# OK GenCOn ENWorlders, document your experiences here...



## Treebore (Aug 18, 2008)

GenCon is over and your returning home. Before the memories fade share your stories, who you met, games you played, stuff you bought, etc... Include links to any pics too...


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## FunkBGR (Aug 18, 2008)

This was my first GenCon, and I rocked it hard core. 

I showed up with a group of buddies, and we had no idea what to do. Here's some of what I remember in no particular order:

Met a bunch of ENWorld/CM people
 - Went to the Ennies
 - Worked the Ennies booth

Was almost trampled in the "Running of the Bulls"-style opening of the Exhibit Room on Friday

Watched a 12-player Twilight Imperium game that 3 of my friends were in
 - Saw my first game of Twilight completed in 5 hours?!?

Went to the World of Our Own signing
 - Told Paul S Kemp at the Paizo booth that I didn't know who he was 
 - Told James Lowder at the Paizo booth that I did know who he was 
 - Was told Greg Stolze was not at the Paizo booth when I showed 

Played the memorial game to Gygax
 - Watched the guy Feedback run a game of this
 - Pointed out Keith Baker to my friends
 - Pointed out Mike Mearls to my friends, who then ran our game

Played the Dungeon Delve in WotC's place
 - 'Beat' a delve "just to beat it"
 - Met Dave, the best Delve DM ever
   - Waited specifically to get Dave as the DM-guy
 - Ended up with 61 tokens 
 - Doesn't play LFR, so had no use for aforementioned tokens

Enjoyed the screenings
 - Second Skin!
   - Randomly met the director, and their group

Got lost in GenCon
 - I had no idea where anything was!

Got lost in Indianapolis
 - They have White Castles everywhere!

Bought:
Black Goat of the Woods - Arkham Horror Expansion
3 discs of Fat Dragon stuff
Dogs in the Vineyard (Finally!)
Shab-Al-Hiri Roach thing
Grimm, after seeing it on the Ennies thing so much
The Esoterrorists, and all things for it
Worlds of Their Own, and the other Gygax book Paizo put out
Pirates Guide to Freeport + Map (now squished!)
Red November
Tomb of Ice - Descent Expansion


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## Hecatol (Aug 18, 2008)

My wife and I had a very nice con experience overall - this was the 11th one we've been to in a row, and I'd rank it highly.

Highlights:
- Happy, happy gamers everywhere. Most of them relatively funk-less
- Nothing revolutionary product-wise, but I love DM tools - magnetic chips, weirdo dice, minis, measuring tools etc - and found a few new (to me) ones this year
- Expeditious Retreat Press' 2nd Edition of A Magical Medieval Society in HARDCOVER. Joe, I would have paid double if I had to!
- Some gorgeous books - will have to fill in titles when my brain is awake
- Playing in the D&D Open and actually finding kind of fun and going onto the semis (I'd sworn I'd never enter again after a few less fun experiences)
- Playing D&D with my wife for the first time ever - she's patiently attended 11 GenCon's with me, finds gamers generally very nice people, but have never picked up a pair of dice before. And she enjoyed playing!
- Comfy low-80s temperatures! Being from Seattle, 90s don't do it for me

Lowlights
- Showing up for the D&D Open semi-final to find 3/5 of my team missing, thus ending up with an unexpected 4 hour break on our hands 
- (Different game) Another player getting up and leaving in the middle of rather difficult fight. About 15 minutes later he returned with a giant Taco Bell bag and proceeded to devour the contents down to licking the papers. I thought he might end up licking the battlemat too as he had spilled plenty of stuff. The guy then fell asleep 3 times during the remainder of the game.
- Since no-one in our social circle are gamers it was just the two of us. Wonderful to spend time with my wife, but I think she would've liked it even more if we got to socialize a bit more

Other
Kept seeing Scott Rouse around the Westin, and he looked more and more like he was operating on pure willpower as the days wore on. Hopefully he gets to sleep in for a few weeks!


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## TroyXavier (Aug 18, 2008)

I had a pretty good time.

Let's see, highlights included co-running two events for Filsinger Games.  Running into my old gaming group and us talking about getting together again and playing which would be great.  I saw a lot of good costumes this year and only a few tired old ones.  I ran into several other people I knew and was glad to see.  Oh and I also made a new friend which is always good.

Downsides were the utterly ridiculous crowding especially on Thursday and Saturday, my two favorite places to visit being on opposite sides of the room making trips between the two of them a journey, and too much good stuff with only certain amounts of spendable funds.

What I got...well not a huge amount but it was all stuff I wanted
War and XPs along with the free magnet, Robotech and Rifter #43 from Palladium Books, Red Dwarf RPG for the fun of it, Midnight Syndicate's The Dead Matter Cemetary Gates CD, a Modern GM screen and the Song of Fire and Ice test rules from Green Ronin (if only they had had the book I really wanted, but I'll just have to wait), as well as various swag including a free Blue Dragon T-Shirt and my new Poke-em Stick (the yellow sword they were giving out)


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## bh2 (Aug 18, 2008)

*40 hrs of RPGA*

Me and a couple of buddies of mine have been trying to get more RPGA in during GenCon, but we haven't had much luck with getting event tickets ahead of time. This year, though, we got all our tickets ahead of time (you can play with generals, but its hit and miss and no guarantees). We played in 9 RPGA events: ALL of the LFR events and the D&D Open. Other than that, we stayed at a house about 30 mins from the con and brought a cooler of food. Overall we were very well prepared.

So, highlights from the con:


12-16 hours of 4e D&D for 3 days straight!! While a bit exhausting, it was awesome.
Several very good LFR mods, many excellent GMs, and a bunch of fun players to play with!
My gold dwarf cleric of Moradin, Glimmer Goldbeard, got laid in WATE1-1 Heirloom .
For the first time, we actually qualified for the second round of the D&D Championship (our group was called 'We Didn't Die'), though we didn't actually end up playing the 2nd round.
Looting the body... Apparently gencon ordered too many bags and were giving them away sunday near closing. We got about 60 bags of stuff and looted it for the good stuff: gencon d6es, random Q-Workshop dice, and several card games.
So yeah, good times, I already can't wait till next year!


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## paradox42 (Aug 18, 2008)

This was my 14th or 15th time going (I lost count a few years ago actually)- I've been going every single year with only one exception, that being in 2006 when I had severe money troubles. It's always a highlight of my year, and I don't plan to stop going any year soon.

*Wednesday* night I arrived, after spending a couple of hours at Indiana Beach on the way to delay so as to arrive after my roommate had checked in, to take up residence in the Westin with my friends- one my roommate and the other two a couple who also live in the Kansas City area near him. We're all old college buddies who used to play Magic in the University of Illinois Urbana campus group. Played some games in mine & Mike's hotel room this year because we had a slightly better setup with two beds (could move the table between 'em for play space and seating). I lost Cthulhu Munchkin, but pulled out a win in a Shanghai Rummy game in the last two hands.

*Thursday* I managed to get up in time to go into the convention hall at the opening, and witnessed the opening ceremony and dice roll after Dave Arneson and Peter Adkinson's speeches. "Running of the Bulls" is an apt description of what happens every day of the Con, if you happen to be waiting in the crowd at the 10 AM opening of the Exhibit Hall, but I enjoy doing it at least once if I can manage to get up early enough just to feel the energy of the crowd.

Once inside the Hall, I hightailed it over to APE Games to snag my copy of _War & XPs_ along with the free magnet, and also stopped by the Ennies booth to check out the rules for booth volunteers since I was set to do that on Friday. A little later on I demoed Monsterpocalypse, the new collectible minis game from Privateer Press, which I found quite fun and seemed to be a fairly bit hit at the Con (I saw people carrying boosters and starters all weekend- and they ran out of starters by Saturday).

Thursday was True Dungeon day for me- the one time-slot our group had managed to get a ticket for was at 2:36. We went through it and won in the end, solving the puzzle in the final room while waiting for the "Combat" team to finish their simultaneous fight. And Greyhawk was saved! Later on we did some trading, and I led my friends to the Gamingetc. booth which had True Dungeon token *singles* on sale as I'd noticed during my wandering earlier in the day. I managed to assemble the tokens necessary to get a Boots of Sure Footing later that night, which was great.

Thursday was also the day for me to go to the Gaymer Dinner with my roommate Mike, though sadly we couldn't stay long because the Cthulhu For President rally was taking place at the Embassy Suites about a half-hour after the dinner started. We got to touch base with some of the same people we met at last year's dinner at least, and meet some new people as well, such as nerfwright's husband who came along this year for his first Gen Con.  Always great to see the fun spreading to more!

The rally was next, and was fun, though most onlookers agreed I got robbed in the spelling bee (I spelled "Ghast" perfectly but apparently Randy wanted "Ghast*s*" though that wasn't clear from the sentence!). The duct-tape-girl look-alike contest was definitely a highlight, with the phrase "and hilarity ensued" leaping inevitably to mind given all the *male* contestants who were involved (prizes were eventually given to the best of each gender).

That night, back in the hotel room, we played Settlers Cities & Knights with the "Oasis/Caravans" variant from the new set Mayfair had on sale this year, Traders & Barbarians. I thought it added a cool twist on the game myself, but *man* did it end up lengthening the game! After the other two left, Mike & I played a 2-player game of Cthulhu Munchkin incorporating the Epic rules, which we'd never played with at all before but I had a printout of just begging to be used.

*Friday* saw me getting up about 11, to make my shift volunteering at the ENnies booth with nerfwright, and I arrived in time to get instructions from Xath before she headed out. The shift went faster than I'd thought it would, with mine & nerfwright's conversation regularly getting interrupted by interested passers-by and others (which was not a bad thing since it gave us plenty of chances to "sell" the ceremony and kept us on our toes the whole time). After the shift, and passing on our instructions and information to C.W. Richardson who arrived to relieve us, went to eat lunch at Champp's Sports Bar in the mall with nerfwright, his husband, and (contact) and his wife. They're all good people.

After lunch headed back to the hotel to meet another couple of friends for a game of Munchkin, using the Epic rules with the original "D&D" set this time, which I ended up winning at the end. Then had a nap and after that headed downstairs for the ENnies. Unfortunately I only got to see the first half, but it was great to see Dave Arneson get his Lifetime Achievement award, and several of the other speeches were entertaining (Piratecat made quite an emcee). I was perhaps a tad underdressed, but there were plenty of others in the audience in jeans & t-shirt sort of clothes so I didn't feel hugely out of place.

Later that night, played more games with my usual gang of four up in our hotel room again, including a non-Epic game of original-set Munchkin.

*Saturday* was a quiet day for me, mostly spent shopping in the Exhibit Hall and wandering around it doing a really thorough once-over (which I didn't give it Thursday due to not having enough time). Picked up _The Gamers: Dorkness Rising_ DVD at Paizo, and got a copy of _Where the Deep Ones Are_ at the Atlas Games booth for my baby nephew- and managed to get it signed by both the author and the artist to boot!

Saturday night was Cassander's YMCA Dread game, which was my first time playing Dread. While I can't say it made me scared, I *definitely* felt the tension with every pull made after the first couple of hours, because the tower just kept getting more and more unstable and yet players kept managing to keep it from falling! It only fell with the very last pull of the game, when the Cowboy tried to swing out over the audience and knock Elton John off the crocodile so he'd stop upstaging us (yeah, you really had to be there I think  ). My big moment was in killing the GI after he transformed into a werewolf and started ripping into that same crocodile; sorry Xath, but I really did think you'd be starting on the audience after the reptile was dead...

After Dread, I went back to the hotel and was treated to watching the Catan game my friend were playing drag out for an hour as they clawed at each other for victory. After Catan we played a brief game of original Munchkin using the Epic rules, and for the first time the Demented Dungeons set (Munchkin 6, which was sold out on Sunday- glad I got my copy months ago).

*Sunday* was the day of leaving, always a downer after a Con full of fun, though I'm very glad I only had a three-hour drive home instead of an eleven-hour drive like my Kansas City friends!


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## Steel_Wind (Aug 18, 2008)

*Gencon 2008 Dealer Hall*

Overall, my impression of the Dealer’s Hall for this Gencon was, frankly, not a very positive one in terms of the health of the RPG hobby. In a phrase folks – there were not many new products on sale – and not a whole lot of interesting OLD D20 products for sale either. My hoped for bounty of cheapie 3.5 WotC books at $5 a piece did not come to pass – at all. Hell, there were not even that many dealers selling old D20 3.x stock either.  Very slim pickings, for the most part.  The “industry”, such as it is, appears to be a very troubled one.

Picked up _Dragons of Spring_ from the Marg Weis Productions booth for $5. I was under the impression they were not even supposed to be selling these books anymore. It was the only 3.5 D20 DL book I did not have – so it completed my collection. In contrast to previous years, M Weis’ staff did not seem that enthused about this show and it was a subdued sales pitch there.  Not a happy vibe. But I’ll give em a break – because it wasn’t just them.

In fact, that was the vibe repeated time and time again at nearly every RPG sales booth in the dealer hall ( and there were less of those, too).  The one exception out of this depressing 2008 dealer hall (well, depressing in terms of Core RPG sales) was Paizo. Because the story at Paizo was a very different one. And I have little doubt that experience was not lost upon others there.

