Dave's Adventures in Americaland: GenCon Report
Forgive me, I often don't know LJ usernames. I'll edit people's LJ links in whenever I can.
Tuesday
After the train trip from Cheltenham, I spent Tuesday evening at Ian Crawford's, eating out at Nandos, chatting about Exalted and our respective Chronicle styles for the game, speculating as to certain GenCon releases. That sort of thing. Early to bed (we had to get up at 5:45 so Ian could give me a lift to the airport) brings us to...
Wednesday
And, after a final text message home, the long flight across the Atlantic, which I spent squashed up against the window by a truly huge American gentleman. I mean, I'm no skinny guy myself, but jesus. I had to roll one of my shoulders forward to get into the seat. Inflight movies were "Wolverine" and "Adventureland". I had intended to spend the flight statting my Mage game for the Con, but couldn't get the books out so limited was space, so had to restrict myself to planning scenes and rough dicepools on a pad.
Washington DC airport (Dulles International) gets a lot of stick (mostly Die Hard II related stick), and I have unfond memories of it from the mid-90s when I experienced it last, but in the end it turned out to be a blessed relief after the flight - they've improved things. Customs took all of ten minutes, not the hour and a half I experienced on honeymoon at LA. It was peaceful, not full of crowds, properly air-conned, well thought out with giant rolling shuttle-rooms (instead of a bus between terminals there's a room you walk into which detaches and rolls across the tarmac on bug wheels. Okay, so it IS a bus, but it's been designed to seamlessly integrate into the terminal rather than being a bus-like experience) and suchlike. Emailed Sharon to say I'd made it across the pond safely (more on this later), Ate lunch at Five Guys, thinking that I'd be in Indianapolis soon and would swing by the Con to meet folk and eat out. My plane to Indy was on time, we left the gate...
...And then sat there at the entrance to the runway for three hours.
Storm between Indy and DC apparently, made worse by the effect of all the planes queuing up. One of the planes ahead of us in the line started leaking fuel, which noone on our plane noticed until the Captain came over the intercom to say "for anyone worried about all the fire engines...", at which point we all looked for them.
Finally got to Indy three hours late with no desire to do anything other than go to bed and the accompanying feeling of being guilty about spending all that money and going all that way in a stressful time to just say "fuck it, I'll cross the final two miles in the morning".
Thursday
The trip must have taken more of it out of me than I thought, because I woke up at half nine (having intended to get up two hours before). Having missed the shuttlebus from my hotel, on the far side of the river and the university from the convention centre, I took a very pleasant walk to the Convention in the Indianapolis sunshine. Using Google Streetview to plan three different ways to walk to the hotel from the con in the weeks beforehand had paid off, and I knew which landmarks to turn at.
GenCon hits you like a brick to the face. Normal city. One cityblock later normal city with a high proportion of beards and ponytails. One block later, "Welcome Gamers!" banners on signposts, crowds sprawling out of the Convention centre and restaurants that are doing better business than the fourth of July. After figuring out - to my relief - that the line snaking out the door and down the street was for those that *hadn't* pre-bought a badge, I registered (no loot!) and went to find White Wolf in the dealer's room.
For my fellow Brits, imagine the dealer's room at GenCon UK. Make it fifty times bigger in a hall that could fit a football field. Or the entirety of GenCon UK for that matter.
White Wolf were based out of a black obelisk with triangular sections around it - WoD on one side, Exalted and the Board games another, the cash register on the third and the card games on the fourth. A bit of an odd design, until you realise that the obelisk has a door in it and the quiet interior space can be used to store stock and hide from the overwhelmingness of the con for a few minutes (or take a phone call, or talk about things not meant to be spoken of when surrounded by fans, or... You get the idea). Met emprint, who was exactly as I imagined him, and ESkemp who was pretty much the opposite from how I imagined him but a very nice guy nontheless.
