Gen Con 2017

You're coming to Gen Con? Excellent!

In my experience, generic tickets are primarily used if, e.g.

• you want to go to an event that's sold out (so you couldn't buy the corresponding ticket) but one of the people that bought a ticket doesn't show up
• you see people getting ready to play something that looks interesting and you want to drop in, but don't have time to pick up a ticket before it starts

Personally, I tend to plan one or two things each day and found that it tends to be enough. I haven't needed generic tickets in the last few years. Your mileage may vary.

Yeah, Generics are more for "This looks cool, I want to sit and play this now". I'd get a handful (I think you can redeem them back for cash but I might be remembering Origins and their tokens instead of Gencon) so it doesn't hurt to plan.

We must get together! Please email me:

You can redeem them back for credit, minus something like a 10% processing fee.

Shiny -- glad you're coming!  Looking forward to seeing you! 

Do you want to do a lot of organized, official events, or do you want to wander around the expo hall, look at all the cool stuff, and spontaneously demo games there and other places where they don't require tickets? Both are totally valid, awesome times at Gen Con, and I've done both as an attendee.

If the former, sign up for as many as you possibly can and then get generics if you have specific events in mind that are sold out and you want to try to slip into. If the later, don't get any generics.

A simple request for the gtg staff: 

last year you dropped the bomb about prime Wars during your state of gtg panel and those of us who couldn't make it to gen con were super confused on what's going on because it was the first place we heard about it and some of us were not super happy about. As a request if you drop any bombs this year like this we could get an official statement hopefully later that night so it's not as huge of a shock. 

I don't think we are going to drop any bombs this year.

thank you.

Except possibly smoke bombs.  

Not sure whether to post this in the Citizens thread or here, but this seems more a generic Gen Con thread while the other is a little more time sensitive, so.

Fellow volunteers and other GTG types: I know some folks took pictures of the Young Legacy costumer at dinner last night. That was my daughter, and my wife and I spent so much of our time wrangling her that we never got a decent picture ourselves! I would love to have pictures of her trip to the GTG dinner last night, so please send me a message or reply if you could send me a picture.  Thanks!

GenCon!

Man, oh, man today was rough for me. I was traveling for work yesterday and pulled something in my back. Had to hobble around airports and got in late Wed, stopping by the convention center to get my badge from Will Call. For much of yesterday and last night I thought it unlikely that I'd be able to even make it to GenCon. The worst was at 4am, I woke up needing to use the bathroom and could barely stand.

But by the morning I was better and with some trepidation I got my bike ready and gave it a try. It worked well enough. Though I needed to take a lot of rests, I was able to do just about everything I wanted at the con today, including picking up a heavy package that was delivered for me at GenCon, meeting folks for dinner a few blocks away, and lugging a ton of stuff all the way over to Lucas Oil to teach some friends Spirit Island in the evening.

In the end, despite the pain and missing a couple of things, the sheer excitement of overcoming diversity and actually getting to GenCon made this one of my happiest days at the con.

GtGs is once again set up with both a booth and a large side room. The booth was doing brisk business, including, I hear, a rush in the morning on the 50 or so copies of Spirit Island put out for sale today. Craig said he hadn't seen this before, in which a large group of people make the GtG booth their #1 stop first thing on the first day. The booth looks especially dazzling this year, with tall, black bookshelves ringed by small, bright lights. The booth is long and narrow -- 40 feet by 20 feet, I think. One end has walls to make a storage room, with Handelabra set up on one side doing demos of Bottom of the 9th and, I think, showing off the prime wardens. Bottom of the 9th looks really good! Someone (Jeremy, I'm almost sure) was dressed as Guise wearing a baseball uniform and looked SO GOOD. After the storage room there's a register area and then shelves of product forming an organized area for a line to the register. Then, on the other side of the shelves the rest of the space consists of about 8-10 small, standup tables. There were demos of Lazer Ryders, Spirit Island, Bottom of the 9th, and I'm not sure what else. Traffic looked brisk the couple times I was by there with most if not all of the tables in use.

GenCon completely sold out this year. Not sure how many people that is, but I think there were 60,000 last year. In past years, Thursday has been fairly light, but not this year. The space has expanded enought that it wasn't too hard to get around in the exhibit hall, but there were a LOT of people. The exhibit hall opens at 10am. Around 9:30 I was trying to get through the area outside the hall where people were crowded, waiting to enter, in order to get to the GtG side room, and it was really packed. Luckily, a small corrider was roped off for people who needed to make their way through, but it was a long, slow process.

Similar to last year, the side room was narrow and deep, with space for a gaming table to come out from each of the side walls and then about that much space again in the middle, but extending for about six tables down each side. A life-sized Bunker cutout (so, like two stories tall), was at the front of the room. Very cool. Lazer Ryderz, Fate of the Elder Gods, Spirit Island, OblivAeon, Viva Java, Compounded, Brewcrafters, and Exoplanets were all being run, with some of them on multiple tables.  I enjoyed getting to see lots of people again and getting to meet some folks I hadn't met before, but was very sad to have missed the Wed night dinner. I wasn't officially volunteering, but enjoyed pitching in a bit -- putting some items in bags and teaching Spirit Island. The tables were mostly full every time I was in there. Getting to meet the mentioned-in-a-previous-post Young Legacy was delightful. She had a great big smile and enjoyed grabbing on to my fingers. I also was impressed with the Harby costume I saw today.

The Sentinels RPG was being run elsewhere and I didn't see that, but I heard from a friend who really enjoyed it. 

With little agenda for much of the day I spent a lot of time wandering the dealer hall. I found a Buffy game I was interested in and was directed over to Hall D to play a full game. Getting there (in a lot of pain) I learned that it was a paid event, for which I would need a ticket or generic tickets (which I didn't have), and that it was over for the day anyway. A bit annoyed and disappointed I started heading back to the exhibit hall only to run into a friend of mine, at GenCon for the first time with his successfully Kickstarted Game, Diceborn Heroes, who was setting up to run a couple demos. I stopped to rest and chat and learned that a bunch of people signed up, but none were there -- somewhat concerning when the game was supposed to start in a couple minutes. At that point he realized that he'd come to the wrong hall, that he was supposed to be in Hall A. Seeing his look at the bits and pieces all spread out, I offered to go over to Hall A as quickly as I could and let the people know that he was coming. I did and it all worked out. The poor guy ended up trying simultaneously to teach four groups of people how to play the game. I did what I could to help, but I'd only played it once six months ago and struggled to remember details. Still, it was fun to see him and help and I never would have if I hadn't been sent on a wild goose chase.

I also dropped by the Cheapass Games booth and ended up teaching Tak to a bunch of people because for some reason noone was manning their Tak table and I really love that game, so it was fun to do.

One of my goals for this GenCon is to gather signatures on a copy of a game that I'm giving as a present to a friend's daughter for her HS graduation. More than a dozen of the designers are at GenCon and the lead designer is a friend who's offered to help, but it's REALLY hard to track down where these industry folks are going to be at any given point. I know enough people that I seem to be regularly running into folks I know, but finding PARTICULAR people at any given time? Seemingly impossible.