Paizo, you see, had new stuff to sell. And racks of fairly new stuff too. _Pathfinder_ this, that, and the other thing gleamed  - and flew- off the shelves. Line-ups of attendees were queued to have their _Dorkness Rising_ DVDs signed – and more than a few customers were queued up to buy _Pathfinder Beta_ and the new Setting campaign book –  together with all sorts of other odds and ends and new and older accessories. Paizo rolled the dice – and on the first round of combat at any rate - they’ve rolled a 20. 

By Saturday, I watched Jason Bulhman relocate the last of the _Pathfinder Beta_ books from one wall to the main shelf. They sold out quickly thereafter.  That’s right: SOLD OUT.  For the RPG sellers in the dealer hall – that was a pretty damned unique event. (The 4E Forgotten Realms Campaign Setting Book also sold out at WotC's booth).

Speaking of WotC...WotC’s booth _seemed_ to be smaller this year and the overall impression was that they didn’t have much that was new to sell there, either. The Forgotten Realms campaign books was reportedly flying off the shelf there – but that was about it. I’m not sure if my discomfort with WotC’s booth this year was attributable to a new layout or if it was something else. The impression I got from their booth was one of their declined interest in the show. Not saying they, in fact, HAD a declined sense of interest  - simply that that was the _impression_ conveyed by their booth.

Apart from Paizo, there were some positives in the Dealer Hall though...just not in RPG land. Fantasy Flight Games was hopping and seemed to be bigger this year with tons of demos and new product fairly dripping off the shelves. Their booth was just plain mobbed and they did a brisk business throughout the entire show.  Their new _Battlestar Galactica_ boardgame was being played all over the convention hall.  Their new _WoW Adventure Boardgame _and _Red November mini boardgame _was similarly getting play in the ballroom and all over hotel lobbies around the Con.  FFG knows how to make money in the hobby games trade – and their Gencon 2008 booth was a clinic on just how to do it.  

Days of Wonder was showing off some new expansion products for _Memoir ’44 _ but their new similarly themed "monster game" expansion product for _Battlelore_ was not for sale. It did not seem to trouble them much. By Sunday morning, Days of Wonder had sold out of almost all of their stock. _Ticket to Ride_ in just about ever flavour, in every expansion – even the card game -  was just plain sold out.  All the new the new _Memoir ’44_ product was sold out -0 and almost all of the old products too. 6 expansion packs s for Battlelore remained on Sunday monring. They had sold out their booth of essentially everything they had brought to Gencon except for 4 Memoir ‘44 Duffel Bag carriers. And by the time I left the booth – they only had three of those.  Making good products counts; having your booth as the first significant booth inside the east doors to the Dealer Hall probably didn’t hurt sales either. 

Upper Deck was demonstrating the forthcoming _WoW Collectible Miniatures Game _to a lot of gamers. Interest appeared to be high and frustration that the product was not yet for sale was pretty clear.  The price on the booster packs and core starter set appears to be in line with similar offerings from other companies – until you realize that there are only 4 minis in the starter and 3 in a booster.  To be fair, the WoW minis are significantly larger in size than WotC’s minis line and the look great, but still – it seems a very steep price to pay for a CMG.  I expect they will sell very well just the same.  It’s WoW; and the WoW brand makes money – whether that’s at Blizzard,  Upper Deck, or Fantasy Flight Games.

The electronic exhibits were noticeably fewer this year and space seemed available for electronic exhibitors who ultimately chose not to attend. Noticeably absent was Blizzard; no _Wrath of the Lich King_ to try; no _Starcraft II_ or _Diablo3_ trailers or demos to drool over. Nada. A big no show.

I expect that Leipzig’s big show later this week and PAX the following week forced a lot of electronic exhibitors to pick and choose. And some of them clearly chose to skip Gencon entirely.

On the plus side, Cryptic’s _Champions Online_ was being aggressively demod with about a dozen hands-on displays that fairly hummed the whole show. TBH, I’m still a little iffy about the game; it’s no _WoW_ Killer. But if _City of Villains_ and _City of Heroes_ is their target competition – they’ll do well enough.

_Warhammer Online_ was being demoed as well and impressions were very favourable. I think this one will make some serious noise if the timing is right...except of course, with _WoLK_ imminent and Warhammer Online delayed again, the timing ISN’T right. These guys may well have missed their chance to slay the WoW dragon. It looks like a strong game and is pitching to the WoW crowd with expanded PvP options. Art direction is about what you would expect from a Warhammer product so that will sit well with WoW players. We'll see. I still think these guys will be six months too late to market though.

Lastly, I do have to comment very positively about _Dragon Age_. BioWare’s booth was filled for nearly every session, with lengthy line-ups to see the closed door, rated “M” gameplay demo (/me roll eyes). Put bluntly, this is the best traditional non-mmo CRPG I have ever seen.  This thing is going to sell – and sell very, very well. Keep an eye on this one.

CCG wise, it was all _WoW CCG_ in terms of hype. Gamers of all ages and sizes appeared to be playing it and buying it too at card dealer booth. _Magic:TG_ is still the schoolyard bully and I doubt that will ever change – but _WoW CCG_ is, for the moment at least, stealing the spotlight in the CCG hobby.

Oh yes - Privateer Press was also humming most of the show. Their booth was large and very well attended. Given the nature of the products they sell, it was difficult to see them in use around the Con in the usual spots by the usual suspects - but that is a function of their product niche as much as anything else.   

*Favorite Dealer Hall Purchase*: The aforementioned _Memoir ’44 _ Duffel Bag.

*Dealer Hall Steal of the Con:* A carton of 96 unopened boosters of “DC Icons” for Hero Clix CMG, in the shrink. *$20*. My ten year old was bouncing up and down to get these when I got home this evening. The only reason he did not get more of them was a function of space in the car and my ability to cart same from the Dealer Hall to the car back at the Sheraton on Sunday afternoon.

*Bone-Headed GenCon Retailer of the Year:* Subway Sandwiches in the lobby of the Hyatt, who had to close at 6:30 p.m. on Friday night because they ran out of bread with which to make any sandwhiches.  Not sure how much money they left on the table due to this mismanagment, but the owner of this shop needs to get his crap together.  It's happened before in past years too - it's not like Gencon sneaks up on em as a surprise event.


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## Shemeska (Aug 18, 2008)

Bunch of random impressions and recollections:

Managed to snag a copy of both full-color Cthulhutech books from the Catalyst booth (they limited it to 25 books of each for sale per day). And Jesus are these books amazing pieces of work. Dripping with flavor, and top notch production values. I'm a little curious as to what's up with who they're currently being released by, since I know that Mongoose was selling a black and white version of the core book, but Catalyst is branded on the color one and the new release book as well. Either way, they're 2009 Ennies material.

Bucco di Beppo is a piece of heaven on earth. Why did I not discover them till last year?

The Paizo seminars I attended were pretty damn cool. The crowd was honestly buzzed and asking questions, and the Paizo guys were a bunch of class acts. Real engaging and played the audience well. Got to sit down and chat with Wesley and James after one of them, which was really cool. The cute chick in the Desnite costume was also a secondary high point of that event.

Passable crossdressers in chainmail bikinis are not fair. Ever. Ten levels of wrong.

For the first time in my life, I had someone ask me to sign a book (the Pathfinder campaign setting). Also was the first book I've had my name in. I was grinning like a fool the rest of that afternoon. Made my day. 

Attended Wolfgang Baur's KQ seminar, and enjoyed it. Magic 8 ball says that a subscription and some queries are very likely in the near future.

Hunter: The Vigil is awesome. And courtesy of Amazon Prime, my copy should be here to read as of this afternoon. The developer chatter about magical bees was amusing during their seminar on the line.

WotC's booth in the dealer hall was smaller this year, and it seemed like a tomb in terms of buzz, crowd, and the general sense of apathy I got from the whole thing. Looked like they reused many of the same props and setup from last year (including bangs and marks from shipping). Not sure what was going on there, but it wasn't a positive sign. No buzz to speak of regarding the DDI either. Maybe I was missing something major, but it was like they wanted to pull a jedi mind trick about that whole thing.

ENnies were classy as always, and this year the big winners (Paizo and White Wolf) were well deserving for their wins. WotC picked up some equally well won ENnies for Star Wars saga edition as well, but they get major props from me for asking the authors of Expedition to Castle Greyhawk (all now with Paizo) up on stage when it picked up an award.

Being dubbed "That Orange Bastard" by one of the artists in the Art Show for a particularly off-key commission that required the full story behind it being told. That was amusing, and hopefully his hands down fall off after drawing that much citrus fruit in the background to a character portrait.


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## Longshadow (Aug 18, 2008)

I attended only the Saturday session this year.  

*The Good:*
Introduced my kids to Gencon.  They thoroughly enjoyed it and have already started saving their allowances for next year’s show, as they went through the money their parents gave them rather quickly.  The look on their faces as they finally grasped the size of the Dealer’s Room was priceless.  My son, a Star Wars fanatic, snagged pictures of himself with pretty much every even halfway decent costumed attendee sporting Star Wars paraphernalia (all of whom were very gracious).

Got to see people I liked and who I only get to see at Gencon.  I actually remembered to bring the camera this year so I could get pictures of said people to throw on the computer when I returned home.

Got some desired swag, and hopefully arranged for some more writing work.

The temperature -- I actually walked the few blocks from where we parked and _wasn’t _drenched in sweat as I have been in previous years. It was actually a pleasant little stroll.


*The Bad:*
Crowds.  My god was it crowded.  This had to have been the most crowded I have ever seen a Gencon, and I have made it to every one this century.  Sheesh.  Hope people’s sales reflected it.


*The Ugly:*
I had the single worst customer service experience that I have ever had in all the years I’ve been attending cons.    Wizards of the Coast booth.  Early Saturday afternoon, about 2 PM-ish.  I strolled up to the counter ->

------

Me:  “Excuse me…”

Booth Guy:  <Looks through me, doesn’t respond>

Me:  “Sir?”

Booth Guy: “Sigh”  (No, he literally sighed.  Seriously) 

Booth Guy:  “Can I help you?” (spoken in a tone of voice more appropriate for saying “Bite me and die screaming, maggot fan boy.”)

Me:  “Can I get a copy of the *Forgotten Realms Campaign Guide *and the DM’s Screen, please?” (trying to stay polite but inwardly taken aback)

Booth Guy:  “Read my lips – SOLD. OUT. FOR. THE.  CON.  Got it?  Next.” (spoken in loud and clipped tones, and if anything, managing even more hostility than his prior sentence)

Me: “…” (a little stunned at the level of rudeness)

Booth Guy:  (noticing I’m still there) “Was I unclear, sir?”

Me:  “No.  Not at all.  Good day.” (cold, but still polite as I walk off)

--------

I try to be a polite person and teach my children to be the same.  I have a very low tolerance for direct and intentional rudeness (I'll tend to overlook the obviously _unintentional _rudeness...we're talking gamers, after all) .  Maybe I’m just a little old-fashioned, but this was an astonishing display as the face of a company interacting with the public, at least in my opinion.  Okay, the booth staff may have caught some grief during the Con from various rude attendees (such as all those people wearing those incredibly tacky “4th Edition Killed Gary” T-Shirts), but still, on what level was this at all professional or even excusable?  If I hadn’t been so angry at the time, I would have had the presence of mind to get the name of the jackass, but sadly I didn’t.  I’ll sure as hell remember his face and voice, though.  I’ll continue to support my local FLGS and buy WOTC products through them, but I will NOT be giving my money _directly _to WOTC again.  Period.  Oh, I was pissed.


Regardless, the good outweighed the bad enough that the ’08 Gencon gets a thumbs upfrom me.   The looks on my children’s faces as they saw the life-sized remote controlled R2-D2 moving around in the hall was enough to push Mr. “Too Damn Cool To Be Working A Booth” down the tally sheet far enough for a positive outcome.


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## Longshadow (Aug 18, 2008)

Double post.  Apologies.


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## Grazzt (Aug 18, 2008)

Shemeska said:


> WotC's booth in the dealer hall was smaller this year, and it seemed like a tomb in terms of buzz, crowd, and the general sense of apathy I got from the whole thing. Looked like they reused many of the same props and setup from last year (including bangs and marks from shipping). Not sure what was going on there, but it wasn't a positive sign. No buzz to speak of regarding the DDI either. Maybe I was missing something major, but it was like they wanted to pull a jedi mind trick about that whole thing.




I noticed this too. Couple that with the fact that they were jammed in the far back corner, and also the fact that I didn't see any 4e adverts really anywhere. Seemed odd considering that this is the year of the new edition.

Now- Champions Online...jeez...those guys advertised the hell outta that game (the stairs, the columns, the floors,the walls, etc)


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## Rel (Aug 18, 2008)

As has become usual for me, I spent all of about 2 hours in the dealer hall (although those two hours were quite pleasant, having been spent in the company of Bretbo and Piratecat respectively and I picked up a couple products that I think I'll enjoy).  The balance of my time was spent in the Hyatt and Embassy playing and running games that were universally awesome.

And of course there were all the normal social gatherings where I got to hang with my buds from ENW and CM and considerable quantities of alcohol got consumed.  Then there was the TBR of course where, as usual, NOTHING HAPPENED.


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## Noumenon (Aug 18, 2008)

This con was all about exposing myself to the 4E experience.  First we went to Wizards' booth and played their four-round delve to get a free mini.  It was okay, but it would be a lot cooler if they would work a cross-promotion deal with one of the companies that sells realistic dungeon kits with plastic water and walls, instead of drawing little arrows on dungeon tiles to show where the water was.

