Gen Con - Good bad and ugly

[bolen]

Good

- Meeting Mike Mearls (designer of Iron Heroes) I had several very good conversations with him. He and Sue Cook are good people.

- Rogue Judge's Car Wars - This was amazing. They had a entire city with matchbox cars which we could drive around on.

- Great independent GM for BOTH my Conan and my Mutants and Masterminds game. (same person

- Friendly folks. I don’t think I met any smelly gamers this time

- I paid for my hotel with money I made at the auction (yea auction) ( another thanks to Kevin (Piratecat) for helping me carry my stuff to the auction)

- The folks at Ad Asteria games - they have the coolest game a true 3-d spaceship combat game which uses real physics called ATTACK VECTOR

Bad

- The Mongoose Conan game- Lots of errors on the character sheet. Our GM did not know the conan system very well. If your company has someone demoing your game, I would think you would want to ensure quality.

- The event system many of my games were sold out but no one showed up for them. I heard about this alot. I am suspicious of the event system.



Ugly

Coming out of gen con on Saturday afternoon, a guy came up to me and said hey what's Gen Con? I told him it was a large gaming con and explained what that was. He said, "Dungeons and Dragons, Isn't that kind of evil." I said no and kind of walked away. What a way to end your con.

 

[Shemeska]

Good:
Winning a freaking Ennie with Planewalker.com! *GLEE*

Getting to sit with the guys from Priv. Press at the Ennies and watching their reactions when they won two gold Ennies and didn't seem like they expected it at all.

Running two 3e Planescape games, getting to have Rip, Orri, and Smeazal show up to play in them when I had openings.

Meeting more folks from Enworld in person, was very cool *grin*

Getting to play in a Shadowrun game. I loves me my shadowrun.

Bad:
The freaking line for getting Shadowrun 4th ed. I didn't manage to get a copy during GenCon because they sold out every single day. Yikes.

Hotel prices on the minibar *shudder*


Ugly: Having a seizure Sunday morning. *feeling very -very- sore at the moment*

 

[Crothian]

good

Running Paranioa and play in a round robin game

Seeing everyone and just talking about everything from gaming to dating to canadian politics

Meeting Lynn Abbey

Bad

Tire blowing out on the way to the con.

Cost to park

ugly

the ten year old and stinky gamer in my group of True Dungeon

 

[Bobitron]

Good:
Winning a freaking Ennie with Planewalker.com! *GLEE*

Congrats on that, Shem, great to see all the hard work recognized.

Getting to sit with the guys from Priv. Press at the Ennies and watching their reactions when they won two gold Ennies and didn't seem like they expected it at all.

How could they not have expected that?!? The World Guide is just tops.

 

[Keeper of Secrets]

Good:

All the great people I met

All the sweet deals I found in the dealer's room

Copy of Mutants & Masterminds I picked up

Bringing a huge cooler filled with sodas and beers for my own room

Bad:

Smelly gamers

The fact I had no idea what was going on in True Dungeon and felt like a 'hanger on' with my group

I, too, saw that my games sold out but there were a few absences in every session - very strange

The Ugly:

More smelly gamers

Blowing my budget on stuff I wanted but didn't need

 

[Keeper of Secrets]

Also, added to the Ugly colomn:

The fact that Crothian lives here in Ohio and yet I never had the opportunity to meet him!

 

[francisca]

Good

Seeing people from here and NTL.

Getting a chance to make new aquaintences, and actually do some socializing with people beyond a handshake, and "How ya doin'?" This year, these folks included Teflon Billy, Boz, CarlZog, GlassJaw, Cthulhu's Librarian, Ethernaut, HellHound, Mark CMG, and others who are slipping my mind.

Starting some traditions like seeing people for the 2nd or third time at GenCon, like ButterCup, Storminator, and Tim Peaselee who is part of the Reaper Black Lightning demo team. I've played in his Warlord games for two years in a row, and anticipate doing so as long as he keeps coming.

Gotta echo the Rogue Judge's Car Wars Rogue Arena. Outstanding!

True Dungeon

Got to play the new RoboRally. Very fun.

The KoDT Live Reading. I was lucky enough to get to read again this year.

Der_kluge handing me the Dark Dungeons Chick Tract. Brilliant, man. Brilliant. Now I guess I need to repent!


Bad

Really missed seeing WarGolem and May this year.

Getting crushed in the DCC tourney. (especially after talking trash) Feel like I let my team down a bit.

Didn't schedule some stuff due to the tourney. Missed out on a bit.

Could have used about 4 more days of GenCon....


Ugly

Go to bed at 3AM. Woken up by a screaming toddler at 3:15. No prob. I have a 6 and a 3 year old (not 6 3 year olds, Wil), I understand. 10 minutes later, it's still going on, and it dawns on me that nobody is trying to quiet or comfort this child. So, I go out in the hallway to find this cute little girl, about 2.5 years old, screaming her head off, wearing a soaked diaper that must weigh about 10lbs. I can't get anything out of her at all, except she wants her mom and dad. Tell my roomate to call the front desk, and I finally get her to stop crying and become somewhat coherent. About then, this young guy (early 20's) from the front desk shows up and is freaking out. Of course this sets off the girl again.

Now, what really pisses me off at this point, is that we are the only people out in the hall trying to help this girl. Except for the the occasional "TELL THAT KID TO SHUT UP!", everyone else is either sleeping through or hoping the problem will go away.

So, the girl finally sobs herself half-asleep (hell, she might have been in shock), and the dude takes her downstairs, and I go back to bed.

Next morning, the guy is still at the desk, and I ask what happened to the girl. As soon as he came out of the elevator, she let out a wail, and mod and dad come running out of the lobby where they were playing D&D. They apparently had a baby monitor, but guess what? That crap doesn't work through 4 floors of concrete and steel.

Moral of the story: Put your kids before gaming, OK? And for the rest: if you hear a kid in trouble, try to help.

 

[fett527]

Also, added to the Ugly colomn:

The fact that Crothian lives here in Ohio and yet I never had the opportunity to meet him!

That's it. WE NEED ANOTHER OHIO GAMEDAY!!!!!!!

 

[DonTadow]

Good:
-Winning Iron DM 2005 "IRon Dungeon Master Dread"
-Qualifying for a bunch of board game finals and semifinals
-Playing and dying horribbly with an old gaming group in the DND OPen
-Having the creator of Mutants and master mind DM an awesome game that made me give a second thought about running a super heroes game
-True Heroes was more fun this year despite keeping ht combat system. They used stronger magnets this year and more puzzles entertwined with combat. They did a better job of it than dungoens and dragons.

Bad:
-I had the worst midnight shadowrun game ever. The dm didn't know the rules, the players had no idea what stealth was and the newbies had never even heard of the game.
-There was no free internet anywhere. That was so annoying considering hte last couple of years the internet was free.
-Wotc shoving hekatomb down our throats, only to reveal a serious design flaw that really slows up game play or encourages cheating.
-true dungeons was only ok this year for me. TOo much emphasis on the puzzles doesn't capture the thrill of d and d for me. I"m all for challenging puzzles but the final boss should be a monster

Ugly:
- Me after losing my enworld badge and thinking about hte possibly of walking right by some of you and not knowing.

 

[KenM]

Can someone tell me if they had fixed the major computer glitch they had last year with lots of people that were just going in for a single day just waited to get in because of it?