After saying "Hi" and picking up some game-skull-icon pinbadges for the decoration of my gencon badge, went to explore the Convention. And then the smaller but also giant trading card hall. And the vast RPGA hall. And the boardgame rooms, which were normal-sized but plentiful. Following lunch (and the reading of a bit of Geist), I scouted out where I was supposed to go to a seminar later and went back to lurk at WW for an hour, congratulating Craig Grant on the layout and design of Geist and hanging with Travis Stout . I've worked with Travis only once that I can recall, long admired his work and he turns out to be a great guy. He said he'd been on the next Dungeons and Dragons setting, but that he couldn't say what it was until an announcement at WOTC's booth the following day.
Then the Geist Seminar. Many questions and answers. A lot of which were sadly crossover related, but that's what happens when the people asking questions about the new game haven't read the new game yet - they're still in the "how does this relate to my current chronicle?" space. It'll be interesting if there's a similar panel at a con later in the year, once fans have had time to digest the awesome of the new game.
And it is awesome, by the way. Describing it in oWoD and computer game terms is entirely unfair, but "a cross between Orpheus and Mummy: The Resurrection with a society informed by Grim Fandango" gets you in the right frame of mind.
After the Seminar came the Mage game. "Island of Souls" went off without a hitch after the usual ten minutes where no one wants to be the first to "go" in a game. My recording of it worked despite the Kobald's Ate My Baby game going on next to us, and the recap will hit rpg net in the fullness of time. The players all put great spins on their characters - Haruspex and Adder especially, but I owe a shout-out to the fabulous job Alec and Nick did at playing Excalibur and Rodriguez.
The game overran by about two and a half hours, and we were all starved, so a very late dinner at Steak n Shake finished the night off. I can see why Steak n Shake is so famous among con-goers, though I don't think I'll have the suspicious cheddar-flavoured sauce again.
Friday
This time, I managed to get the shuttlebus in... To discover that I was far, far too early and the main hall didn't open for another hour. Once it did open, touched base at WW again and went in search of Chronica Fuedalis for pathstrider. Finally found it at the Indy Press Revolution booth an hour later, and picked up a few things for myself (like a copy of 3:16 from Cubicle Seven's booth) along the way.
Lunch with the Mage players at Ram's, a sports bar who'd gone further than most, renamed all the items on their menu to fantasy terms, had Privateer Press posters up and were showing Lord of the Rings on their big screen. Left the guys playing Monsters Attack America in a board game room while I went in search of innocent_man who I was supposed to meet after his "play with a developer" game despite me not knowing which of the several such games was his, nor finding anyone at the WW booth who had seen him.
Some detective work (and another few passes around the dealer's hall to find stuff, flip through books (Rogue Trader is the very essence of the shiny, and I do believe the Leatherhead group will love it) and meet people) later, I arrived at a hotel a few blocks south of the Convention and find a particular room with four games going on inside. The GM with his back to me looked like he matched the pictures of Matt's front I've seen here on LJ, so feeling a little like a stalker I settled into the lobby to read 3:16 and wait.
It turned out that my stalkerness was correct, and so I attended Matt's birthday party with Anaka, jadasc, hot493, her lj-less boytoy who likes to say "cock" a lot, unacreamy and eberg at a very nice Italian. Our waiter was named Dax, which amused me terribly, and he had the patience of a saint with our very rowdy bunch.
And then back to the hotel.
Saturday
No shuttlebus today - Indy was hosting a Marathon which closed certain vital roads - and so another walk in led to lurking at the booth again, talking to Ethan about a shared love of D&D4e and being unexpectedly brought muffins by hot493's lj-less boyfriend who said "cock" a lot less but had baked goods to spare. Then I met the Mage gang for an epic game of Descent: Journey into the Dark, a boardgame which approaches the same space as D&D4e from the other direction. It was three when we finished, so after Lunch at a hot dog stand I headed back to the hotel to get changed (Saturday night is when the parties happen), read Exalted books and watch showtime until it was time to get the (now running) shuttlebus back to the convention. Watched a truly awesome Warhammer 40K Apocalypse game for a while and then went to the White Wolf Freelancer's meal at the Palomino.
What happens at the White Wolf Freelancer's meal stays at the White Wolf Freelancer's meal. Much was discussed.