Later we found the RPGA D&D Delve (totally by accident; I just asked a bored DM sitting near the fence and he explained it all to me) and went through it like five times.  It was great!  Figuring out all the pregens on the fly was a blast.  At home you'd never generate five characters and fit them into a campaign in less than a month.  Now I've played a paladin, a cleric, a warlord, and figured out how I would play a ranger and a rogue.

I noticed that the Delve is more fun when the DM stresses how fast you have to go and how much time you have left, and when he calls you by your character name instead of player name (much easier to tell who's hurt, who you go after, etc).  Did anyone manage to get through the Delve?  We never got out of the second room and in one case didn't even get into the second room, being bottled up in the staircase the entire time.  This was due to someone's bright idea that we all delay our initiative so that we could go around the table in order.  Meaning the DM moved first and we couldn't maneuver or escape the staircase.

The delve really made me wish it were possible to have professional DM services.  When one DM runs one adventure twenty times for different people, they just do great at running it fast and well.  It also becomes worth the investment to have appropriate minis if you are charging for it and running it multiple times.

I just wish the Delve (which someone described as "video game D&D") had gone the full video game route and allowed you to "buy back in" at the end of the 45 minutes so you could actually see the final room.  Did anyone manage to finish?  Even with six vets I think it would be hard to move that fast.

I also did the Paint and Take.  What a great charitable event.  I only wanted to paint my one mini to represent my very first D&D character, and I got to do it without buying ten different paints and having to read a bunch of internet sites to find out how to make bright colors (paint it white underneath first) and make eyes (splotch on the white, then outline over it with the skin color).  

The P&T definitely could have used more signs, however.  Signs like "The wait is two hours and we close at 6 PM," instead of making the poor guy at the table repeat that to 100 people over the last two hours.  Also a little "how to paint" handout would be nice.  Like "to correct errors, either a) get a plain wet brush and soak the paint back up or b) paint over it."  Or "to make a good mouth, blend chestnut color into your flesh color."

Anyway, this Con was all about cheap or free events provided by awesome volunteers, so thanks to the RPGA and the Paint & Take people!


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## Morrus (Aug 18, 2008)

Longshadow said:


> I had the single worst customer service experience that I have ever had in all the years I’ve been attending cons.    Wizards of the Coast booth.  Early Saturday afternoon, about 2 PM-ish.  I strolled up to the counter ->
> 
> ------
> 
> ...




Wow.  That's appalling.  I would've gone nuts there and then, right in his face.  Did you get his name?  Was he wearing a namebadge?  Failing that, hopefully someone at WotC will read this and knows who was working the booth at 2pm Saturday.

[Edit - ah, reading the remainder of your post, I see you didn't get his name.  That's a shame.]


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## Eridanis (Aug 18, 2008)

My GenCon experience this year was colored enhanced by the fact that I didn’t know I was going until a week beforehand. A change of employer this spring meant I had no vacation days available to use, so I was resigned to not going for the first time since 1999. But when I found out my brother had just happened to take Friday and Monday off, and my daughter was set to spend part of the weekend with my parents, and I started thinking that maybe I could leave work mid-afternoon Friday, drive the 12 hours to Indy, spend Saturday there, and come back Sunday. A few hours of planning and one thumb’s-up from the missus, and I was ready to roll!

The drive out Friday night was fun. I love to drive, and it was good to spend some one-on-one time with my brother. Unfortunately, the car he rented did not have an Aux jack, so instead of listening to an iPod full of *Gamers with Jobs* podcasts, we enjoyed picking up eight different baseball games on AM radio as we sped through the night in Pennsylvania and Ohio. We got in at 2:30am, sacked out for a few hours, and got down to the convention center around 8:15am to get our badges… only to find not a trace of a long line. We were in and out in five minutes. I think most people didn’t know that the registration opened at 7am, not 9am, so we were the lucky beneficiaries. Thank you, GenCon, for making it easy!

What to do with nearly two hours to kill before the dealer room opened? Well, we walked back to our car to drop off the book I didn’t need for a long line wait, and then we walked over to the new football stadium, Lucas Oil Stadium, that was having its opening ceremony that morning. A sea of blue and white, the Colts’ team colors, spilled down the steps from the camera-packed podium. I’m happy for the city of Indianapolis, but the exterior of the stadium didn’t strike me as very interesting. It led me to think about the place of public architecture in American life in the early 21st century, and how we don’t seem to make Great Buildings any more; you’d not see an impressive building like the Empire State Building any more, but you still see expressions of greatness in our public coliseums, like Yankee Stadium, Wrigley Field, PNC Park, and the like. I tend to think of these places as exciting-looking, someplace that you know interesting things happen. I recall, as a boy, driving through Indianapolis on my way home from visiting my grandparents in St. Louis. I could see the RCA Dome on the Indy skyline, and say to myself, “Cool! Football games take place there!” The new stadium does not cry out as a place where interesting things happen; it mumbles something about being a converted warehouse, nothing special, and it’s just trying to blend in. Very sad for a brand new building that cost hundreds of millions of dollars! I’m sure it will be beautiful inside, with its retractable roof and side windows, but I was severely underwhelmed. Perhaps it will age well. We’ll certainly enjoy the extra space given by the demolished Dome if GenCon stays in Indy after 2010!

After mulling around, we headed back to the Con. After waiting on line to enter the dealer hall, and listening to the speech about “don’t run to the WotC booth or we’ll take away your badge,” I was disappointed to see many people running into the hall. I wish security has stood by their threat. I suggest that they have a tripwire installed for next time, so those not following directions will find themselves flat on their fac. Gamers don’t tend to have ranks in Find Traps. Hee hee.

We wandered the hall for two hours, and decamped to Steak n Shake for lunch (just in the nick of time; after sat down, the line to get in quickly grew). After lunch was Rel’s Sky Galleons of Mars game. Don’t let anyone fool you; Rel is an excellent game master and a very creative man. We had a lot of fun searching for the survivors of the RMS Titanic, lost in the polar region of Mars. I got to meet Pielorinho in person for the very first time, and saw that he’s a great gamer as well as a great guy. I was very happy to game with Kid Charlemagne again, as we’d played together in Wulf Ratbane’s Lazy Days D&D 3.5 campaign when I lived in Chicagoland. Piratecat is always a wonderful player, choosing a distinctive character voice to set the mood. Hypersmurf was in fine form, and knowing that he may not make it back to these shores again for a few years was a deciding factor in my going to this year’s GenCon. His battle cries filled the third floor of the Hyatt, and there was no denying the Gamers Were In The House. And it was good to game with my brother for the first time in years. Lots of fun all around.

The break before out next game was largely spent waiting on line at the Hyatt McDonalds. The Subway there was closed (“back in a hour – we ran out of bread.” !!!!!), so we had to make do with Big Macs and Chicken Nuggets. Meh.

The evening game was Piratecat running a Mutants and Masterminds game he’d outlined on the plane flight to Indy. As one would expect, it was fun, interesting, and full of action, comedy and drama. We spent the evening trying to figure out if the dastardly Professor Peril has truly had a change of heart, and was trying to become a Good Guy (Doctor Benjamin Factor – a.k.a. Benny Factor) or if it was just a Twisted Plot. Never having played MnM before, I had no fear, as PC is the undisputed master of making game rules transparent and letting everyone concentrate on having fun in the game. I got to meet Quartermoon, who is delightful and a great gamer. Coyote6 did a great job as Valiant, and Wizardru was a pleasure to meet and game with. I had met keryn (aka Sandie Law) before but had never had a chance to spend any time with her; for someone who was obviously tired and had to keep track of her young son (who could not have been better behaved), she more than held her own in the game, and was a lot of fun. My brother did a fine job as my character’s sidekick, with silly voice and all, and even got to be the McGuffin that drove the end of the plot. Hypersmurf stole the show though, and stunned Piratecat to silence with his plot-changing speech to the bad guy at the end of the game. Not something I’ve ever seen before, or expect to see again any time soon!

After that game wrapped up at 12:30am, it was back to our hotel room to page through new swag for a few minutes before our bodies turned off of their own volition. Sunday morning found me very groggy, but breakfast at Denny’s (alas, no Bob Evans nearby) helped perk me up a bit. We spent two more hours in the dealer hall, and would have spent more, but we had a twelve hour drive ahead of us; into the car and off on I-70 East to return to our ordinary lives. Got home around 12:45am, and now I’m at work, wondering what my name is and why I can’t go back to sleep.

I had a lot of fun, and I hope we can go again next year (all of us: wife and three kids). Time will tell!


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## Stormtower (Aug 18, 2008)

GenCon was a marvelous experience for me.  It was my first time DMing at GenCon (3rd GenCon overall) and I ran 7 slots of LFR (Core 1-3 Sense of Wonder in slot 1, 3, 5, and 7, plus Core 1-1 Inheritance in slot 9, 11, 13).  I'm a little hoarse but otherwise it couldn't have gone any better.  The LFR launch overall was extremely well received (at least, it seemed so to me) and the players were delighted to hear about player-driven guilds and adventuring companies, which is the new RPGA experiment to help change the culture from competitive into a more cooperative, shared experience.  Thumbs up all around, and thanks to all my awesome players, fellow GMs and RPGA organizers.

My scanned/laminated dungeon tile maps received rave reviews by players, marshals and fellow DMs, and my status tracking system (cubes and rhinestones) was also well received by my tables.  I got a really nice complement from Bruce Cordell of WotC on Sunday morning on my DM style, which really made my year.  *blush*  That made all the prep worth it, and then some.

Special thanks to the "Ice Pirate Lords" in Slot 13 on Sunday morning... if any of you are ENWorlders, that table rocked the house.  Great RP, great tactics, just one of those totally in-the-zone experiences where all 6 players and myself were completely sucked into the narrative and the combats.

I agree with others who said the dealers' hall was somewhat lacklustre this year.  Paizo was kickin' it with long lines and strong sales, smiles all around.  The mood at the WotC booth was a bit somber, too... but that is understandable.  

I will be coming back next year to run 7 or 8 more slots.  Viva la GenCon!


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## Rodrigo Istalindir (Aug 18, 2008)

I got to:


Try to conquer the galaxy and fail (Twilight Imperium)
Shoot down a plane and in turn have mine shot out from under me by having the front half of the plane chewed away (Crimson Skies)
defeat Darth Lucas and help create Chewthreepio, Wookiee/Cyborg with a Dewback body and light-saber horn.  (SWSE)
Return to a forgotten Earth and get caught between two warring post-apoc factions only to die in a firefight at the last second (Dread)
Help other Hanna Barberra characters thwart a cross-dimensional attack by Elmer Fudd (Feng Shui)
Escape from a luxury spaceliner that had become infested with borg-like creatures (d20 Modern)
watch as my lovely and misunderstood Winter Wtich was defeated once again (4e)
Get blown up by dynamite while taking out zombie banditos (AFMBE)
Be a Lara Croft-esque adventurer fighting Nazi's on Jupiter (Spirit of the Century)
Fight the evil Clown Martians and rescue the survivors of the skyship RMS Titanic.  (Sky Galleons of Mars -- d20 Modern)
Sit behind the curtain at the ENnies and run the slideshow
Attend the annual opening night CM/ENW party as well as SammichCon '08.
Average 4 hours of sleep a day.
Hang out with a heck of a lot of wonderful friends I get to see all too seldom.


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## Noumenon (Aug 18, 2008)

My customer service experience at the WotC booth was that I told them "You should tell people who enjoyed your delve about the Delve upstairs, yours really whets the appetite for more" and he said, "Okay, I'll pass that on" and made it sound like it might be a good idea.  So it was fine.


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## Steel_Wind (Aug 18, 2008)

*GenCon 2008 Auction Hall*

One of the centrepiece events of any Gencon is the world’s largest game auction hall.  The importance of this event to Gencon has arguably declined over the past ten years with the rise of eBay.  At the same time, however, as the price level in the dealer room for new product has climbed, the real bargains at Gencon can only be found in the auction hall.  I tend to spend a fair bit of time in the auction hall as a consequence.

This year, I spent more time in the auction hall than I do normally due to the conflicting schedules of most of the people I attended Gencon with. The end result is that I can give a pretty coherent report on what sold and for how much concerning several thousand items that went this year.

The entertainment value of the Auction, especially when Frank Mentzer is the auctioneer, is hard to beat if you are a hardcore gamer. Frank was entertaining as always, though he was a little subdued on his first night up when he started to mention Gary’s death.  For gamers, EGG was an icon of our youth and the death of the Father of the Game that saddened us all. For Frank, Gary was much more: a close friend of 40+ years. He choked up and had to wipe away the tears. It was a bittersweet start to the collectible auction.  

Generally speaking...

*Original and 1st ed Collectible RPG Products: *Prices remain stable to climbing for early D&D rpg products in “excellent” or better shape. Prices for 70’s and early 80s era products still in the shrink are insanely high, even with respect to fairly trivial TSR products.  That said, a copy of the First edition Original D&D Brown box version, third printing, with an incomplete and heavily damaged box with books in, at best, “good to very good” shape went for $850 this year.  If the product had been in excellent shape – it would easily have gone for five to ten times that amount.

Products signed by Gary are climbing in value, for obvious reasons. ‘Nuff said.

*2E products: *Prices are still relatively low here, except for a few gems.  Overall, I thought the 2E era games were fewer in number for sale, and the prices were, if anything down.