Which reminds me of Adam, Paul, and Christopher and how most if not all of the con is just a series of meetings for them. Once upon a time those guys gave demos and worked the cash register and then fit in their meetings at crazy hours of the day. It's been a while since those days, and I'm glad to see it. Still, I'm nostalgic for that first GenCon in their 10x10 booth way in the back of the hall, with Christopher working the crowds, inviting people to come play at SotM and get a promo card -- one of the 500 Young Legacies. I wonder how many people idily took that card and discarded it later.

Oh, also, guess where I gave that Spirit Island demo to my friends? On the field at Lucas Oil stadium. THE FIELD. Life is weird.

Not sure if this is exactly what you meant ;)

It is, I think.

I'm supposed to be downtown at breakfast in under eight hours, so ... here are my incomplete notes from the State of GtG panel:

• There will probably be another pre-order or Kickstarter for Prime War once it's ready, to gauge interest in whatever the product has become at that point. Anyone who wants their money back now can have it. Anyone who wants their money back when they see what Prime War is can have it. Anyone who sticks with Prime War will get something for their patience.
• OblivAeon will take at least a dozen cargo containers to ship from China. Because of the mammoth size of the order, the various pieces that make up an individual's orders will be packed together in China and then put into the container. In St. Louis, then, it will just be a matter of putting a label on the box and giving it to Fedex. The publisher can't ship all of those containers at once, which is a good thing because GtG couldn't receive them all at once. Ideally, they'll ship two a week, so even in the _ideal_ situation it will take six weeks to ship out Kickstarter rewards. In reference to how long OblivAeon has already taken and the expected amount of time that shipping will take: "We have not _begun_ to disappoint you."
• At GenCon (and soon if not now, I imagine, on the website) one can pre-order a Sentinels RPG starter kit. It contains six heroes (Freedom Five and Unity) plus six "Issues" -- scenarios one can play through. These are connected, so choices the players make will affect the order (at least) of the scenarios.
• The Sentinels RPG Kickstarter will contain, at least, a core rulebook and some sort of history of Sentinel Comics -- a history of the publishing company of Sentinel Comics, not the lore from the stories of Sentinel Comics. Christopher says it will be, "A lot like the Letters Page, but even worse. I'm sorry."
• Spirit Island expansion timline is unsure: Maybe next year, but at least 18 months after a Kickstarer until delivery, as Spirit Island takes quite a lot of work to be sure that everything is balanced.
• Dice Hate Me Games that are likely coming: Home Brewers, a followup to Brew Crafters. Ligher weight. Dice rolling. Capturing the bullshit of brew clubs. Will have a Kickstarter, hopefully in the first half of next year. There's a backlog of Dice Hate Me Games products. One of them is an 'embiggening' of Isle of Trains, as an expansion. Another is a game called 'All Aboard'.
• Christopher, in reference to fan made SotM expansions: "I'm not going to play them, but I think they're amazing". They love fan made stuff.
• In reference to The Cauldron and the possibility of any sort of endorsement of other fan-made SotM decks they shied away from saying that they 'blessed' them, but they are willing on a case by case basis to recognize fan-made products that reach some nebulous level of quality to be considered quasi-endorsed, allowing the use of their trademarks.
• Conventions and other events: Some of these are great for making connections with fans and others are great for various business reasons. Chris tends to go to places where people might pitch games. Toy fair, GAMMA in Vegas, and some others are entirely business to business meetings. Essen is important for meeting with people. Some shows are important to have a demo presence, though maybe only a small one. I get the idea that the PAXes might fall in this category. The two that rate a big presence are GenCon and the UK Games Expo. UKGE has come on strong lately and has a per capita attendance equal to GenCon in the US.
• They plan to do more with supporting fans running their games in various places through the Envoy program. I don't know any details about that.
• They would love to update the website, but it's not a higher priority than other things, so it may be a while yet.
• They're mostly unwilling to pick amongst the characters as to which is their favorite, though Adam did say that Blade is his favorite villain.

There was probably a bunch more stuff. I'm sorry I don't remember it! Adam, Paul, Christopher, and Chris were on the panel. Virtually the entire room raised their hand when asked who had listed to The Letters Page. Apparently it has rather a large number of listeners.

I didn't see the booth at all today and was only in the room for a short while, as I was running around getting signatures on a game from a friend's daughter's HS graduation gift. Spirit Island continues to sell out immediately in the mornings. The exhibit hall seemed more crowded today, which surprised me since the show was just as sold out yesterday as it was today, but I can imagine some people might get four day badges but not actually make it to the show until Friday or even Saturday.

I managed to ride my bike all the way to the convention center before realizing I left my phone at home. Luckily there was great weather, so it wasn't too big a deal just to go back and get it.

So I'm running around getting these signatures, asking each person if they know where other contributors are, and not really knowing who most of these people are, when the person signing casually drops that he designed Pandemic Risk and Pandemic Legacy (amongst other things) and worked at Hasbro for 12 years. His new company is taking old games that were once popular, but have fallen behind the times due to problematic mechanics and punching them up for today's audience: Rob Daviau of Restoration Games.

In my looking for people to sign I ended up meeting a woman who was helping to organize games for Ultra Pro. After chatting a bit I learned that she actually works for another company (Cascade?) and they provide these organizing/event services for multiple companies -- six of them simultaneously at GenCon. It makes sense, in retrospect, that you would hire people who know what they are doing to run these events, but it had never occured to me before.

For those of you who haven't been to GenCon, it is dizzying. There is so much going on simultaneously that I find it kind of mind blowing to try to consider it all. On one hand, it can be categorized into a few broad categories: Board games, miniatures, RPGs, panels, activities, etc. but there's just SO MUCH OF IT. Puzzles, Japanimation rooms, foam weapon fighting, cosplay, musicians, game auctions, art, etc. And those are just the official events. People are around tables and using the floor around the convention center and the nearby hotels and restaurants, playing and talking about games and gaming. There are fewer games and booths than at Essen, but still FAR, FAR more than I could ever grok. I happened to walk by someone I knew listening to a demo of a game, so joined him. It was a cute little game about rolling dice to get the numbers one needs to get hexagonal pieces to put together in ways to get points, yadda, yadda, yadda. We learned these rules and it was a reasonable game, and I'm guessing I will NEVER SEE THAT GAME AGAIN. Or if I do, I probably won't remember it.

We wouldn't think we could go into a bookstore and grok all the different titles available, so I suppose it's not a surprise with gaming, but it's so different than when I was young, I'm still quite amazed by just how many games exist.

I think you meant "overcoming adversity".

And reading all this reminds me that I wish there was a board game playing community where I live. I'm always reading about all the new board games coming out and being like "Darn it, that looks awesome, I would totally buy and play that IF I HAD ANYONE TO PLAY IT WITH..."

Thanks for doing these Andy, sometimes I think these reports from fans are far better representations than the pieces put out by the companies!

adversity/diversity. My brain, oy vey.!

It's okay, Andy! Some day we'll overcome diversity.

Thanks for the updates Andy, it's great to read your impressions from the floor!

You're the best! 

Never made it to the booth again today and was only in the room briefly. The tables were mostly full. I offered rules advice to a group of people playing Fate of the Elder Gods who didn't have a volunteer with them. I feel _reasonably_ certain I was right.