And then, the yearly and infamous Succubus Club. The White Wolf free-bar, cage-dancing-girls, goths-a-plenty, Justin Achilli as DJ (Putting Jessie's Girl on was a stroke of mad genius) party. I ended up sat on the floor next to the windows overlooking the street, people-watching with Travis, John Newman, John Newman's lovely wife who I forget the name of, hot493 and hot's lj-less boyfriend who said cock slightly less but brought me Vodka repeatedly. Nice guy, once you get past the penis obsession. Congratulated Travis on the D&D setting, which by now had been announced as Dark Sun. I Lasted until 1:45, and left just as the guys on the door were starting to talk about where to have an afterparty.
Sunday/Monday
Tried to check out at my hotel, to discover that the email I sent from DC - paid for on my credit card - had led my somewhat overzealous bank to believe I had been phished and cancel my card. One *fifty dollar* phone call back to the UK, the card was unblocked, my suitcase was in storage for later and I had a few hours to kill. So - back to the Con to get the most out of my 4-day badge.
Another Marathon closed the bridges, but I got a lift in with another group of attendees. A final pass around the dealer's hall to distribute business cards and sort out who I needed to email later this week led to goodbyes at WW and then the double-leg taxi back to get my case and then to the airport.
I'd planned my journey to have a three-hour gap at Chicago, reasoning that it would have better facilities than Indy and despite the oddness of going further into America before flying to the UK would end up a shorter flight. My flight from Indy was at five, I got there at one. All good.
No one had told me about Chicago airport. Or more specifically, Chicago airport's weather. My plane didn't take off until half seven from Indy, as earlier planes were unable to land and in some cases returning to Indy after running low on fuel. My three-hour wait in a peaceful Sunday Chicago airport turned into a half hour's rush to eat in preparation for the long trip across the pond in a setting that resembled the third circle of hell.
The plane back was okay, though. In flight movie was Star Trek, but mostly I read Geist.
Once back in Heathrow, turned the mobile back on, got the bus to Reading, got the train to Swindon, got the next train to Cheltenham and finally arrived back home. By my calculations, from getting out of bed in Indy to climbing into it in Cheltenham took 29 hours.
And now a day off. Tomorrow it's back to work.
So - my thanks to everyone who said hello, everyone who put up with me and everyone I played with. I don't know about next year, but I'll try. 2011 is a cert, though.
Tuesday
After the train trip from Cheltenham, I spent Tuesday evening at Ian Crawford's, eating out at Nandos, chatting about Exalted and our respective Chronicle styles for the game, speculating as to certain GenCon releases. That sort of thing. Early to bed (we had to get up at 5:45 so Ian could give me a lift to the airport) brings us to...
Wednesday
And, after a final text message home, the long flight across the Atlantic, which I spent squashed up against the window by a truly huge American gentleman. I mean, I'm no skinny guy myself, but jesus. I had to roll one of my shoulders forward to get into the seat. Inflight movies were "Wolverine" and "Adventureland". I had intended to spend the flight statting my Mage game for the Con, but couldn't get the books out so limited was space, so had to restrict myself to planning scenes and rough dicepools on a pad.
Washington DC airport (Dulles International) gets a lot of stick (mostly Die Hard II related stick), and I have unfond memories of it from the mid-90s when I experienced it last, but in the end it turned out to be a blessed relief after the flight - they've improved things. Customs took all of ten minutes, not the hour and a half I experienced on honeymoon at LA. It was peaceful, not full of crowds, properly air-conned, well thought out with giant rolling shuttle-rooms (instead of a bus between terminals there's a room you walk into which detaches and rolls across the tarmac on bug wheels. Okay, so it IS a bus, but it's been designed to seamlessly integrate into the terminal rather than being a bus-like experience) and suchlike. Emailed Sharon to say I'd made it across the pond safely (more on this later), Ate lunch at Five Guys, thinking that I'd be in Indianapolis soon and would swing by the Con to meet folk and eat out. My plane to Indy was on time, we left the gate...
...And then sat there at the entrance to the runway for three hours.
Storm between Indy and DC apparently, made worse by the effect of all the planes queuing up. One of the planes ahead of us in the line started leaking fuel, which noone on our plane noticed until the Captain came over the intercom to say "for anyone worried about all the fire engines...", at which point we all looked for them.
