GenCon Indy 2007

I just got back from GenCon 2007 in Indianapolis. It was quite the trip! I'm tired, but I'll try and summarize some hightlights here - and fill out more details later. The complete photo-album for this post may be found here.

The Voyage
The trip out (Thursday morning) started poorly: the bus station was full of recently released prison inmates, and the prison guards were delaying their departure again and again in the name of prioritizing customers such as myself. Some of them had already been there 7 hours, and they were flagging badly. Rick, in an apparent attempt to earn sainthood, went to McDonald's and bought them all food and drink. My hat goes off to him for that - that was a really kind act. When the bus to St. Louis finally arrived, there weren't many spaces on it; I got on by rushing to ensure I was at the front of the line, and not budging an inch! Once on the bus, I had a slightly cramped but uneventful ride to St. Louis. The bus station there is horrible; poor air-conditioning, and the Indy line went all the way out of the queueing area, and around the restaurant! I found a spot to wait and spend an hour or so sweating. When the bus finally arrived, I didn't get a seat - but a second bus arrived within 20 minutes and I managed to squeeze onto it. Very full, but not as bad as the Greyhound of old: there was only one person sitting in the aisle, and the AC worked. I took a nap on the way to Effingham, IL (isn't that the greatest place name? It's like someone censored the real name...)



My bus, enjoying the 105F heat of Effingham, IL!

The ride from Effingham to Indianapolis was pretty uneventful. It took a while, but was pretty quiet. I began to get the feeling that things would go well. :-) Indianapolis has a great skyline, visible from the bus. It's quite a big city (2m people), and has a nice mix of old and new buildings. The bus station was a pretty typical big-city affair, albeit clean. Really, really clean! That never happens. I had no trouble finding a taxi to my hotel, an EconoLodge - with absolutely no frills, a small bedroom and bathroom. It works - and was cheap. By this time it was dark/late. This was the view from my hotel room:



Day 1 (Friday)
I got up bright and early, had breakfast at Denny's, and caught a cab downtown. The convention center is huge - and GenCon sprawled beyond its spacious confined into various hotels around the center itself. Registration was easy - wait in line for 5 minutes, fill out a form, pay, and Bob's your uncle. I then proceeded to roam the halls, getting a feel for what was going on. The vendor hall was pretty amazing - full of video game companies, game companies, card companies, the art show (not as large as it used to be, sadly), and a ton of people. I could hardly move! Here are some snapshots I took:




I also spent a lot of time with various computer game developers, and was invited to join an independent game developer's group. Yay! The people at the Warhammer Online display were especially nice, taking the time to walk me through a few graphics effects. Finally, I played Starcraft 2! It's coming along nicely, and feels a lot like the old Starcraft - only smoother, prettier, and if anything a little faster paced. Finally, I got my butt well-and-truly handed to me in a Counterstrike tournament.

Once I'd finished the obligatory tour (and looked at the city around the center - see below!), I went about signing up for things. I signed up for an evening D&D game, and a night D&D game. I also made a list of some seminars to attend - and promptly missed the first one because I couldn't find the venue! Instead, I had a nice long chat with the people at the Podcasting stand. I'm a big fan of Dragon's Landing, but it's been quiet lately - so they made some recommendations. I also decided to attend at least one of their live podcasting events to see how it's done.

I found myself with a short break for lunch, and ate McDonald's. I also met up with a girl named Eva and her husband (John?), who were up from New York - we'd apparently met online before, so it's nice to put a face to a screen-name! Then it was off to the Union Station Conference Center for some gaming. It was a pain to find! Fortunately, most other people in the event had the same problem so I didn't hold anything up. In the subsequent game, our merry party from Rasheman infiltrated the Thayvian port of Surthay, and rescued a mask maker from the clutches of a smelly wizard. Rather stereotyped, but a lot of fun - a good dungeon bash once in a while can really lighten things up! Afterwards, I played a short and silly game with a bunch of RPGA people. It was great to see some old friends again! :-)

Suddenly, it was about 3am... so I caught a taxi back to the hotel and slept.

Day 2 (Saturday)
I overslept slightly, and decided to have breakfast anyway - gaming on an empty stomach doesn't work! I started out in the vendor's hall, picking up a Dr. Who episode for Mel and being slightly disappointed that the anime shopping list I had from Stara started at $65 and went up from there. Then, it was seminar time!
The first seminar was Spin a Yarn with Ed Greenwood, something of a GenCon tradition. As usual, we made the guest Wizards' girl blush - this time in 8 minutes. The guest in this case was different, though - she's the author of Confessions of a Part Time Sorceress: A Girl's Guide to Gaming, and is a really nice gamer girl. She wants to do the seminar again next year, so we didn't scare her too badly! The theme of the seminar is that we throw plot elements at Mr. Greenwood, who then gets to write a story including them all. Elements included sentient undergarments, 75 virgins transporting poisoned wine, a royal wedding in which the bridesmaids looked better than the bride, a roving band of gay pirates who have lost their ship, a ship of gender-changing, a hobbit plumber convention, a dragon with irritable bowel syndrome, sushi, a singing sword, a narcoleptic bard, a sheath (scabbard) of rhythm (the writer girl uttered 'man, I need one of those'), and a whole host of other silliness. I laughed until my sides hurt - quite an achievement for a one hour seminar!


