tracker7 | Entries tagged with gencon

Wednesday afternoon, a strong thunderstorm popped up while I was assisting a client down in Shively. It dumped a lot of water and the lightning scared the client, and all of that combined to delay my departure by about an hour. The storm knocked the heat off quite a bit, enough so that I was able to leave the car's AC off for the drive to Indy.

Thursday morning, things too off in a hurry. We're letting the Mistborn license expire, so we marked down everything we had at the booth. The last few copies of the board game went in a hurry, and the RPG products sold off quickly enough that we had to adjust the bundle pricing for those often. We had a small shipment of a new board game, Sardegna, on hand, and it sold well. Thursday's total sales came to about half of the booth's cost, and that put us all in a good vibe. Dinner at Union 50, then back to the hotel.

I slept in Friday - normally, I work morning shifts at the show, but traded with another staffer who needed the favor. Did some shopping - The Borellus Connection for The Fall of Delta Green and the core and a supplement for Outgunned. Did my afternoon shift, sold product, closed the booth.

Saturday was my day off. Tried getting into a Night's Black Agents game with some generic tickets, but no luck. Checked the event schedule and found an Unisystem-powered Dark Tower game, and was able to join that one. The GM was really good, and it was a darn good game. Got lunch at a chicken and waffles truck, then went back to the hotel for a nap. Got a FB message from a buddy asking if I would mind picking up some miniatures for him - sure, I replied. And then he sent me the list and the money - yay PayPal - and it was a doozy. About $400 for some Kingdom Death stuff - about ten models. That would pay for a LOT of BattleMechs. Then it was time for my second game of the day - Numenera. Great GM, great group of players, and we all got starter boxes for the game. I had an invitation to the Hunters Entertainment party that evening, but was tired and waved off.

This morning, breakfast with Alex before opening up the booth for the last day of my seventeenth GenCon. Brisk sales again. Less than ten copies of Sardegna left when my shift ended. Said my goodbyes, bought a softcover DCC rulebook for a co-worker, packed up the car, and headed south. Delivered the Kingdom Death stuff. Went home, unpacked, started laundry and added the new purchases to the stack of stuff to read.

Breakfast most mornings was at a caterer's tent - scrambled eggs, hash browns, sausage links, little donuts, and apple butter for $10. Heck of a deal, and quite filling and tasty. Dinner at Union 50 was good. Got some pizza from Hot Box, of course.

GenCon is increasingly looking less and less like me, and I am here for this diversity. Both of my GMs this year were women. Our Buru tables drew lots of attention, as did the Tabriz prototype - Indonesian and Persian art drew people in. Lots and lots of Gaymer and flag ribbons. Such a good thing to see.

Free League announced a second edition of the Alien RPG; unrelated, they won the Ennie for Fan Favorite Publisher. God's Teeth (Delta Green) got Best Long-Form Adventure. Catalyst is leaning into the joke with a lance box of UrbanMechs - and another box of UrbanMech LAMs. This is delightfully bonkers.

I'm GenCon tired. It's a good kind of tired. I kinda want to take a nice hot bath before bed, let my feet work out the soreness. I think this is my last con of the calendar year. I may fly out west next spring for Crafty's 20th anniversary con, and there are small shows on the calendar in 2025, but this should be it for 2024. It sure was good to be back.

I submitted my wish list as soon as the counter hit zero and was about 8800th in line. After a half-hour of grinding, my list got processed and I got one of the three events I wanted - Old Gods of Appalachia. Went poking around a few hours later and found a Numenera game that looks interesting. So, it's going to be a Very Crafty and Monte Cook GenCon for me.

Not a great day at the job. New client got very aggressive during the visit, and I just walked away. She's very schizoaffective, with minimal life skills - her home is filthy, it stinks of food and human waste ... and so does she. There's something going on with her lease, she was locked out of her apartment, and I'm supposed to just wave my hands and fix this. Next visit was to a similar environment, so starting off the tour in foulness. Ick. Did get to see a couple of good clients later on. Sprayed my shoes with alcohol before going into my apartment, took a quick shower to get the sheen of filth off, filed my notes, called it a day.