Spirit Island sold out again, though I don't think it was as fast, as a friend of mine bought a copy around 11am

The live Letters Page podcast was fantastic. I'd expected to be bored, actually, but hadn't counted on the interactive nature of what they'd planned. I've seen other podcasts get recorded that completely ignored their audience, but most of this event involved taking questions from the audience. The BEST PART was that Christopher's brother was there to play the theme sound and transition music live, with Christopher and later Adam, too, on melodica. The audience sang along. It was truly great.

I didn't take notes and don't remember much of the responses, but I figure it will be in a podcast, so you don't really need me to report on it. One tidbit that stuck with me is that the OblivAeon enivoronment, Nexus of the Void, actually IS Spirit Island. Also mentiones was that Lazer Ryderz and the animated Sentinel Comics shows aired concurrently in the faux world that published Sentinel Comics.

My GenCon involved rather a lot of running around getting signatures on this present I plan to give. I've gotten all but two of the people who are actually present. One I plan to get tomorrow and the other is Peter Adkison, who owns GenCon. I've posted to Twitter and Facebook in the hope that someone will put it in front of him and he'll carve off a moment, but I'm not holding my breath.

I'm a big fan of Kittens Slay Dragons (kittensslaydragons.com) and really enjoyed seeing them live.

Since this is GenCon 50, there's an exhibit of items from GenCon's past in Lucas Oil Stadium. It was really interesting to see artificats from the early days of gaming and game conventions, including original versions of Gettysburg and Civilization, as well as the first editions of D&D and my old favorite, Boot Hill.

The Gen Con through the years exhibit at Lucas Oil Stadium also had a working mid-80's Macintosh with games from the era installed. Seeing Might and Magic II, my first digital RPG, warmed my heart.

The overhead monitors at the stadium were cycling through pictures from the previous day's events, including things like the USAopoly demo booth and a picture of one of our own SOTM costumers (a Matriarch). 

Two employees from a local sports talk radio station came by the Handelabra booth in the late afternoon. They were interested in Bot9 and already knew the physical version, so we set up a pass and play match for them to try out. They got into it quickly and had fun, hopefully they'll pass the word on to their compatriots at the station. (They did not identify themselves, but I noticed their employer listed on their badges and made sure they walked away with hats.)

We still get a surprising amount of "wait, there's a video game for Sentinels?" on that side of the booth. Most of the traffic has focused on Bot9, though. In addition to those who are already familiar with the physical Bot9 and those who know nothing about it, I've had several folks in Cardinals, Red Sox, and Blue Jays gear stop just because they saw baseball or heard the organ stings from the demo video. 

I've had a rough time getting my impressions typed up, I'll try to get some more done later.

I'm curious to hear this explanation.  They aren't supposed to be the same world as the idea behind Spirit Island is this occurs during colonial type eras.  Then based on the Akash'Bhuta episode it wouldn't be possible since the Nexus was buried in the earth until the OblivAeon event.  

Oh man, I totally cannot wait to hear the Gen Con Live podcast with Christopher's bro. Two more weeks! *cry* Was there a overarcing topic, or was it "whatever everyone felt like asking/talking about"?

I look forward to any notes you ever have, bolnerap, I know you've had some adventures.

I think I remember there being some commentary in the chat of a past Sentinels Live that the Nexus reminded people of Spirit Island, so interesting to see the comparison confirmed.

The Live Letters page was mostly people asking questions and then rounded out by some questions they'd received previously. I missed the first few minutes so maybe there was something else. Oh, also, guitar playing, and singing. Did I mention it was SUPER FUN. It was.

Final day is done. Spirit Island continued to sell out the limited quantities available. Paul mentioned that both Lazer Ryders and Fate of the Elder Gods are selling at the upper level of the expected range and that Spirit Island is well above what they expected. I went to part of the freight and shipping panel that Jodie, Paul, and Matt gave. There were a couple dozen people in attendance. I was impressed. Would not have been too terribly surprised if there were only a handful. There was lots of interesting information about the nature and differences amongst parcel shipping and various levels of freight shipping -- LTL (less than truck), partial truck, full truck, and container, and the differences between private (i.e. fedex) and public (i.e. US Postal Service) costs/expectations. We got to hear horror stories of pallets ruined by forklifts and containers possibly being dropped to the ocean floor. It was good stuff -- much more than I'd imagined, frankly -- and came fast and furious.

I went by the booth and peeked in the side room a few times and they were always busy

The most surprising Sentinels thing that happened to me occurred just a couple minutes before GenCon ended. I was on my way out and happened to be walking past an area where I'd learned two different games from two different people yesterday and today. They were both their cleaning up, so I stopped to thank them both again. One of them asked me if I was Andy Arenson from the GtGs forums. Turns out his handle is awmiller (probably) and though he hasn't been around for a few years, back in the day he posted a Villain contest submission about Visionary becoming a Villain who was fighting to maintain the timeline. And the other one was _also_ a big fan of SotM. Earlier, I'd happened upon Paul on the show floor talking to a couple people at a cash register. I'd just assumed this was an informal chat with business colleagues. Nope. Turned out Paul had bought something and the person working their recognized him and started telling him how SotM was her favorite game.

My quest for signatures turned out victorious. I'd asked everyone who signed to peruse the list of people to help me locate them and they had universally commented about Peter Adkison (the owner of GenCon) that, sure, they knew him, but they had no idea where to find them. But mid day today I got the suggestion to ask at Event HQ. I'd discounted doing so earlier, but with nothing to lose I gave it a shot. Turned out Peter was on a panel right then and all I had to do was wait for it end and he was happy to sign. The panel itself turned out very cool. It was the various people over the years (from TSR and elsewhere) who had run GenCon talking about the history of the convention, including fun stories about (unnamed) celebrity guests and whatnot. It sounds like there basically is not another place in the US that they think they could run the convention as well as Indianapolis. The city and the space are actually able to accommodate many more people -- consider that the Superbowl accommodated 150,000 people in roughly the same space. The reason they capped attendance, then, is not the sure number of people who could be accommodated, but the problem of dealing with the vast majority of them trying to get into the dealer hall all at the same time. Peter floated the rough idea that if they had to tackle that problem they'd do it with carrots instead of sticks, but didn't elaborate.

I enjoyed demo'ing Scott Pilgrim's Precious Little Card Game. It's a deck builder using two-sided cards and besides just the fact that I love Scott Pilgrim, I also found the mechanics to have a nice combination of interesting choices without a paralyzingly large decision space. Other games I could describe are Magic Maze and Ex Libris, if anyone's interested. 

I didn't stay to help with tear down for various reasons, which I would feel bad about if I wasn't in so much back pain.

At 3pm I found myself at loose ends and decided just to walk through the exhibit hall one more time in the final hour. I ran into no less than five friends I hadn't yet seen at the convention, as well as a number of others, and got some of my favorite pictures.

congratulations on getting all the signatures!

Ex Libris has my curiosity up, especially because it's the phrase I write into copies of books before I loan them out. What are your general impressions?

Thanks for the posts Andy

I'll write up more later, but the highlights of my Gencon were:

1.  Demoing Spirit Island and seeing people start to get the game and love it.

2.  Demoing Lazer Ryders and seeing how much fun people have with it.

3.  Playing Spirit Island with Paul, and Christopher coming by, telling him he needed to play someone other than Heart of the Wildfire.

