Motorcycle Touring

Ahh, Saturday. This is the day when the folks who couldn’t take a week day off will be here. Should be the biggest crowd. This is also the day of the costume parade. There were even more folks running around in costume so there are more opportunities for quick pictures. But first, I decided to go for a walk. I hadn’t been outside much, hazard of gaming. And Wednesday night it poured with lightning. Here’s the walking bridge. Nice blue sky and all. It was also pretty cool out.

There were even some big fish in the river:

On my way back I got a pic of the hotel. We’re way up towards the top. There are 33 floors on the buttons so I assume we’re 5 floors down from the top although there may well be conference rooms or Presidential suites.

Once I got my fresh air, I headed back to the convention and ran into a few more costumed folks:

While in the vendor area spending my last hundred bucks, I ran into this guy and had to get a picture. It’s weird how some of the pictures are a little blurry and others are nice and clear. Some iPhone specific thing. I chose not to bring the camera along just because it’s a pain to get it out and ready just to have it flash at the folks as well. The iPhone seems to be good enough most of the time. Anyway, I snapped this one of a steampunk costume that just looked exactly right. I’ll be adding it as a description to my Airship Pirates game coming up.

More costumers. These guys are Dark Elves I’m guessing.

And she is not. Sailor moon maybe?

I turned around and spotted Red Skull. Woah, what a costume.

Sonic had a good sidekick 😀

Again, not sure. The mouse guy looks pretty cool although the ladies are interesting as well.

Disney folks? Captain Hook, Prince Charming? The Evil Queen, etc?

No idea who they are, however I ran into them when I was at GenCon last time so had to get the followup picture.

Stormtroopers are always a hit.

Of course there are the cosplay folks. The little kids love them.

The Riddler guy was pretty good. Don’t know if the lady is a Batman villain though.

Bobba Fet? (Right guy, don’t know the right spelling though).

These are guys from the Warhammer RPG universe. Pretty cool actually.

Wandering back through the boardgaming area, I had to get a pic of the Booth Babe (even though she’s not in a booth).

Jon and I got together and headed over for lunch at TGI Friday’s and ran into a group of folks on a scavenger hunt. They needed a picture of a motorcycle rider with a GenCon badge (I guess there aren’t all that many of us 😀 ). It just so happened I’m one but of course my bike is in the garage. Fortunately a couple of guys left their bikes out front so they took advantage and got a pic. That’s Jon on the left (not in the Challenge Nation shirt of course).

Note my shoes. Those are actually moccasins. They’re the ones I wore when Rita and I married. This is the only other time I’ve worn them (and they’re not bad although). Also note the purple bandage. I’d given blood earlier as part of the convention and received the red “Gave Blood” add on to my badge plus was told I needed to have some protein to build back my red blood cells which was why we went to TGI Friday’s.

Back in the vendor area after lunch, I picked up my Judge Dredd books (spending the last hundred bucks) and ran into the Blade booth. Who should be running it but Ken St Andre, a well know game designer of Tunnels and Trolls, the second role playing game created at the same time as Dungeons and Dragons. After discussions about Ace of Aces (a WWI air combat game that’s pretty cool) and my having original versions of most of his stuff since I was buying it back then, I bought the 7.7 edition and asked him to autograph it which he did. I shook his hand and thanked him for some great gaming.

Once done there, I brought my gear upstairs and headed down at 6pm for Wendy’s Bachelorette party. It was actually Wendy’s gaming group either from Denver or friends she’d made while gaming. We had a pretty good time hanging about and chatting about the convention. They’d attended several LARP’s so some were still in costume. Megan and Lori especially.

Once I was done, I headed on upstairs to get my gear packed up and ready to go so I could be on the road in the morning with a minimum of fuss. Jon, Wendy, Megan, Lori, and the rest were attending a Midnight Zombie game (that started at 9pm). So I needed to be quiet when I left in the morning.

Second day of gaming. Again, I checked out the book to see what I could find. On the plus side, I was checking the book out on the 31st floor. I’d moved my Cthulhu plushie to my backpack so having a little kid exclaim, “look at that mom!” was pretty satisfying 🙂

I headed over to the board gaming area once I had a list of games to hunt down (Red Dragon Inn, Pandemic, Level 7 [Escape]) and a hand full of Generic tickets. Weirdly though, not much was running. I’d stop by the Battletech/Shadowrun/Leviathan gaming area (all Catalyst games) just to check things out, plus Privateer Press (Level 7) was next door so I could check on the availability of a Level 7 demo game. The Horde miniatures guys were out in droves. Lots of cool miniatures, nothing I’d want to get in to as they can be even more expensive than just role playing (1 have 245 Shadowrun role playing books not including the PDFs, dice, patches, t-shirts, etc).

This was one I came back to a couple of times. The guy on the right eventually loses.

The Orc train is arriving 🙂

This one was pretty cool. It looks a lot better when all of the mini’s are painted. The company had several fast miniature painting demos over at the Vendor booth (Privateer Press again).

Once done there, I headed over to the Vendor room again. It was getting close to 10 so the doors were opening again. Not quite as many lemmings as on the first day but still a few.

Straight back is the board gaming room. I’d gone upstairs to check out the location of a seminar I wanted to attend. To the right and towards the back are the electronic gaming rooms. There was a pretty big LAN party going on plus a Dance-Dance game on the center wall (full projection) and a Guitar Hero game on the right side. That was pretty cool but I did ask about Rocksmith for next year. The comment is that they’re just facilitators and don’t bring the gear. The folks who want to, can set up a Rocksmith game next year. You’d just have to bring your own gear. Now that might be interesting. I might just have to do that next year 😀

Plenty of costumes floating around. There is a parade tomorrow plus impromptu contests and shows.