In 84 days, I can start applying for internal transfer, and if I haven't already jumped ship, I'm going to be watching the postings intensely. Again - I feel like I'm in the right agency, but I am in the wrong job.

Something else I liked about Civil War - seeing a big ol' Ford Excursion doing what it was built for. Carrying a number of people and their gear on a lengthy trip through sometimes rough country.

Catching up with Donna was good. Don't know when we'll get to see each other again - the rest of May is busy for me, and June and July are going to be busy for us both. She's working towards a move to New Orleans in about a year and a half, and has extracted promises from me that I'll come see her when she's settled in down there.

GenCon badges got sorted out, and I have a three-event wish list ready for tomorrow's registration. Listen closely, friends, around noon Eastern, and you just might hear the servers groan. I've GMed all of the games on my list - Trail of Cthulhu, Shadow of the Beanstalk, and Old Gods of Appalachia - and I'm looking forward to being on the other side of the screen.

Welp, the last few days have been exciting.

About an hour after I posted the previous entry, I saw on the company Discord that someone had dropped out of the GenCon team. I filed it away for an hour or so before deciding to get in there and make this about me. And so my planned day trip to GenCon became a three-day working vacation.

Drove up to Indy Thursday night, taking over five hours thanks to construction up and down I-65. Got to the Hilton, chatted and got updates from the team, called it a night.

Wasn't scheduled to work Friday, so I decided I'd get in some time in the Exhibitor Hall and open play area. Headed to the R. Talsorian booth first off to get Danger Girl Dossier. Good fortune smiled on me, and I got to chat with Mike Pondsmith and Steve Jackson for a few moments. Went to Free League and Modiphius, striking out at both places, then drifted over towards the Goodman space. All around good dude Dieter Z was working a booth next to Goodman that was moving someone's overstock, so I got a copy of Night's Black Agents: Solo Ops for $10 - and would get The Dracula Dossier Director's Handbook for $10 on Saturday, leading me to swing by Pelgrane and just finally get the core book Sunday morning. I'm not made of stone, okay, and Mr. Laws and Mr. Hite were there and graciously signed the book and took a few moments to chat with a fan.

Saturday - taught one of our upcoming games, Buru. Very pretty, quite fun. Saw some of the Louisville folks. Played BattleTech. Had some tasty barbecue - brisket served over smoked gouda mac and cheese. Retired to the hotel for a nap. Dinner at Giordano's and boy-howdy do they serve up a killer deep dish. Turned down an invitation to a product release party.

Sunday, pickup game of a Shadowrun card game. Met a Discord acquaintance face-to-face. More Buru teaching. Closed down the Exhibitor Hall for the first time since 2019. Delicious tacos for dinner.

Drove home this morning.

A few big stories from the con:
The Disney TCG was in great demand, and GenCon screwed things up pretty badly Thursday morning after the publisher had set things up nicely. An orderly line - one that started forming at 6PM Wednesday - became an ugly mob around 7 Thursday morning.
A couple of dudes got into the hall staging area and stole about $300,000 in collectible cards.
Free League won SEVEN Ennies across their various lines.

It was good to be there again, and it is sure good to be home. Gotta finish laundry, and finish winding down. Gods help me, I have missed working that show.

GenCon says it pulled 50K individual attendees this year, down from the 63K or so from a few years ago. It did feel smaller, and I think the 50K count may be stretching things.

But, whatever.

I finished the first season of Star Trek: Strange New Worlds yesterday. Holy cow, that's good Trek. Every episode had a different vibe going on, and every one managed to feel like Star Trek. I found myself liking these characters more than I had expected to; their adventures and stories just worked for me.

The Paramount+ PS4 app is just a smoldering mess, though.

Got back from GenCon a little while ago. A Sunday-only trip, very much worth the drive.

I left home around 5:00 yesterday morning, got to Indy around 6:45. Breakfast with Pat, then over to the ICC to get my proof-of-vaccination wristband and badge. The latter was redundant - two members of the team had to cancel out just a couple days before the show, so the company slid me one of their exhibitor badges.

