfortunately, It was just too loud, we were starting too late, and people had to leave early. That said, we still had a good dinner and spent a while talking about games and generally a really good time.

Sunday was going-home day, but there was still time to head down to the convention center and see what else could be done. Meeting up with what had turned into the usual crowd, we had lunch at Steak and Shake, hit the exhibition hall some more, and just tried to get in as much as possible before having to go. I, unfortunately, had to go first and before I could see WastexGames demo the stuff he was premiering there. But I was thrown a bone and my time in Indy ended in one of the best ways possible. It turns out that my gate was next to the one that Daniel Solis (author of Do: Pilgrims of the Flying Temple) was flying out of. I got to meet him and have him sign my copy of Do, which I happened to have with me in my carry on. Then, it turns out my flight was delayed, which meant I got to play a game of Do with him and two others, including digitaldraco who I’d seen a lot of in my time in Indy. It was about the best way I can imagine to wrap up my time at GenCon: spending time in the airport playing a game with friends and a game developer.

I had a great time there at GenCon this year and I’m glad I went. It wasn’t without some problems, some anxiety, or some dissapointments, but on the whole it was really awesome. I hope to go back next year. I want to play more games, both as a player and as a GM. I want to be more assertive and talk to people that I want to talk to without worrying so much about being a bother or a nuisance. I want to meet more people I know from online gatherings and get to know them better. All good reasons, I think, to go again.