4.  Meeting up with Yoshi and Tosx from the BGG SOTM forums, and playing their games, and playtesting expansions and new content.  Really cool to see those guys move from custom SOTM decks to having their name on their own games, and great to be able to participate in the crreative process with them again.

5.  Pitching Richard Launius the Lazer Shark as an elder god idea, I think it went well.

6.  Seeing They Might be Giants in concert in an arena.  It was a bit surreal.

Ex Libris is a fairly standard worker placement game with the twist that the actions one's workers can take change every round, drawn from a random pile, and the way one places cards is a relatively rare mechanic. There's a minor hidden role segment: Players get extra points for books of a particular color.  The game has interesting choices along a couple of different axes -- use existing cards or fish for better ones, place cards such as to maximize points based on shape or to retain flexibiilty for future cards, focus on points from the type of books shown on the cards or from where the cards can be placed into one's shelves.

Imagine Splendour (sort of) as a worker placement game

I had a fantastic time there. It was really great meeting some of the denizens here (again), including arenson9, grysqrl, Chaosmancer, BlueHairedMeerkat and his friend Steven, Codie and other members of the Adaptive Subroutines, and more.

The Letters Page recording was definitely one of my highlights. I went to a couple of other panels/podcasts, and they were good, but didn't have nearly the energy that was in that room. I hope it comes across in the audio feed.

Other highlights came from Spirit Island games. There was a super-epic game on the thematic map with grysqrl, Paul, BlueHairedMeerkat, and Steven against England. It was lots of fun. At some point Christopher came by and looked at all the white figures on the map and said "you guys are so screwed". But we pulled it off!

Another great game was with grysqrl, closing the convention, winning at the very last possible instant. Details here.

In general, it was great to see so many people enjoying the game.

Just waking up from my traditional post-Gen Con mini-coma. The convention was so excellent this year! It was great to see some familiar faces and meet lots of new ones.

I think I played about 15 games of Spirit Island, many of them teaching games but a handful of more challenging games that were exactly what I was looking for this year. The 5-player game and the final game dpt mentioned were both a ton of fun. I love how much buzz this game is getting - lots of people would come up and ask about it while we were playing and I saw a handful of other groups clearly figuring things out in the middle of their first game.

I was sorry to miss the Letters Page recording; it sounds like it was a lot of fun. I don't have Proletariat's talents, so I'm limited to being in one place at a time. Excited to listen to the pod when it's cast.

Anyway, it was great to see everyone. Safe travels for everyone still out and about. See you next time!

I really wish there was more time availalbe to do all the things... And I have no idea how Andy does everything he does and still have time to write about it! 

I spent half the con running demos for Spirit Island, which seemed to go over really well. The rest of the time was mostly helping out a little at another booth (Collapsible Construction, run by friends staying with us for the con) and exploring the Exhibitor Hall. I also:

• Many and varied enjoyable conversations with friends.
• Played the upcoming Firefly Adventures. Unlike Gale Force Nine's other Firefly games, this actually felt like it was related to Firefly (and not just skinned). I enjoyed it and really liked how it felt! It's also coop, which helps significantly. 
• Made it to the Letter Page recording. I haven't gotten to my camera, yet, but I'll post some pictures (including a panaramic shot of the room) as soon as I can. 
• Watched some of a Sentinels RPG session. I really like the way it feels like the players are playing comic book characters! It's crunchier than our play group usually prefers, but I might try to get a small group together to do some games on the side. Pre-ordered the starter set, so I'll at least have a game I can test to see what folks think. (So I wouldn't recommend spoiling yourself on the starter set, Andy! )
• Talked to someone who had played 1st Ed SotM with 2 heroes and had a horrible experience. Was able to show them my copy (yes, I carried a demo copy of SotM around the con ) and explain how it should be played (i.e., 3-5 heroes) and convince them to buy a new version.
• Picked up some little things I was looking for, but not everything. (Some RPG props are apparently harder to find than others... )
• Checked in with vendors on a few products that I was waiting for and options to deal with the situations. (For example, I'm still waiting for my players to have web access to Ream Works data... )
• Enjoyable dinners catching up with a variety of folks. 
• Got in some evening games with friends who were staying with us for the con, including Spirit Island, Clank, Hero Realms, and Epic Tiny Galaxies. Lots of fun!

Every year, I run into more and more people I know while running around at Gen Con. Being less-social-than-average and very bad at remembering faces or names, I'm both surprised at this and that I -- sometimes -- actually remember folks.  And that there are folks I'm used to seeing who weren't there this year! 

It was a great con. 

One of my methods for doing more stuff is to not do them completely. Fairly often I'm in back to back events that are separated by significant distances, so I'll leave before one ends and arrive after the other starts. That works better in demo games that people don't expect to run to completion anyway.

The main reason I can write about stuff every day is become I come home all keyed up from the day and if I _don't_ write it down, I have trouble sleeping. So I don't get as much sleep as I'd like, but as a morning person, once that sun is up it doesn't matter. Where this hits me is in the afternoon. I missed considerable sections of the Letters Page, despite being physically present, because I couldn't keep my eyes open. I think it was last year that I was so sleepy in the State of GtG panel that I nearly fell out of my chair. Christopher called on my at one point to say how many cards were in SotM and luckily I had that number burned into my psyche at the time. I think I responded before I was actually awake.

And it helps not to volunteer. I love volunteering for GtGs and teaching games, but I'm jealous of my time at GenCon, so I try to help out as much as I can during the setup and takedown. This year was a big exception, since I arrived back from a work trip Wed night and then was in too much pain to help with teardown. I did what I could though, helping to bag up some promo items and getting a group started with Spirit Island. And I say no to things. NASCRAG is a fantastic time, but takes up two full gaming slots (and probably some time Sat night). Friends run a hilarious game that I enjoyed being an NPC last year, but wasn't willing to commit two full slots to again this year. True Dungeon is quite an experience, but I don't need the hassle or cost. I'm sure I would enjoy the costume parade, but I've never taken the time for it. I usually only play demo games that are particularly untriguing -- some sort of new mechanic or from a fandom I love.

And I just straight up miss stuff -- sometimes accidentally, like this year's costume content. Still kicking myself for that one. I ditched a chance to go to the BGG Hot Games demos on Sunday to get the last two signatures I needed. That was a difficult to get ticket and I was sorry to miss it! There were two different groups of people I know gathering Sat night and I had to choose. I would have enjoyed those 5-6 player Spirit Island games, but something had to give. I got invited out drinking at like 1:30am and almost went. That would have been ridiculous.

Finally, the best way to save time is to do events with the people you want to see, so I put effort in advance into finding out what folks are up to and arranging lunches and dinners and shared events.

Finally, finally, I recommend not buying much of anything. I mean, get that super cool thing you can't get elsewhere or that is really inexpensive at the con, but spending a lot of time shopping for a whole bunch of items seems odd to me. You can usually get these items elsewhere, often for cheaper. Of course, shopping can be fun, particularly when you're doing it with others, but if it means you can't do many events, perhaps because you can't move very quickly or you have to spend a lot of time going back and forth to your hotel/car, maybe it wasn't worth it? I dunno. Just a thought.