I didn't have any plans to speak of, barring visiting a handful of booths and the Goodman Games wizard van. I spent the open hours of the con in the exhibitor hall and open play area, made my way over to Lucas Oil Stadium to see the van. Played a short session of Adventures in Rokugan - it's fine, I guess, but my love of L5R isn't enough to overcome my indifference to D&D5. Got in a few demo turns of the Cyberpunk Red skirmish minis game. Bought some CP Red minis, and was thinking really hard about picking up a couple of Goodman's OAR products - half priced! - but talked myself out of it. And that was good, because when I walked by the Free League booth, they were putting "Sunday Special" tags on most of their product, and I bought a couple of Alien RPG products for less-than-even-Amazon prices.

And several people asked about my Old Gods of Appalachia t-shirt over the course of the day!

Helped break down the booth, then it was off to ... somewhere for Pat's birthday party. Pretty good time, good company, and that was a heck of a prime rib sandwich. Slept well for a few hours, and decided I'd just head on home. Drove a staffer out to the airport, then rocketed back down I-65. A good day.

Now, doing some laundry, going to read some, and then maybe a long afternoon/evening of sleep.

Primary elections today. Most races are already won or lost, so I did what I tend to in primaries - voted for the most progressive candidate. This was a first for me, to the best of my memory. Every candidate I voted for is Black.

I don't feel good about this coming November. My district is solidly blue, but it's a tiny island surrounded by a deep red sea. If the Repugs don't win fairly (and I think they will), then they're going to cheat and then the very best thing we can hope for is a couple of years of nothing getting done. I don't want to dwell on the worse outcomes.

Denis Detwiler wrote this week that there's going to come a day in the US when the shootings start, and just don't stop this time. I think he's right. We're in real trouble, and I don't know that it's going to get turned around. Around, hell, I don't know if it can be turned away.

After no real debate, I bought a Sunday badge for GenCon. If I go, I'll have a good day trip, and if I don't go, I'm out $16 and I should be able to handle that.

We're going to be under a freeze warning tonight. Not cold enough to threaten water lines or anything, but cold. Kinda cold, at least.

I'm starting to feel a little bit of cabin fever. I spent so much of October on the road in one fashion or another, and now I don't see much of that happening. I'm ready to get back to work in some fashion.

Crafty's started our GenCon planning. Looking at a smaller team, maybe a dozen people. Figuring out how to staff a booth while minimizing risks of infection. I have no idea how the convention will look; to be honest, I'm there to see and make friends, maybe play something new and/or cool. Everything else is just gravy.

Outside of some group management stuff, I've been off of Facebook for about a week. Feels alright.

I should be on my way home from Indianapolis right now. Tired and refreshed at the same time, happy to have spent a long weekend working and playing with some of my favorite people. But, it's 2021, and this damned virus has just buggered everything.

Good vehicle news - looks like the sunroof drain is unclogged. Bad news - the electrical gremlin reared its irritating head again.

Mom's back at Ephraim McDowell. Heart problems again, and they're compounding her other conditions, and it's just managing all of this as best we can and best she will, and ... well, I'm starting to accept that I may lose her relatively soon.

I'm just tired all the time. Constant low-level tension punctuated by moments of hilarity and frustration and higher tension and everything else. I'm going a little nuts now and then, feels like.

Made myself lie in, if not sleep in, this morning. Stayed in bed until around 9AM, and I'm feeling pretty good this afternoon. Made a quick grocery trip, threw together the NPCs for a Fantasycraft game, ran said game, and have most of the week's laundry done. I almost feel like I've accomplished things today.

I think I'm skipping GenCon, barring some utterly stellar reason to go. I think our company presence is just going to be a placeholder to keep the con from booting us out of the guaranteed exhibitor space list, and the announced details for the con are not especially reassuring. The timing isn't great, either - I was planning to go back to Archon this year, and there's only a couple of weeks between those events.