Sometimes I have no idea what’s being shown though. I mean, I get the Stormtrooper and maybe the Jedi on the left but I don’t know what the other two are from. Still, cool costumes.

I stopped in and picked up a copy of Level 7 for me and sent out a query to Wendy to see if she had her copy yet. Several folks who came from Denver were overloaded with gaming vs looking at available swag so she had sent out a query yesterday for someone to get a copy of Level 7 for her. Once I had the game, I started over to the board gaming but was pinged by Jon. They had a 1st level D&D game going on and needed a fighter, am I available? I said sure, where are you and was directed over to the Courtyard Marriott, Indiana Ballroom. I took a roundabout route to get to it but made it without too much trouble.

The game was pretty cool over all for such a low level adventure. There were a few points where I might have done it a little different, but I’ve been role playing since the 70’s so I have a little more experience than 90% of the folks at GenCon 🙂

I did have a pretty cool moment during the game, probably the best over the entire weekend. The woman next to me quoted Time Bandits which was relevant to the situation. I experienced a warm feeling right then. I’m among gamers again. It feels like I’ve been wandering in the wilderness for years. Especially when she said it was a favorite movie of hers. That was my ‘awesome’ moment for GenCon.

When the game was done (around 4pm) we congratulated everyone and headed off to do other things. I’d received a reply from Wendy that no, she didn’t have Level 7 yet so I headed over to the game room and bought a copy for her. On my way back, I ran into more costumed folks:

These costumes are very elaborate. I suspect it’s anime related though. Still, very cool.

I went back to my room and broke out my Level 7 game. It’s a solo game but up to 4 can play. I got it all punched out and set up per the instructions and then started a game. I received a message that Wendy and Megan (her sister) were upstairs on the 31st floor so I grabbed her bag with Level 7 and headed on up. We chatted for about an hour before bailing. I finished my Level 7 game (and had a few questions), put it away and then took a shower and went to bed.

Ok, I’m at GenCon 45. Unfortunately I didn’t get any game tickets. See, you schedule and purchase game tickets in advance to make sure you can attend the games you want to play. You can also get a Generic ticket, worth $2 which lets you attend any game with an open slot. Either because someone who actually paid failed to show up for whatever reason, or because they didn’t sell every open slot. Board and Card games are generally a single Generic ticket with longer running games, mostly Role playing, requiring up to 8 tickets. So upon waking, I checked with the guys who came and headed off.

We met at the Starbucks where I was holding a place for them, Brian and Jason. Both are members of my gaming group along with Jon, Wendy, Mike, and a few others who didn’t make the Convention.

First thing was to check out the board gaming (and card gaming) area. This was a fairly large area in the main convention hall.

And that’s just one corner. I was standing in the center of the room (or as center as I could) and got a pic facing each corner. It’s a huge room. This is pretty much all card gaming with board gaming behind me.

Of course, much of the fun is the costumes. Folks do tend to go way out with their selections. In this one, all three actually came separately and stumbled upon the others and decided to hang together for a much better effect.

There was live music as well. These guys were actually pretty good as were the other bands that were around the convention area.

The biggest “unofficial” event is “The Running of The Lemmings”. This is at 10am on Thursday and is when the vendor doors open. See the various game companies have special convention only gear such as t-shirts, buttons, patches, and even special or limited edition books. So much of the attendees of the convention gather at the gates (there are three) and wait for 10am. At 9:45am is the opening ceremonies and we even had the mayor of Indianapolis speaking at this one. I guess with 35,000 to 40,000 gamers come to town, there is some reason for the bigwigs to come out and schmooze 😀

I did pick up convention specific gear from the Catalyst booth (they create Shadowrun, my go to game) including a Doc Wagon t-shirt, Attitude t-shirt, … well, here’s a picture. Maybe that’ll help 🙂

The two rows on the left are the Shadowrun books. The two black ones are the limited edition ones which I had autographed as well. On the right side are Judge Dredd books which use the Traveller game system. At the back is the Level 7 horror semi-cooperative board game. Into The Cosmos is a settings book for Cosmic Patrol, a ee doc smith or Jack Vance space opera type of game. Next to it is Tunnels and Trolls version 7.5 also autographed. On either side are boxes of dice. The left ones are specific to Shadowrun. The right ones I needed for a D&D game I played in. Under that are expansions to Red Dragon Inn (Pooky and Erin). Between is a CD from Choke The Word. Then various stickers and buttons along with a couple of books I got at the con.

Add in another 4 or 5 t-shirts and it’s a nice haul (and tough to pack back on the bike; but I did it).

I headed back over to the room at lunch. We had concierge service which gave us access to the 31st floor for free food and drinks all day. I’d had breakfast earlier then lunch now. I also dropped off my first run of gear (the Shadowrun stuff). Since it was light out, I got a couple of pics.

I did a little wandering around but was mainly looking for open games. I browsed the convention book looking for games I wanted to play and then headed over to see if there were open spaces. I was able to snag a space in the Cosmic Encounters game. I have the original game from back in the late 70’s, early 80’s so I was curious as to what had changed in 30 years. Mostly the characters and powers were the same. Some of the rules were slightly different, not enough to badly affect the game but enough that I couldn’t just jump in knowing all the rules.

I did wander around a bit after to see if I could connect up with a different available game but none were open. I did find a 10′ tall Wookie though.