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<blockquote data-quote="MulhorandSage" data-source="post: 3009522" data-attributes="member: 751"><p>Okay, here's mine. Be warned, it's long and I'm still wiped, so this may not be 100% coherent. It's also name-drop heavy. Please be forgiving. <img src="data:image/gif;base64,R0lGODlhAQABAIAAAAAAAP///yH5BAEAAAAALAAAAAABAAEAAAIBRAA7" class="smilie smilie--sprite smilie--sprite1" alt=":)" title="Smile :)" loading="lazy" data-shortname=":)" /></p><p></p><p><strong>Tuesday:</strong> Had an early Wednesday morning flight. Went to an overpriced Vancouver airport hotel after an overpriced taxi ride. Bleh. Hotel internet didn't work. Went to bed early.</p><p></p><p><strong>Wednesday:</strong> Woke up at 4:30 am for the ride to the airport. Everything went smoothly except for putting my boarding pass in my luggage. Oops! Got new boarding pass, flew to Chicago, then got to Indy. Less hassles than usual, though the flight was too cramped to take out my laptop and work. I took a taxi from the airport, registered at the Hyatt. I went to the Hero Games 25th anniversary party (where, after 15+ years of talking online, I finally got to meet Mike Surbrook face to face), then hopped over with Steve Long and Darren Watts to the Diana Jones awards, where the award for gaming excellence went to Irish Game Charity Auctions. I was a little non-plussed by this -- complaining about drunken Irishmen paying large amounts of money to buy stuff for good causes probably ranks alongside kicking puppies on the heel scale, but I kinda want awards on games to go to, y'know, games. Perhaps Sean Reynolds's charity books (or the many that came out after Katrina) don't make as much money as the Gaelcon content, but they're just as well-intentioned and you can dance to them... I mean game. Even so, the Irish game con auctions *do* rock, and it's cool to bring some attention to them.</p><p></p><p>I finally had a chance to meet Matt Forbeck, whom I'd worked with on Decipher's LOTR RPG line, and I had a long chat with my old Interplay mate Sean Fannon. I also discussed writing a Faery's Tale book for Pat Sweeney's Firefly Games. The awards were announced, and being as at home at most parties as I am at, say, the running of the bulls, I made a quick retreat back to the hotel. I met my roomate (a nice guy from Texas who confusingly calls himself "Teflon Billy" on the Hero boards (he didn't know how popular the moniker was here until it was too late) and hit the sack</p><p></p><p><strong>Thursday:</strong> 10 am. It's the magic hour of Gen Con, the time of the Inundation, when the dealer's room floods and too much money changes hands. I bought a lot of stuff. I picked up the Mansion of Shadows and the M&M Powers book, the Champions 25th anniversary book, the Ultimate Skill, You've Got to Have Character, BlackWyrm's Fires of War, and Goodwin's Revenge of the Rat-King. Later, I would add the Mountain Witch, a whole pack of painted pulp minis, and the granddaddy of them all (Malhavoc's Ptolus) to my bulging luggage. I also got to say hi to Luke Johnson, the ever-effervescent line editor on my World of Warcraft work, and say hi to James Wyatt, whom I've wanted to meet for a long time. Unfortunately, I really suck at the art of convention floor conversations, so we didn't really get to do more than to say how much we liked each other's work, but it was great to finally meet him in person.</p><p></p><p>12 am. I played the Mountain Witch, an indy game where six samurai trek up a mountain to kill a Mountain Witch, but everyone has a secret motive for being there. Man, this was a fantastic game. I played Shiro, a samurai who loved his daimyo's son (I intended this love to be fraternal, but the GM interpreted it as sexual, and given the historical habits of samurai, it fit, so I let it go), who had died facing the Mountain Witch. Among my four comrades was a man whose enchantment allowed him to never fail in hitting his target, and another samurai with a demon possessed hand.</p><p></p><p>We had many adventures. First there was a battle with gaki demons in a Japanese graveyard, then we encountered blood-draining monks in an old temple. Fleeing from the temple after the appropriate bloodshed, we discovered a little girl who was consorting with ogres: she turned out to be the abandoned daughter of one of my comrades, and her mother was the Mountain Witch's consort. </p><p></p><p>Every character in the Mountain Witch has three player defined special abilities. One of mine was the ability to force someone to fall in love with anyone of my choosing, so I forced him to fall in love with her mother (since I was a romantic who felt that no man should be without love). We were attacked by flying bat demons, had terrible dice luck, and the bats grabbed the little girl and flew off into the castle.