I attended Gen Con Indy again this year. Gen Con is a big gaming convention held each year. Word had it that there were 82000 people this year.

:: WEDNESDAY

My friends and I arrived early Wednesday afternoon. Well, he made the hotel reservations putting us at the Comfort Inn again this year. If you read my post about last year’s Gen Con, you know I was not impressed with the place. Come to find out he fouled up and had booked our room at the Comfort Inn West which is located out by the airport. It is nowhere near the downtown convention center. Fortunately, the downtown Comfort Inn made accommodations for us every night except Thursday. It was a pain to have to pack, move and unpack multiple times during the convention. But I am grateful that the downtown hotel worked with us. I read that there are plans to tear down the hotel next year to expand the downtown stadium and convention center. So, this is thank you and goodbye.

Wednesday night was the Gen Con Forum Stink. It is a party for forum posters. They gave away a lot of free things, or swag in convention-goer speak. I got some Star Wars swag from Celebrations which is another convention put on by the folks who run Gen Con.

We ran dinner at the The Ram. I was severely disappointed with them this year. The food was poor. The waitress talked me into a BBQ meatloaf that came with a pineapple slaw. I was starving and ate it but it was horrible. The wait service was almost non-existent. Ever want to leap about of the booth and tackle the waitress so you can say, "I would like more iced tea please!"?

:: THURSDAY

The morning started with a game of Giant Settlers of Catan. It is a well-balanced game of players on an island. You manage resources to build entities that are worth points. The first player to ten points wins. During your turn you may trade your resources with other players. For example you may want to trade a wood resource for a brick resource. I wonder if anyone was passing by the room when I was shouting, "Wood for sheep! I’ve got wood for sheep!" Something wrong about that.

Next I played a game of the Exalted RPG. My nominee for the Gen Con fool was the bumpkin who tried to get into the game with generic tickets. There was a cute blonde that was also trying to get into the game. Ultimately the judge said there was room for one. This meant there was no room for the hawt player. So, the dude sat down. The judge asked for his generics. Come to find out he had none. Du-oh, fool! All was well with the universe when the flawless female then furnished the judge with her generic tickets and joined the game. By the way if you are the lovely woman, you are allowed to play with me anytime. I will even provide the generic tickets if you do not have them!

Thursday night was the AEG Party in Plaza. I can’t explain why this event was so lame. The DJ they hired, aka Shawnta Claus, rocks the Klingon Dance Hall every year at Archon. He usually does a good job of taking requests, too. Of course Archon does have a free beer all weekend. Maybe next time buy the DJ a beer! His partner told me to my amusement, “I just set up the speakers.” Ok then.

My buddy and I stayed for about a half-hour before we left for a scheduled game. We schmoozed with some AEG guys we know. I had a corn dog and played a game of Frisbee Clout. Then we left with no swag.

Finally we ended the night with a game of City of Heroes RPG. It was an entertaining game. I got bored with it pretty quickly though

:: FRIDAY

I started Friday morning with the Hickman’s Killer Breakfast. I met two forumites in line: Mike B and El-Fire & Damnation. El-Fire was dressed as what can be described as rainbow goth. She was a cute Rainbow Brite. The Killer Breakfast had no breakfast but was two hours of first level characters dying in insanely fantastic ways. The players also bribed the judges with candy and trinkets in order to live to the next round. It was a good time.

My buddy and I met later for our first True Dungeon experience. True Dungeon was a huge disappointment. After shelling out $41 I feel I have the right to give some constructive criticism. The music was annoying. It just didn’t change much. A loud cymbal crash would’ve been a great time warning.

I can’t state what a poor first impression we had. The guys working the registration desk were inept. Next why did the guy handing out character sheets hand us the sheets and then disappear?

Once inside the training area the young woman gave a fine presentation. But she talked about things I had no idea to what character class they applied. She pointed to parts of the room I could not see. We were promised time to prepare but were shooed from the training area after 1 minute. Our trainer promised the opportunity to come back. But nobody let us know when it was appropriate to come back and train. My smile quickly faded as I was a little frustrated at this point.

Instead of just killing us for choosing the wrong door, why didn’t they do any of these:

• take armor/weapon/random tokens from the group
• “respawn” the group in the room (now with double the monsters)
• maybe kill the last person to enter the door
• just allow us to reenter the room and try again but make the final room more challenging based on the number of failed attempts

I played Ship of Fools Thursday night. I played a character named Dale Patterson who was a neat freak and psycho killer. I “disappeared” one of the crew and set a tiny little fire. It helped make the “headaches” go away. Tom J, the judge, and I had a good laugh post-game about how messed up the character was.

After the Ship LARP Tom J and some of the other BYOV folks invited us to another LARP in which they were players. I played a nun named Sister Emanuella. So, I played roles I hadn’t tried before. I played a nutcase and a woman in the same night. Everybody else in the game had secret identities. But my character was really a nun. I tried blessing people. They kept asking, “Is something bad going to happen?” Ah, paranoia!

:: SATURDAY

Slept in a bit Saturday. Then we prowled the dealer hall looking for gamer merchandise. I picked up some dice from Chessex, bought a copy of Super Munchkin, purchased starter decks for Hecatomb and Axis & Allies Miniatures and several expansions for Carcassonne.

We played the Spycraft LARP. I played a KGB agent. There was a family that played the game. The mom was also a KGB agent character in the game. She suprised me by talking about tying up the priest character and interrogating him. I could not help but think I could never play this game with my mother. Ha!

Gen Con Dealer Hall

More of the Dealer Hall

World of Warcraft Statue

Axis & Allies Miniatures Promotion