After a couple of online cons and the growing number of Deadlands and Mutant Crawl Classics sessions, I was getting more and more certain that my personal GM woes were external rather than internal, and today's little session proved it for me. Kept the game going, entertained myself, players had fun. Yay me!

It's the first day of calendar spring. This wasn't the worst winter I've seen, but it sure had its moments. The final days of the season saw wind and a last cold rain, but that's more springtime weather, and well, springtime in the Ohio Valley tends towards the exciting.

Finally got around to replacing my old desk chair today. I still have to overcome a powerful aversion to spending money on things like that while there's still some perceived value to the existing item - some kind of World War 2-like "use it up, wear it out" way of thinking. The new chair is very comfortable, by the way.

Some backlash over GenCon's 2021 date has started bubbling up. It's during the school year, it's on the weekend of Yom Kippur, it's too close to Origins' own rescheduled date, all that.

Some more rain today, but we're not going to see any flooding out of this. There's some dangerous weather in the making down around central Mississippi and Alabama, though.

GenCon LLC announced that there will be an in-person con this year, moved to mid-September, and we're at this very moment having a discussion about going. I'm torn - want to see my friends, but I also want to see them for several years to come.

I was not expecting the level of melancholy this weekend brought. I was able to see a number of seminars and panels and the Ennies, and that was alright. But. No anticipation as the clock ticks towards 10AM Thursday, no crossing paths with friends and industry people, none of the experiences that are part of the place.

I didn't get into any gaming sessions as part of the online con, handling the weekly DG session instead. One of the folks I've met through Armada asked about joining the game, and I'm excited about that, and some older gaming friends are interested in dropping in as their schedules allow. Good enough for me.

So, the big announcements, at least from my point of view. Armada's upcoming Clone Wars-era expansions look incredible, my proclaimed lack of interest in that era aside. I think they're going to bring new players to the game and keep it going for a while longer. X-Wing's getting plenty of new material, continuing gradual move to allowing new players to dive in with a preferred faction - this time with the Resistance. There will be more new miniatures coming, but the sustained future of the game will be card packs, and I am so very good with this. Arc Dream took a gold Ennie for The Labyrinth, and I'm going to order that one from the LGS this week. The GenCon organization declared the online convention a success, and there will be a GenCon Online 2021, no matter what happens with the Indianapolis show.

Crafty's Kickstarter for the new board game went off well, and it's into stretch goals now. Virtual tables were full all weekend long. Good for the company and my friends.

One of GenCon's biggest draws, for me, is the chance to play games, mostly RPGs, that I wouldn't otherwise get to. The Laundry Files, Blue Planet, Mothership, indie stuff at Games on Demand. Stuff that I'd have to organize and recruit for if I wanted to play at home.

GenCon is online this year, and I'm finding myself looking through the event catalog. Already found a couple of events that fit into my free time, and since I've gotten comfortable enough with Roll20, I'm thinking about scrubbing this week's DG session and getting in some sessions as a player.

Things finally sorted out so that I could take the Canyon back to Dad. It's a great little truck, no doubt, but for reasons that make perfect sense to me, I'm glad to have my Mariner back.

The drive to and from Liberty was rather nice. I took the old 64-151-127 route instead of 31/150-127 this time - both legs - and it just seemed to go faster coming and going. This was the first time I'd opted to listen to podcasts instead of NPR or music on the drive, and that probably helped, too. Spent a good few hours with Mom&Dad and the dog, and those are precious times.

Met up with Aaron H for our X-Wing match on Friday afternoon. The First Order squadron that I had good luck with Josh S failed badly on this outing. I scored half points on two ships, but otherwise, I brought shame upon my ancestors. Oh well. On to the next squadrons.

The ongoing civil unrest here got a little hotter yesterday. The bluntly named Not Fucking Around Coalition showed up in force - 350-400 armed black folks, and of course the threepers ("security force," my ass) had to be there, too. NFAC outnumbered the threepers about 7-1, and unsurprisingly the cosplaytriots aborted out, as they tend to in the face of any real resistance. Having said that, I'm not going to wholeheartedly lionize the NFAC. While they were assembling at Baxter Park, one of their guys dropped his gun and it went off, injuring a couple of his fellow travelers. On top of that, the organization's leader has espoused some pretty heinous anti-Semitic stuff, and may be a Hebrew Israelite, and there's not much good to say about them.