</p><p></p><p>We proceeded to the castle gate, where a gatekeeper held the key. I challenged him to a duel, so we played a game of go, with the stakes being my life vs. the key. The demon-handed samurai stole the key, and we bid a hasty retreat before the game ended. Passing into the castle, we rescued the daughter with the help of one of the servant's children, a cat-human hybrid. Then we were waylaid by a troupe of actors, who persuaded us to watch their play; we spent five years watching the play before we noticed the distraction. Uki, the samurai's daughter, was now 16. She had also been possessed by a fire demon while she'd been kidnapped by the bats, but I forced her to fall in love with a pool of water, and she jumped into the pool and purged her of the fiery spirit. </p><p></p><p>We returned to the castle, and found a library filled with the scrolls, each which depicted the life story of someone who had died trying to kill the Mountain Witch. The cat-person who had helped us years ago tried to kill us, because the Witch had murdered the cat's family because he'd helped us, and we struck him down. We found Uki's mother, dead, trapped in ice, and Uki became trapped in ice as well. I was drawn by the voice of my dead lover into the witch's lair, where he showed me his spirit in a mirror and offered to restore him to life and give us immortality if I agreed to betray my comrades and serve him. I touched the mirror, said that my beloved came here to perform a task and promised I would not fail him and attacked.</p><p></p><p>Unfortunately, I was then cut down like a dog by one of my comrades, who pulled out his betrayal card, and even the power of true love was no match for bad dice rolls (in the immortal words of George of the Jungle, dumb luck *is* the greatest power in the universe). Oh well. Great, tragic fun. Kudos to the GM and the other players for getting such an epic game in six hours.</p><p></p><p>At 9 pm, Rod Currie ran his Pulp Justice game, where we played pulp heroes. My character was Joey Pulzak, a Polish-born palooka and mechanic; we started the scenario in Africa, where the nefarious Pygmy Master had us suspended in a net over shark-infested water. After the inevitable escape, we made our way back to America, where we became embroiled in a battle to discover the ancient secret of an old Californian bandit and the secret of a lost treasure. In the end, we chose to blow up the entrance of the bandit's cave and keep the secret forever. More than that, I won't say, since Rod plans to run his games again at GenCon SoCal. I highly recommend them, even for non-Hero System fans.</p><p></p><p>It was now 12:30, and I was tired. I trudged back to the hotel and got to sleep pretty quickly.</p><p></p><p><strong>Friday:</strong> Having one game end at 12:30 pm and another start at 8:00 in the morning is not a great thing for those of us in the over-45 set. This was a game of Capes, which I'd wanted to play for several years, but my gaming group is composed of stodgy traditionalists who wouldn't touch a GM-less system with a 10' pole. Unfortunately I arrived late, and when I saw a pool of characters on the table, I assumed everyone had already chosen their characters at the start, and so I selected one I'd liked. I then found out that the characters were selected after play, and I'd chosen one who was prized by another player, who loudly accused me of violating common player courtesy. I was not happy, but held my tongue. The characters were distributed by the order of players around the table (I was last), and I couldn't help but notice that "Mr. Courtesy" skipped over two other players who were ahead of him to grab the one he wanted. </p><p></p><p>Beyond that, though, the game went extremely well. We were playing supers (heroes and villains) in late 1960s San Francisco, and I had a lot of fun playing Nowhere Man, an invisible guy, who was trying to save innocents who were imperiled at a protest rally. One of the villains, the Candyman, was captured, so we played a second game where the bad guys tried to bust him out of jail. This time, I played a superhero named the Guru, and placed the goal "The Guru tries to get Candyman to reform" on the table. In Capes, one fights over scenario related goals, and that one saw a *lot* of play. In the end, the bad guys won, but it was a good time. The game was run by Hans Messersmith, whom I knew from the Christian Gaming Guild mailing list, and it was a pleasure to meet him in person.