I was also there at GenCon - it was even more rushed than usual since I was only there for the weekend.

One of the highlights for me this year was definitely the Letters Page.  I'd been thinking for ages that it'd be a great idea to organize a group singalong for the theme song but never bothered to do so myself and was kicking myself for that oversight - turns out that it was 0% necessary because we geeks are all of one hivemind.  There's never enough time to do everything you wanna do at GenCon - perhaps the most notable thing I missed out on this year was demo'ing the RPG.  I did one last year for what they had and it seemed fun, would've liked to go a bit more in depth this year.

Side note:  this isn't exactly family-friendly fare, but the D20 Burlesque show on Saturday night is always a huge favorite of mine and is highly recommened.

Did anybody get a chance to play this Photosynthesis game I've read about in a couple places?

Yeah I was wrong on that point timing wise.  I still want to hear the explanation on what I see as an unnecessary retcon.   

My first Gencon was a ball. I came as Parse but only ran into a few who recognised me before the clothing police took issue with my arrows, which I politely returned to my room without further incident. I hoped to catch the creators in costume but, alas it was not to be. Got many compliments though. Love this game!

I saw it near a demo I was playing, but I couldn't listen to both demos at the same time.

I had a blast, and the game I played with Dpt and Grysquirrel was intense, I'm a little sad I missed the others but I really enjoyed the stuff I ended up in.

One night I found a Tower Defense Board Game called Terminus Breach, it was immensly fun with some unique class mechanics and a ton of strategy between the three players. The guy was also completely bootlegging it, in his words, just setting up whereever and whenever people seemed interested.

I got to try Compounded for the first time and I also was able to sneak into a session of the RPG Sunday afternoon that really made me feel better about my decision to purchase it. I was probably going to for just the lore (which is a poor financial decision) but now I could see myself really running this system at home which is a much better propisition.

A lot of my time though was spent running RPG demos for Mythical Eras of War's new system Era of the Ninja. The creator is not only a friend but pays my way into the Con so I can run demos which is super cool. Means I tend to miss out on a lot of stuff though.

Still haven't gotten a chance to try out Fate of the Elder Gods, and only got glimpses of the new art and set-up for Oblivaeon (which looks absolutely amazing) but overall everything was great and I'm curious what next year will bring.

Edit:  there is a separate thread made about this so please more further discussion there https://greaterthangames.com/forum/topic/spirit-island-and-nexus-of-the-...

I have been typing! But I am having trouble posting it in a format that looks good. I will try to get the paragraph breaks looking good soon.

Wednesday 8/16

Those reading this who are unfamiliar with the convention center: it may help to keep this link handy when I reference certain rooms. Mods, etc: this is the official website of the Indiana Convention Center: http://icclos.com/media-kit.aspx . Click on the first link under Floor Plans to get a nice map in PDF format.

Finally getting a bit of time to sit and type, so here was Gen Con from my perspective.

I left work an hour early on Wednesday to head home, get my daughter's belly full, change her into her Young Legacy outfit, and get ready to head back downtown to Rock Bottom for dinner with the Greater Than Games crew and fellow volunteers. We got there a little bit after 5 and headed downstairs to meet the group. Since it was only my second time volunteering at the booth, I didn't know a ton of people, but I saw rabit, Christopher, Adam, and anotherletdown (Zach from the Sunday night Handelabra streams) right away. Since I was affiliated primarily with Handelabra, I chatted up Zach for a while before we all sat down for dinner.

My coworker Alex, a GTG booth volunteer, showed up a little bit later, so we sat and ate with him for a while. Around 6, I started thinking that I was pushing my luck with Good Mood Baby, so I asked Jeremy from Handelabra when he was coming over so I could get my badge and be ready to go if/when my daughter got fussy. He told me he would be over in a bit, so I walked Young Legacy around. Once Christopher came over to our side of the room, my wife told me I should take the opportunity to talk to him. I took Young Legacy over to meet him. We chatted and cracked wise at the expense of one of his boothmates for a couple minutes. Lesson reinforced: words mean things and should be used appropriately. Lesson learned: do not be vague with language around Christopher, or he may throw lighthearted jabs at you. ("Did you make that?", someone asked me, referring to the outfit; "I'm pretty sure he was involved", Christopher replied, referring to the baby.) When we were done, he told me that Adam had seen us when we got there, and that I should go talk to him.

I found Adam across the room at a tall table and felt a little bad interrupting his conversation, but no one seemed to mind. He took a picture and we chatted a bit about our kids' ages and being parents. When I mentioned that my daughter wasn't talking yet, he said his life changed for the better when his kiddo learned how to tell him "no"; I laughed, but he insisted that he was serious, because it cut down on the number of fights / tantrums. Having a daughter that increasingly wants to do her own thing but doesn't know how to TELL me that, I can see how that would be beneficial.

Once we were done talking with Adam, I went back to my table and waited for Jeremy to make his grand entrance. A few minutes later, he obliged, loudly proclaiming his arrival in his Guise outfit. I waited for the initial throng of picture-taking to subside, then flagged him down. We couldn't figure out who had my badge (Paul didn't, Craig didn't, and Jeremy didn't), but I was assured that it would get taken care of on Thursday before my shift at 2:00. I stuck around for a couple people to get pictures of Young Legacy with Guise, then we took off for home while Young Legacy was still in a decent mood.

---

Thursday 8/17

The three of us got up around 7 on Thursday and got everything together. Even our daughter got up a little earlier than normal after sleeping like a rock through the night. We got to the Government Center South parking garage around 9:15 and had to park on the roof since, y'know, it was still a normal work day and my fellow State employees actually had to use the garage.

From the map: Exhibit Halls B, C, D, and E (and perhaps A as well? I'm not sure) were combined into one massive gaming space, with long table after long table full of demo spaces and tournament setups. The biggest areas were for playing MTG and Fantasy Flight products. Legend of the Five Rings was apparently a big thing this year, to the point where they had a marching group of people in costume carrying banners behind a drumline that entered to kick off one of their events. Exhibit Halls F, G, H, I, J, and K were all combined into one 300,000+ square foot shopping area that is referred to herein as "The Exhibit Hall".

The three of us got into the convention center around 9:30. My wife had a game demo at 10 in hall D, but I didn't yet have my badge, so I had to fight the opening day Exhibit Hall crowds to get to the GTG room (134). Jodie, Mara, and Jennifer were all super nice and allowed me to sit in the room with Young Legacy for half an hour while my badge situation got sorted out. Once the halls cleared, Jeremy had time to bring my badge to me, and I was more free to roam. While I was sitting in the GTG room, several other folks came over to see Young Legacy, including Andy (arenson9), several volunteers, and a Matriarch costumer. Christopher also stopped to say hi to Young Legacy on his way through the room.

Badge in hand and hallways mostly cleared, I was free to roam a bit. I headed over to hall D and found my wife playing Healthy Heart Hospital. Young Legacy was getting a little fussy, so I stopped to feed her and watch HHH for a while. I couldn't quite get the full experience sitting two tables away, but it looked like the "scale up the danger" mechanics somewhat mirrored the dice drawing mechanics of Pandemic: the Cure. Once the baby was done with her snack, I got her out of the stroller and took two trips into the Exhibit Hall, carrying her in one arm. This was probably a mistake - we had an umbrella stroller that was pretty small, so I think I could have handled walking around with it even in the chaos of the first hour of Thursday in the Exhibit Hall. But it worked out, as I bought my wife a Con*Quest Journal specific to the show, and after that, I made my way to the Handelabra booth to make sure Jennifer (Handelabra artist/programmer), Andy (not arenson9), and Mike (my fellow volunteer) got to see Young Legacy.

