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Message: <blockquote data-quote="JoeGKushner" data-source="post: 3005842" data-attributes="member: 1129">I don't go to Gen Con to game.I go to buy stuff and hear what's coming out.In terms of news, I must've missed the big announcements. "Kane for Savage Worlds!" Yeah, heard that before I went to the convention. "Lankhimar for Runequest!" Heard that months ago. I think the internet has spoiled me as far as news is concerned.Did the paint and take a few times. Good stuff there.As I noted when people asked me about Gen Con, at least one dealer, that for Wyrd Miniatures, had no credit card capabilities and I had already spent my cash at the time. Better luck next year.Spent a lot of time in the anime/manga section. It's free and it's something I enjoy. Saw some weird live action movies. Definatly not the main stream stuff. Heck, I don't know if I'd even see that type of stuff at the indie type booths.Let's see...Great Cthulhu $85 bones but man he looks bad ass.Rappan Athuk #889 $75 bones. It's okay but I bought it more as a 'completist' than anything.Flipmatt City $10 I love these things. I've got the one for the wilderness and now city.Deluxe Initiative Tracker: Mine was lost when my bag of old was lost.Burning Empire $40: Uses the Burning Wheel System and is for the Iron Empire comics/graphic novels. Hate the size format but love the design, layout, and art. Looks very intense and has gotten me interested in the cmoics.Burning Wheel/Jihad/Paths of Spite: $25, $10, $5: figured while I was getting Burning Empire, I might as well see what Burning Wheel was. It's rare that I do this as 3.5 is pretty much my default fantasy campaign setting. The guys who were running this booth by the quite zone, were really friendly and knew what they were talking about, but putting the register in the back seemed to be the stupidist thing you could do as you were funneled in and there could only be like one or two people in the booth at a time to even look at stuff much less buy it.Miniatures: $50 Picked up some Lance & Laser and some Magnificent Egoes. The L&L stuff you simply can't find at any store in the Chicagoland area, including Games Plus. Their newer stuff is simply fantastic. The ME stuff Games Plus carries, but not all of it and not in a timely fashion outside like the latest releases some times so I figured while I was there...But I didn't see anyone selling Fenryl miniatures. Privateer Press had a huge stage, but Games Plus gets them no problem. Same deal with Rackham and Confrontaiton. Buy that on the home front.Crystal Caste 16mm steel/iron dice: $40 but I got a free bag with it to hold my other stuff. And the dice are nice and heavy.Queen of Lies: $15. Little buyer's regret because it's okay, but I already have the original and well, it'll be a long time before I get around to this.Silk Road by Expedious Press: Every time someone complains of price gouging by Wizards of the Coast, I have to wonder if they buy any 3rd party products. This is a nice book, b&w softcover format at 160 pages for $27. Compared to a WoTC 160 hardcover full cover book at $30, it would be overpriced. Good stuff.Bought my girlfriend Squirrel Attack Boardgame for $30. If it wasn't for my g/f, I'd never have touched this thing for that much money. No box and a rolled up 'board'? Yeah, gotta love that small press touch. Also got her the cat shirt, "If you don't talk to your cat about catnip now, who will" for $21. And some home made chocolate on one of the many paths back to Chicago from the con for like $20.Didn't take a single review product this year. Figured I'm still a little backed up on some of the material I'm working on already (Dragons of Faerun, Red Hand of Doom, Complete Psionicist, Artesia, etc....) and didn't want to try and sound like anything I'd take now would get done soon. So cash was paid and I'll be able to read the stuff at my own lesiure.One thing I thought was funny was a game setting/mechanics with a poster of a dragon with chromatic and metallic colors with the phrase, "Color means nothing!" or something similiar and noted how it now uses the A/B system!And I was thinking... "Man, the fear of d20 must be huge if people are using dragons and knights and other fantasy troupes and going to another game system." Or people honestly think that they've got the next system (TM) and that it's going to be the bomb! Honestly, if it's not d20, I tend to keep away from it. I may pick up Savage World (again!) when Solomen Kane comes out and I may pick up Runequest when Lankhimar and Conan 2nd ed come out but my days of buying multiple fantasy systems are over for the most part. The only reason I bought Burning Wheel was that Burning Empire looked so good and I was curious to see how that transferred over to fantasy.Because I was wearing bad shoes (semi-dress shoes that felt like a thousand daggers) and walking around a lot, I didn't stop in at a lot of booths and catch up with people, which I felt was bad. I was pretty much there to buy and get out and I know I missed a few booths like Goodman Games, Paradigm, and Green Ronin, but at the same time, I'd pretty much blown through what I was going to spend and since my feet were killing me and I didn't want to stand around talking... "Yeah, I bought all this stuff but I'm buying nothing from you and taking time away from other customers!"  <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f61b.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":p" title="Stick out tongue    :p"  data-smilie="7"data-shortname=":p" /> One of the things I noticed thought is that there are some lazy dealers. I gotta tell you, if you're at a convention with a table with nothing on it but you're book, you're not doing your job. Get something to take up some space with images/details of your product. If you're sitting on your butt, you're not doing your job. How stupid is it to pay for a table, (not to mention the creation of product in the first place), and sit there reading your book or looking down at the ground instead of standing up and trying to get people interested in your product? If you can't do that and can only create the product, you need to hire someone else to come in and hawk your wares for you otherwise you're wasting time and taking up booth space!Oh, the art was awesome too. They've got a whole section in the exhibit hall seperated from the main hall and man, the artists were out in force with art to sell and display pieces to own. If I had money and a place to put 'em...WoTC... man, when you sell out of the Book of Nine Swords, you didn't bring enough. When you're selling products for prices that other dealers are killing you on, you might want to think about not bringing those products and bringing more of things you're selling out of. One of my friends bought a brick of Angelfire miniatures for under $100 and was like, "Man, what's WoTC thinking charing full retail when everyone else has 'em for $9 or less." I spent way too much time in the Hotel room watching CNN. I don't get cable at home and CNN is like a car accident. I just couldn't turn away with all the stuff happening. Felt kinda weird but as it effected two of the guys in the room, it was something real and something I felt important to keep up to date on. It was like hypnotism. Anyone sharing a room with me can attest that anytime they walked in, if I wasn't asleep (don't drink, do bars, etc...) or wasn't out (woke up about 5:00 Am most days and walked around downtown in bad shoes), I was watching CNN.Took two shifts in the Ennies both and had a chance to speak with some En Worlders. Great bunch of guys and gals out there.If I go again next year, I'll try to actually get in some gaming.</blockquote>

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