I really wish that I was getting ready to head to Indy in a few days.

I mowed the front yard this morning, and in a sane world, that would be the whole of my labors today.

I'm watching the Indy Grand Prix, and the cars now have windshields. I am not used to seeing this, and according to the commentary, it helps the aerodynamics, it makes the cockpit really hot - like, 130F on the drivers. If this is an experiment for this season, I'm looking forward to the driver evaluations at the end of the year.

There was a long aerial shot of downtown Indy just now, and while cancelling GenCon this year was the right decision, I am going to miss seeing my convention family. Next year, next year.

I've joked about the perspective I have from being a long-haul trucker's kid - long(ish) distances really aren't anything to me, that "unless I cross two state lines and a time zone, I've just gone out for a gallon of milk." I think it's time I started applying that brag to seeing friends. Two hours or less from me? Let's get together for dinner and a game, once it's safe to do so.

GenCon cancelled. They're taking a cue from Origins and organizing an online con. I don't know of we'll participate in any meaningful fashion, and to be honest, I'd rather we didn't.

I am not on my way to, from, or near Paris, Texas. Dad drove up here last night, I took him to the truck stop at Brooks to meet up with the other driver, and he's driving a rental back here tomorrow. Much simpler than, well, everything else.

The Louisville Game Shop and Heroes are reopening soon, maybe a little too soon, but they're following good practices. TLGS won't reopen its play area for a while yet, and Heroes is limiting the number of people in their area to one-third normal capacity and two-hour playing blocks. Heroes is also running a Memorial Day/Reopening sale this weekend. I don't know if that's the best idea, but if people are smart, and Steve will probably enforce being smart, things should be safe enough. I'm torn between wanting to support the store and not really needing anything.

Gods, though, I do really want to get in some X-Wing and Armada time.

Second Delta Green session is tonight. I have a decent handle on what's going on, and since the three players from last week are the only ones able to come back tonight, I won't have to burn any time or energy on getting anyone up to speed. I'm mapping this one out for about twenty sessions, a TV season's worth. There's going to be a Yig cult in there somewhere - one of the items found in the investigation was a set of interview recordings with a Yig cultist in the early 1970s, and since the initial operation went down in eastern Kentucky, darn right I'm going to do something with a snake god and good ol' crazy snake-handling churches in the hollers.

We pulled out of GenCon yesterday. I don't think the convention is going to happen, and even if it does, the company owners aren't coming in from the West Coast and my co-director isn't likely to make the trip from the UK. I could handle the staff scheduling and other management, but any of the company contracting and related work is way outside of my interest and comfort zone. So, no Best Four Days in Gaming this year. We'll deal with the fallout in 2021. I don't like it, but it's the right decision.

I finished watching Discovery, and came away pretty happy with it. The end of the second season planted plenty of seeds for more stories, and in a season or two, I'll resubscribe and catch up again. I'm a couple of episodes into Picard as of this morning. It's good so far, and I like seeing Picard's moral core again.

Related, there is a lot of Modiphius' Star Trek Adventures line on the Bundle of Holding right now, and since I have even more time than usual for reading, I'm probably picking those up soon.

Since I couldn't get a physical copy before the closures, I bought the iOS version of Terraforming Mars. It's been a real delight. I'm an easy mark for things Martian, and it's a darn good game.

Also on the electronic gaming front, I had a little lucky streak. I've been looking at subscribing to Sonys PS+ service, and was about to pull the trigger a few nights ago. Decided to consult Reddit about the service, and saw a post about a 25% discount for a PS Now sub - a boatload of streaming and downloadable games from three generations of PlayStations. So, I decided to go that route and made a note to pick up a PS card the next time I was at Speedway. Did so, and got a notification for a bonus $10 in PS credit. Not bad!

This was one of the best GenCon weekends I've ever had. Maybe the best.