Twenty minutes in the insanity of Thursday's Exhibit Hall was just about enough excitement for my daughter, so I returned her to the stroller and walked her around the significantly quieter and cooler hall D until my wife's demo was done. After they'd lost their game of HHH, we regrouped and planned. My wife would go shopping while I took care of the baby for an hour or so.

I retreated to the second floor of the convention center, which is usually pretty clear on the whole. The two biggest rooms, again, were Rio Grande Games and Piezo. The RGG room wasn't quite as busy this year, since there was no new Dominion expansion to show off (Empires was relatively new last year), but I wasn't going to subject the baby to me doing a game demo. The Piezo room, on the other hand, was completely insane. And for folks who aren't familiar with the Convention Center, I should specify that the Piezo "room" is the Sagamore Ballroom, a 33,000 square foot monstrosity that is normally used for things like job fairs, speaking engagements, and smaller conventions' entire dealer rooms. In this case, it was filled with tables of people playing Pathfinder and the new release of Starfinder... and there was always a line to get in just to play. Additionally, the usual food vendors in the hallway outside were not present, because Piezo had set up a vendor booth to sell Starfinder - and again, there was pretty much a constant line to buy it.

The hallway outside Sagamore Ballroom was a great place to chill last year, but it was pretty trafficky this time around. So, after I got a diaper change accomplished in the one men's restroom I could find with a changing table, my daughter and I headed around the corner of subdivision 1 of the Ballroom, where there's a nice quiet area of chairs and low foot traffic. She'd fallen asleep in her stroller during the walk, so I left her there and prepared a snack for when she woke up. 20 minutes of poor wireless reception and Twitter browsing later, she woke up and ate.

Around 90 minutes after we'd split up, my wife e-mailed me and let me know she was done shopping for the day. We met up and went back to the car, then my wife and daughter went home while I headed back to the Exhibit Hall for my shift with Handelabra. I only had about half an hour to roam the halls before my shift, so I didn't get to do much; I mostly checked out the Rio Grande and Looney Labs booths since they were both close by. It was still pretty crazy in the hall even at 1:30.

Jean-Marc (Handelabra composer/programmer) and I took over the booth at 2:00 and worked until the halls closed at 6:00. We had a good amount of visitors, almost entirely focused on Bottom of the 9th. Several people bought it on the spot after they tried the demo; many others assured us that they would be purchasing it just as soon as they could get to a wi-fi connection. (One disadvantage of the ICC Exhibit Halls to attendees - wi-fi access is exhibitor only. The closest public wi-fi connections are two blocks away at the Indiana Government Center, or through the tunnels to the Circle Center Mall. Most people don't know about the public wi-fi at Government Center, but some of you folks might want to keep it in mind in the future if you don't have access to wi-fi otherwise - it's pretty fast, only State employees tend to even know about it, and you can access it from shaded benches along the south side of the IGC building.)

Handelabra was giving away 50 hats per day to folks who bought the game and showed it to us on their phones, and we gave away somewhere between 35 and 40 hats on Thursday by my estimation, with several people promising they'd be back for one later.

A vast majority of the folks who tried the Bot9 demo on Thursday chose to bat. I only saw two people choose to pitch in my four hour shift, and one of them was my next door neighbor from college, who stopped by to see me in the 5:00 hour and finalize dinner plans. He tried out pitching solely because I told him that only one person had pitched thus far.

We again had a continuing problem with people being too impatient to read directions. Last year, folks would jump into the SOTM demo and expect that the UI would be at their fingertips from the beginning (it is not - it teaches you different ways to manipulate cards before it turns you loose). This time, a strong percentage of the players did not pay attention to the fact that Training Mode resets the outs, fatigue meter, and baserunners after every at-bat. Thus, when their first batter walked, they tried to figure out why no one was on first base (or they realized it even later). I tried to gently remind people to read the directions after that happened a few times.

Two forum regulars that I recognized stopped by through my shift: Andy (arenson9) and pricyprovinces. Three costumers came by: a Captain Cosmic, the Matriarch I had seen earlier in the GTG room, and #Guise4MVP.

At 6, Jean-Marc and I shut down the booth and made plans to meet the next day; neither of us had a booth shift, and he wanted to meet my wife and daughter. We'd planned on bringing the kiddo over on Thursday and Friday only, having a babysitter on Saturday, and then Sunday I would come over alone.

My wife and daughter came back downtown at 6:15 and we all went out to dinner at Ali Baba's on Market Street. We mostly caught up with some old college friends about what we were up to, then Young Legacy got fussy and we had to leave. We all made our way back through the convention center halls toward the parking garage. My wife peeled off for a few minutes to stop at Gen Con customer service on the way.

The customer service line was pretty crazy, moreso than I would have expected. When my wife got back from what she needed to do, she let us know what the issue was. There was a They Might Be Giants concert at Banker's Life Fieldhouse (NBA stadium a couple blocks away from the Convention Center), and the Fieldhouse was strongly enforcing their "NO BACKPACKS" rule. Let's just say that rule is a problem for most Gen Con attendees, and since this was the first time that the Fieldhouse was used as an event location for Gen Con, communication wasn't at its best regarding this rule. The confusion caused Gen Con to alter their normal refund policy for ticketed events, because with so many people whose hotel rooms were 15-45 minutes away by car, there was no mechanism for those people to get back to their hotel rooms and dump their bags before the concert. Many refunds were issued that day, and the concert likely had disappointing attendance as a result.

The three of us continued back to our car, and we went home with a very tired baby girl.

Friday 8/18

Without any events or work shifts on either of our schedules, my wife and I decided two things: 1) we didn't need to be to the convention center until 10:00 when the Exhibit Hall opened, and 2) we would take turns with the baby through the day so both of us could do some shopping. I also tried to send messages to Jean-Marc so we could set up a meeting.

The plan mostly went without a hitch. We got to the IGC garage around 10 and headed straight to the Hall D entrance that we had become familiar with the previous day. On our way toward the Exhibit Hall proper, a Gen Con volunteer approached and handed us a button for Young Legacy. They had 11 different buttons they were passing out throughout the convention, ostensibly for those who were bringing children. If you collected 10 of the 11, you could get a big Gen Con 50 button as well. We pinned it to the umbrella stroller we were using and noted the collection points for later.

The three of us started out by heading to the GTG room and getting a picture of Young Legacy with the 8' Bunker cardboard cutout. She looked absolutely delighted. We also got a picture with a Matriarch cosplayer before we went to the Exhibit Hall. There, we ran into a married couple, Eric and Valerie, from our bi-monthly library game nights. We talked for a couple minutes, but we'll see them on Friday at game night, so we didn't linger too long. Our big stops in the Exhibit Hall:

- Fowers Games - I am a big fan of the Tim Fowers production, "Paperback", and I wanted to make sure to stop and tell him so. (Paperback, if you haven't heard of it, is a cross between Dominion and Scrabble, effectively.) He thanked me and we discussed the new multiplayer implementation in the iOS app, along with the fact that he's got an expansion for Paperback in playtesting. He offered to show the expansion to me, but I told him that I'd be back later when I didn't have the baby in tow. Tim was also demoing his co-op heist game Burgle Bros, and its follow-up logic/deduction game Fugitive. I took a quick look at both but didn't have time to absorb them.

