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Message: <blockquote data-quote="WizarDru" data-source="post: 1108838" data-attributes="member: 151">Shorecon 2003 ENWorld Con ReportAs promised, not even DNS provider failures could forestall a warp-up of the weekend that was Shorecon (although Soul Calibur II slowed it's arrival, a mite).Warning: I've included quite a few pics here, so the bandwidth-challenged should consider themselves warned.Anyhow, on to the report.As expected, we enjoyed ourselves immensely. Shorecon is the only gaming 'con we make, usually, and any con where I get to PLAY for a change is a good thing.This was the first time in a few years that Shorecon (which, in case you're curious, is NOWHERE NEAR THE SHORE....or at least it hasn't been since before I've been going to it) was held at the Clarion in Cherry Hill. Previously, it's been held at the Cherry Hill Hilton, which is a few miles closer to Philly and a considerably bigger venue. The Clarion struck me as a little of disappointment, but that was soon overcome.The issue is that the previous Shorecon that I attended was 2001, which was 9 days after 9/11, and 2000 prior to that, which was huge. A huge dealer room and lots of game space. I'm not sure what the attendance numbers were for this year, but it was down considerably due to a variety of factors, noticably the holiday weekend, college starting the following week and Dragoncon being on the same weekend. As such, the con was cozy, but I had hoped for a slightly bigger crowd.None of which had any impact on the amount of fun we had, or the enjoyment of the con in general, which was great. So what was there? Plenty.Valanthe, Scorch and I arrived on Friday afternoon. We got our badges in less than a minute each, and quickly attached our 'ENWorld Delegate' badges that Valanthe had made. These would elicit comments and nods throughout the con. ("ENworld? Dude, I go there ALL THE TIME. Awesome site.") It was too early for check-in to the hotel, so it was off to the dealer's room. The Dealer's RoomInitially, I was disappointed at it's size. I would find out the reasons for it later (and I'll mention below), but it was somewhat distressing, at first. In previous years, the dealer's room had been...well, huge. There had been room for Shorecon's own ROBOT WARS (although after the incident with the blowtorches, they were confined to a plexiglass arena).<img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f600.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":D" title="Big grin    :D"  data-smilie="8"data-shortname=":D" />I soon found that quality made up for quantity. Reaper was up from Texas, with their entire INVENTORY..IN NUMERICAL ORDER. Their staff was very knowledgeable, guiding folks to just the right mini...and they had a laptop playing the Horatio Hornblower movies from DVD throughout the con.<img src="http://www.wizardru.net/img/shorecon/Shorecon-minis3.jpg" alt="" class="fr-fic fr-dii fr-draggable " data-size="" style="" />Chessex was in attendance, with the Wall of Dice (tm). You can see another view of it in this <a href="http://http://enworld.cyberstreet.com/showthread.php?t=62370" target="_blank">thread right here</a>. Note the bowl of dice, wherein much scooping occurred.<img src="http://www.wizardru.net/img/shorecon/Shorecon-Dealer2.jpg" alt="" class="fr-fic fr-dii fr-draggable " data-size="" style="" />Several local dealers were about, including the fella who was selling Dwarven Forge at 40% off. I mean, what would you do, in my place?<img src="http://www.wizardru.net/img/shorecon/Shorecon-Dealer3.jpg" alt="" class="fr-fic fr-dii fr-draggable " data-size="" style="" />An interesting thing they were doing was the Dealer's room raffle....for every $10 you spent, you got a raffle ticket. Every dealer contributed some items to the 'pot', and on Sunday, they had a drawing from the raffle tickets. I don't know who won, but it wasn't me. <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" /> The nice thing about the local dealers was that I asked for Midnight on Friday, and they didn't have it, but one dealer told the other which publisher it was, and the next day it was magically mine (Thank you, Valanthe!)Throughout the weekend, the folks in the dealer's room were nothing but nice. Everyone knew their audience, and with one major glaring exception (the lack of a particular guest's products, which was inexplicable), I was more than happy with the contents therein. There was an excellent selection of games that I hadn't seen before. I had almost bought one particular game...but balked at the price. This turned out to be fortutious, as you'll see.After stocking up on some stuff, we checked into the hotel, and then headed off to our first scheduled event, a Crimson Skies game at 3PM.To be continued...(after lunch) <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /></blockquote>

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