I realize, now that Billy has completed his posts, that I do need to produce the big summary post about the event. But, to quote Wim. Vander Zalm (kiznit you know what I'm talking about), "You get to the end of these things and there are so many people you want to thank and then you miss someone and they feel bad so I'm not going to do that. But I would like to thank... The Chinese."
Actually, scratch that. I’m not going to thank the Chinese. Instead, I think I’ll just express what a great event it was by enumerating the fun stuff I did in reverse order. And I really do apologize in advance for missing the half-dozen people whose names don’t appear in my narrative and clearly should. However, many of you will have spent enough time with me and my ubiquitous bottle of scotch that you will be impressed that I remember this much.
So, let me begin by mentioning how generous and fun Dextra and Hellhound were as traveling companions; they gave me a lift back to Toronto all the way back from Indy and even found me a place to stay overnight during our stop in Kitchener. Not only were they a pleasure to travel with, their daughters were the most funny, sophisticated, intelligent and mature pair of early adolescents I have encountered in decades and perhaps ever. Never mind the fabulous laughs we had on the road as we discussed future ENnies ceremonies and forthcoming ENWorld game store publications (you guys are in for a treat!) It made constantly rearranging the weight in the trailer a small price to pay for such a great trip back.
Then there was Twin Rose, whose magical human relations skills somehow mobilized his online friend Joanna to ferry us to and from my remotely situated hotel room in both the middle of the night and the relatively early morning. Finishing up Gen Con over drinks with these two and Hellhound made for a nice restful denoument as I sipped the most expensive ginger ale in the world in the Hilton hotel bar.
Further back in time, there was my last dinner. We were forced to wait so long that Belen Umeria were able to solve all the world’s problems, sitting on a very long bench. While those around us became so faint with hunger that we ended up accepting two adjacent tables instead of one large table, Belen and I hardly even noticed time passing. Unfortunately, I didn’t get to join his and Alenda’s table but was honoured with the only non-parent/child seat at the people with kids table. This was the fourth of my various near-misses at actually having a conversation with Steve Jung. Sorry Steve. So, despite my predictions to the contrary, I was able to enjoy a chat with Queenie and Dire Wolf and to watch pure incarnate cuteness in action as Bella enjoyed her food as only an infant can. By the end, Buca di Beppo had defeated us a second time as we were forced to pack away food and I had to turn down Queenie’s offer of a piece of cake. How fortunate for those who partook that said cake was hidden under half a foot of ice cream and whipped cream whose excavation burned nearly as many calories as it replaced.
I must say generally to our community that there is something damned impressive about the fact that you can make nearly any Gen Con event fun. Disassembling the ENnies booth was practically a recreational activity, even though many of us could barely stand by Sunday afternoon.
It occurs to me that pretty much my entire Gen Con experience was either going to restaurants or going to games. My last lunch in Indy was spent with Piers, my friend from Toronto and Buttercup, my near-constant companion by the end of the Con. We managed to survive lunch by not outing the fembot disguised as a waitress. I’m pretty sure we would have been shot with its laser attachments if we had let on that we could tell its responses were just a continuous pre-recorded loop.
Sunday morning staffing the booth with Nakia was much fun. Not only was he a clever, relaxed, humble guy; my own guilt and disappointment at double-booking my shift against a PirateCat game I really wanted to attend was somewhat assuaged by the fact that he had done exactly the same.
I know some people around here, including me, have expressed in the past that RangerWickett had the capacity to be a little aggravating. Let me tell you: this guy has really grown in the past year – and not in the ‘too many calories’ way. His generosity at hosting the Saturday night party for our bunch was limited only by his roommates’ desire to get some sleep. Now I know I’m going to forget to mention someone when I enumerate all the great people with whom I got to spend time at his event; all I can say is: don’t blame me; blame diaglo’s scotch. It was at this event that diaglo and I got to toast the wise and benevolent rule of Daniel Ortega. It was here that I got to pontificate about David Icke’s shape-shifting space lizard conspiracy theory. Crothian, Buttercup, Hellhound, Shaylon, Rystil Arden, Frater, reveal, Sidereal Knight and a host of others put up with me very patiently.
