"I looked pretty bad: wearing old Levis and white Chuck Taylor All-Star basketball sneakers… and my ten-peso Acapulco shirt had long since come apart at the shoulder seams from all that road-wind. My beard was about three days old, bordering on standard wino trim, and my eyes were totally hidden by Sandy Bull's Saigon-mirror shades. "But my voice had the tone of a man who knows he has a reservation. I was gambling on my attorney's foresight but I couldn't pass a chance to put the horn into a cop: and I was right. The reservation was in my attorney's name. The desk-clerk hit his bell to summon the bag-boy. 'This is all I have with me, right now,' I said, 'The rest is out there in that white Cadillac convertible.' I pointed to the car that we could all see parked just outside the front door. 'Can you have somebody drive it around to the room?' The desk-clerk was friendly. 'Don't worry about a thing, sir. Just enjoy your stay here – and if there's anything you need, just call the desk.' I nodded and smiled, half-watching the stunned reaction of the cop-crowd right next to me. They were stupid with shock. Here they were arguing with every piece of leverage they could command, for a room they'd already paid for – and suddenly their whole act gets side-swiped by some crusty drifter who looks like something out of an upper-Michigan hobo jungle. And he checks in with a handful of credit cards! Jesus! What's happening in this world?"
My scribbled notes, shattered checkbook, and dangerously-stacked shelves imply Nicole and I attended Gen Con 52 (August 1-4, 2019).
(If you want previous after-action reports, you can read about Gen Con 49 and Gen Con 50. They haven't aged particularly well, but such are the vagaries of life on this wretched internet of ours. What's that old Lynn White quote about the Dark Ages? "If it was dark, it was the darkness of the womb?")
I'll keep this one comparatively short.
Wednesday
The drive to and Indianapolis was accompanied by The Legend of Drizzt: The Collected Stories. (We have minimal exposure to the Forgotten Realms, so it was an amusing diversion. And totally worth it to hear Ice-T say, "Menzoberranzan," over and over again.) When we ran out of audiobook on the return journey, we transitioned to Queen, as one does.
Dispatches from liminal spaces.
We eventually traversed the wastelands and arrived in Indianapolis. We had to rush to pick up materials for a game I was running Friday morning, but I did get an unexpected Exhibitor badge and a bunch of swag from Atlas Games, so that was pretty sweet.
Seriously, folks: run for Special Ops. It's clear they're still working out some of logistics, but they take great care of you.
Ol' Johnny Two-Badges
We were originally going to go to the Gong Farmer's Almanac stapling party, but it wrapped early, so we went back to the room.
Thursday
Here's the most important part of the weekend: there was a cat who clearly lives around our hotel. She was incredibly sweet, and we took to visiting with her each day and calling her Gen.
Oh, to be a little Gen Con cat.
We headed to the Exhibition Hall, and I finally encountered No Rest for the Wicked in the flesh.
The baby comes home!
We also met Kalin Kadiev in person. A longtime Unknown Armies Fan Club member and an illustrator for Chaosium, it's been a long time coming. We continued around the Exhibition Hall and grabbed the standard array of stuff before we had to hustle to a No Small Crimes in Lankhmar game at 2 PM. It was fun! (Protip: if you're going to rob a house, make sure it's not a wizard's house. Things get dicey.)
We also had an opportunity to meet Mike and Shoe in real life (after playing in Ben L.'sDreamlands game with them for a number of weeks), and she ran Six-String for us (which she talks a bit about here). We sadly didn't get far into the playtest, but we await the finished product with baited breath.
I will freely admit: it wasn't my best work. The adventure has a lot of moving parts, and in the shuffle, I skipped one which would have enhanced the runtime. But as it was, they managed to reunite the Marias and save the day, so it all worked out.
There was food and more Exhibition Hall. At some point, we encountered cosplay of Sweet from MCDM'sThe Chain stream.
Who is this under my knife?
Then, we returned to the hotel to change before the ENnie Awards.
As you have no doubt heard, Chaosium swept the ENnie awards, although there were some notable others, with Mothership having an excellent showing. The winners are listed here.
Saturday
I was running Over the Edge at noon, so I dressed in my Al Amarjan best.
Thank you for your consent.