Finally got to Indy three hours late with no desire to do anything other than go to bed and the accompanying feeling of being guilty about spending all that money and going all that way in a stressful time to just say "fuck it, I'll cross the final two miles in the morning".
Thursday
The trip must have taken more of it out of me than I thought, because I woke up at half nine (having intended to get up two hours before). Having missed the shuttlebus from my hotel, on the far side of the river and the university from the convention centre, I took a very pleasant walk to the Convention in the Indianapolis sunshine. Using Google Streetview to plan three different ways to walk to the hotel from the con in the weeks beforehand had paid off, and I knew which landmarks to turn at.
GenCon hits you like a brick to the face. Normal city. One cityblock later normal city with a high proportion of beards and ponytails. One block later, "Welcome Gamers!" banners on signposts, crowds sprawling out of the Convention centre and restaurants that are doing better business than the fourth of July. After figuring out - to my relief - that the line snaking out the door and down the street was for those that *hadn't* pre-bought a badge, I registered (no loot!) and went to find White Wolf in the dealer's room.
For my fellow Brits, imagine the dealer's room at GenCon UK. Make it fifty times bigger in a hall that could fit a football field. Or the entirety of GenCon UK for that matter.
White Wolf were based out of a black obelisk with triangular sections around it - WoD on one side, Exalted and the Board games another, the cash register on the third and the card games on the fourth. A bit of an odd design, until you realise that the obelisk has a door in it and the quiet interior space can be used to store stock and hide from the overwhelmingness of the con for a few minutes (or take a phone call, or talk about things not meant to be spoken of when surrounded by fans, or... You get the idea). Met emprint, who was exactly as I imagined him, and ESkemp who was pretty much the opposite from how I imagined him but a very nice guy nontheless.
After saying "Hi" and picking up some game-skull-icon pinbadges for the decoration of my gencon badge, went to explore the Convention. And then the smaller but also giant trading card hall. And the vast RPGA hall. And the boardgame rooms, which were normal-sized but plentiful. Following lunch (and the reading of a bit of Geist), I scouted out where I was supposed to go to a seminar later and went back to lurk at WW for an hour, congratulating Craig Grant on the layout and design of Geist and hanging with Travis Stout . I've worked with Travis only once that I can recall, long admired his work and he turns out to be a great guy. He said he'd been on the next Dungeons and Dragons setting, but that he couldn't say what it was until an announcement at WOTC's booth the following day.
Then the Geist Seminar. Many questions and answers. A lot of which were sadly crossover related, but that's what happens when the people asking questions about the new game haven't read the new game yet - they're still in the "how does this relate to my current chronicle?" space. It'll be interesting if there's a similar panel at a con later in the year, once fans have had time to digest the awesome of the new game.
And it is awesome, by the way. Describing it in oWoD and computer game terms is entirely unfair, but "a cross between Orpheus and Mummy: The Resurrection with a society informed by Grim Fandango" gets you in the right frame of mind.
After the Seminar came the Mage game. "Island of Souls" went off without a hitch after the usual ten minutes where no one wants to be the first to "go" in a game. My recording of it worked despite the Kobald's Ate My Baby game going on next to us, and the recap will hit rpg net in the fullness of time. The players all put great spins on their characters - Haruspex and Adder especially, but I owe a shout-out to the fabulous job Alec and Nick did at playing Excalibur and Rodriguez.
The game overran by about two and a half hours, and we were all starved, so a very late dinner at Steak n Shake finished the night off. I can see why Steak n Shake is so famous among con-goers, though I don't think I'll have the suspicious cheddar-flavoured sauce again.
Friday
This time, I managed to get the shuttlebus in... To discover that I was far, far too early and the main hall didn't open for another hour. Once it did open, touched base at WW again and went in search of Chronica Fuedalis for pathstrider. Finally found it at the Indy Press Revolution booth an hour later, and picked up a few things for myself (like a copy of 3:16 from Cubicle Seven's booth) along the way.
Lunch with the Mage players at Ram's, a sports bar who'd gone further than most, renamed all the items on their menu to fantasy terms, had Privateer Press posters up and were showing Lord of the Rings on their big screen. Left the guys playing Monsters Attack America in a board game room while I went in search of innocent_man who I was supposed to meet after his "play with a developer" game despite me not knowing which of the several such games was his, nor finding anyone at the WW booth who had seen him.