Eventually, we ended up in a LARP room to finish diaglo’s gallon of scotch. For some reason, it was important to people that while Psion, Hellhound, RangerWickett, Teflon Billy, diaglo and I killed the bottle, while Buttercup, reveal and Crothian looked on in bemusement, we needed to keep rolling a D20. Apparently it was some sort of drinking game but, as far as I could tell, the actual drinking seemed strangely unlinked to the die rolls. Sadly, the scary LARPers we had met in the elevator – and I’m thinking especially of the guy dressed in some kind of cheap 13th century Europeanized harem outfit that showed off his impressive cleavage and neatly combed chest hair collaborating in a fake English accent with some guy in Victorian dress wearing a safari hat painted silver – never turned up.
Earlier, at my second dinner on Saturday night, I appeared to those who had not spent the earlier portions of the day with me to be a man capable of some level of restraint in eating. I think I refrained from mentioning to Keeper of Secrets, Bubbalicious, Strawberry and my two other immediate neighbours (to whom I deeply apologize for not recalling properly) at the Nothingland dinner that this was my third meal in six hours. Keeper and I, in particular, had a great wide-ranging conversation; as well, the relative merits and techniques for cooking various varieties of poultry were discussed by all.
Dinner #1 on Saturday was at the Ram with Cheiromancer and my friend Jude, the member of my Toronto gaming group I brought to the con. Half of the dinner was spent discussing the Christian virtue of hope and my inability to get my head/heart around it, as opposed to faith and charity which seem like a piece of cake by comparison. Of course, Cheiromancer’s piece of cake had more immediate attractions than either, what with all the ice cream and chocolate sauce. My appearance of restraint in the presence of the cake was more a consequence of the fact that I was still full from lunch and had another dinner to attend two hours later.
As mentioned above, Saturday was the day of eating continuously. Not only was the Nothingland dinner preceded by another dinner. It was also preceded by an enormous lunch at the India Gate restaurant. As I recalled, the place served perfectly adequate Indian food in infinite quantities at a fair price. Unfortunately for all who took my advice, I made the mistake of recommending the gulab jamun dessert which was, without a doubt, the worst gulab jamun I have ever eaten. For those looking for the lunch equivalent of the Embassy breakfast next year, this place is only half a block north of the Hilton and is of roughly comparable (slightly higher) quality. Despite the gulab jamun experience, Shaylon managed to enjoy his exposure to Indian food; I’m hoping the company made up for Romp, Buttercup and Maldur’s intensely mediocre experience. Buttercup and I managed to work off about 20% of the calories during our subsequent ‘power walk’ (my leisurely stroll with legs double the length of hers).
Saturday began with Buttercup’s fabulously fun Damnation Decade game in which Whirligig, Maldur, Shaylon and Cthulhu's Librarian joined me in fighting aliens and eating Pringles. It was at this event that CL revealed that the Westin leaves free apples everywhere. He had a whole sack of them for us. I haven’t got to use my Punjabi accent in years and getting to pronounce on the subject of alien conspiracies, reincarnation and meditation techniques and sitting in lotus position while my character teleported guns with his mind was just all kinds of fun. Although there was solid RPing all around, I must specially recognize Shaylon for his hysterical portrayal of a gun-toting, alien-hating, drawling Texas trucker with a big sack of ammo and a HAM radio.