Under Broken Wings went more smoothly than Maria in Three Parts, I think. We had a rockstar woodwind player, his tiny fireplug of a bodyguard, a monster-hunting monsterfucker, and a thief who always lies. After becoming trapped in the Stately Arms, running into vein-creatures and rubbery hair monsters and a manic dentist named Dr. Benway, they managed to solve the strange occurrences and leave.
After that, we hustled to PST Productions'Once in a Lifetime LARP. (Amusingly, Once in a Lifetime was the very first PST game I played over a decade earlier.) If you want to see pictures of the event, they're over on Facebook.
Sunday
We headed to The Goodies and annual Goodman Games raffle. We also had the chance to meet with Max and Kate, both known to us from the Unknown Armies Fan Club. (And Kate's been playing in an online Unknown Armies game with us for a couple of months now.) Then it was back to the hotel room to prepare for the long journey home the following day.
I can still hear the voices of my ancestors calling to me, telling me to avoid giving out personal information on the internet. But we're all social media's stooges, so I suppose I might as well do this.
Since a couple people have asked: If you want to say hello at Gen Con, I'll no doubt be around — probably bouncing around the vicinity of the Lamentations booth (booth #3010) and shilling the few copies of No Rest for the Wicked likely to make it. Buy them and I'll devalue them with my signature upon request!
I'll no doubt be flitting around the Atlas Games (booth #1421) or Goodman Games (booth #117) booths, although that's likely to be more of a transient thing. If you're at the Gong Farmer's Local #282 meeting on Wednesday night, I should be there.
If you want more definitive information to dispatch assassins and end this wretched charade, I am likely to be found at the following places:
"My central memory of that time seems to hang on one or five or maybe forty nights – or very early mornings – when I left the Fillmore half-crazy and, instead of going home, aimed the big 650 Lightning across the Bay Bridge at 100 miles an hour wearing L. L. Bean shorts and a Butte sheepherder's jacket ... booming through the Treasure Island tunnel at the lights of Oakland and Berkeley and Richmond, not quite sure which turn-off to take when I got to the other end (always stalling at the toll-gate, too twisted to find neutral while I fumbled for change) ... but being absolutely certain that no matter which way I went I would come to a place where people were just as high and wild as I was: No doubt at all about that... "There was madness in any direction, at any hour. If not across the Bay, then up the Golden Gate or down 101 to Los Altos or La Honda. ... You could strike sparks anywhere. There was a fantastic universal sense that whatever we were doing was right, that we were winning... "And that, I think, was the handle – that sense of inevitable victory over the forces of Old and Evil. Not in any mean or military sense; we didn't need that. Our energy would simply prevail. There was no point in fighting – on our side or theirs. We had all the momentum; we were riding the crest of a high and beautiful wave..."
GenCon 50 (August 17-20, 2017) has come and gone. (And it only took me a month to publish this after-action report!) In most ways it was less frenetic than the previous version, and lacked the same nervous energy. There are still ways to optimize planning for future expeditions, but they are able to be tweaked without difficulty.
All pictures are by Nicole and I, except wherever obvious exceptions occur.
Bookends.
Wednesday, August 16, 2017
There is a set of stone gates that mark the end of the lands of my ancestors. That is the gauntlet to be traversed to reach Indianapolis.
If I take one more step, it'll be the farthest away from home I've ever been.
Of course, there is no threat greater than...
...the raw, existential horror of the Midwest.
The accompaniment on this year's drive was provided by The Secret History of Twin Peaks. I've heard dissatisfaction with the book, given that it doesn't do much to peel back the layers of mystery around Twin Peaks, and it ties in the entities of the Black Lodge with UFOlogy and John Keel's ultraterrestrials. However, I felt those were features rather than bugs (and not all that surprising, given the identity of the Archivist). Of course, getting into the new series would be a whole other blog post. Ahem.
Finally, we arrived.
Strangers on a train.
We were in the Crowne Plaza, in one of the rooms in an old train car, which is kind of neat, because you can pretend you're a hobo if you want. And they give you earplugs because it's directly under the train tracks. So there's that.
Also, we were in the Charlie Chaplin room. They name all of them after celebrities; I'm guessing the feature in this one is that HUAC kicks you out if you stay too long.
If you meet the Buddha in the road, kill the Buddha.
We had a couple of tickets to pick up from the will-call line, and since badges were sold out, that took no time at all.
The teeming throng of humanity strains against its bonds, searching only for one thing: commerce.
