Tell Me About GENCON...

[der_kluge]

... and the count down begins.

Who's getting their badge today?

Ooh yea, it did open up today, didn't it? I'll probably get mine Friday (payday).

Need to reserve a room, too.

 

[francisca]

... and the count down begins.

Who's getting their badge today?

Me.

Someone asked about the Westin up-thread. We paid $139/night last year for our room with 2 queen beds, and two keycards.

 

[Quickbeam]

Quickbeam, my lad, how are ya?

Thanks for the two cents and more...

~ OO

Things are well, and you are most welcome for my lengthy two cents .

How is life with you, if you don't mind the slight hijack?

 

[Hand of Evil]

Ooh yea, it did open up today, didn't it? I'll probably get mine Friday (payday).

Need to reserve a room, too.

12 Noon today PST - 3 PM EST

 

[Stone Angel]

My advice is go, if you want a hotel your best bet is one that is attatched to the convention center for quick and easy access.

A lot of games fill up quickly, like I registered a week after registration started last year and I could not find a Deadlands game for the life of me.

Try to play games you normally don't Gen-Con is a time for expanding ones horizons. Allow yourself plenty of time to actually enjoy youself. If you have a too full schedule it will feel like work.

There is always a lot of commradarie(sp?) at the con. Plenty of games to sign up on here and at the booth.

I hope that you do attend.


The Seraph of Earth and Stone

 

[IronWolf]

(1) If I (we) hold off a week or two before registering, will we be OK for most of the larger hotets (Westin, Hyatt, Hilton, Marriott) or do those get snapped up really quickly? I may not have a final decision made on attendance until around March 1st...how big a problem is that likely to be?

You will porbably be fine. The only potential issue is if you have your heart set on a certain hotel, but if any of the hotels near the center will work you should be able to find something. Last year we booked a room for Saturday night in July. No issues.

Who's getting their badge today?

I will be!!

 

[francisca]

I have stayed at the Best Western City Center the past two years. It's 2 blocks from the convention center on the opposite side from all the other hotels, but it's a bit cheaper and the parking is FREE. Did you hear that? FREE parking. that will save you about $60-80 right off the bat if you stay 4 nights. Plus, they have suites which make for nice downtime when you need to get away from all the gamers and just crash for a few hours. It's quiet too, unlike many of the other hotels I walked through.

In fact, I'm staying there again. I just booked my room online, before everything disappears. Easier to book it direct than dealing with the convention registration system, and there are no cancellation fees either if something changes (it's $50 to change or cancel the reservation through GenCon)

I followed your lead and just reserved my room there.

I'm already getting geeked.

 

[woodelf]

GENCON Vets,

Time to help a (potential) GENCON virgin out !

I am talking about hitting GENCON this year with a couple of other ENWorlders on what would be the first trip for most of us. With the 2/12 Pre-Reg date right around the corner...I have a couple of questions:

1) How quickly do games fill up? I am not in the RPGA, so those games are out...but if we wait until April or May to register, how screwed are we?

2) Hotels. Where have you stayed and which one(s) did you like/dislike? Also, how quick do the rooms fill up (again, if we wait to register until April/May...will we have residency problems)? Room costs are not a huge issue for me...I would rather pay more for convenience and comfort if that helps narrow rooming choices down.

3) Informal Gaming. One of the driving factors behind hitting GENCON for several of us is the potential to get together with other ENWorlders for food, fun and dice throwing. Besides the "Get Together" and the Ennies, have you done open gaming with other ENWorlders or pretty much stuck to the program?

Any other tips and/or words of wisdom?

Thanks in advance,

~ Old One

Out of order:
2: hotels fill fairly quickly. If i were you, i'd buy a badge right now, and get a hotel room right now.

1: Some games fill up really quickly. Others never do. If you're trying to get into the Latest Cool Thing, you want to register early--Living Dungeon fills up pretty quickly, last year the V:tR demos filled up almost instantly. If you *must* play a particular GM's session of some game, then you want to register early--most games only accommodate 6 people, after all, so it doesn't take very many people being interested in it to fill it up. If you really want to play some obscure game that you never get to play at home, you'll want to register early--last year, i believe there were two games of Everway, total, so only the first dozen interested parties got to play, frex. But if you merely want to play a good game of D&D, or something else equally common, you don't even need to pre-register.