For the second year in a row, I got to have my post-ENnies dinner with Joe and Suzi Yee-Browning but whereas last year, there were drinks and Chinese food of consolation as we mused that the awards had outgrown Expeditious Retreat Press what with its small print runs and PDF focus, this year, we were toasting their stunning comeback as winner for Pleasure Prison of the Bthuvian Demon Whore along with Jude, Calamari Face, his lovely wife Michelle, Romp and Buttercup. I also made the important discovery at PF Chang’s that there is now a brand of cheap sake that appears to be flavoured with the same ester as the one Nestle uses to make its raspberry-flavoured water.
The ENnies are always fun for me because, just like when I dine with my friend Philip, I get to be the opposite person in the interaction than I usually am. The difference is that, when I dine with Philip, I get to be the dumb, socially adept person in the interaction; at the ENnies, I get to be the calm guy. I get to watch PirateCat and Dextra panic while I remain laid back and calm. The panic afforded me many opportunities both to do surprisingly low-stress odd jobs and to recruit volunteers for others; I learned, for instance, that very few ENWorlders believe themselves to have good penmanship as I combed the hall for people to transcribe the list of winners onto sheets PirateCat could actually read. For future reference, Buttercup and Psion have good penmanship as do two other people I am embarrassed at not immediately recalling. Xath’s penmanship was so good that she remained in the main hall making “reserved” signs for tables so that nominees would have somewhere to sit in our the undersized facility we somehow got consigned to. Of course, she made these signs while simultaneously juggling chainsaws with Dextra as an awards ceremony that ran like clockwork was somehow willed into existence from a mass of chaos by Dextra’s cat-herding abilities and her trusty volunteer coordinator. I managed to enjoy all of this while getting in enjoyable snippets of conversation with diaglo, 8DS, Crothian, Billy, Eosin the Red and several other people to whom I apologize in advance. Also, the gamers foolishly avoided all the expensive sage darby cheese on the high-end appetizer platter. More for me!
I was also treated to a fabulous group of players for the second run-through of my 1E Gamma World Escape from the Embassy Suites adventure. Having had more time to perfect my map overnight and having the bugs worked out by Francisca and company the day before, this game was one of the best gaming experiences of my life. FickleGM[b/], reveal, Rel, Billy, Buttercup, Dave Stebbins and Shaylon were such enthusiastic fun players that they ended up selling every ratty joke in my notes. Everything the Paris Hilton fembots said after a while was punctuated with a chorus of “that’s hot,” from around the table. Not to mention the fact that they, without the slightest hint of railroading, managed to recreate the scene towards which the adventure had been building: a split party watching half its members getting slaughtered in the lobby while the other half waits impatiently for the elevator that it gradually dawns on them will never come.
Friday began with D20Dwarf’s GMing of the only true beer and pretzels game of the weekend. The fact that it was more a scotch and Pringles version was more than made up for by the fact that we managed to get into the drink by about 10am when Teflon Billy proclaimed that it had to be 5pm somewhere. How fortunate that, as is usually the case at GenCon, I had a 26oz bottle of scotch in my briefcase! Psion, Maddman and DireKobold managed to fill out a game that was basically an unending series of conversational tangents and remarks by D20Dwarf that the commercial module of his that we were running was full of logic errors and typos.
Thursday night was my one decent shot at spending an extended time with Billy and I was not disappointed. What had been a miserable, calamitous journey to the Con was transformed through his unrivaled proficiency as a raconteur into a story of comedy, pathos and even an actual fight. Kiznit, diaglo and I were in awe. (Here, I know I’m forgetting someone – estoy muy sorry.) Then, despite his exhaustion, Billy abandoned us briefly for an encore performance for Queen Dopplepopolis, The Universe, reveal and others out of earshot at the other end of the table.
Eventually, the karaoke expedition on which Thursday’s gathering had been premised fell apart and Billy and I were forced to wander the halls until being swept up in the D20Dwarf vortex. We got to test his pickup line singles bar card game in which increasingly challenging women enter a bar (culminating in French post-feminist academic Camille Paglia) and are treated to horrendous pickup lines. The game was great fun although the pickup line responses crossed the line from cheesy to Dadaist; Billy summed up the game as “and the Camille Paglia responds, ‘my favourite colour is pancakes!’” Nevertheless, much fun was had, despite me having left my scotch back at the hotel.