*3E products: * There is no auction market for 3E era items yet. Wait another ten years please 

*Collectible Auction Highlights: *Most of the serious money was extracted on Friday night. An excellent to  near mint copy of _Quest for the Fazzlewood_ went for only $750. It was in impressively good shape, and the price was light in view of previous sales. _Lost Caverns of Tsojconth_ (not a typo) went for a lot more as I recall $1300 I think. I missed the sale price on _Palace of the Vampire Queen_ (the first ever D&D module) which sold on Saturday night around 1:00 a.m..

 An excellent B3 went for $1100. A “little light” to borrow a phrase from Frank Mentzer.

The stuff that absolutely blew me away was the price for 1st edition Dungeon Geomorphs, in the shrink. I remember buying and opening the products from these lines. If I had known that I could have picked up a second copy of each and stored ‘em for 27 years or so to get $350-$450 each for them...well...I would have bought a few more! 

A copy of _Bladerunner – the Boardgame_ in mint condition went for $850. In light of the rarity of the product (100 made, given as a promo at premiere of movie), I think that one was the steal of the auction.  The game really did look like it had been stored in a suitcase full of pillows for 25 years.  It was the heart and soul of “mint condition”.  I can easily see how 25 years from now, that item could go for $20,000.00+ if it is stored in the same manner it has been for the past 25 years. 

*Other auction notes:* The high water mark for _Talisman_ was evidently set last year. With the release of the 4th edition by Black Industries last Gencon and the forthcoming re-release (a “5th Ed”) by FFG (with plastic figures) set for later this year, it’s time to sell your GW Talisman stuff on eBay while you can. Prices were down significantly from last year.  Don’t get me wrong – they are still expensive as hell – but the downright nutty prices of $300 plus were nowhere in sight. A player’s copy of Talisman 3rd Ed in fair to good shape went for $80. Last year? That went for $225.

Auction Gripe: The length of the charity auction on Saturday night pushed my limits of patience. Two hours is one thing - four is another entirely. This format of the charity auction needs to be rethought.

*My steal of the Auction*:  I got a copy of Eagle Games’ _Age of Mythololgy_, in the shrink, for $38. I was happy.  I have not opened it yet – but yes, I plan to open it and play it. I prefer to play my games, thanks.


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## Jack99 (Aug 18, 2008)

Morrus said:


> Wow.  That's appalling.  I would've gone nuts there and then, right in his face.  Did you get his name?  Was he wearing a namebadge?  Failing that, hopefully someone at WotC will read this and knows who was working the booth at 2pm Saturday.
> 
> [Edit - ah, reading the remainder of your post, I see you didn't get his name.  That's a shame.]




Three words that works with people like that: "Your superior, now!"


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## Scott_Rouse (Aug 18, 2008)

Hecatol said:


> Kept seeing Scott Rouse around the Westin, and he looked more and more like he was operating on pure willpower as the days wore on. Hopefully he gets to sleep in for a few weeks!




No sleep for the Rouse.


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## Scott_Rouse (Aug 18, 2008)

Longshadow said:


> *The Ugly:*
> I had the single worst customer service experience that I have ever had in all the years I’ve been attending cons.    Wizards of the Coast booth.  Early Saturday afternoon, about 2 PM-ish.  I strolled up to the counter ->
> 
> ------
> ...





Longshadow,

I would like to personally apologize for the total lack of professionalism and customer service you received at the Wizards of the Coast booth. Yes we under ordered the FR books and lots of people were  probably asking about them and likely upset about us being sold out but that is no excuse for apathy and rudeness. 

See my PM as I would like to get a description of the individual and take  this incident  up with our show manager.

Also PM me you home address and I will send you a copy of the Forgotten Realms Campaign Guide myself


Kind Regards and Apologies,


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## Jack99 (Aug 18, 2008)

Scott_Rouse said:


> Longshadow,
> 
> I would like to personally apologize for the total lack of professionalism and customer service you received at the Wizards of the Coast booth. Yes we under ordered the FR books and lots of people were  probably asking about them and likely upset about us being sold out but that is no excuse for apathy and rudeness.
> 
> ...




/tips hat


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## Kid Charlemagne (Aug 18, 2008)

I got in on Wednesday with Sir Brennen, one of my fellow gamers from Chicago, and ate at Fogo de Chao - figured that I could eat enough steak to last me through the lean days ahead - especially Friday when I had games scheduled from 9 thru 5.  The CM party at Embasssy suites was a hit, and I reintroduced myself to a lot of gamers who I hadn't seen since last year.  I spent more time introducing myself and finding out who folks were this year - a good move on my part.

Thursday morning was the dealer hall, followe by my only dissapointment of GenCon - the Kingmaker game I had booked cancelled, as the guys running it never showed.  That was made up for by a very fun Traveller game (character creation took place during the game, which in any game buy Traveller would be a bad idea) and got attacked by Vargr pirates trying to take my dilettante nobleman's yacht (my PC was accurately described by the GM as a "male Paris Hilton."  I replied, "yup that's what I was going for!"  That game sold a Mongoose Traveller book; I'd like to run a game sometime in the not so distant future.

Friday morning was probably the highlight of the con, as Barsoomcore's DinoPirates of Ninja Island was an absolute blast.  It may also have sold a copy of True 20, as I really liked the system.  I trampled an escaping villain with a Triceratops. 

After that came a lackluster game at the Pathfinder Society - I didn't really realize that it was a "living campaign" sort of deal, and I especially didn't realize that they weren't using Pathfinder rules!  I was wanting to try Pathfinder at the Con.  Oh well.

That night was the Ennies - I went to one of these a long time ago, and haven't been to one since, but this year was great.  Moving tributes to Gary Gygax and Eric Wujcik (sp?), and great products winning prizes.  I'll second Chris Perkins' class move of asking the Paizo guys up on stage when WoTC won the Silver Ennie for Expedition to Castle Greyhawk, especially as it turns out that Paizo won the gold Ennie in the same product (Piratecat as host: "uh guys?  Don't go too far...")

Saturday I only had one game but it was also a great one - Rel's Sky Galleons of Mars.  I got to be swashbucklery again, play Carlotta, the defrocked nun turned pirate turned crew member of the Indomitable.  This was the All-Mod (plus a mod's brother) game.  Fun, fun, fun.

Finally on Sunday, I got top play Mutants and Masterminds as run by Piratecat.  Another great group of players, and I managed to make excellent use of my super-scientist's eidetic memory to defeat the bad guy at the end.

Then back to Chi-town!  We gave Piratecat a lift to the city, and I came home to rest and go through my pictures - I have about a hundred to sort through and see what I can put up on Picasa.  I'll post here when I do - I've got some nice ones.

See you all next year!


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## Rel (Aug 18, 2008)

Scott_Rouse said:


> Longshadow,
> 
> I would like to personally apologize for the total lack of professionalism and customer service you received at the Wizards of the Coast booth. Yes we under ordered the FR books and lots of people were  probably asking about them and likely upset about us being sold out but that is no excuse for apathy and rudeness.
> 
> ...




Where is the +rep button?  Nice job, Scott!


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## Mistwell (Aug 18, 2008)

(not looking for free products here, just mentioning my experience).

I also had a negative experience at the WOTC booth.  And mind you, I have been a super cheerleader for WOTC since the announcement of 4e (heck, since the announcement that Dragon and Dungeon were being pulled from Paizo and going in-house and online).  In fact, I have gotten a lot of flak from people I like for that staunch loyalty to WOTC.  So I was going in with a very positive view of WOTC, in what was to be my first meeting with anyone from the company in person.

My wife had a booth in the autograph area, and I got to the WOTC booth 8 minutes before opening on Saturday morning.  

I had been told the day before that the FRCS book was out, but more would be back in the next morning, and possibly more DM screens though maybe not.  So, I made a point of getting there first thing in the morning.

Me: "Do you have any DM screens?"
WOTC Employee: "No, gone, not going to be any more for the con."
Me: "OK, could I get one of those forgotten realms campaign setting books (indicating the stack of books on the shelf behind the counter)".
WOTC: (looks at my special guest badge, no recognition apparently) "No, not until 10 (flat monotone bureaucratic tone)." 
Me: Quizzical look, waiting for some more explanation, and then a shrug and I left.

Yes, that's right...no explanation beyond asking me to wait 8 minutes.  For no particular reason it seemed.  The booth was full of WOTC folks doing nothing but chatting to each other.  The register was on and ready.  All set up seemed to be done.  Nobody could have possibly arrived before me at 10am, because I was STANDING RIGHT THERE.  

I would have been fine with some explanation.  Something like "I'd like to sell it to you right now, but my boss told me I cannot sell anything until 10am because it's in limited supply".  Or "I'd love to help you, but it will still take a couple of minutes for [whatever technical issues might prevent a transaction at that time]."  Or even "I'd be happy to do that, but the convention rules say I cannot do that during non-convention hours".  Or ANYTHING other than a deadpan "No, not until 10".  

It felt to me like a purely lazy, bureaucratic answer.  As if there WAS no reason for not selling the book to me aside from the fact that he didn't HAVE to do it for another 6-8 minutes.  That his standing there doing nothing was more important than customer service to someone TRYING to spend money on a product he was there to sell.

I could have stayed and waited the 8 minutes (actually, 6 minutes at this point), but decided against it.  Why buy at full price from WOTC when I could buy at 30% off from Amazon.com? I mean, I want to support WOTC by buying direct and writing a review when I get home, but if those 6-8 minutes of doing nothing are more important than helping a customer out, then I've got no reason for any feelings of loyalty to WOTC enough to just stand there doing nothing for 6 minutes so that I can pay more to buy it directly from them.  I'll buy the book later from a discount source.


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## Jack99 (Aug 18, 2008)

Mistwell said:


> .......




You must often leave stores, if that is your usual reaction to such a responce from a sales guy ...


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## Kid Charlemagne (Aug 18, 2008)

I've put up my pcitures in this Picture Gallery!  I'll title them later so people will know who's who - I'm not sure of some folks 100%, and I wanted to get them up ASAP!


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## Rel (Aug 18, 2008)

Jack99 said:


> You must often leave stores, if that is your usual reaction to such a responce from a sales guy ...




Well of course.  Leaving and buying a product elsewhere is a pretty typical reaction to rudeness by a salesperson.


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## Darrin Drader (Aug 18, 2008)

Jack99 said:


> You must often leave stores, if that is your usual reaction to such a responce from a sales guy ...




I often leave stores because I dislike being there to begin with. If there were some way to get my groceries and mundane items such as toilet paper and dishwashing soap delivered to my door, I'd be all over that. I do realize that there are places where you can do exactly that online, but they don't have that where I live. Most of my books, gadgets, software, and other more expensive items are ordered online. I'd be perfectly happy if I never had to set foot in another store as long as I live.


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## Scott_Rouse (Aug 18, 2008)

Mistwell said:


> (not looking for free products here, just mentioning my experience).





Mistwell,

I am sorry you also had a bad experience. 

I can understand that the person behind the counter may have been following directions or was trying to keep it fair for everyone and wait until the hall opened, but that is not an excuse for rudeness. 

I have a meeting planned withe the show manager and he has instructed me to be brutally honest with my thoughts. I will discuss my concerns regarding customer service (or lack there of). 


Sincerely,


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## Jack99 (Aug 18, 2008)

Rel said:


> Well of course.  Leaving and buying a product elsewhere is a pretty typical reaction to rudeness by a salesperson.




You really think the WotC guy in question was rude? (see below if you forgot what he said)



> Me: "Do you have any DM screens?"
> WOTC Employee: "No, gone, not going to be any more for the con."
> Me: "OK, could I get one of those forgotten realms campaign setting books (indicating the stack of books on the shelf behind the counter)".
> WOTC: (looks at my special guest badge, no recognition apparently) "No, not until 10 (flat monotone bureaucratic tone)."






Darrin Drader said:


> I often leave stores because I dislike being there to begin with. If there were some way to get my groceries and mundane items such as toilet paper and dishwashing soap delivered to my door, I'd be all over that. I do realize that there are places where you can do exactly that online, but they don't have that where I live. Most of my books, gadgets, software, and other more expensive items are ordered online. I'd be perfectly happy if I never had to set foot in another store as long as I live.




Okay, I am not quite sure how to respond to that, aside that there is probably some professional help to be had, for issues like that...


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## Scribble (Aug 18, 2008)

Scott_Rouse said:


> I have a meeting planned withe the show manager and he has instructed me to be brutally honest with my thoughts. I will discuss my concerns regarding customer service (or lack there of).




Make sure to tell him should he fail you again, you will be brutally honest with a spiked chain rather then your thoughts... 

Wait... that's not standard business protocal?


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## Maggan (Aug 18, 2008)

Longshadow said:


> (such as all those people wearing those incredibly tacky “4th Edition Killed Gary” T-Shirts)




Excuse me? Am I reading this right? People were walking around with t-shirts with the text "4th edition killed Gary"?

To me that shows serious disrespect for the man, and I find it sad to use the memory of Gary Gyxax to make an edition war attack.

/M


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## Thaumaturge (Aug 18, 2008)

Stormtower said:


> Special thanks to the "Ice Pirate Lords" in Slot 13 on Sunday morning... if any of you are ENWorlders, that table rocked the house.  Great RP, great tactics, just one of those totally in-the-zone experiences where all 6 players and myself were completely sucked into the narrative and the combats.