Before the Dealers' Room opens.
Thursday morning Nicole and I wandered around the convention and hit the dealers' room dressed as Hugh the Barbarian and the Flame Princess. A couple of pictures out in the wild can be found here, here, and here. Pictures inbound:
Also, in our wanderings, we came across a group of gnomes. Nicole had to take a picture, as we recently played through The Gnomes of Levnec, and she now plays a horde of gnomes in that campaign.
Protip: Gnomes are delicious.
The dealer's room was not nearly as frantic as last year; we picked up the new Goodman Games releases, the Lamentations of the Flame Princess shirts, and a Lost Pages zine I had somehow missed.
But first, a brief cosplay interlude:
Praise the Sun!
A friendly capitalist robot.
After retreating to the hotel to change into civilian clothes, we tried to get into Thunderhead Mesa, Greg Stolze's Unknown Armies game. We failed, but fortunately, somebody captured audio of one of the sessions. I haven't had a chance to listen to it yet, although I know there's a ton of background noise; the gaming rooms at GenCon are loud.
Unsurprisingly, they put on a kickass show. (Although I still should've opened up the pit.) I was greatly amused that they kept making Indianapolis references, though; I'm guessing nobody told them that most of us wouldn't be local. The obligatory pictures:
Audience selfie time!
They wanted people to tag their audience selfies with #DepecheMode, evidently starting the musicians' feud nobody knew they wanted until now. Like you do.
Then we went back to the hotel, because the next day was going to be a long one.
Friday, August 18, 2017
I swore we saw this graffiti on Saturday, but the timestamp says Friday.
Nicole had an event in the morning, so I wandered around a bit before realizing that the convention center is huge and I should probably head to the game we have at 1 PM to claim seats. We played in an Unknown Armies, second edition, game called Couples, Retreat! written and run by Cameron Hays for 37 Zombies. The game featured four couples going to a couples' retreat to strengthen their marriages. Unfortunately for them, the pop psychiatrist who runs the place had certain occult leanings, and the eight people he invited all had various foibles of their own, so the whole thing turned into a fiasco. It was a lot of fun, and featured a lot of neat background on psychology. He'd have to update it to 3rd edition, but he should really put it up on Statosphere.
Then we hustled to the Unknown Armies panel. (Audio is here.) There were few revelations, as most of the stuff was covered in last year's panel, although we did learn that the intensely popular Sleeper meeting minutes in Book 5 come from long-time Unknown Armies writer Chad Underkoffler. The other thing is that there are no specific plans to publish the long-buried first edition supplement Town Without Pity, but Greg said he'll try to contact Tim Toner again.
After dinner, it was time to head to the ENnie Awards.
Several of the Atlas Games crew accept the "Best Production Values" award.
Of particular note, Spellburn won the Silver ENnie for "Best Podcast" (particularly noteworthy as they were up against Ken and Robin Talk About Stuff — winning a silver against Ken Hite is basically like winning a gold any other time).
And as you might expect on this blog, we're most excited about Lamentations of the Flame Princess. Up against some heavy hitters, they did incredibly well — Patrick Stuart'sVeins of the Earth won Silver ENnie for "Best Monster/Adversary" (Chaosium took gold), and the Silver ENnie for "Best Writing" (Tales from the Loop took gold, as it did in each category in which it was nominated). Not too shabby. Jeff Rients'Broodmother Skyfortress received a Judges' Spotlight award from Reece Carter. Most notable, in a huge coup, Kiel Chenier took the Gold ENnie for Blood in the Chocolate (beating the unstoppable juggernaut of Chaosium).
Just repeat this photo four times. Left to right: Zak S., Patrick Stuart, James Raggi.
Trollsmyth hosted. Nicole quickly started talking with Jim's wife Maria and Trollsmyth's wife (Tam, I believe; it was noisy and there was a lot of whiskey) while I wasn't looking. Eventually, the Raggis left, there's more whiskey, I talked to some drunk people about D&D, Nicole started talking to Ela Darling, and then there's a noise complaint across four floors and we have to move the party downstairs to the bar.
Downstairs, Nicole and I continue to talk to Ela, and I'm pretty sure we're all just living in Plato's Cave while she's living in the realm of Solids. She does the camming thing, and is working to develop integrated VR and automation tools for it (because we live in the cyberpunk future). Once those are full functional, she'll probably take them to their logical conclusions in other applications outside of entertainment. (Assisting people with disabilities is probably the most obvious one.) Along those lines, you can hear her talking about Apple, artificial intelligence, augmented reality, and virtual reality on The Future Is Virtual here. Fascinating stuff.