Next up, was a Q&A session with Wizards about the new 4th Edition D&D. They did a straw poll beforehand, and discovered that we were a bunch of human loving, cleric playing DMs. A primary focus of 4E is apparently to make the DM's life easier - less paperwork, and generally an easier time reading stats. No more daemons with 200 abilities (3 of which are worth having) - rather a focus on what's needed to get things going. Interestingly, a lot of things are being copied from the MMO world (someone quipped that this sounds like World of D&D-Craft; they are right, IMHO - and Wizard's statement that WoW copied everything from D&D may be true - but it's a weasle-word way to avoid the issue!). The game is being structured around party roles - your basic MMO roles of tank, nuker, healer, etc. This tends to happen in traditional D&D anyway: you pretty much want a fighter, a cleric, a mage - and the other classes risk being 5th wheels. (This is not true, IMO, for good games; many great games I've been in have featured so called 5th wheel classes as a focus!). Monsters also get the same focus, and the balancing has moved away from single monster encounters - rather, a party of five adventurers should expect five monsters in a group configuration. Powers have been completely revamped; no more "oops, I used my spell slots and now we have to take a nap" - rather, you have per-encounter, per-round, per-day and other time-based limitations, and an as-yet-unrevealed mechanism for pushing yourself beyond your limits (at a risk) to keep going. The emphasis is on keeping the tempo up, and giving players a genuine sense of urgency. I like that concept, but it does feel like a computer game. Then again, the new D&D Insider setup is almost an MMO. It's a really interesting idea. Dragon, Dungeon and other magazines are becoming online-only, and are part of a DDI subscription. More interestingly, a character generator, MySpace like setup, and virtual gaming table are also part of it - and entering a rulebook's ID number automatically populates your databases with content from that book. So all spell databases online automatically contain every spell, monster, etc. to which you have access. The Virtual Gaming Table looks pretty cool. It's voice-chat enabled, and doesn't take care of game mechanics - it's a map with highly customizable counters to move around. Modules come with preloaded table content (so no map making!), and everyone can seriously customize their virtual representation. The dice roller looks cool, too. If I can find people to play with remotely, this could be the solution to my lack of gaming; if I can't, it'll be a very pretty boondoggle for those lucky enough to have a huge screen next to their gaming tables. There was a lot of grumbling about overemphasis on online content, and the complete incompatibility of 4E with what has come before. We'll see how that plays out; 3.5E caused a gaming crash - 4E could well do it again!
I'm still deciding exactly how I feel about 4th Edition. I skipped 3.5; I may buy 4. I'll figure it out closer to the release date.

Then I played some board games in the hall, played some Company of Heroes (came 4th), and found some lunch.

After that, I went to watch Pulp Gamers perform their live podcast. What a great bunch of guys! Very friendly, and their setup is quite professional. I was impressed. I recommend giving their podcast a go - they cover everything, and seem like a good substitute until Dragon's Landing reappears (I hope!). Topics included the changes at GenCon (tons of families nowadays, not so many lonely nerds), and how amazingly big it is, D&D 4th Edition (it was the talk of the show), podcasting in general, and various board games. Twisted Dungeon sounds really interesting - well worth a look.

Next up, a seminar on web comics featuring several web comic authors. It was really amusing, but lacking in words of wisdom that need to be shared!

Some friends persuaded me to watch the costume contest. Some of the costumes were amazing, but I couldn't get a good focus on the stage with my camera - so few pics, I'm afraid.

Saturday evening was the GenCon Dance, which didn't interest me at all (although it was goth themed). I'm just not a loud-music dance type of person, really. Instead, I went to the Hyatt and found a pick-up D&D game. It was short and really, really funny. :-)

The Voyage Home (Sunday)
I checked out of my hotel, and after checking with Greyhound caught a slightly earlier bus home than planned - meaning I missed the closing ceremonies of the con. Sad, but it meant I arrived home at 9:30pm rather than 9:00am on Monday. Indy bus station went smoothly (and was still clean!), and as usual St. Louis bus station was a nightmare - I was bowled over in a crowd rush, but a huge Scottsman protected me. Yay for huge, random Scotts! I returned home, and hurried off to see Mel. You really know you love someone when GenCon isn't enough to make you forget missing them!