</p><p></p><p>In the afternoon, I hooked up with Aaron Allston, whom I hadn't seen in about four years. Aaron was in Indy for a Star Wars con, but any excuse to renew acquaintances is good for me. I spent more time in the dealer's room (not surprisingly, I picked up the Mountain Witch), then met with Steve Kenson to travel to the Mutants and Masterminds panel. This was over in the Omni, and it was a long walk for them, let alone me (I have a neurological condition with my legs, and the trips was well outside my usual walking range). It was worth it, though, to meet so many great fans, to hear Steve plug future books, and to hear Chris McGlothlin enthuize about his upcoming Time of Vengeance (which sounds like it'll be great). And I got to plug my own Agents of Freedom too. Most of the time was spent on campaign troubleshooting questions, and a good time was had by all.</p><p></p><p>The big event of the evening was the ENnies. By pure happy circumstance, I managed to get a seat next to the Green Ronin section, and I got to share in the enthusiasm for their well-deserved triumphs. There were a couple of questionable calls, but nothing worthy of more than minor outrage (I can easily see Shackled City as best adventure, but best campaign supplement over Freedom City 2e, which might be the best worldbook I've ever seen, is dicey. However, I like Paizo a *lot*, so I can overlook my disagreement; Chad Underkoffer received two ENnies for Truth and Justice, which absolutely rocked). I was especially glad to see Steve Long pick up the silver for best writing, given that Pulp Hero has given me as much gaming joy as any product has in years; he and S. John Ross did a superlative job on that book. Last year, I won silver for best adventure for Villainy Amok and didn't think that high could be repeated, but the stream of awards for my friends was just as satisfying. The ceremony was crowded, but went with very few glitches. Congratulations to the ENnie committee and thanks to everyone who voted.</p><p></p><p>After the ENnies, I decided to make an early retreat, as the con was finally starting to catch up with me.</p><p></p><p><strong>Saturday:</strong> I had an early game. Rod Currie's "serious" Champions game, SuperSquad game. Well, it's as serious as Rod can get and still inject with loads of Silver Age whimsy. I was playing the Mysterious Mister Z, an alien in a world that didn't believe that extra-terrestrials existed. Z had come to judge humanity in the previous year's game, but the team persuaded me to delay my judgment, so I joined the team to study humanity and determine their worth. To help me with adapting to life as a superhero, one of the old heroes lent me his collection of comics.</p><p></p><p>The scenario began with a breakout of a hundred superheroes from prison. We were run ragged trying to battle minor league threats like the New Sin Squad (which I dubbed "the Nuisance squad") and the Nighty-Night Gang while a major villain named DeathGrip began working a campaign of vengeance. I compared the plot to "the modern classic" Nightfall story from Batman that introduced Bane. DeathGrip was always one step ahead of us, and it ended in a shocking cliffhanger at Times Square (again, Rod's running this at GenCon SoCal, so I'm keeping a lot of the details sketchy). I did get off one more truly awful pun; while chatting with DeathGrip's brother, I told him "he ain't your brother, he's a heavy."</p><p></p><p>For that pun, I deserved some sort of punishment, and it came later that afternoon when I had to bow out of a Dogs in the Vineyard game due to a combination of exhaustion and bad food (mostly the former). After a few hours' rest, I hit the dealer's room in the afternoon, which gave me the opportunity to have long chats with Mike Stackpole and Monte Cook (who signed my copy of Ptolus).