Some detective work (and another few passes around the dealer's hall to find stuff, flip through books (Rogue Trader is the very essence of the shiny, and I do believe the Leatherhead group will love it) and meet people) later, I arrived at a hotel a few blocks south of the Convention and find a particular room with four games going on inside. The GM with his back to me looked like he matched the pictures of Matt's front I've seen here on LJ, so feeling a little like a stalker I settled into the lobby to read 3:16 and wait.
It turned out that my stalkerness was correct, and so I attended Matt's birthday party with Anaka, jadasc, hot493, her lj-less boytoy who likes to say "cock" a lot, unacreamy and eberg at a very nice Italian. Our waiter was named Dax, which amused me terribly, and he had the patience of a saint with our very rowdy bunch.
And then back to the hotel.
Saturday
No shuttlebus today - Indy was hosting a Marathon which closed certain vital roads - and so another walk in led to lurking at the booth again, talking to Ethan about a shared love of D&D4e and being unexpectedly brought muffins by hot493's lj-less boyfriend who said "cock" a lot less but had baked goods to spare. Then I met the Mage gang for an epic game of Descent: Journey into the Dark, a boardgame which approaches the same space as D&D4e from the other direction. It was three when we finished, so after Lunch at a hot dog stand I headed back to the hotel to get changed (Saturday night is when the parties happen), read Exalted books and watch showtime until it was time to get the (now running) shuttlebus back to the convention. Watched a truly awesome Warhammer 40K Apocalypse game for a while and then went to the White Wolf Freelancer's meal at the Palomino.
What happens at the White Wolf Freelancer's meal stays at the White Wolf Freelancer's meal. Much was discussed.
And then, the yearly and infamous Succubus Club. The White Wolf free-bar, cage-dancing-girls, goths-a-plenty, Justin Achilli as DJ (Putting Jessie's Girl on was a stroke of mad genius) party. I ended up sat on the floor next to the windows overlooking the street, people-watching with Travis, John Newman, John Newman's lovely wife who I forget the name of, hot493 and hot's lj-less boyfriend who said cock slightly less but brought me Vodka repeatedly. Nice guy, once you get past the penis obsession. Congratulated Travis on the D&D setting, which by now had been announced as Dark Sun. I Lasted until 1:45, and left just as the guys on the door were starting to talk about where to have an afterparty.
Sunday/Monday
Tried to check out at my hotel, to discover that the email I sent from DC - paid for on my credit card - had led my somewhat overzealous bank to believe I had been phished and cancel my card. One *fifty dollar* phone call back to the UK, the card was unblocked, my suitcase was in storage for later and I had a few hours to kill. So - back to the Con to get the most out of my 4-day badge.
Another Marathon closed the bridges, but I got a lift in with another group of attendees. A final pass around the dealer's hall to distribute business cards and sort out who I needed to email later this week led to goodbyes at WW and then the double-leg taxi back to get my case and then to the airport.
I'd planned my journey to have a three-hour gap at Chicago, reasoning that it would have better facilities than Indy and despite the oddness of going further into America before flying to the UK would end up a shorter flight. My flight from Indy was at five, I got there at one. All good.
No one had told me about Chicago airport. Or more specifically, Chicago airport's weather. My plane didn't take off until half seven from Indy, as earlier planes were unable to land and in some cases returning to Indy after running low on fuel. My three-hour wait in a peaceful Sunday Chicago airport turned into a half hour's rush to eat in preparation for the long trip across the pond in a setting that resembled the third circle of hell.
The plane back was okay, though. In flight movie was Star Trek, but mostly I read Geist.
Once back in Heathrow, turned the mobile back on, got the bus to Reading, got the train to Swindon, got the next train to Cheltenham and finally arrived back home. By my calculations, from getting out of bed in Indy to climbing into it in Cheltenham took 29 hours.
And now a day off. Tomorrow it's back to work.
So - my thanks to everyone who said hello, everyone who put up with me and everyone I played with. I don't know about next year, but I'll try. 2011 is a cert, though.