As the Ice Pirate Lord representative to ENWorld, I'd like to say thanks for running a great round.  Your energy picked us up and carried us.  We had a blast.

If anyone gets a chance to play at a Stormtower run table, take it.  

Thaumaturge.
(Patrin, Dragonborn Warlord of the Ice Pirate Lords)


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## Mistwell (Aug 18, 2008)

Jack99 said:


> You must often leave stores, if that is your usual reaction to such a responce from a sales guy ...




What about my response seemed unusual or extreme to you?


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## Rel (Aug 18, 2008)

Jack99 said:


> You really think the WotC guy in question was rude? (see below if you forgot what he said)




Oh it's less rude than response that Longshadow reported earlier but, yeah, I still think it is rude.

The supposition when I take the time to enter somebody's store is that they want to sell me their product.  If I note that they have the product in stock, say, "I'll have one of those, please" and they tell me "No" then I think it would be nice if they gave me a (good) reason why I've wasted my time in coming to their store.

To reiterate what Mistwell said, if the guy had offered an explanation for WHY the product could not be sold at that time, we wouldn't be having this conversation.


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## Rel (Aug 18, 2008)

Jack99 said:


> Okay, I am not quite sure how to respond to that, aside that there is probably some professional help to be had, for issues like that...




I'll note, by the way, that Mistwell's experience with rudeness was perhaps a shade less rude than this bit that you posted.  While I can't improve the customer service at WotC, I can improve it here.  So knock it off or you'll be absent from the boards for a while.


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## jaerdaph (Aug 18, 2008)

Longshadow said:


> (such as all those people wearing those incredibly tacky “4th Edition Killed Gary” T-Shirts)




I'm no fan of 4e, but that is absolutely in poor taste. I've said it before and I'll say it again, for a hobby with such a big social interaction component, RPGs sure tend to attract some of the most socially inept people.


----------



## Jack99 (Aug 18, 2008)

Mistwell said:


> What about my response seemed unusual or extreme to you?




Sure, telling you why you had to wait 6 minutes would have been the best way of handling things. But based on how I read what you wrote, I didn't find his response rude. That's why I think, that your reaction to not buy it and instead choosing to "punish" WotC by buying it from another source, was way out of left field.

Now, please do not think that I am one of those people that never complains and just smiles and nods. In fact, I am semi-famous for not taking any crap, especially from sales-people (_mod edit: yes, it is for another board_). I think the other poster was justified in his reaction.

When that is said, you were there, I wasn't. 

Either way, I hope you still had a good Con. I really wanted to be there, but I had trouble justifying the $1500 plane ticket with the missus... Not to mention the timing sucked, work-wise.

Cheers


----------



## Mistwell (Aug 18, 2008)

Jack99 said:


> Sure, telling you why you had to wait 6 minutes would have been the best way of handling things. But based on how I read what you wrote, I didn't find his response rude. That's why I think, that your reaction to not buy it and instead choosing to "punish" WotC by buying it from another source, was way out of left field.




It's not to punish WOTC, and sorry if I left that impression.  It's merely ambivalence.  I was not going to play a silly game of him standing there and waiting for 6 minutes, me standing there in front of him waiting for 6 minutes, us both looking at our watches and tapping our feet, looking around at nothing, maybe making small talk, and then when the 6 minutes was up him handing me the book and taking my money.  It was nonsensical.  At that point, why NOT just buy it another time, for the lower price? It's not like I had a burning need for the item.  I really was just trying to buy it from the source out of support for them, like I try to do with a lot of products I buy at a convention instead of over the net.



> Now, please do not think that I am one of those people that never complains and just smiles and nods. In fact, I am semi-famous for not taking any crap, especially from sales-people (and Christians, but I think that is a story for another board). I think the other poster was justified in his reaction.
> 
> When that is said, you were there, I wasn't.
> 
> ...




I had a great Con, and this was a relatively minor issue in the grand scheme of things.  But, since the topic had been raised, I thought I would mention my experience with that booth.

I had four great games with folks from here and/or CircvsMaximvs, the Hygena booth was rocking, I had some good dinners with folks from the Sci-Fi board and from the Superhero show, a good party with the people from CM, and I bought a lot of cool stuff (and spent too much on miniatures).


----------



## Jack99 (Aug 18, 2008)

Mistwell said:


> It's not to punish WOTC, and sorry if I left that impression.  It's merely ambivalence.  I was not going to play a silly game of him standing there and waiting for 6 minutes, me standing there in front of him waiting for 6 minutes, us both looking at our watches and tapping our feet, looking around at nothing, maybe making small talk, and then when the 6 minutes was up him handing me the book and taking my money.  It was nonsensical.  At that point, why NOT just buy it another time, for the lower price? It's not like I had a burning need for the item.  I really was just trying to buy it from the source out of support for them, like I try to do with a lot of products I buy at a convention instead of over the net.



Fair enough. I guess I just read too much into your first post.


Mistwell said:


> I had a great Con, and this was a relatively minor issue in the grand scheme of things.  But, since the topic had been raised, I thought I would mention my experience with that booth.



Cool


----------



## Xath (Aug 18, 2008)

I had an awesome con.  Unlike last year, I didn't entirely overbook myself, so I had plenty of time to hang out with people.  I played in some great games run by Rel, Piratecat, Cassander, JohnCrichton and Barsoomcore and I had a blasty-blast in every one!

The ENnies ceremony went over smoothly and we had a great batch of volunteers for the booth.  I'm super-excited to be involved for 2009 as well.  Congrats to all of the publishers and the new 2009 judges (Kennon, Jody, Zach, and Chris)!

We just got home a few hours ago, and I for one am exhausted.  This whole Tuesday-Monday thing was totally awesome, but I don't know if I'll have the energy (or PTO) for it next year.


----------



## Scribble (Aug 18, 2008)

Jack, Mist... come on you guys hug it out!


----------



## demadog (Aug 18, 2008)

Scott_Rouse said:


> Mistwell,
> 
> I am sorry you also had a bad experience.
> 
> ...




Hi Scott, I'm not looking for anything either, but I had a similiar experience at the booth.  I asked if there were an DM screens left and the saleman responded, "no, we've sold out" in a seemingly aggressive tone.  I tried to brush it off by clenching my fist and giving a comic "arrggg", and then the guy mocked me.  I guess he knew I wouldnt punch him, but for a split second I wasn't so sure of myself.  I walked away and was going to let it go, but I decided to post to let you know that it seems that the other's experiences were not isolated.

Thanks for your attention,

Al


----------



## Jack99 (Aug 18, 2008)

Scribble said:


> Jack, Mist... come on you guys hug it out!




We did! 

You want a hug as well?


----------



## Mike_Lescault (Aug 18, 2008)

Scott_Rouse said:


> I would like to personally apologize for the total lack of professionalism and customer service you received at the Wizards of the Coast booth. Yes we under ordered the FR books and lots of people were probably asking about them and likely upset about us being sold out but that is no excuse for apathy and rudeness.




I want to echo what Scott said. We had so many great folks take the time at Gen Con to come by and visit our booth that at times I felt sad that I couldn't personally thank them all for coming by. This is doubly true for those who were interested enough to consider buying our products at the booth. Folks like that are the reason those of us from Wizards of the Coast are lucky enough to have jobs in our industry and they deserve our utmost respect.

Gen Con was a very long and busy conference for many of us, as both Scott and I can attest(as well as anyone who bumped into us late in the show). I can understand how some of our hard-working booth staff may have been a bit worn down and tired, but nothing would justify rude or disrespectful behavior to a customer at our booth.

The Rouse has much more juice than I do, but I'll be following up on this as well. Sorry again for anyone who had a bad experience. I can't articulate just how crushed I was when I read Longshadow's post. =(

-Mike


----------



## Scribble (Aug 18, 2008)

Jack99 said:


> We did!
> 
> You want a hug as well?




Just can't resist a chance to quote Ari Gold!


----------



## Mistwell (Aug 18, 2008)

Here are some pics from the Con:

Sunday PirateCat M&M Golden Age game:






Saturday The Great JC d20 Modern Escape from Cronos game (about half the players):





Dinner with some superheroes (left to right: The Defuser, Feedback, Me):





Heading home at the airport:





Some more pictures here:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/41453615@N00/sets/72157606809347444/


----------



## Longshadow (Aug 18, 2008)

> Longshadow,
> 
> I would like to personally apologize for the total lack of professionalism and customer service you received at the Wizards of the Coast booth. Yes we under ordered the FR books and lots of people were probably asking about them and likely upset about us being sold out but that is no excuse for apathy and rudeness.
> 
> ...




Scott,
Thank you for responding.  I wasn't expecting any sort of official response, especially one as gracious and generous as this.  Please understand that I was also in no way trawling for any sort of compensation for the bad experience, but was merely venting.  In fact, I have already made arrangements with my FLGS for them to hold me a copy of the book when they get it in tomorrow.  However, that being said, I appreciate the gesture immensely.  I will still PM you as requested, though.  

Again, kudos on a very commendable response; it restores some of my faith in the company's professionalism.


----------



## Traycor (Aug 18, 2008)

demadog said:


> I tried to brush it off by clenching my fist and giving a comic "arrggg", and then the guy mocked me.


----------



## Darrin Drader (Aug 18, 2008)

I'd just like to mention that as a former part of WotC customer service, the company places a great deal of emphasis on the way the company interacts with its customers. While the rest of the company was shrinking, CS was expanding and being held to higher standards than ever before. I have no idea how people with such a lack of CS skills could have ended up behind the counter, but that is not in any way typical for WotC, either through the CS department or their usual convention teams. I suspect that this is a case of one bad apple spoiling the whole barrel.


----------



## Quartermoon (Aug 18, 2008)

GenCon had it's highs and lows for me, but I just want to mention that Piratecat's M&M game on Saturday night was the absolute highlight of the weekend. We all know what a genius he is, and he did not disappoint. Plus, the table was filled with terrific players, most notably a fellow know here as HyperSmerf, I believe, who revealed his own genius in the final scene and surprised even PCat. I had a blast (literally) zooming around as Jetette, and the evening was filled with humor, danger, suspense, romance, and angst, not to mention cookies, robots, refrigerator magnets, trained sea gulls, and piranha.

Thanks to all who made it so great.


----------



## Stormtower (Aug 19, 2008)

Thaumaturge said:


> As the Ice Pirate Lord representative to ENWorld, I'd like to say thanks for running a great round.  Your energy picked us up and carried us.  We had a blast.
> 
> If anyone gets a chance to play at a Stormtower run table, take it.
> 
> ...




Thanks for your kind words, Thaumaturge.  We'll do it all over again in your backyard (Pitt) at DDXP in February!  Looking forward to it.


----------



## Finkin Swiftfingers (Aug 19, 2008)

*WoTC Experience*

I hate to pile on but after this year's GenCon, my entire group swore off from ever buying directly from WoTC again.  Three people (including myself) had negative experiences from the same person who was manning the counter.  I stopped in each day to check to see if the FRCS was available.  After being told it was sold out each day, I asked the guy manning the counter on Saturday if they would have any available on Sunday.  The conversation went like this:

"Will you have any books to tomorrow?"

WoTC Rep: "We'll have about 30 books, it won't even be worth your time stopping down to try and get one" He then followed that up with "Actually it's probably less than that - I'll probably have 15-20 for sale"

I followed with, "Why not have more books available?  It seems that they are selling out within an hour or two each day."

WoTC Rep:  "Where would I put the books?  I only have so much space for product.  What would you have me do with the books I don't sell?  Are you going to pay my shipping costs to send them back when the Con is over if they don't sell?  I don't think so"  

After this comment I just walked away.  The guy talked to me like I was some idiot for asking about the book and asking if they would have any on Sunday.  On Friday I waited a good 5 minutes while two members of WoTC continued a conversation with each other.  When they finally greeted me it was with an annoyed "Yes?" statement.  Every other company at GenCon is generally excited to help someone at their booth - but WoTC was cold and left me feeling like I was not a valued customer.  This was my introduction to trying to prep for the first campaign setting that supports 4E?  I've been a loyal FR player since the Grey Box - I'm not buying the book now.

Other experiences from my group were similiar in tone, though that was probably the worst overall.  It is both sad and funny that when I went back to my room on Saturday to tell the group about my experience - someone else had a similiar story for me.


----------



## ColonelHardisson (Aug 19, 2008)

Jack99 said:


> You must often leave stores, if that is your usual reaction to such a responce from a sales guy ...




When I get treated like that, yeah, I leave, and usually make it clear I didn't appreciate such rudeness. I'm not a doormat for somebody just because I want to buy something from them. I don't often get such treatment, though, because most salespeople I've run across have been pleasant. I can't imagine getting such treatment a lot.


----------



## Kralin Thornberry (Aug 19, 2008)

Scott_Rouse said:


> Longshadow,
> 
> I would like to personally apologize for the total lack of professionalism and customer service you received at the Wizards of the Coast booth. Yes we under ordered the FR books and lots of people were  probably asking about them and likely upset about us being sold out but that is no excuse for apathy and rudeness.
> 
> ...




Now I wish that the "big box" stores could learn something from The Rouse!


----------



## fba827 (Aug 19, 2008)

Longshadow said:


> (snip) various rude attendees (such as all those people wearing those incredibly tacky “4th Edition Killed Gary” T-Shirts),




Seriously? That is _very_ *tacky*!  Sickening actually.