Also, keep in mind that, if you really want to get into a game, but it's full, you still have a chance. Show up 10-15min early, with generic tickets in hand, and see if there's an opening. Some GMs can accommodate an extra player. And, IME, almost never does everyone who's registered for a game actually show up, so there are often openings. I've run games with 6 people pre-registered, and had only 2 of them actually show up. In fact, its rare enough in my experience, that it is noteworthy and sticks in my mind the only time that 6 out of 6 registered gamers showed up for a game. (I've frequently had exactly the right number of people show up--but because 2 people showed with generics, and 2 who were pre-reg'd never showed.)

As for picking games, here's my advice:
1: Play that game you've always wanted to play. Whether that means a particular system, or a type of scenario, or with a GM you've always wanted to play with.
2: If that doesn't fill your schedule, play games that you've never heard of. You can play D&D, or V:tM, or ShadowRun, or whatever, any time at home. Take advantage of the convention to play games that are more obscure, or that your friends refuse to play, or that are new--or all of the above.
3: Keep in mind that, while most games at GenCon will be good, there's no guarantee. You're playing with an unfamiliar group, and any one of them (including the GM) could be a dud, or even ruin the game for you. Which is a large part of why i focus on (2), and to a lesser extent (1), when picking games. There's not much point, IMHO, in playing a potentially-marginal session of D&D3E with strangers--i can play D&D3E at home, with a group that i know is fun. But if it's a game that i can't play at home, then there's a definite positive to offset the potential negative (which, in most cases, never materializes--but every now and then...).

Also, don't over-book. Try and estimate about how many games you'll actually want to play, and sign up for that many, no more, maybe a little less. Every time you sign up for a game and then don't show up, you're (1) preventing someone else who wants to play that game from getting in and (2) possibly ruining the game for everyone. [Last year, one of the sessions that we had to cancel had 6 people signed up for it. One of them showed. And he had come from Australia for GenCon, and had been specifically looking forward to trying out this new game system (i knew him from online). I know *I* wouldn't want to be part of the reason that somebody who came from another continent didn't get to play a game they'd been looking forward to. (And, yes, we did what we could with only one player, but it just wasn't set up to accommodate only one, and it wouldn't have been much fun for him, solo.)] All that said, it's not earth-shattering if you overbook. Everybody does it. Just be realistic--if you find out you're beat after your 5th game, and can't make the 6th, that's understandable. And you should be there to have fun, so have fun. Though, even swinging by the table and letting the GM know, so she knows that there's at least that one opening for someone with a generic ticket, is great. Just don't sign up for 15 games, figuring you'll actually go to 5, and figure out which ones when the time comes. That's just rude.

Oh, and finally, you don't need to pre-reg at all. I've never pre-reg'd for a game at GenCon in a dozen years of attending. I've never had a problem finding cool, fun games to play. I haven't always gotten into every game i wanted to, but i've gotten into plenty. And, besides, i find there're usually multiple games going on at any given time that i want to play. So simply eliminating the full ones makes my decision easier. So, another option is to plan to do most, or all, of your gaming on-the-fly, with generic tickets, figuring out what you're in the mood for when the time comes. The dowwnside, like i said, is you'll have fewer choices (though keep in mind that a "full" game might not be). The upside is that you can game whenever you want. Decide at teh last minute that you'd rather spend more time shopping, or take a leisurely dinner, or take a nap, or keep chatting with a new friend? No problem: finish your dinner, see what time it is, and see what games are about to start that you're interested in.

3: Never really done pick-up games, so no input.

 

[woodelf]

[about registering in April/May]

VERY screwed. Attendance last couple of years was about 30,000, and games fill up darned quickly. Now, this only applies to the pre-registered events there - if you like walk-up demo games in the exhibit hall, or you like seminars by notable industry insiders, or you like just kit-bashing a game with strangers in the spare rooms and halls, you'll have no trouble finding some action. But the pre-reg stuff fills up quickly.

I dispute that. Yes, some games fill quickly. But by no means all of them. Frex, we ran 31 4-hr games last year. As of May 31 (which i think was after pre-reg had closed), 10 of them were full, 6 had zero people pre-reg'd, and the remaining 15 had from 1 to 4 openings each. And every one of those games had been in the system since before the first day of pre-reg.

I don't know how that compares to RPG events in general, but back when i was gaming at GenCon (no time, these days), usually better than half of the events i wanted into were still open as of the start of GenCon.

 

[diaglo]

i missed last year.

but i went to Gen Con Indy the year before (the first year it was held there).

had a blast. almost. all of my events cancelled on me.

every single one. st00pid DMs bailed. didn't let any of us know. so i got up and went to all of those sessions only to be told i could get a refund after sitting there for a while.

plus i toted around a backpack full of lead minis and dice, so i could run an OD&D game for ENWurlders... it was like being hazed all over again in college... except back then i didn't pledge a frat.