I got on the road right at 4PM Wednesday. Traffic on I-65 was heavy going north, and not as fast as it might have been, since there was a lot of construction through Indiana. Lane shifts and lengthy stretches without a breakdown lane and all that. I kept watching my fuel gauge and listening to my stomach, planning to fill both fuel tanks once I got clear of crowded construction zones. By the time I did get clear, I was a few miles from Indy, so, fuck it, I just powered through and went to the hotel. Met up with Alex and Pat and Eunice, got mostly settled in, found something to eat (Five Guys - hadn't been to one in a long time), had the team meeting. A lot of new faces - the most women we've had on the team ever!

Thursday morning, breakfast at First Watch across from the hotel. Everybody and their brother knows about Patachou now, so it gets hammered. Honestly, First Watch is just as good, by my measure, and its menu has more that appeals to me. Got over to the ICC, dropped a couple of things off at the booth, and headed over to R. Talsorian's booth for the Cyberpunk Red starter box. Got to meet Mike Pondsmith, who was very gracious to this fanboy. Back to our space. Played a lot of the upcoming Mistborn board game expansion and watched the crowd. Dinner at Punch Bowl Social, which was okay enough, and during which I learned that my recent weight loss and drastic decrease in alcohol consumption have combined to make me a very easy drunk.

Friday, more Mistborn at the booth. After my shift, got to see Steve, Leighton, and Josh and catch up with their goings-on. Then over to Lucas Oil Stadium for the X-Wing campaign by the Shuttle Tydirium podcast. They had a weekend-long narrative set up, and I was able to get into two of the three nights. I flew poorly and set up things even worse, and got hammered. Won some great prizes, though!

Saturday, repeat. Much better performance at X-Wing, though. Prevented my opponent from accomplishing one of three objectives, and wiped his (numerically and pointwise) superior force from the table. Scored enough points to boost myself into the middle of the pack overall, and second of 11 Rebel players. The Empire won the campaign, though. More great prizes, more good times, and if I go back in 2020, darn right I'm signing up for the campaign again.

Shorter day Sunday. Did my three hours in the booth, then went to the hotel slept. Dinner at Giordano's - darn good deep-dish pizza. Loaded the Mariner, said my farewells, and lit out for home. Made great time on the return trip - less than two hours from getting onto I-65 in Indy and crossing the river, including a stop for gas at Exit 76. Got home, unloaded, slept.

Back to work this afternoon. Not especially looking forward to it, but I'll power through. Later this week, some work on the Mariner - brakes and an oil change - and maybe a trip down to Liberty to see Mom.

I'm not feeling well, dear reader. A headache started coming on about 90 minutes ago, and my stomach feels leaden. The latter I can understand, having eaten too much when I got home from the tower. The headache, though, is something else.

Barring catastrophe, I'll be in Indy in 72 hours, making final preparations for GenCon. We're showing off a couple of new games and continuing to milk the Mistborn license, and on a personal level, I'm very much looking forward to seeing some people I don't get nearly enough face-to-face time with. Got a couple of things on a shopping list - Cyberpunk starter kit, maybe the new Armada campaign box. The time of GenCon being a big new release event has passed, and I think that's a good thing.

I had this idea to get out to Meijer and pick up a couple of little things for the trip and some of the cash I'm taking, but unless this headache goes away, I'm staying on this couch and trying to avoid too much noise. I'm willing to bet that this screen isn't helping things, either, so that's a good sign to wrap this up and close the Macbook until another time.

Roadside Picnic

Bright Ideas, Dark Futures

Northern White Clouds

Broken Man

Down to Memphis

This Life

Car Wheels on a Gravel Road

Live and Direct

The Way You Used to Do

You Made me the Thief of Your Heart

Charcoal Suit and All

Cavern of Golden Tears

Staying Behind

Meltdown

The Reflex

It Ain't What You Do

Candy-O

Once Bitten Twice Shy

I Started Something I Couldn't Finish

The end is the Beginning

To be a Lover

Drop an Atom Bomb on Me

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June 2025

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