Anyway, sorry for the thread derail... we now return you to our regularly requested GenCon experiences from those that were there.


----------



## JediSoth (Aug 19, 2008)

Scott_Rouse said:


> Longshadow,
> 
> I would like to personally apologize for the total lack of professionalism and customer service you received at the Wizards of the Coast booth. Yes we under ordered the FR books and lots of people were  probably asking about them and likely upset about us being sold out but that is no excuse for apathy and rudeness.
> 
> ...




Wow. That's just incredibly cool, Mr. Rouse. I'll admit to having some lingering bitterness towards WotC (for a variety of reasons that aren't really important), but _that_, sir, is service with a smile...so to speak.

And for the record, I have actually had very good experiences with WotC customer service. When the Aberrations D&D minis set came out, my Sauhagin ranger was missing his umm...head or arm, I think, and I got a new one sent out, no questions asked, with just one e-mail. If I recall, it arrived very quickly, too.


----------



## Darkwolf71 (Aug 19, 2008)

Scott_Rouse said:


> Longshadow,
> 
> I would like to personally apologize for the total lack of professionalism and customer service you received at the Wizards of the Coast booth. Yes we under ordered the FR books and lots of people were  probably asking about them and likely upset about us being sold out but that is no excuse for apathy and rudeness.
> 
> ...



I've had a lot of mixed feelings towards WotC over the last 18 months or so. One thing, however has remained constant. The Rouse is one heck of a stand up guy.

You 'da man.


----------



## davethegame (Aug 19, 2008)

Even though we got a bag of free stuff (Thanks, Katie!) I still stopped by the WotC booth to buy the Forgotten Realms Campaign Setting, new Dungeon Tiles, and H2. The staff that I dealt with were super-friendly, even while keeping a big line moving. I guess the mood changes completely when they run out...

Anyway, here's where we're assembling links to all our GenCon coverage:
http://www.critical-hits.com/2008/08/15/gencon-2008-coverage/

And here's the pictures we took:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/davethegame/sets/72157606742295414/


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## JediSoth (Aug 19, 2008)

I blogged my entire Gen Con experience, so I won't repost it here...

I had a great time. Though I was stupid and overbooked myself, I would argue that it was the best year, yet, for me, despite the lack of good swag. The highlight, as always, was getting to see friends from a far again and getting to game with them.


----------



## Banshee16 (Aug 19, 2008)

Longshadow said:


> I try to be a polite person and teach my children to be the same.  I have a very low tolerance for direct and intentional rudeness (I'll tend to overlook the obviously _unintentional _rudeness...we're talking gamers, after all) .  Maybe I’m just a little old-fashioned, but this was an astonishing display as the face of a company interacting with the public, at least in my opinion.  Okay, the booth staff may have caught some grief during the Con from various rude attendees (such as all those people wearing those incredibly tacky “4th Edition Killed Gary” T-Shirts), but still, on what level was this at all professional or even excusable?  If I hadn’t been so angry at the time, I would have had the presence of mind to get the name of the jackass, but sadly I didn’t.  I’ll sure as hell remember his face and voice, though.  I’ll continue to support my local FLGS and buy WOTC products through them, but I will NOT be giving my money _directly _to WOTC again.  Period.  Oh, I was pissed.




That's where you write down the name on his badge, and write a complaint to WotC customer support or whatever, afterwards.  That kind of behaviour is objectionable, and the hopefully that employee isn't brought back for another Con......customer service like that can do a lot of damage to a company.  I'd imagine you weren't the only person who had a bad experience with the person.

Banshee


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## Mark Plemmons (Aug 19, 2008)

Longshadow said:
			
		

> (such as all those people wearing those incredibly tacky “4th Edition Killed Gary” T-Shirts)




I killed one of those guys and took his stuff.





Who says D&D doesn't teach social interaction?


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## Mark Plemmons (Aug 19, 2008)

Finkin Swiftfingers said:


> WoTC Rep:  "Where would I put the books?  I only have so much space for product.  What would you have me do with the books I don't sell?  Are you going to pay my shipping costs to send them back when the Con is over if they don't sell?  I don't think so"




Yeah, that's pretty much one of the stupidest replies ever.  Even ignoring the poor customer service, it's just silly to bring only about 100 books to a convention with thousands of your fans, unless it's a small advance printing batch.

Our booth was up by the exhibit hall doors on the WotC side, and it was like a herd of mad cows every morning when the doors opened, with gamers running to the WotC booth, only barely restrained by the shouts of the security guards.

WotC shouldn't be blamed for the overeager crowd, but limiting supplies to even 200-300 books a day would have been a lot better than 20-30.


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## catsclaw227 (Aug 19, 2008)

What booth had the obnoxious "4e killed Gary" shirts?  I want to know who NOT to spend my on.


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## crazy_monkey1956 (Aug 19, 2008)

I was one of the volunteers at the GenCon booth, though I wasn't at the counter (I was running delves and killing PCs with the Beholder).

I just want to say, from a personal standpoint that I am sorry for the poor treatment longshadow received at the counter.  I have enough experience in customer relations to know that that was uncalled for.  This was my first time at GenCon and most of the volunteer are a great batch of folks, helpful, courteous and considerate.  Hopefully that one bad example won't ruin folks opinions of the rest of us.

I only got a brief chance to interact with The Rouse and I will vouch for the fact that he is a stand-up, pure awesome kind of dude.  

Edit: I didn't see a booth actually selling the "4th Edition Killed Gary Gygax" shirts.  I think those wearing them brought them to the Con.


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## The_Baldman (Aug 19, 2008)

they were not limited to 20-30 a day. That Sunday I was bringing down every extra FRCS I could find that I had not handed out to my judges (which I handed out over 200 of them to my workers Saturday night). I told them I could probably scrape up 20-30 extra ones which would not last very long versus the demand but it was at least another 20-30 happy people. 

I am not defending some of what was said. Certain tones are inexcusable from a customer service position. Just please keep in mind the crap they have to put up with. I saw it a few times and it's why I don't do those types of jobs (or if I did I wouldn't be doing them very long LOL). By the time you ask them about the FRCS they've probably been asked that a few hundred times. Most of those by people probably being a little less polite then you. Their answer is still not acceptable but I can totally understand how they could get to that point.

As to the line and 10am selling it's due to other vendors from my understanding. In past years (and heck this year) they send their lackeys over to line-up before the room opens. They then buy the stuff and haul it back to resell from their booth. "Look what we have. Wotc is out but get yours here". Some vendor's were buying DM's screens in the VIG session on Thursday in 10 packs before they were stopped. They want to sell the product to the fans not to another vendor who can then charge them extra for it or make them look bad.


----------



## catsclaw227 (Aug 19, 2008)

crazy_monkey1956 said:


> Edit: I didn't see a booth actually selling the "4th Edition Killed Gary Gygax" shirts.  I think those wearing them brought them to the Con.



I see.  I had heard that some guys manning a booth were wearing them, though I wasn't sure if anyone was selling them.

Either way, It's really poor taste.  if you are working a booth, you are representing a company's brand, or in this case jeopardizing it's brand.


----------



## coyote6 (Aug 19, 2008)

Quartermoon said:


> [...]Piratecat's M&M game on Saturday night was the absolute highlight of the weekend. We all know what a genius he is, and he did not disappoint. Plus, the table was filled with terrific players, most notably a fellow know here as HyperSmerf, I believe, who revealed his own genius in the final scene and surprised even PCat. I had a blast (literally) zooming around as Jetette, and the evening was filled with humor, danger, suspense, romance, and angst, not to mention cookies, robots, refrigerator magnets, trained sea gulls, and piranha.
> 
> Thanks to all who made it so great.




What she said. I had a blast.


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## Mistwell (Aug 19, 2008)

wavester said:


> As to the line and 10am selling it's due to other vendors from my understanding. In past years (and heck this year) they send their lackeys over to line-up before the room opens. They then buy the stuff and haul it back to resell from their booth. "Look what we have. Wotc is out but get yours here". Some vendor's were buying DM's screens in the VIG session on Thursday in 10 packs before they were stopped. They want to sell the product to the fans not to another vendor who can then charge them extra for it or make them look bad.




I was asking for one copy, at full price, as a fan (I had already told him I was there the day before and told to come back that morning).  And the guy clearly looked at my badge and saw "Special Guest" and not "Exhibitor" before replying. That said, I still would have been fine if he just said what you did...almost ANY explanation would have been fine with me.

Anyway, sorry to even bring it up again.  I had a blast, and this was not a big deal.


----------



## Mistwell (Aug 19, 2008)

catsclaw227 said:


> What booth had the obnoxious "4e killed Gary" shirts?  I want to know who NOT to spend my on.




Edit: It was *not * the Dragon Roots booth.


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## Hypersmurf (Aug 19, 2008)

Kid Charlemagne said:


> I trampled an escaping villain with a Triceratops.




_VICTORIAAAAAAA-A!_

-Nob.


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## Morrus (Aug 19, 2008)

catsclaw227 said:


> I see.  I had heard that some guys manning a booth were wearing them, though I wasn't sure if anyone was selling them.




If nobody was selling them there, somebody was coordinating and sellng them somewhere.  It's remarkably tasteless, nonetheless.  I'd have been disgusted to see anyone wearing such a thing.


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## Hypersmurf (Aug 19, 2008)

Quartermoon said:


> Plus, the table was filled with terrific players, most notably a fellow know here as HyperSmerf, I believe, who revealed his own genius in the final scene and surprised even PCat. I had a blast (literally) zooming around as Jetette, and the evening was filled with humor, danger, suspense, romance, and angst, not to mention cookies, robots, refrigerator magnets, trained sea gulls, and piranha.




Never met you before, may never see you again... but I'll certainly never forget you!  Having Jetette and Dynamo finally get together at the end was one of my favourite Role-Playing Moments of the con   And with the wrong player on the other side of the table, I doubt it would have been anywhere near as cool.

Thanks for making that happen 

-Hyp.


----------



## Bretbo (Aug 19, 2008)

Rel said:


> (although those two hours were quite pleasant, having been spent in the company of *Bretbo *and Piratecat respectively and I picked up a couple products that I think I'll enjoy).




Ditto, pal!


----------



## Silver Moon (Aug 19, 2008)

Hypersmurf said:


> Having Jetette and Dynamo finally get together at the end was one of my favourite Role-Playing Moments of the con.



I would have loved to see that!  I had a great time in an earlier game of that module as Liberty Lass.


----------



## Rel (Aug 19, 2008)

Hypersmurf said:


> Never met you before, may never see you again... but I'll certainly never forget you!  Having Jetette and Dynamo finally get together at the end was one of my favourite Role-Playing Moments of the con   And with the wrong player on the other side of the table, I doubt it would have been anywhere near as cool.
> 
> Thanks for making that happen
> 
> -Hyp.




Stop trying to get into Quartermoon's PANTS!!


----------



## der_kluge (Aug 20, 2008)

x-posted from CM.

Wednesday
Flight leaves at around noon or so. I'm surprised by how much my flight attendant looks like Ellen Degeneres. No gamers spotted.

I have absolutely -zero- layover at O'Hare. Walk from one flight and immediately board the next. ing awesome. I start playing "Gamer/Not a Gamer" on this flight. Hint: a derby hat will give it away every. ing. time. Note to dude wearing the "Gen Con" t-shirt. You're not even making this hard on me.

Grab a ride to the hotels with some other gamers. I walk to the ES from their stop. It's only a few blocks. Crash in the hotel lobby. See Underpants Gnome who looks suspiciously like Crothian. He doesn't even let me in on this relatively obscure fact. Bastard.

I see Reveal wandering around, and meet him. I'm trying to find Stebbins so I can get a room key. I ask the front desk, and he's in the system, and apparently has checked in. That's reassuring. He's not answering his phone.

I call Nareau and he comes over and gives me his room key so I can dump my  off and go eat. What a guy.

8:00 - Nareau's room. Riggs and are I by ourselves in the room just shooting the . Lamest CM party ever? Well, at 8 o'clock it was. By 9 o'clock, the place was standing room only.

Holy . I met so many people. My head's swimming trying to get it all straight.

Thursday
Head downstairs and join Reveal's DCC game. Apparently there's an empty slot. I write down a wonderful quote. "We're staying in initiative because of the sheep." When you're 0th level, sheep matter.

Grab a bite to eat.

Head to the dealer hall. I step into it at 1:40 and have to work the ENWorld booth at 2:00 and then I realize I don't know where it is. Ooh - my first quest! After a few minutes of searching, I recall someone saying something about 1500, so I finally found it on that row. So, I made my wisdom check to recall some information. So that was handy. Worked the booth with *Hand of Evil who is a swell guy. Xath is frantically running around putting out fires, and then we get the weirdest one of all - apparently Dave Arneson hadn't been invited to the Ennies, and was upset. Some "handler" guy came up to us to express Arneson's frustration. I was a little confused, because I wasn't even aware that Arneson was there, or that he was receiving an award. Cause I was like "anyone can come to the Ennies - he's welcome to come." But then the guy tells me about this award. A few moments later Dave actually arrives at the booth in his wheelchair with his nephew and Xath comes by and basically personally invites Dave to the Ennies. For whatever reason, the people the Ennies staff had been in communications with never bothered to tell Dave that he was invited. Very strange. But, fortunately it all got worked out, and Dave seemed cool about it in the end. Whew.

Eat.

