Gen Con 2004 Report

For a third year I went to Gen Con. Gen Con is a big gaming convention held in Indianapolis each year. This is the second year in Indy. Previously it was held in Milwaukee where it had outgrown the space there. Indy is closer and bigger, a win/win situation for gamers in the southern IL/St Louis area.

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Gen Con 2004 in Indy

:: WEDNESDAY

My friends and I arrived Wednesday night. For future reference do not stay at the Comfort Inn & Suites on Capitol Ave. I do not want to dwell on this, but the free parking did not make up for the green pool, non-existent breakfast and poor customer service. Next year we will spend more and stay at another place.

While this year's convention was the best I've attended, not everything was great. The following list is a gentle nod to other Gen Con gamers who had to filter through all the noise. Stuff that sucked: not spotting any mullets, fanboys who cut in front of me, fanboys who love FarScape, the Doom: the Board Game demo with no pieces?!, Gen Con's new and undocumented generic ticket refund policy, having the D&D Epic Level party moved indoors with no signage or rep to redirect people to Union Station, gamer funk, no tickets for sold-out True Dungeon, having a headache Friday night, the art dealer who charged me $2 for a bookmark I thought was free, not seeing a 9th Level Games booth this year, the vendor who was selling DVDs that were lame copies of old videotapes, AEG's lack of support for the Initial D Collectible Card Game (CCG), not finding my AEG role playing game in the location listed by the convention again this year and being accosted in the parking lot by a drunk, non-gamer football fan.

An artist works on a painting

:: THURSDAY

I had lunch at The Ram. This place is my favorite Indy restaurant. They had a gamer-oriented menu for Gen Con, kept a meeting room open for gaming and had a 24-hour showing of anime. The food is America pub fare. Everything is tasty. The service is great! If you visit Indy, it is worthwhile to check this place out.

Next I played a game of the Warlords of the Accordlands RPG. Everyone at the table grumbled that the reference books for the game still aren't available. They have been promised for over year. The AEG rep that ran the game was non-committal on a delivery date. Overall, the game seems interesting. I was not impressed with either the Game Master or the scenario that he chose to run. So, I'm undecided if this game will be fun when it is finally released.

Thursday night was the Wizards of the Coast Epic Level Dungeons & Dragons Party. There were free T-Shirts, bags, posters and food. Ever watch gamers dance? The scene summons the words "controlled spasms" to my mind. Heh. Did I mention the freebies?

Murder and mystery on a train

Also, Thursday night I joined a Live Action Role Playing (LARP) game called "The Train of Lost Souls". Two guys from a group named BYOV organized the LARP. Basically, they rented seven train cars and hosted a live action murder mystery on them. The story had several "threads" including a haunting by ghosts, time travel, a Kennedy meets phony-Moon-landing filmers conspiracy and guest appearances by Nostradamus and Heisenberg. There were also some very attractive women in costume that played the game. It was a fun game in an unique and beautiful atmosphere. I had a blast. Pray that they are allowed to host it there again next year.

:: FRIDAY

On Friday morning I played the Ninja Burger Card Game. It is a tongue-in-cheek game of fast food delivery combined with ninja skills. We had six people play the game. The closest neighboring player to me decided to mess with me early on. So, I spent the game giving him challenge after challenge. I lost but, wow, was that therapeutic! I have a copy of the game and, now that I know the rules, can't wait to play it with friends.

AEG ran several card tournaments

Upper Deck heavily promoted its Vs card game

On Friday afternoon I played in an Initial D CCG Tournament with Jason, the buddy with whom I traveled to Gen Con. I had to leave early to get to another game. So, I ceded third place. Jason took home a first place trophy. Good job!

I rushed off to play the Gangs of Chicago LARP. During the course of the game I developed a huge headache. I spent the rest of the night relaxing in the hotel room. As a result I missed the White Wolf party. If it was anything like last year's party, I probably didn't miss much.

On Friday the New York Jets were in town to play the Colts in the RCA dome attached to the convention center. The news media reported that the Jets were upset because they couldn't get a hotel room downtown. Gamer Geeks 1, Football Dorks 0.

:: SATURDAY

Saturday morning I had not signed up for any games. Jason and I roamed around the vendor area. I bought a game called Power Grid. It is a game where you manage power plants in competition to supply the most cities with electricity. One side of the game board has American cities, the other side German cities. I tried to get a demo of this game later on in the day. Rio Grande had sold completely out of the game including the demo copy!

While in the vendor area we walked by the area in which the celebrities were sitting. Every year Gen Con draws a number of actors and actresses from science fiction and fantasy movies. This year we saw Erin Gray, David Carradine, Gil Gerard, Marc Singer, Virginia Hey and Linda Blair. Sorry no pictures. They were charging for autographs and pictures.

Several video game companies had booths in the vendor area. There were several I had a chance to observe and play. First of all, Bioware's Jade Empire is impressive. It shows the Bioware still can make an awesome game even after losing the D&D license. Stormfront Studios gave us a monster beat-em'up in their LOTR: The Two Towers game. Demon Stone married the Stormfront Studio technology with a D&D story written by R.A. Salvatore. Sadly, there is not much innovation there. Perhaps I'll buy Demon Stone if I ever finish the LOTR games. Sid Meier's Pirates is a modern remake of a 80s classic. My buddy waxed nostalgic and shared stories of playing the original game as a young man. He is looking forward to a November release of the remake.

We lunched at a place called the Slippery Noodle Inn. We enjoyed the sunlight in the atrium. My sandwich was good and reasonably priced. The group agreed that the place was on our must-visit-again list for next year.

After lunch I sit in a Q&A seminar with author R.A. Salvatore. Salvatore is best known for his dark elf ranger character named Drizzt. Even though I haven't read any of his books, I wanted to hear anecdotes from the accomplished author of over thirty-six novels. He shared stories from his career like "I didn't quit my day job until my second successful novel" and "my original idea for Drizzt was as a sidekick for another character". When asked about the "Dungeon and Dragons" movie, he responded that he hadn't seen the movie and won't criticize other people's creative efforts. He then shared a story of hate mail he's received. He said, "I don't write books for people who hate my work. I write books for the fans of my work." I left of the seminar with respect for the author and plan to read at least one set of his trilogies before next year's Gen Con.

Cardhalla means making houses out of cards

There was an event known as Cardhalla. People made a large series of houses out of cards. I suppose this is what gamers geeks do when they're bored with their card games.

A dragon sculpture built on site

A woman poses on the dragon

During the course of the convention a team of artists sculpted a dragon. On the last day you could have your picture taken on it for a fee. I snapped a picture of an attractive woman posing for pictures.

On Saturday night, our last night, we ran into a group of gamers who had rented a ballroom in the hotel. They were gaming by candlelight. They had set up a dungeon with miniature figures. In combat they would turn off the lights and check the line of sight with the light of a tea candle. It added an element of realism to the game because it also showed that some monsters where hidden in the silhouette of other monsters.

The last game we played was Strange Synergy. It is an interesting game where you start with a team of three warriors and endue them with a combination of strange powers. The kicker is that you decide the combination making each game play out differently.

Posted at 4:31 PM