- Miniature Market - My wife wanted to take a look at some small containers they'd advertised on their website, and we also discussed St. Louis and the physical Miniature Market location a bit. (We love vacationing in St. Louis - it's a relatively short drive and it's not terribly expensive. We've gone on 3-4 night trips there 3 times in the last 5 years, and we can't wait to take the kiddo when she gets a little older.)

- Hrothgar's Hoard had some very nice dice towers and other containers; we entered a contest to win $100 in store credit because we weren't prepared to pay $90 for a dice tower when we already have a foam core one that my wife assembled and decorated for Betrayal at House on the Hill.

- There was another booth that had crocheted hair clips and dolls from various video game / anime properties (a Metroid hair clip, a moogle, several Katamaris, some kodama from Princess Mononoke, etc). They also had quilts from Tetris, Mega Man, and other such.

- We also swung by the Handelabra booth to see Jeremy and Crista (community manager), to make sure Crista could meet the baby (and so the baby could see Jeremy sans Guise outfit).

Baby girl was getting hungry and needed a change, so we headed back to the corner of Exhibit Hall K where they had a kid-friendly area set up. After a change and some time playing with another little girl about her age, Young Legacy was in a better mood and had a snack while my wife went off to shop some more. Upon her return, we all went to Foam Brain together to take a look at all the SOTM pins and shirts they had available. There were a couple dozen different pins, though it was disappointing that the pin I was most looking forward to getting (Argent Adept) was unreadable. The entire musical staff and all the lettering was all done in gold - the lack of contrast meant that it just looked like a gold blob instead of an actual logo. I bought a Visionary pin and moved on to look at the shirts. They had a base set SOTM shirt, and shirts for Tachyon, Absolute Zero (made to look like his suit), Bunker (Turret Mode), Argent Adept, and one lonely 3XL Legacy shirt.

Kiddo was getting really restless in the stroller at that point, so we left and went up to the same corner I'd occupied with her the previous day. My wife took over baby duty with a bottle and a book, and I went back to the Exhibit Hall myself for an hour.

It occurred to me around this point that I hadn't heard from Jean-Marc, and it was probably because of my low-end cell phone plan. So, I sent him a message by other means and hoped he would see it.

First up, I checked out the vendor part of the GTG booth and fulfilled an order for the set of SOTM soundtrack CDs and SOTM promo cards. Also got a set of the promo cards for myself. This year's set was the Prime Wardens and Rogue Agent KNYFE. I was really excited to get these since the original art for PW Argent Adept is my favorite character card art in the game. Sure, his outfit is bizarre, but I love the stained glass background with his instruments inlaid.

Next I hopped over to Rio Grande since it was right next to GTG. I scouted their Dominion sets, but the only one they had that no one I work with has was Hinterlands, and I have no clear memories of that one, good or bad, from my digital time with Dominion, so I left it on the shelf. Hilariously, the most expensive Dominion set was the original base set; now that it's out of print and will never be reprinted, it's a hot commodity. Seems weird to me since most of the cards that were removed from Dominion 1E were actually pretty bad, but whatever floats people's boats.

The RGG booth was also weird because it had three random baskets full of Hallmark Christmas ornaments of various nerdery (mostly Star Trek and Star Wars), all priced at original Hallmark prices. I, uh, can see the appeal to the kinds of folks who were there? But I don't understand why it was at the RGG booth.

Finally, I continued my tour of "tracking down people whose stuff I like and making sure I tell them" by stopping at BoardGameTables's booth and telling Chad DeShon that I received and like my Duchess gaming table from the epic Kickstarter they did.

My hour was just about up, so I went back to find my ladies. My wife hadn't had any luck getting our daughter to nap, so they were both getting a little antsy to get moving. My wife went back to shopping while I took the baby for a nice, long walk over to Lucas Oil Stadium to begin Button Quest 2017. She fell asleep after about 10 minutes of walking and stayed out for over an hour while I pushed her around.

The entire football field of Lucas Oil Stadium was covered with a slightly raised platform. The majority of the platform was comprised of tables for tournament setups, and the absolutely massive game library where you could check stuff out and play. A smaller section was devoted to the history of Gen Con, with an area the size of the original building at Lake Geneva, WI set aside for historical displays. Old Gen Con brochures, newspaper articles and newsletters about early conventions, IDs from dozens of old conventions, copies of many games from throughout the years, and lots of stand-up plaques that told a chronological history of Gen Con. What particularly stood out to me was the early 1990s Macintosh computer that they had plugged in and running - one of the games visible on screen was Might and Magic II, which was my first RPG of any kind.

The overhead monitors at the field were taken up with a slideshow of pictures taken the previous day. When my wife and I returned on Saturday to do the History of Gen Con spread together, we noticed that a Matriarch cosplayer ended up on the Big Screen.

On the way to and from the stadium, I noticed several rooms devoted to Japanese-specific things; an anime viewing room and discussion panel room; an import video game collection available for play; and a manga library.

I picked up two buttons at Lucas Oil, then continued back through the Convention Center, gathering and displaying buttons on the stroller as I went. I finally heard back from my wife after I'd collected 7 out of the 11 buttons, and together, we decided to finish up before we finally went and got some food. Coincidentally, right as we finished up the collection, I heard from Jean-Marc and he hadn't eaten yet either! So, we made arrangements to meet for lunch at a local place called Pearings (mostly a soup/sandwich/crepe/frozen yogurt joint), and while he made his way over, we stopped where my wife used to work and showed off the baby for a few minutes.

"Lunch" was around 3:30. After we ordered ("Cheech and Chong" paninis for me and my wife, and a "Mario and Luigi" crepe for Jean-Marc - all the menu "pearings" are named like that) and got Young Legacy changed, we sat down to chat with Jean-Marc. My wife and daughter have also been fans of his music, particularly the remix he and his wife did for OCRemix's FFIX project. We talked kids for a while (Jean-Marc's son is about a year and a half older than my daughter), went over what we'd bought and planned to buy at the con, talked about Bottom of the 9th and other GTG stuff, etc. After our sandwiches, we took turns getting frozen yogurt while passing the baby around. Baby girl enjoyed spending time with Jean-Marc; he's really good with kids.

As it got closer to 5:00, the baby was getting tired after her long day and Jean-Marc said he had a meeting to get to, so we parted and the three of us went back home. Young Legacy fell asleep in her car seat and was out for nearly an hour, then went crazy running around her pen burning energy for a couple hours before bed while the two of us mostly just chilled and rested our feet.

My wife bought a d4 Christmas ornament and a base set SOTM shirt.

Saturday 8/19

We'd arranged for a babysitter for Saturday since my wife had an event at 3:00 and I had to work the booth from 2-6. She got to our place around noon, and we went straight to the con, getting to the Convention Center around 12:30. Parking was much easier since it wasn't a work day.