At 7:00, I have a seminar on "Impromptu GM'ing". Funny thing is, I'm running my Round-robin GM game at 8:00 so that seemed like a perfect segue. Worst. Seminar. Ever. I can't begin to describe how annoying the guy was, how unprepared he was, how pompous and idiotic he was, and how the seminar mostly had extremely little to do with impromptu GM'ing. I knew it was going to suck when he bragged at the beginning that he had no notes and was going to improvise his seminar on improvisation. Holy , was I right. One curious thing though, was at some point he asked "by show of hands, how many people in here dislike 4th edition as much as I do?" and in a room of roughly 60-70 people, I bet about 70% of them raised their hands. Surprising.

At 8:00, someone from ENWorld, a Beldar-something who had met me during my stint at the ENWorld booth wanted to play in my game. I apologize if others were trying to find it. Seems maybe Brent Nall signed up, but I hadn't bothered trying to take a list of players for it, since I'd assumed (incorrectly) that there would be an ENWorld sign-up book for games, and I could manage it through that. Oops. So, he headed to the pick-up area and found 3 others to play. A good time was had by all. Plot synopsis: We had to stop a mystical key from opening up a gate to the elemental plane of water by getting an earth elemental to eat it. The most brilliant part was when the guy tied the "coins from an island nation" we'd found in the first 30 minutes of the game to the location where we needed to go to find the earth elemental. Brilliant.

Friday
Never again will I schedule 3 games in one day. . What a chore.

First up, Belen's SWSE, Not Star Wars game. What a groovy ride this one was. My favorite line was when I told Fraisala that "I was just ing around" in my thick Indian accent. Wonderful.

Rodrigo's Winter Witch game was brilliant. I'll forgive him for using 4th edition. It was an interesting experiment, though I'm not entirely convinced it creates the perfect mood for the game. It worked, though, and wasn't an issue. He's a great story-teller. I particularly liked placing a bear trap on the troglodytes scrotum. Good times.

Head back over to the lobby for Dire Wolf's Steam Tunnels game. Fortunately, I think we were all pretty loopy by this point, and boy did it show. I played a football player LARPer, and I decided the only logical reason my character would LARP would be to get some tail. So, he was the tough guy who ended up getting attacked *almost* as much as the bad guys did. I never saw the pepper-spray coming. Amazingly, we managed to actually finish this scenario in a respectable amount of time. Kudos to Dire Wolf and his truly inventive scenario. Very clever.

Saturday

I'd told Marcus Americus that I could play in his Saturday morning game since I knew it had openings, and I was free all morning. I think some other folks were trashed, and had little interest in wanting to play that early on Saturday. I can certainly understand. I wasn't terribly upset when he decided to cancel it. I don't care what other folks say about Marcus, he's a super nice guy, and I was glad I got to hang out with him.

So, I headed to the dealer hall instead, which was nice, since I'd not gotten to spend very much time there up to this point. I ended up picking up some decent deals, and a few interesting things.
Dread, signed by the author.
CAPES!
I picked up WoTC's Sandstorm (desert book) for $5 at Troll and Toad.
I picked up the Planer Handbook from the Pinnacle booth for $5. Too good to pass up.
I ended up stopping by the XRP booth and chatting with Joe and Suzi for a bit. I'd been meaning to pick up their Monster Geographica line, and at $5 a pop, I couldn't resist all 4 of them. Apparently, I got the last every print copy of "Forest". Yay me!
I picked up two foam swords from the Everquest booth for my daughters. Free swag!
I bought two family games from the Simply Fun booth - one called Handy which is basically described as "Twister for your hands" - you have to hold these foam balls between your fingers. More on this later.
I also picked up a game called Walk the Dog where you try to collect sets of little dogs. It comes with 7 sets of 9 dogs (63 total). My kids will probably just end up playing with the dogs. My oldest seems to like it.
I also got some good swag from working the ENWorld booth. I'd actually forgotten about that. More free stuff!

At 3:00, I hook up with John Crichton and his Escape from the Cronus game. I played the starlight, Azure with her pet disintegrator rifle Schnookums. I spent twenty minutes coming up with movie quotes. Hopefully JC will post them. They seemed like a big hit. Though admittedly some were corny. My favorite movie title "Drill me Hard - A love story." What a great game, and great players. Holy . Can you guys come to my house every week and entertain me like this?

At 7:30, I bolt a little early from the game (which ended up running 5 hours) to the Indianapolis Symphony Orchestra's production of "Video Games Live". I'm not going to bore you with all the details. This was OK. I heard the U.S. Premiere of the theme music to Diablo III (impressive) - but my favorite was probably the music to Zelda. A bunch of the games I wasn't entirely familiar with. This was almost as much rock concert as it was "orchestra" as for the latter songs, one of the guys brings out his guitar to play a few pieces. Highlight: The announcer begins to announce the game and he says "the company is Square Enix, and the game is", and at that point, someone in the audience shouts, "over-rated". Holy crap. After the show, I stood in line like fan boy to talk to the composers, and actually got to meet one of the guys who did a lot of the dialogue/plot writing for Baldur's Gate, NeverWinter Nights and SW:KotOR. What was amazing about talking to the composers and this guy was just how absolutely ing arbitrary it was that they ended up with these careers. The composers hadn't even majored in music, and neither of them even set out to be composers. The one guy who was also the MC actually ended up in the business by being in a music store, wearing a computer-related t-shirt, and meeting someone who was in the video game industry who needed a composer. ing crazy.

Sunday
The picnic was great. I actually don't completely suck at throwing a frisbee despite how ever many years its probably been since I've last done that.FickleGM was awesome for helping organize that, and I'm pretty sure Sidereal Knight helped as well. Great guys. It was nice to just sort of wind down, and take it easy.

On the way to the airport, I actually see Rel and Riggs and we all share a taxi ride together to the airport.

On the flight out of Indy, I just couldn't help but love how everyone was reading game books. That was awesome.

What was even more cool was that I ended up meeting a guy who runs the only game store in Tulsa I hadn't managed to find yet (apparently it's mostly card games) and we chatted quite a bit in our 2 1/2 hour layover in O'Hare. Nice guy.

My wife's friend's husband actually picked me up at the airport, whom I'd never actually met. Turns out, he's also a huge gamer, and we spent the entire trip home talking about gaming. Crazy! So, my Gen Con didn't officially end until I hit the sack at about midnight Sunday.

Whew!*


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## der_kluge (Aug 20, 2008)

Wow. apparently I cuss a lot.


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## Rel (Aug 20, 2008)

der_kluge said:


> Wow. apparently I cuss a lot.




We know.  It's ing deplorable.


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## Rodrigo Istalindir (Aug 20, 2008)

Rel said:


> We know.  It's ing deplorable.




The oft-cussing gamer would be an excellent demographic to target with a new product.


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## guivre (Aug 20, 2008)

der_kluge said:


> One curious thing though, was at some point he asked "by show of hands, how many people in here dislike 4th edition as much as I do?" and in a room of roughly 60-70 people, I bet about 70% of them raised their hands. Surprising.




Wasn't even close to 70%.

From the back it was clearly closer to 30%.


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## Mark (Aug 20, 2008)

Rodrigo Istalindir said:


> The oft-cussing gamer would be an excellent demographic to target with a new product.





_It better be a great ing product._


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## Hypersmurf (Aug 20, 2008)

Rel said:


> Stop trying to get into Quartermoon's PANTS!!




Hey, I spent the first 90% of the game trying _not_ to get into Quartermoon's pants!  She just wouldn't take no for an answer!

-Hyp.


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## Quartermoon (Aug 20, 2008)

Hypersmurf said:


> Never met you before, may never see you again... but I'll certainly never forget you!  Having Jetette and Dynamo finally get together at the end was one of my favourite Role-Playing Moments of the con   And with the wrong player on the other side of the table, I doubt it would have been anywhere near as cool.
> 
> Thanks for making that happen
> 
> -Hyp.




Back at you, sir. It was perfect...who needed that robot pushing wine!



Rel said:


> Stop trying to get into Quartermoon's PANTS!!




You're just jealous. 



Hypersmurf said:


> Hey, I spent the first 90% of the game trying _not_ to get into Quartermoon's pants!  She just wouldn't take no for an answer!




Hey--live fast, that's Jetette's motto! (Mine is actually "Make sure there's chocolate", but that's another story.)


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## Teflon Billy (Aug 20, 2008)

Scott_Rouse said:


> Longshadow,
> 
> I would like to personally apologize for the total lack of professionalism and customer service you received at the Wizards of the Coast booth. Yes we under ordered the FR books and lots of people were  probably asking about them and likely upset about us being sold out but that is no excuse for apathy and rudeness.
> 
> ...




Rouse amazes me


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## Filcher (Aug 20, 2008)

Teflon Billy said:


> Rouse amazes me




Rouse is keeping the soul in D&D. All hail.

I had a blast at Gen Con. Picked up both the PFRG AND the 4E Dungeon Crawl Classics and ran games for both. Fun times.


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## jdeyonke (Aug 20, 2008)

Bad


 Similar WOTC booth experience.  Maybe not as bad as others have posted, but general indifference from those on the other side of the counter.  I also left their booth telling myself I'll just save some money and buy the stuff on-line.


 Played the Delve twice and had two bad experiences.  I was surprised at this, because I played many Delves at DDXP and had a blast.  I guess I was just unlucky in the table make-up plus DM draw.  The first table was later at night, and you could tell the DM did not want to be there anymore.  Add in a moron player, who won initiative, then proceeded to argue with the DM in a frickin' Delve...  Next trip through I had a good DM, but half the table were friends and what I would label “elitist” gamers.  I should have known in line when they were quizzing me on how much I've played 4E, as if I would be holding them back if I didn't have an extensive knowledge of the system.  Luckily for me I've been playing it since before it was released.  About three rounds into the first combat, when we were getting trounced, one of them leans to me and asks if I've used any encounter powers yet.  I looked at him and said “Yes, I've used every one of my encounter powers other than the one which involves skill checks.”  The shut him up pretty good, and I was actually happy when one of them died.    


 Good


 The two LFR games I played in were both awesome.  The modules were good, the parties were good and the DM's were excellent.  I would like to single out Stormtower here, as he ran the Thursday 8:00 a.m. slot of Sense of Wonder I played in.  He was an exceptional DM and I sure wish he lived close so I could bribe him to run our home games.  He was prepared, had all the DM gadgets, the NPC voices, and all the other little things that make a gaming experience fun.  The status tracking system which he mentioned in his post was awesome, and I made sure to get his e-mail address so I could get a copy of it.  Here's another compliment for Stormtower -  You're the best DM I've had since Ed Greenwood! Put that in your sig 



 I played and ran in the Blackmoor campaign, and as usual had a great time.  I don't know what it is, but the players in that campaign are so down to earth.  I even volunteered to run an early Saturday game for the group I ran on Thursday, forgoing my plan to sleep in, just because they were so cool.  I was able to play in a sneak peak of Blackmoor 4E, and can't wait for that book.


 Of course the best part of Gen Con, and the reason we go, is to see friends.  As we get older, in our mid-30's now, the people we grew up gaming with are spread out all over the country.  Ten of us made it to Gen Con this year, coming in from four different states.


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## Hypersmurf (Aug 20, 2008)

jdeyonke said:


> Of course the best part of Gen Con, and the reason we go, is to see friends.




Yup.

As I put it to someone on Sunday night at the dinner: "I don't fly nine-and-a-half thousand miles for the official events, or the dealer hall, or the costumes, or the sights of Sunny Indiana.  I fly nine-and-a-half thousand miles for _the people in this room_."

-Hyp.


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## Michael Dean (Aug 20, 2008)

Longshadow said:


> *The Ugly:*
> I had the single worst customer service experience that I have ever had in all the years I’ve been attending cons.    Wizards of the Coast booth.  Early Saturday afternoon, about 2 PM-ish.  I strolled up to the counter ->
> 
> ------




I hate to laugh, but I witnessed a scene at WOTC's booth at about the same time Saturday, only it was a poor schmuck ahead of me trying to RETURN his copy of Forgotten Realms because he didn't like it.  The counter guy made him wait while he disappeared for a bit, came back and told him they wouldn't refund his money.  The guy asked why, and got a short "because we can't."  The guy spent the next few minutes trying to find someone to buy it off of him.  If only you had hooked up with that guy!

Edited after reading Scout Rouse's sincere apology so as not to seem like I'm dogpiling bad service.


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## exile (Aug 20, 2008)

This was one of teh best Gen Cons I have attended in recent years.

General
1. My wife had other stuff to do and did not attend. I love her dearly, but she cramps my gaming.
2. With the exception of Saturday night, I shared the friend with only 1-2 other friends, meaning we had a lot more space than years past.
3. Despite the intense rivalry between 3.Xers and 4E'ers, the two systems, played back to back, are a lot alike, and both still hold lots for me to love.

Wednesday
1. During the drive from Toledo to Indy, my friend Sean and I did some world-building. I am particularly proud of the backstory we created for halflings in the world. 
2. We arrived early. I already had a badge; Sean was able to get his in minutes. 
3. I had not pre-registered for events, so I tried for some of my top priorities, the four Pathfinder Society scenarios. I was actually able to get into all four of them, but later I realized that two were scheduled for teh same time period.
4. D&D 4E pick-up game in the Hyatt. We just through our stuff out on the table, and were able to attract a group of four additional players. Two had never played 4E, two were well-versed in the game. We had a nice little tropical adventure, fighting shark cultists, rescuing island children, and escaping from an angry shark god. The game wasn't highly polished by any means, but it was tons of fun. It probably would have been more so if two of the players had been more willing to use the pregenerated characters Sean and I had made, as they all had a tightly woven backstory.

