Conventioning - Gen Con 2017

GenCon!

Okay, so Gen Con happened this past week and everyone is running their recaps so I figured I should too! Because a lot of stuff happened, and this one felt like a weird Gen Con. Not a bad weird, more of kind of a strange weird. The lead up felt like it just kind of came up as a surprise, and the whole way there it didn't seem like it was actually happening.

Then we arrived, and it did. So let me give you a recap of what happened while I was there.

Booth Setup

We get there, and finally get the booth setup. It's always a great time, and the people who are doing all the hard work had done most of the annoying work first (the setup of all the flooring and the carpets on it) and then we got to work on setting up the booth.

The biggest issue came up when the big smirky ball in the sky wasn't inflating because the battery powered inflater we had ... died. Well the battery did. Thankfully the staff at the convention center is amazing and they found a way to pump it up for us and then floated it up right before the carpets went down.

IGDN Social

After that came the IGDN social. Now, at this point I have driven about 9-10 hours myself, and got about 3 hours of sleep in the afternoon before that so I'm a little ... exhausted. Now Exhausted Jonathan mixed with coffee and one drink turns into manic Jonathan pretty quickly so I was a little loud, and a little overly energetic.

That said! It was a great time. A bunch of Canadians took over the table by the door, and we indoctrinated a few of our American friends. They did accept the maple candy of citizenship so it was all okay. Particularly fun to hang out with Rob, Rachelle, Kate, and Anna who I have met peripherally a few times but was able to actually have conversations with.

If you've never been and are an indie designer, I highly recommend it. Loughmillers is a nice space (if small) and there are a lot of the smaller designers that you can hang out and talk with. The key is to get there early and grab a table because space is at a bit of a premium.

They announced the results of the Indie Ground Breaker awards, of which I probably should have kept track of but didn't because see manic Jonathan. I won one of the prizes and got a physical copy of Chariot which is great since I have the PDF. It's like I did the reverse bricks and mortar!

Stuff that happened

GenCon is always a bit of a blur. I got to spend most of it with my booth family, hanging out at the Smirk and Dagger booth. That said, I ran two RPGs.

We Used To Be Friends - Thursday

Ended up with a game of We Used To Be Friends, and it was a 4 hour slot because I find that the city creation and character creation takes a while because people get invested in it. It was nice to have a group of people who were invested in it but blazed through it. Fourty Five minutes and we were ready to go with our town with four clubs. It was a fun time where I got to play this game with Matt and his daughter Teagan. Matt was playing the Libertine and Teagan was playing a super Harriot the Spy like Plotter.

The Episode Mystery was based around why this equipment for this new nightclub got trashed. Which was a perfect episode mystery. For a while it looked like one of the character Duncan might have done it, but it turns out it was the family's security head honcho. It was heavily implied that Duncan's mom was getting kind of handsy with Security Dude at a party.

Shining Moments: 
-Omarr (Hard Boiled) coming out to Duncan (Socialite) and Opening Up, asking them out basically. Rolling a 6 and then the moment happens when that's when everything gets quiet and everyone hears so he basically came out to everyone and their parents.

When asked what Duncan was going to do the response was, "Pause ... and then just walk away without saying anything."

Then the Delinquent "started a fight" with Omarr to try to help them hide their embarrassment.

-Just outside Duncan went outside and had a moment with Matt's Libertine (whose character name I forget) and ended up also rolling a 6 which ended up being this moment where the Libertine thought he was having a moment but Duncan though he was hitting on him too.

"Is that what I am to all of you?" Duncan screamed.

Critical Go Westerly! - Faux Dungeon - Friday

This game was fun! I had a couple of people who had never really played RPGs before, and a bunch of people who I knew (Kate has owned this game for like 5 years and has yet to play it) as well as Michelle and her son Will. I had a table of 7 people but Critical is kind of the game where if you have more people it doesn't bog down too much.

We had everyone but Daphadiana and Tara, but that makes for a good group, and while there was a couple of times someone said something wincy (and I had to keep reminding someone that Angelique is a woman) it was fun. Laughter was had by much people!

Shining Moments:

-Urist has had enough of being trapped inside the demon's ball of invulnerability and wants out. The player goes, "Wait, there's like real stone beneath me. I want to find it, I want to find the real floor."

To which I replied, "So you're saying you want to disbelieve the dungeon?"

"Yes."

"Just checking."

-There was a RDI moment that made me smile.

"The wench over here --"

"HEY! I have a name. It's Mary."

I laughed because I think Mary would have approved of it had she been there.

-The players have messed with the mechanism and find themselves teleported to the actual realm of Ailee the Necromancer, and they see the house.

Barnabus, "Oh! I read about this in Magician's home weekly. It's 4 years out of date but it was very impressive architecture. I mean, there seems to be less bodies laying about the place but I guess that's to be expected."