Charlotte Stokely was also there, and she's pretty hilarious. I know I asked her about gaming, but the edges of our conversation are fuzzy, probably because of the Maker's Mark. Pictures in-bound:
Nicole, Zak, and I before moving downstairs
Myself and Ela Darling. I don't even know what's happening here.
There was a stone backdrop and shields for some reason.
Ela, Nicole, and Charlotte, prepared for battle.
Throwing up the horns.
Stokely, screaming while pressing a T-shirt on my face, for reasons that made sense at the time.
No pictures, but I also had the chance to meet all-around cool D&D dude Dan Domme. As we were leaving — we had an early event the next day — we also ran into Satine Phoenix of Maze Arcana fame (although she'll always be Mirror* to me). She talked about joining Geek & Sundry, and how generous everyone was even though she was the new kid on the block with a somewhat nontraditional entertainment background.
Technically, part of the party should go here, but it's not the next day until you sleep. The next morning, we did something touristy and went to the City Market Catacombs, an old storage space under Tomlinson Hall (at least before it burned in 1958). It was neat; the most important thing from the perspective of a gaming blog is looking at the old architecture.
Creepy chair circle.
The last standing portion of Tomlinson Hall.
"Voodoo Corner," so named because it flooded back in the day and was therefore bad market space.
Although I'm just going to assume it was cursed.
The Indiana State Soldiers' and Sailors' Monument
There was generic convention wandering, as we had no scheduled events until the What's New at Goodman Games seminar that evening and we weren't organized enough for a pickup game. They talked about Into the Borderlands (the In Search of the Unknown and Keep and the Borderlands compilation, published in cooperation with Wizards of the Coast), the DCC Annual (it's apparently coming), a new magazine for pulp fiction called The Magician's Skull, the next Judge's Guild collection, and Grimtooth's Trapsylvania (a DCC setting featuring the infamous Grimtooth from Flying Buffalo). The footage is below:
Next, we had to hustle to see d20 Burlesque at 9 PM. It was a solid show, but in retrospect, I should have budgeted more game time, as this would have been a perfect time to play Doug Kovacs'Inferno Road. There were a couple of brilliant routines — a deconstructed Black Widow who started mostly nude and then put clothes back on, and a Bugs Bunny routine (inspired by this bit, but also reminiscent of Frank Zappa's hand signals) requiring the audience to make the music a capella — but the standout was DC-area native Maki Roll, who not only put on a kickass routine, but did so having driven to Indianapolis that afternoon (seriously, she got there just in time to get onstage at intermission), and then having to drive back to DC the next morning.
We originally had a Driftwood Verses event at midnight, but Clint Krause was in a car accident on the way to GenCon (he's fine, fortunately), and so had to cancel. With that, it was time for bed.
Sunday, August 20, 2017
We skipped returning to the con and started driving home; a good thing, too, as apparently all the road construction in the Indiana/Ohio region starts at 4 PM, which explains the long, grueling drive home last year. The most notable thing from the return trip was this graffiti, a clear indicator that we were in America's heartland:
I bet they thought of that comeback themselves, too.
Apocrypha
Lessons for future years include hyper-focusing (seriously, trying to divide attention among OSR, Unknown Armies, and random seminars meant that very little gaming happened), and potentially leaving Monday.
Thus ends GenCon. Being less frenetic and vaguely overwhelming than last year's convention, it didn't feel as magical as the first time, although I guess there's a joke in there somewhere. But by the gods, we shall return to that broken jaw of our lost kingdoms as conquerors.
Kickin' rad.
And now, cosplay:
A priest of Adeptus Mechanus.
Stan "The Man" Lee
Why not Zoidberg?
Royal rainbow!
Vraska the Unseen. (Thanks to Jenx for identifying this one.)
Spock's wedding party might be my favorite costume.
Breath of the Wild cosplay!
Raoul Duke, living the American Dream
This is bat country!
One piece of bonus material. Since Hunter S. Thompson has been referenced a couple of times, and Harry Dean Stanton just passed away, have the 30th anniversary audiobook of Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, narrated by Stanton himself:
