Gen Con: Day 1

Thursday was the first "real" day of GenCom. I started off with my duties at home. I woke up at 5 am, drove home, took care of my dogs, and drove back. This was a repeat task for me every day at 5 am and 5 pm. It's just what I had to do to meet my responsibilities to my pets. The original plan was for my girlfriend to take care of this, but she hurt her back, and dealing with big, excited dogs was not in the program any more. She was very kind and did take care of them once for me, as you'll see in a bit.

After returning to downtown, I had a little time, so I managed a little extra sleep before waking up at 9 am so I would be sufficiently early to my 10 am True Dungeon run. I scheduled this first thing in the convention partly because I hoped choosing this time I would be more likely to get my pick, and partly because there wasn't anything competing for my time yet. It turns out the group I was in was 8 friends, some of whom were podcasters, including @Tresi, @bafadam, @Jennisodes, @linabaf, @WarrenLocke, and @TheGreatMrChibi. We spent some time going through our bags of tokens trying to optimize the distribution as best we could. Turns out that was something of a wasted effort. When our 10th player showed up, he immediately dropped a massive binder of tokens on the table and announced the he was equipping the party. It was nice to have good gear, that's for sure, but this particular individual was a little over the top and proud of his collection. It was pretty clear that we were somewhat beneath him since we were casual True Dungeon players. I think he was disappointed that no one really cared that he was there.

Finally, we rolled into the practice room and had just enough time for our cleric and mage to memorize their diagrams and prayer beads before we were ushered into the dungeon. This was a puzzle run, but there was a fair amount of combat too. I could take you through room-by-room, but I'm sure if you really want to know, the info is out there somewhere online. We did fairly well, solving more puzzles and defeating more monsters than we failed. Unfortunately the final puzzle was a solve or die puzzle. We had the solution, but somehow just didn't manage to locate the hidden item even though we were pretty sure what we were looking for. We entered the final room with the whole party alive, but didn't solve the puzzle in time. That was a bit of a let down, but that's how it goes. I think everyone had a great time anyway. I know I did. This event was absolutely worth the price of admission, and I will be doing this again.

I got out of True Dungeon at about noon, so it was lunch time. I knew Scotty's would start to get busy today, so I headed down there and picked up my collectible die. Lunch was less crowded than I thought it would be, but the wait staff had certainly been trained to cater to the GenCon crowd. My waitress asked me about the games I'd played so far, and while I doubt she really cared it was still nice to have that little extra bit of effort aimed at gamers.

Once lunch was done, I made a dash to the dealer hall to try to get a little exploration time in before my next game. The new dealer hall area is just about overwhelming. I realized after a few minutes in there that I was really glad my first trip in was with a purpose. I'd heard so many good things about Ptolus that I wanted to get a copy of the two book reprint being released by Malhavoc Press and DriveThruRPG.com. I'd seen comments on twitter that they were running out quickly, so I located the booth on the hall map and headed straight back to it. Good thing...there were only about 7 copies left. This is a monster of a product. 2 books that add up to about 2 inches thick, and additional electronic docs to follow (I believe it's 16 PDFs, including the map). It didn't come cheap, but what really great product of that volume does?

Setting up for Crucible of the Gods in the J. W. Marriott. From left to
right: @BrainClouds, @Hzurr, @saveversusdeath, and @DanielRoanoke