</p><p></p><p>I took it easy that evening. I had a chance to play in the SuperSquad finals, but there were so many good players that I didn't want to take any of their spots, so I bowed out. </p><p></p><p><strong>Sunday:</strong> I packed up and made preparations for checkout. Aside for the surcharge for using the Internet, the Hyatt was a great hotel and their staff and accommodations were first-rate. I went to the Christian Gaming Guild worship service, where Jon Evans preached from Ephesians and the Psalms on gaming (and life) etiquette. I missed my home church, but I appreciated Jon and Dave Mattingly for their time; the service was packed (there was 75 attendees in the hall, up from about 50 last year. The growth is encouraging). After lunch, I met Rob Heinsoo, an old friend from Wizards of the Coast who's now one of the senior designers in their minis division. Rob and I went to Houlighan's for lunch, but the service was lacking and this cut into what should've been a great experience. Hopefully, Rob wasn't too bowled over by my "what I'd do if I were Wizards and I wanted to make sure 4e was a success" speech. It was a good get together.</p><p></p><p>On my way back to the convention center, I had one of the oddest fan encounters ever: a man came up to me on the street with his wife in tow, and mentioned that he'd met her playing Champions. Since my material was a part of their game, he told me I was indirectly responsible for their marriage. I really didn't have a response for that, but felt unbelievably honored. This respect was typical of what I experienced at the con; most people were incredibly nice and friendly this year, and it was very welcome.</p><p></p><p>The con was now winding down, and I had an early evening flight. After one last circuit of the dealer's room (where I picked up some nice painted pulp minis and a couple of fig boxes), it was time to leave. It would've been nice to have spent the evening at the traditional post-con Hero dinner, but I couldn't schedule it this year.</p><p></p><p>With the recent bombing attempts in England, I decided to hit the airport early. Security was tight, and produced one embarrassing moment; they asked me to remove my belt to check it, and as soon as I did, my pants dropped. Oops! Quickly hiding the humiliation, I laughed at the incident; after everything these guys have been through in the last week, the last thing they needed was for me to act like a jerk and add to their stress.</p><p></p><p>I made it back to Vancouver, bulging suitcase and all, around midnight, and got back home at about 1:30 in the morning. I was exhausted, but extremely enthused about upcoming projects and can't wait to get to them. Kudos go out to everyone who made this such a fantastic experience, especially to Peter Atkinson, who continues to do an unbelievably good job at organizing this monster. Thank you.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="MulhorandSage, post: 3009522, member: 751"] Okay, here's mine. Be warned, it's long and I'm still wiped, so this may not be 100% coherent. It's also name-drop heavy. Please be forgiving. :-) [B]Tuesday:[/B] Had an early Wednesday morning flight. Went to an overpriced Vancouver airport hotel after an overpriced taxi ride. Bleh. Hotel internet didn't work. Went to bed early. [B]Wednesday:[/B] Woke up at 4:30 am for the ride to the airport. Everything went smoothly except for putting my boarding pass in my luggage. Oops! Got new boarding pass, flew to Chicago, then got to Indy. Less hassles than usual, though the flight was too cramped to take out my laptop and work. I took a taxi from the airport, registered at the Hyatt. I went to the Hero Games 25th anniversary party (where, after 15+ years of talking online, I finally got to meet Mike Surbrook face to face), then hopped over with Steve Long and Darren Watts to the Diana Jones awards, where the award for gaming excellence went to Irish Game Charity Auctions. I was a little non-plussed by this -- complaining about drunken Irishmen paying large amounts of money to buy stuff for good causes probably ranks alongside kicking puppies on the heel scale, but I kinda want awards on games to go to, y'know, games. Perhaps Sean Reynolds's charity books (or the many that came out after Katrina) don't make as much money as the Gaelcon content, but they're just as well-intentioned and you can dance to them... I mean game. Even so, the Irish game con auctions *do* rock, and it's cool to bring some attention to them. I finally had a chance to meet Matt Forbeck, whom I'd worked with on Decipher's LOTR RPG line, and I had a long chat with my old Interplay mate Sean Fannon. I also discussed writing a Faery's Tale book for Pat Sweeney's Firefly Games. The awards were announced, and being as at home at most parties as I am at, say, the running of the