I seem to recall having dinner after the Thursday episode of Escape from the Embassy Suites but cannot recall where or with whom. Still, I recall arriving stuffed and happy at Champps for the karaoke that never happened. Perhaps this was the night that I first went to Buca with a huge roiling mass of ENWorlders who somehow, despite ordering a limitless number of dishes managed to avoid the traps of bistromathics and exceed a 15% tip on our first try. My attempt to create an autonomous ordering system/faction at my end of the table turned out to be completely unnecessary. Buttercup, Truth Seeker, reveal, FickleGM and I ended up consuming much of the main (kiznit) faction’s food anyway.
My Thursday afternoon was spent with PirateCat, diaglo, Francisca, kiznit and Psion. These guys were very good sports, trudging through what I gradually realized to be an insufficiently playtested first version of Escape; PirateCat, who played the funniest armadillo in the world even apologized for not carrying more of the game. Lunatic! Strangely, just like the previous day’s game, Escape turned out, quite unintentionally, to be a heartwarming story of the triumph of the human spirit as Francisca, like Shaylon the day after him, ended up playing the sole-surviving human who ends up in charge of the hotel with his own cult following and unlimited Paris Hilton fembot “turndown service.” Despite some bugs on my part, the adventure was great fun, thanks to enthusiastic, laid back players and an appreciation on everyone’s part for just how far game systems have come in 29 years.
I spent Thursday morning rushing around the Embassy Suites finishing off my map and notes for the adventure but; sadly, my survey ended up being incomplete as I missed the concrete column between the elevators and got the fire stairs slightly wrong. However, after 24 more hours of trying to make my way between floors, the flaws in the system were most accurately represented for my second group of players on Friday.
What can one say about Rel? He makes a person feel welcome and appreciated like nobody else, with the possible exception of Don King; and he’s not even a sociopathic wrestling promoter with weird hair. His party on Wednesday night set the tone for the entire Con – a host of people, almost all of whom have already been mentioned converged on his suite and kept him up until the not-even-that-small-anymore hours with an alcohol-fueled vortex of silly anecdotes and enthusiastic greeting of new arrivals I am sure his neighbours did not appreciate. Sorry if I hugged you too hard, PirateCat. And sorry we got so little time to visit, Old One.
Maybe that dinner I mentioned above was on Wednesday. I’m really not sure.
My first game of the Con was the ultimate nostalgia experience: Joe, Suzi, Buttercup, kiznit, 8DS and the GM’s friend Eric playing in Francisca’s post-Keep on the Borderlands Basic D&D adventure complete with a random rumours table, one-dimensional NPCs and a set of bugbears who got so sick of us banging on their walls looking for secret doors that they leapt out and attacked us.
The welcome I got from Rel comes in second place to the one I received from Calamari Face, though. He devoted his entire afternoon to ferrying me and my friend Piers about from airport to Cajun restaurant to convention to hotel to gamestore to his house to convention. After a while we forgot where we were going and why but it was sure an enjoyable way to spend the afternoon and helped me confirm all my suspicious about Indy being the geographical template on which all badly-constructed US cities are based.
Then there are the people I distinctly recall spending time with but cannot recall exactly where or when. LadyToll, for instance, always seemed to be nearly in the same place at the same time but not quite; nevertheless I got a hug and the great news that her health, since last year, has been on the mend. Kudos to Dave Stebbins for finding our hobby such a great recruit. Fett527 also makes this list; I came away with a good opinion of you sir but no recollection of how I developed it. DireKobold brings up the final place on this list. I can’t even remember where we finally caught up conversationally but he was an all-around great guy just like last year, snowmobiles and all.
(that was me on the balcony trying to help you locate him.)