After wandering back to my hotel room to stash my new purchase and grab some character sheets, I went to one of the events I'd really been looking forward to. On Tuesday before the con, I'd gotten an invite from Sersa V (@saveversusdeath) to play his new fourthcore adventure, C1: Crucible of the Gods. I'm a fourthcore fan, so there was no way I was going to miss the opportunity to play the new adventure with the creator of the module and fourthcore as a whole as the DM. My girlfriend had said she could take care of the dogs so that I could play in this, and for that she has my sincere gratitude. At 3:30 I found myself in the lobby of the J. W. Marriott shaking Sersa V's hand and then looking for a free table to play at. This game was everything I expected and more. It was full of incredibly difficult challenges that we mostly barely scraped by. It was non-stop pressure and excitement. Sersa as a DM made the experience even better. His style was very animated, and each description of what the party was experiencing came complete with very evocative language and sound effects. Yes, we all died. Doesn't matter...everyone seemed to have a blast playing, and I know I did. I'll repeat this rule in my description of later days as well, but when you stop and look around a gaming table and everyone is smiling and laughing or totally absorbed, you know they are having fun and you're in a good game. We lost 3 characters on the way to the final room (including my poor cleric), and then in the final encounter defeated the rest. I think we did a really good job overall though, and made it really far for our first run at this adventure  (this is a replayable module). The last man standing was @Hzurr, and in the truest tradition of fourthcore, he made a last minute plea to the gods and basically won the day. His exploits in the final chamber earned him a place in the module from that point forward (see Crucible of the Gods Update and New Content). I'd like to think that this game is part of what changed Sersa's mind regarding D&D 4E and fourthcore. He'd announced prior to GenCon that he was no longer going to be adding any fourthcore products, just finishing what was already on the schedule, and was going to pursue writing his own game instead (Wrath). While I'm excited for Wrath, I really thought losing fourthcore D&D was tragic. Now, thanks to a post con change of heart we get both! As an afterthought, it occurred to me after the whole con was over that this game was my first full game of D&D 4E. I'd played Encounters, I'd played some play-by-post 4E, but this was my first full adventure. What an introduction! Baptism by fire if ever there was.

If you're trying to match up my day with my schedule, you'll find I skipped my 2 hour Tower of Gygax run to play in Crucible. I don't regret that at all. I would have enjoyed Tower, but I am sure I picked correctly. It's OK to skip things at GenCon if better opportunities arise. They have the generic ticket system in place for just this possibility, and I'm sure someone got my spot and was glad for it.

It was about 7:45 pm now, and I had a little bit of time before my 10:30 Tower of Gygax event. I stopped by the RAM to see about dinner, but they had a fairly long wait, and I like the food at Scotty's better. I took a walk down there expecting an hour wait, and ran into @Hzurr also waiting for a table. He invited me to join him, so I ended up only waiting about 10 minutes and had good company for dinner. To top it all off, he was in my 10:30 game as well, so it all worked out about as well as it could. I grabbed a growler of the Abbey Ale on the way out, just in case there was drinking allowed at the late night event. Turns out no one did, so the growler stayed in my bag for later consumption.

I'm a "Champion of the Tower"

My 10:30 game was again DMed by @saveversusdeath. It was a three night adaptation of the original Tomb of Horrors hosted by Tower of Gygax and run with slightly modified AD&D rules. We were each allowed to choose 3 pregens, and you weren't eliminated until all three were dead.  It was a fun and casual way to play a real challenging dungeon with none of the brutality taken out. Some at the table had never played any of the 1E style rule sets, so it was nice to be the one in familiar rules territory for once. One player had never heard of percentile dice :).  It was a great night that lasted until around 2:30 in the morning. There was only one player who was a little bit of a jerk (questioned the DM because "that doesn't happen in the original" and as a paladin summoned his warhorse inside just to be a tool). The party worked around him and @saveversusdeath maintained his cool as a DM. I was one of the few players left at the end of the adventure with my first character still standing, and I got a badge ribbon for that. By the time 2:30 rolled around, I was tired but on a high like only a great day at GenCon can give you. I headed back to my room to try to grab 2 hours of sleep if I could.

That, folks, is what a full day at GenCon looks like. Some scheduled events, some pick-up games, some time in the dealer hall and making a lot of friends. You'll notice a lot of twitter handles in this post. I can't think of one thing that I did better than making a lot of friends and acquaintances on twitter during the year running up to the convention. I arrived with a bunch of people I wanted to meet and that knew me well enough to feel good inviting me to games. I really got far, far more out of GenCon thanks to attempting to be part of the community and pay things forward with this blog.

Gen Con: Day 0

Wednesday was really the beginning of GenCon 2011 for me. I woke up early because I couldn't sleep (thanks to a somewhat rough Tuesday) loaded my van, and headed downtown. One of the great things about my job is that I get to use the Indiana State parking garages, so I pulled up within 20' of the door to the overpass (hereafter referred to as the gerbil tube) between the J. W. Marriott and the convention center. On a whim I walked over to the Westin and asked if they had a room, and they did. I was able to check in at 10 am and move all my stuff right away, which made the day a little more relaxing. The room key was a Neverwinter special, which I thought was pretty darn cool.

My roommate (David Flor, @BrainClouds) was scheduled to arrive at 11:20, so I had some time to explore the convention center and get some breakfast.  Seeing the banners and WotC's statues really increased the excitement level, as it was clear GenCon was finally here for me.