bulls, I made a quick retreat back to the hotel. I met my roomate (a nice guy from Texas who confusingly calls himself "Teflon Billy" on the Hero boards (he didn't know how popular the moniker was here until it was too late) and hit the sack [B]Thursday:[/B] 10 am. It's the magic hour of Gen Con, the time of the Inundation, when the dealer's room floods and too much money changes hands. I bought a lot of stuff. I picked up the Mansion of Shadows and the M&M Powers book, the Champions 25th anniversary book, the Ultimate Skill, You've Got to Have Character, BlackWyrm's Fires of War, and Goodwin's Revenge of the Rat-King. Later, I would add the Mountain Witch, a whole pack of painted pulp minis, and the granddaddy of them all (Malhavoc's Ptolus) to my bulging luggage. I also got to say hi to Luke Johnson, the ever-effervescent line editor on my World of Warcraft work, and say hi to James Wyatt, whom I've wanted to meet for a long time. Unfortunately, I really suck at the art of convention floor conversations, so we didn't really get to do more than to say how much we liked each other's work, but it was great to finally meet him in person. 12 am. I played the Mountain Witch, an indy game where six samurai trek up a mountain to kill a Mountain Witch, but everyone has a secret motive for being there. Man, this was a fantastic game. I played Shiro, a samurai who loved his daimyo's son (I intended this love to be fraternal, but the GM interpreted it as sexual, and given the historical habits of samurai, it fit, so I let it go), who had died facing the Mountain Witch. Among my four comrades was a man whose enchantment allowed him to never fail in hitting his target, and another samurai with a demon possessed hand. We had many adventures. First there was a battle with gaki demons in a Japanese graveyard, then we encountered blood-draining monks in an old temple. Fleeing from the temple after the appropriate bloodshed, we discovered a little girl who was consorting with ogres: she turned out to be the abandoned daughter of one of my comrades, and her mother was the Mountain Witch's consort. Every character in the Mountain Witch has three player defined special abilities. One of mine was the ability to force someone to fall in love with anyone of my choosing, so I forced him to fall in love with her mother (since I was a romantic who felt that no man should be without love). We were attacked by flying bat demons, had terrible dice luck, and the bats grabbed the little girl and flew off into the castle. We proceeded to the castle gate, where a gatekeeper held the key. I challenged him to a duel, so we played a game of go, with the stakes being my life vs. the key. The demon-handed samurai stole the key, and we bid a hasty retreat before the game ended. Passing into the castle, we rescued the daughter with the help of one of the servant's children, a cat-human hybrid. Then we were waylaid by a troupe of actors, who persuaded us to watch their play; we spent five years watching the play before we noticed the distraction. Uki, the samurai's daughter, was now 16. She had also been possessed by a fire demon while she'd been kidnapped by the bats, but I forced her to fall in love with a pool of water, and she jumped into the pool and purged her of the fiery spirit. We returned to the castle, and found a library filled with the scrolls, each which depicted the life story of someone who had died trying to kill the Mountain Witch. The cat-person who had helped us years ago tried to kill us, because the Witch had murdered the cat's family because he'd helped us, and we struck him down. We found Uki's mother, dead, trapped in ice, and Uki became trapped in ice as well. I was drawn by the voice of my dead lover into the witch's lair, where he showed me his spirit in a mirror and offered to restore him to life and give us immortality if I agreed to betray my comrades and serve him. I touched the mirror, said that my beloved came here to perform a task and promised I would not fail him and attacked. Unfortunately, I was then cut down like a dog by one of my comrades, who pulled out his betrayal card, and even the power of true love was no match for bad dice rolls (in the immortal words of George of the Jungle, dumb luck *is* the greatest power in the universe). Oh well. Great, tragic fun. Kudos to the GM and the other players for getting such an epic game in six hours. At 9 pm, Rod Currie ran his Pulp Justice game, where we played pulp heroes. My character was Joey Pulzak, a Polish-born palooka and mechanic; we started the scenario in Africa, where the nefarious Pygmy Master had us suspended in a net over shark-infested water. After the inevitable escape, we made our way back to America, where we became embroiled in a battle to discover the ancient secret of an old Californian bandit and the secret of a lost treasure. In the end, we chose to blow up the entrance of the bandit's cave and keep the secret forever. More than that, I won't say, since Rod plans to run his games again at GenCon SoCal. I highly recommend them, even for non-Hero System fans. It was now 12:30, and I was tired. I trudged back to the hotel and got to sleep pretty quickly. [B]Friday:[/B] Having one game end at 12:30 pm and another start at 8:00 in the morning is not a great thing for those of us in the over-45 set. This was a game of Capes, which I'd wanted to play for several years, but my gaming group is composed of stodgy traditionalists who wouldn't touch a GM-less system with a 10' pole. Unfortunately I arrived late, and when I saw a pool of characters on the table, I assumed everyone had already chosen their characters at the start, and so I selected one I'd liked. I then found out that the characters were selected after play, and I'd chosen one who was prized by another player, who loudly accused me of violating common player courtesy. I was not happy, but held my tongue. The characters were distributed by the order of players around the table (I was last), and I couldn't help but notice that "Mr. Courtesy" skipped over two other players who were ahead of him to grab the one he wanted. Beyond that, though, the game went extremely well. We were playing supers (heroes and villains) in late 1960s San Francisco, and I had a lot of fun playing Nowhere Man, an invisible guy, who was trying to save innocents who were imperiled at a protest rally. One of the villains, the Candyman, was captured, so we played a second game where the bad guys tried to bust him out of jail. This time, I played a superhero named the Guru, and placed the goal "The Guru tries to get Candyman to reform" on the table. In Capes, one fights over scenario related goals, and that one saw a *lot* of play. In the end, the bad guys won, but it was a good time. The game was run by Hans Messersmith, whom I knew from the Christian Gaming Guild mailing list, and it was a pleasure to meet him in person. In the afternoon, I hooked up with Aaron Allston, whom I hadn't seen in about four years. Aaron was in Indy for a Star Wars con, but any excuse to renew acquaintances is good for me. I spent more time in the dealer's room (not surprisingly, I picked up the Mountain Witch), then met with Steve Kenson to travel to the Mutants and Masterminds panel. This was over in the Omni, and it was a long walk for them, let alone me (I have a neurological condition with my legs, and the trips was well outside my usual walking range). It was worth it, though, to meet so many great fans, to hear Steve plug future books, and to hear Chris McGlothlin enthuize about his upcoming Time of Vengeance (which sounds like it'll be great). And I got to plug my own Agents of Freedom too. Most of the time was spent on campaign troubleshooting questions, and a good time was had by all. The big event of the evening was the ENnies. By pure happy circumstance, I managed to get a seat next to the Green Ronin section, and I got to share in the enthusiasm for their well-deserved triumphs. There were a couple of questionable calls, but nothing worthy of more than minor outrage (I can easily see Shackled City as best adventure, but best campaign supplement over Freedom City 2e, which might be the best worldbook I've ever seen, is dicey. However, I like Paizo a *lot*, so I can overlook my disagreement; Chad Underkoffer received two ENnies for Truth and Justice, which absolutely rocked). I was especially glad to see Steve Long pick up the silver for best writing, given that Pulp Hero has given me as much gaming joy as any product has in years; he and S. John Ross did a superlative job on that book. Last year, I won silver for best adventure for Villainy Amok and didn't think that high could be repeated, but the stream of awards for my friends was just as satisfying. The ceremony was crowded, but went with very few glitches. Congratulations to the ENnie committee and thanks to everyone who voted. After the ENnies, I decided to make an early retreat, as the con was finally starting to catch up with