I gave this one a three. Which is not to say it was a bad Gencon. Gencon is generally a GREAT time - so being as good as any other Gencon means it was a great time.
For me, it was a different experience as I was an exhibitor this year and not an attendee. As luck would have it though, Atari hired another crew to set up and tear down the booth - so we had our Wednesday totally free (and no tear down on Sunday).
But the downside of being an Exhibitor in an open booth with 7-10 developers shilling and only 2 chairs for use by gamers to sit and demo the game means that my feet were KILLING ME standing on the con floor for that long. It was really nasty.
With a crew of non ENWorld people with me, once again I missed out going to a con suite for some face-to-face with you all and once again missed the ENnies. Moreover, no time to game meant I had no events, ENworld or Gencon.
I did play pick-up games of
Chez Geek,
Z-Man B-Movie Game (which I have like five different decks to and is a hoot with the right people). I picked up and played
Condotierre from FFG with my buddies in the roXidy Games crew. We had a great time with Condoterre and I really liked what they have done with the 3rd edition. The rules tweaking makes it a brand new game with a helluva lot more depth. For $20 bucks? You can't go wrong here.
Note to Fantasy Flight Games: Max SRP on three and four year old inventory is a shameless cash grab. I don't want to hear about how it upsets your retailers to sell below SRP. New stock? OK. Old inventory? Give it a friggin rest. You antagonized the hell out of me with your prices this year). Mayfair and Rio Grande didn't do that with old stock - but FFG did.
Props to the Paizo guys: for being one of the few sellers in the con with reasonable prices on their products. I was not the only person who noticed and it was definitely appreciated. The line-up in your booth testified to it as well. Similar props to
Steve Jackson Games.
Again on the plus side, the roXidy crew had lots of good food at the RAM, plenty of beer, lots of reasonably decent food at Bucca and we even got a chance on Wednesday to get to Shapiro's Deli - a jewish institution in Indianapolis for over a hundred years which was absolutely PACKED with 200 people on a Wednesday at lunch hour. Not an office building in sight and we were the only gamers in the place. It was packed with Townies for
a reason. If you have not had a chance to get to Shapiro's when at Indy - you've missed out on some of the best food you can buy, anywhere.
Take the time next year and GO TO SHAPIROS.
I did get a chance to hang out at the auction on Saturday night. Picked up a never played, partially punched copy of AH's
Civilization for real cheap.
Sid Meir's Civilization:The Boardgame in the shrink went for twice what I paid for mine right afterwards. I paid half the cost and got 10 times the better game. I didn't have the heart to tell the guy. Regrettably, I didn't pick up
Dune in the auction when I dropped at $70 (it went for $72) - and the two copies of
Titan available went for silly money ($98 and $102, respectively, though it often sells for $120-140 on eBay so... that's still a bargain I guess).
I did briefly get a chance to meet Russ at the ENnies booth and Carl (Truth Seeker) stopped by several times at the Atari booth for a chat which was nice. Carl's a great guy.
I stopped in at Paizo on Thursday morning before the hall opened and had a chance to chat with Erik Mona. At that point, we didn't know what was coming down the pipe with 4E. (The short strokes emerged later that night that there was going to be an OGL for 4E.) As always, Erik was polite and engaging. Keep on Fighting the good fight Erik.
I traded good mornings with Gary Gygax as he was scootering in and i was heading out for a quick smoke. I didn't stop to pump his hand with a sincere "thank-you" but it sufficed.
I know I'll be back as an Exhibitor in '09, so I hope next year to go as an attendee again and do more gaming more con stuff and less Exhibition Hall Endurance Standing.
I DO hope some of you read
The Witcher short story we were passing out though - it really is very good stuff and the game looks
suh_weet.