Trolls!

Love him or hate him, he was there

I dropped in to Scotty's for some brunch and to pick up my Wednesday die. I figured I wasn't going to get back there on Wednesday, so it was a good way to have a nice meal and check Daily Die Quest off my list. By that time it was time to head back to my car and drive to the airport. The airport featured more WotC advertising in the form of a huge 3D dragon display and Neverwinter ads on the monitors at the baggage claim. Yep, Wizards really spent some money to get their message out, and since the ads were cool I was really happy to see such a imposing presence. After picking up David, we headed back to the hotel and then out for some lunch at the food court. I also stopped by Will Call, since it was open at this point, and got my badge, tickets, and swag bag.

Scotty's Wednesday die

At this point there wasn't all that much to do in the remaining time for me, so I headed home for a bit to take care of the dogs and get some food. I had a significant amount of pizza left over from the previous night so that was a free meal I couldn't pass up. After that it was back down town and time for the fun to really start. Wednesday night is Critical-Hits Drinking Dungeons and Dragons (DD&D) night!

Airport GenCon Welcome from WotC

DD&D really set the tone for my GenCon experience. An amazing night all around. I met so many of my friends from twitter, I don't even feel like it would be right to attempt to name them all here. The night was like a who's who of the D&D world. In addition to many of the best bloggers and podcasters out there, a goodly number of the Wizards of the Coast employees responsible for the game and big name freelancers were there. Everyone was super nice, and it was great to just hang out and talk gaming. When the game itself got rolling, it was great to get to watch the masters in action (@Davethegame, @chattyDM, @Slyfourish and @SarahDarkMagic were the DMs). Without spoiling anything, the game consisted of 4 encounters/rounds. The first was relatively normal, and there didn't seem to be all that much drinking going on. The second round really took off when the roles of DM and player were effectively reversed and people really seem to enjoy this. By the time the third round rolled in, everyone was clearly having a great time. The final round was a sudden death round, but seemed to go well despite it being pretty late.

It was all I could do to roll back to the room and crash at that point. Technically the con hadn't even started yet, and I already had a great night. I hadn't even played a single game yet.

Pictures: The New Areas of the Convention Center and the J. W. Marriott

It's been a big few weeks for Indianapolis in the facilities arena.  Both the expansion to the convention center and the new J. W. Marriott hotel have been completed, and are open.  I stopped by and took some pictures of what I could.  Without further ado...

This is shot just inside the new, main conference center entrance.  There's a lot of glass and light in this area. It's nice and bright.

There's a nice little eating area right by the entrance.  It's the same places as the similar area by the overpass to the Marriott, but with much more seating room.

Here's the corridor that runs north-south.  It ends in an escalator that goes below the street and ends up in Lucas Oil Stadium.  This means possible easier access to surface parking.  I think there's also access to the Crowne Plaza hotel down this direction, but I haven't checked it out yet.


















Looking the other direction (east-west), we have this corridor.  It runs parallel to the main corridor in the old section of the convention center.  There's lots of new space on both sides of this.

Under the escalator you can see in the distance in the last picture is this nice, cozy little area.  Not sure what's going behind the bar, but hopefully something good.  Not a bad place for a quick game of something between events.

This is taken on the far west end of the hall, looking east towards the main entrance on the second floor.  the space is very light and well done (depending on your opinion of that industrial carpeting, lol).

This was a hard shot, but it's looking from the new area, back north to the old portion of the conference center.









Stats..you want stats?  Here you go.  New addition doubles the size of the conference center.  254,000 sq. ft. of new exhibit hall and 63,000 sq. ft. of new meeting rooms for a total of roughly 930,000 sq. ft. of space for Gen Con now :).

Here at the west end of the old center is the set of overpasses that takes you to the new J. W. Marriott and the assorted Marriott suite hotels.  This thing looks like a booze flask.  All it needs is a big silver water tank up top to complete the image.  Seriously though, it's very nice inside.




This is the main entrance to the new J. W. Marriott.  Very swanky for those staying here.  I think they even have a parking garage, so you can put that car you pulled up in someplace (parking has traditionally been an issue downtown).

The J.W. is designed with a very modern feel.  The lobby is well laid out, and currently bursting with helpful staff.  What you can't see in this picture is the very nice sports bar you will run into if you continue in the direction the camera is pointing.