My wife and I did the walk over to Lucas Oil Stadium and saw all the stuff I already mentioned. We then headed back to the Exhibit Hall and walked around for a few minutes together before I had to get to the booth.

While I did another shift with Jean-Marc, my wife went off to shop a bit (buying Burgle Bros from Tim Fowers) and did her demo of Freedom: The Underground Railroad. She also bought a plush d6 decorated with Hogwarts fabric and tags for the baby to chew on and stumbled across an upcoming game called Ancestree, in which you somehow have competitive geneaology?

Poor Jean-Marc had an 8-hour shift at the booth since most of the Handelabra crew had set aside time to be in costume. I was sad that I missed the costume gathering; while the general convention costume contest was at 4 PM, the GTG specific costumers showed up at the booth in the morning before I got there, and dispersed before I saw any of them. I hear tell that there were two Wraiths, Greazer, Tempest, multiple Matriarchs, a Super Scientific Tachyon, Setback, Captain Cosmic, and many more. Someone will have to point out where I can find pictures later, because that sounded really neat.

We were under orders to be a little more liberal with the hat dispersion on Saturday, so we handed one out to everyone who finished the demo. Foot traffic was pretty heavy from 2:00 - 4:00, then slowed dramatically after 4:00 as people went out to watch the costume parade. Crista came by the booth around 4:30 and told Jean-Marc to go take a break, which he happily did. In dead zones, Crista and I talked about the neat artwork on the back of the Handelabra business cards and some SOTM strategy. We had multiple visitors on Saturday that wanted to ask SOTM questions, specifically advice on team-building for unlocking Fugue State Parse and Dark Watch Setback. I tried to help out with those as best I could. We also had someone come by who had only purchased the base set and only had enough money for one season pass. After talking to him for a while and learning that he only ever uses the same five heroes, I recommended season pass 2, and he agreed; "more ways to play with the heroes you like" trumped "here are a bunch more heroes that you might never use".

Press-wise, we had someone come over who was live-streaming their show floor experience on Twitch, and who was looking for info about the Sentinel Comics RPG. Jean-Marc went over to the nearby display case of six RPG booklets with them, and gave them an overview of what he knew from a previous event with Christopher.

We also had a pair of people from a local sports talk radio station come by to play Bottom of the 9th. I recognized their employer on their badges and set up a pass-and-play game for them rather than the demo, since they said they'd already demoed the physical version. They seemed pretty impressed and were happy to take hats. Hopefully they say something on their show.

My wife wandered back to the booth around 5:45 with a headache from having not eaten enough, and we headed home as soon as my shift was done at 6.

Sunday 8/20

Sunday was my day to head to the convention alone. I got in around 9:15 and got into the Exhibit Hall early with my exhibitor badge, knowing that the Hall would be nuts again. Sunday is the day you can get "Family Fun" badges, where one badge set can get four people in. So, foot traffic is usually very high, though sales might not necessarily increase proportionally.

First, I went to the booth for "Buy the Rights", a movie-pitching party game that was produced locally in Indianapolis. My wife was in on the Kickstarter and we enjoyed the game, so I stopped there, bought a pin, and let them know we liked it. We talked for a bit before I moved on, they seemed really friendly.

Next, I stopped at Formal Ferret Games to visit Gil Hova and talk to him for a couple minutes. I wanted to demo his new game, Wordsy, since I am a sucker for word games and I liked his previous title, The Networks. A demo of Wordsy was all I needed to know that it would be worth the $20, so I bought it. Instead of being limited to words in your hand / on your rack / whatever, you can make any word you want! You just only get points based on the 8 letters available for common use. I liked the freedom and creativity involved, and I think my game group will too.

Next up was my promised return trip to see Tim Fowers, who signed my copy of Paperback and showed me the upcoming expansion. I like what I see, it looks like it'll be really neat and add more strategies to the game.

Finally I stopped at Looney Labs to let Andy Looney know how much my game group likes Chrononauts. (One of my coworkers has been a longtime playtester for Looney, and is so enamored with their games that he used one of them to propose to his then-girlfriend.)

Two hours of shopping and demos later, I dropped most of my stuff back at my car and did my 1-4 shift at the Handelabra booth. Due to a communications mix-up, I spent the first hour with Jennifer and Andy (not arenson9) rather than Crista, but that's OK - I hadn't had a chance to talk to Jenn yet. I told her "good luck" with the visual design on OblivAeon, and she seemed a bit overwhelmed at the thought. I'm sure she'll come up with something, Villains looks great on tablets.

Crista and I finished the show with lots of foot traffic from kids that seemed excited about Bot9. I made sure to ask what devices they were using if they were on iOS, since the iPod Touch 5 can't run Bot9 (requires iOS 10, iTouch 5 stops at 9.3.5) and I was concerned that the Touch 5 would be a common device among children. Apparently I was wrong, or at least I was wrong in the context of Gen Con attendees - most of them had actual phones, and if not, they had Touch 6s.

A group that I knew via my coworker Alex, including his wife, stopped by around 3:00 and did the demo before moving on to demoing stuff in their last hour on the floor. Richard Launius also dropped by to watch the demo video, though he didn't stop to talk.

The lights went out promptly at 4:00, and I said my goodbyes to the Handelabrats (minus Jenn) and went home. Another Gen Con in the books. Honestly, it wasn't that much more crowded than the previous year despite the badge sellout. Though I did see more people this year getting into the exhibit hall by showing badges that were for the wrong day.

Wow, that's a lot to write! Thanks for sharing. You have a very, very cute baby! Note: Paizo.

I wanted to say that bolnerap was wicked awesome to/for me. Since I've lamented a few times that me being the only geek I know out in the boonies where I live + no car or driver's license = me never getting to go to cons, he offered to pick me up Sentinels stuff at GenCon that would otherwise be difficult or impossible to find.

So I mostly wanted some Handelabrat trading business cards and SotM CDs (though I wasn't expecting to be able to get them signed!), but took advantage of asking him to get me a set of the PW promos since I thought it might be fun to have some hard copy collectibles of the Prime Wardens since they're my favorite SotM team (and I agree that the original PWAA art is the best), and was stoked that they had Argent Adept t-shirts since I had tried buying one (along with a Unity shirt) from Foam Brain's Cardboard Clothing website ages ago only to get a refund and apology in response because apparently they were actually out of stock. I also asked him to have AnotherLetDown sign something for me because I thought it would be a fun thing to have and I thought it might give Zach a bit of cheer to have a celebrity moment.

So thank you for letting me have a little con fun even if I couldn't actually go. :D

Honestly I wish I could go, it sounds so much fun listening to all you folks talk about it. I once again regret not having any chance to play any board games that don't have digital apps.

And I hope people have pics to share; GTG and Handelabra have put some on their Twitters, but it sounds like there was a lot of great cosplays and displays and peeks at products and other fun things. I want to see Actual Baby Legacy. :D

And Jeremy says he never plays Guise. :V

Great writeup!

Trying to make time to go through my pictures from the Con... Hopefully soon! :-(

Maybe I missed it in the above summaries, but does anyone know if the State of GtG thing was recorded this year?  Would love to watch that when (if) it's made available.