me. [B]Saturday:[/B] I had an early game. Rod Currie's "serious" Champions game, SuperSquad game. Well, it's as serious as Rod can get and still inject with loads of Silver Age whimsy. I was playing the Mysterious Mister Z, an alien in a world that didn't believe that extra-terrestrials existed. Z had come to judge humanity in the previous year's game, but the team persuaded me to delay my judgment, so I joined the team to study humanity and determine their worth. To help me with adapting to life as a superhero, one of the old heroes lent me his collection of comics. The scenario began with a breakout of a hundred superheroes from prison. We were run ragged trying to battle minor league threats like the New Sin Squad (which I dubbed "the Nuisance squad") and the Nighty-Night Gang while a major villain named DeathGrip began working a campaign of vengeance. I compared the plot to "the modern classic" Nightfall story from Batman that introduced Bane. DeathGrip was always one step ahead of us, and it ended in a shocking cliffhanger at Times Square (again, Rod's running this at GenCon SoCal, so I'm keeping a lot of the details sketchy). I did get off one more truly awful pun; while chatting with DeathGrip's brother, I told him "he ain't your brother, he's a heavy." For that pun, I deserved some sort of punishment, and it came later that afternoon when I had to bow out of a Dogs in the Vineyard game due to a combination of exhaustion and bad food (mostly the former). After a few hours' rest, I hit the dealer's room in the afternoon, which gave me the opportunity to have long chats with Mike Stackpole and Monte Cook (who signed my copy of Ptolus). I took it easy that evening. I had a chance to play in the SuperSquad finals, but there were so many good players that I didn't want to take any of their spots, so I bowed out. [B]Sunday:[/B] I packed up and made preparations for checkout. Aside for the surcharge for using the Internet, the Hyatt was a great hotel and their staff and accommodations were first-rate. I went to the Christian Gaming Guild worship service, where Jon Evans preached from Ephesians and the Psalms on gaming (and life) etiquette. I missed my home church, but I appreciated Jon and Dave Mattingly for their time; the service was packed (there was 75 attendees in the hall, up from about 50 last year. The growth is encouraging). After lunch, I met Rob Heinsoo, an old friend from Wizards of the Coast who's now one of the senior designers in their minis division. Rob and I went to Houlighan's for lunch, but the service was lacking and this cut into what should've been a great experience. Hopefully, Rob wasn't too bowled over by my "what I'd do if I were Wizards and I wanted to make sure 4e was a success" speech. It was a good get together. On my way back to the convention center, I had one of the oddest fan encounters ever: a man came up to me on the street with his wife in tow, and mentioned that he'd met her playing Champions. Since my material was a part of their game, he told me I was indirectly responsible for their marriage. I really didn't have a response for that, but felt unbelievably honored. This respect was typical of what I experienced at the con; most people were incredibly nice and friendly this year, and it was very welcome. The con was now winding down, and I had an early evening flight. After one last circuit of the dealer's room (where I picked up some nice painted pulp minis and a couple of fig boxes), it was time to leave. It would've been nice to have spent the evening at the traditional post-con Hero dinner, but I couldn't schedule it this year. With the recent bombing attempts in England, I decided to hit the airport early. Security was tight, and produced one embarrassing moment; they asked me to remove my belt to check it, and as soon as I did, my pants dropped. Oops! Quickly hiding the humiliation, I laughed at the incident; after everything these guys have been through in the last week, the last thing they needed was for me to act like a jerk and add to their stress. I made it back to Vancouver, bulging suitcase and all, around midnight, and got back home at about 1:30 in the morning. I was exhausted, but extremely enthused about upcoming projects and can't wait to get to them. Kudos go out to everyone who made this such a fantastic experience, especially to Peter Atkinson, who continues to do an unbelievably good job at organizing this monster. Thank you. [/QUOTE]
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