Turning around from the last picture, there's this cozy area.  Lot's of areas to lounge in.  If we don't have gamers at least playing Zombie Dice back in here, we've all failed as con goers :).

The conference center area of the hotel has a lot of these little sitting areas.  Each is done differently, with a different style.  Again...we need to put these to good use I think.

Finally, from the conference center portion of the J.W., you have a great view of Victory Field.  If there are any games going on during Gen Con, you'll be able to see them from here, should you care to.  All you  can see now though, is the remnants of the ice storm we just got hit with.


I hope you all enjoyed this little photo tour of the new facilities.  I'm no "member of the press", so I didn't get inside any of the halls, or get to see the rooms (or even the biggest ballroom in the midwest, located at the J. W. Marriott).  Still, this should whet your appetite for some awesome gaming coming in August.

It's January, time to think about Gen Con again.

The winter feels longer than it really is; the weather is bad and it's not a lot of fun to be outside. I've neglected this blog for a while, because reporting no news does not make for a very exciting read.  Now, however, we've reached January and that's Gen Con badge pre-order and housing time.

Yes...I have a 4 day badge for Gen Con 2011 and I have a room at the Westin downtown.  I really wanted to book the new J. W. Marriott, but it was a little more expensive and I can use the extra $40 or so to have more fun.  Ideally I'll just be in my room when it's time to sleep and clean up.  Overall cost for Gen Con should be about $1100.  I think I can swing that.  It'll be even cheaper for me if I can find a roommate, but I'm picky there.

D&D Encounters is almost at the end of the season.  I've been playing fairly regularly, and with one week to go in this season, I think I've had enough of the format for now.  It's served its purpose of getting me used to 4E while having a good time, but now I'm ready for full games with more than one encounter per session and more roleplaying opportunities between combat encounters.  Last week though, encounters did something for me that I didn't really expect...it gave my anti-D&D roommate a chance to see what the game was all about.

I've tried to describe how D&D plays to her in the past, but she just didn't really get the picture.  She kept wanting to pigeon hole the game in a boardgame shaped hole.  Out of nowhere last week, she announced that she would like to come watch me play.  After picking my jaw up off the floor, I gave her the address of the game store, and met her there.  Remember, this is the girl who is opposed to D&D for religious reasons.  I'd actually turned her to being open to at least checking the game out.

Naturally, it was the lamest session of the whole season.  The poor DM tried to make it fun, but the players were me, a 10 year old, his 13 year old sister and their mother.  None of them really wanted to be there that night, and play just suffered.  We had a TPK, which I felt was actually a merciful end to a bad session.  I thought that would probably end it for my roommate.  Fortunately, she picked up on the fact that the particular session sucked.  She got to see how the game plays from a mechanics point of view, and left with a much better understanding of the game.  Turns out it was still a positive thing for her to watch.  I think she accepts it a lot more now that she understands the game a little better, and this will make selling me spending money on Gen Con a lot easier.

Anyway, that's the news.  Now that we are moving back into con season and people are thinking about Gen Con again, I'll be posting a lot more I hope.  I've got a couple of  local eatery reviews lined up, and hope that will be valuable for those attending.

Construction Updates

This will be a short post.  I've been meaning to get to it for a while, but it's amazing how these things slip through the cracks.

Construction continues on the convention center.

The Indianapolis Convention Center construction seems to be proceeding on schedule.  It's been very hot in Indy these past few months, and some construction projects were delayed a bit due to the heat.  It looks like they're fairly close to moving to completely indoor construction on the convention center though, so it's certainly on track for being complete for Gen Con next year.

The new J. W. Marriott hotel

The J. W. Marriott is moving along nicely as well.  I can't wait to see what this hotel is like when it's done.  They recently put the letters on the hotel, so it's no longer just a curved sheet of glass.  Peeking through the windows it looks like construction on the interior is moving at a good clip too.  I can't see much that could hold this hotel back from being completed on time.

This hotel will be a two gerbil tube hop from the convention center just like the Hyatt is, but on the opposite end.  There's a whole "Marriott Compound" sitting behind it, and it looks like they'll all be joined.

The west side of this hotel looks down on White River State Park.  This would be a great location to have w00tstock come during Gen Con.  As we get closer, it would be great if everyone hopped over to the w00tstock page, and followed the links to "demand" an Indianapolis w00tstock.  I think this link will get you there.  Sure, the orchestral video game music concert was nice this past year, but w00tstock during Gen Con would be epic.