Thursday & Friday
1. I bought a ton of stuff in the dealer's hall. I'm ashamed to say how much money I spent. Maybe I'll prepare a comprehensive list at some point. Things that saw near immediate use were some Reaper minis (a sword and dagger wielding female rogue used for my Living FR character), Pathfinder dice (which I love, but the runic 20 looks an aweful lot like a one, so I'm afraid people think I am cheating whenever I yell "natural 20"), some boffer weapons (a flail and an axe, I already had two swords), and a PFS faction t-shirt.
2. Pathfinder Society scenarios. I was able to play in all four over the course of the weekend. I think Silent Tide may have been my favorite, though before playing in them, I had been most looking forward to The Hydra's Fang Incident. Overall, I had a very rewarding play experience. I like the pace at which treasure is awarded and characters advanced. I liekd teh stories in each of the scenarios. DMs were all above average (had one guy twice who was quite good). I played a halfling wizard and will be playing more of these scenarios.
3. Living Forgotten Realms. I was able to play in the three core events (not the special) as well as the Waterdeep event. They were a little more up and down than the PFS events, but still quite enjoyable overall. The two had a different feel, with the LFR games being 'higher magic' in general. I do love someof teh treasure I picked up though- Leather Delver's Armor +1 and a Dagger of Lightning +1. I played an elven rogue and hope to be able to continue playing her as well. A highlight- the scenarios made excellent use of the skill challenge rules. Two lowlights- There seemed a lot of diagreement, even amongst judges, to the rules about finding magic items AND one of my DMs fell asleep...twice...during the game (this was actually on Sunday).

Saturday
1. Much like Thursday and Friday, but somemore friends arrived.
2. We had drinks (and some of us, smokes) with Peter Mayhew at the Ram. I massaged his wife/girlfriend/groupie. 
3. Drunken swimming back at the hotel. I had the best room ever. I liked it so much that I will keep secret which hotel and floor it was, because I want it again.

Sunday
1. Much like the previous days. I finished out one more PFS and LFR scenario, keeping me at the con longer than I have ever stayed before. They were that fun.


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## Hypersmurf (Aug 20, 2008)

exile said:


> ... I shared the friend with only 1-2 other friends...




Scandalous!

-Hyp.


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## Rel (Aug 20, 2008)

Quartermoon said:


> You're just jealous.




Correct.  And spiteful.



Hypersmurf said:


> Yup.
> 
> As I put it to someone on Sunday night at the dinner: "I don't fly nine-and-a-half thousand miles for the official events, or the dealer hall, or the costumes, or the sights of Sunny Indiana.  I fly nine-and-a-half thousand miles for _the people in this room_."
> 
> -Hyp.




And yet my spite draws the line when it gets to Hyp.  Even though he speaks American better than I speak New Zealandese, I just can't bring myself to hate the man.  He is a gaming tour de force (I'll bet he speaks France-ese better than me too).

The very first day I'm at GenCon the guy is in a Dread game I'm playing and he's playing a pair of conjoined contortionist twins.  And he's crushing both roles with a vengeance.  The part where he's having an argument against himself AND making pulls against himself is LEGENDARY QUALITY HILARITY.

On Friday night he's at the ENnies in a gold, poofy shirt that would make The Rouse drool with envy.  So incredibly poofy.  Then he goes and turns the second best idea ever for a gaming product into the best idea ever for a gaming product.  Keep a ing eye out for it, folks.

By the time Saturday afternoon rolled around, the nearly sleepless nights and non-stop gaming was starting to take its toll on me.  Fortunately Hyp woke me up right at the start of my Sky Galleons of Mars game with a full-on axe-murderer level battle scream that had literally every other table in the building looking over to see what in the bloody hell was happening at our table.  Crazy Gurkha Fun, that's what!

Anyway, what I'm saying is that the man is a gaming treasure, made all the more valuable for his scarcity around here.  If you happen to be near New Zealand, drop by Hyp's place and try to game with him.  I'm sure if you just ask around that you'll find him.  I mean how big can that place really be?

You'll thank me later because the guy is fantastic.  And I'm not just saying that because he said my Sky Galleons game was his favorite game of the year.  I promise.


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## Eridanis (Aug 20, 2008)

Quartermoon said:


> You're just jealous.




OK, someone has to get this down in black and white before it fades in time.

Hyp's character is the Golden Dynamo, a mad scientist who's built a battle suit for himself. Quartermoon's character is Jetete, who is a 90's woman in a 50's world, and flies around with a jetpack (which, I gather, Dynamo secretly made for her). Anyway, Jetette is obviously interested in Dynamo for more than the twiddly knobs and gadgets on his suit, and Dynamo has been keeping her away in a gentlemanly yet awkward way. (At one point, Jetette demonstrated how good guys show their affection for each other by laying a kiss on Dynamo. Unforfunately, the faceplate got in the way.)

At the end of the game, after Hyp has had his tour de force moment to bring the game to its conclusion (a moment which I've posted about elsewhere and will recopy to here later), he adds the denouement as people are starting to pick up their dice.

"Well, Jetette," he says, slowly standing up from the table. "This has been an exciting day. One full of emotion, and sacrifice, and danger." Quartermoon rises from the table as well, and starts to lean towards him, as he is starting to lean towards her. "Days like this can bring emotions to the surface." She's smiling, he's still stone faced as they lean closer together. The emotional tension is palpable; I can't wait to see what happens. "Jetette, I just want to..." (at this point, their heads are about a foot and a half apart) "... congratulate you for a job well done," and he sticks out his hand to shake hers.

We're whooping like crazy with enjoyment. Quartermoon's character grabs Hyp's character in a clench. At least that's what she says happens; I think Dynamo went off to check on his robot.

And that's why Piratecat says that Hyp's is the best Dynamo he's every seen played.


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## Eridanis (Aug 20, 2008)

Oh, and since I forgot to mention it in my epic essay on the first page of this thread: I also got the very last copy of the Pathfinder Campaign Setting from the Paizo booth. Since I was the lucky last customer, all the designers signed it for me. One of my prized treasures from the Con!


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## IcePirateLord (Aug 20, 2008)

I had a blast at Gencon this year.  We had a really good group of players.  We played all the available LFR/RPGA mods.  The highlight was definitely Nick's DMing on the Sunday morning slot.  He was extremely well prepared and let the table have some great role playing opportunities while keeping us focused.  The trash-talking flying undead dude is a hilarious memory.

All I did was play, so I want to thank all the DMs out there for their hard work.


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## WizarDru (Aug 20, 2008)

Eridanis said:


> At the end of the game, after Hyp has had his tour de force moment to bring the game to its conclusion (a moment which I've posted about elsewhere and will recopy to here later), he adds the denouement as people are starting to pick up their dice.




That moment was, to me, the best moment of a game chock-full of best moments.  The look on Piratecat's face when he realized that Hyp had approached the end of the module from a completely different and totally logical angle (and thereby potentially completely rewriting the ending and future installments, should they occur) was why I play RPGs.  The simultaneous look of "_...wait, What?_" mixed with"_...holy crap, that's BRILLIANT._"  was just fantastic to be witness to.

Take three poker chips, sir, on me.


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## Hypersmurf (Aug 20, 2008)

Rel said:


> Anyway, what I'm saying is that the man is a gaming treasure, made all the more valuable for his scarcity around here.





Eridanis said:


> And that's why Piratecat says that Hyp's is the best Dynamo he's every seen played.





WizarDru said:


> That moment was, to me, the best moment of a game chock-full of best moments.




I enjoy roleplaying.  I have fun roleplaying.  And occasionally, here in New Zealand, I'll play in a game and at the end of it think "You know, when I did XX in that game, that was kinda cool," or "I really liked the concept for that game, and the DM pulled it off well."

But pulling off the kind of moments of awesome that makes you guys say these wonderful, kind things?  I only ever manage that at GenCon.  I'm never that cool here at home.  It's the GMs, and the games, and the players in this community that inspire me to play above my natural level, and I'm just thankful I have the opportunity to be a part of it and be better than I really am 

Something fusangite said to me on Wednesday night - "The people in this community include the best GMs in the _world_."  And if one of the hallmarks of an excellent GM is the ability to draw from his or her players a performance beyond what they believed themselves capable, then I cannot disagree with him.

I'm glad I had the chance to help make some GenCon memories for you guys; you've made a ton of them for _me_!

-Hyp.


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## Hypersmurf (Aug 20, 2008)

Eridanis said:


> "Well, Jetette," he says, slowly standing up from the table. "This has been an exciting day. One full of emotion, and sacrifice, and danger." Quartermoon rises from the table as well, and starts to lean towards him, as he is starting to lean towards her. "Days like this can bring emotions to the surface." She's smiling, he's still stone faced as they lean closer together. The emotional tension is palpable; I can't wait to see what happens. "Jetette, I just want to..." (at this point, their heads are about a foot and a half apart) "... congratulate you for a job well done," and he sticks out his hand to shake hers.
> 
> We're whooping like crazy with enjoyment. Quartermoon's character grabs Hyp's character in a clench.




Oh, and for the record - while it played out absolutely perfectly, Quartermoon was so totally onto me.  I hope the handshake maybe caught some of you by surprise, but I'm pretty sure she saw it coming a mile away 

-Hyp.


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## Rel (Aug 20, 2008)

Hypersmurf said:


> I enjoy roleplaying.  I have fun roleplaying.  And occasionally, here in New Zealand, I'll play in a game and at the end of it think "You know, when I did XX in that game, that was kinda cool," or "I really liked the concept for that game, and the DM pulled it off well."
> 
> But pulling off the kind of moments of awesome that makes you guys say these wonderful, kind things?  I only ever manage that at GenCon.  I'm never that cool here at home.  It's the GMs, and the games, and the players in this community that inspire me to play above my natural level, and I'm just thankful I have the opportunity to be a part of it and be better than I really am
> 
> ...




Oh.

Well nevermind that stuff I said about travelling to New Zealand to see Hyp.  Just come to North Carolina since I'm the reason he's awesome.  Think of the airfare you'll save!


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## DM-Rocco (Aug 20, 2008)

*It was not us, but thanks for destroying our rep*



Mistwell said:


> It was the Dragon Roots booth I believe.





Mistwell,

  I understand that you think it was our booth that sold these shirts, but it wasn't.  I am trying to remain calm about this because this is the 4th site I had to go on and say, "No, it was not us," so I am a little tired of this song and dance.  Please, PLEASE, make sure you are correct in matters like this.  I have spent the last three days trying to calm people in e-mails who are yelling at us for selling a product we never sold.

  We had nothing to do with the "4e Killed Gary," T-shirts.

  Allow me to inform you neither myself nor any of my employees either wore or sold this shirt.  We had nothing to do with those shirts. 

  We did sell shirts, but it was not those ones.  It had our in tribute of Gary art from our Issue #1 cover art on the front and the offical GenCon logo along with a quote from Gary "Roll high, Game long" (which was the quote winner from our Gary quote contest we held after he passed away) on the back.

  We are actually huge fans of Gary.  I drove 12 hours to go to his funeral in the middle of a raging blizzard.  

  Again, we had nothing to do with these, "4e killed Gary," shirts.


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## Hypersmurf (Aug 20, 2008)

Rel said:


> Just come to North Carolina since I'm the reason he's awesome.










-Hyp.


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## Scott_Rouse (Aug 20, 2008)

Filcher said:


> Rouse is keeping the soul in D&D. All hail.
> 
> I had a blast at Gen Con. Picked up both the PFRG AND the 4E Dungeon Crawl Classics and ran games for both. Fun times.




High praise. Thanks


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## sjmiller (Aug 20, 2008)

Mistwell said:


> Some more pictures here:
> 
> http://www.flickr.com/photos/41453615@N00/sets/72157606809347444/



I have to admit, it's rather funny to see myself and my booth in the background of several of your pictures!  I spent most of GenCon at booth 305 selling Doctor Wizard's Patented Elevation Indicators.  I got to take some time and talk to the folks signing autographs when I had a few minutes, and it was a lot of fun talking to them.  When I get a minute I will tell more stories from GenCon, including stories of being in the booth next to "the head shop".


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## DM-Rocco (Aug 20, 2008)

On the plus side, this was my first ever GenCon and in spite of standing on concrete for 96 hours straight and losing my voice, it was a lot of fun.  Next year maybe we can even play in some events.

Most of the time was spent in our booth, THAT *DID NOT* SELL 4E KILLED GARY shirts, and in sleep.  Sunday was great because I abandoned post to check out the authors and artists to make our magazine better.  I also tried to track down the elusive Scott Rouse who apparently snuck out of town early Sunday morning.  I really wanted to say hi face to face to the man who helped us from the inside of WOTC to do certain things with the magazine.

I heard from the inside that he would be at the RAM for Drizzit's special 20th party, but he wasn't there.  Then on Sunday, I tried to track him down at the WOTC booth, but everyone said he left early on Sunday. 

So Scott, maybe next year.  I'll e-mail you.

After the long car ride home, I got home to finally check my e-mails and found about 100 e-mails complaining because somehow people thought we sold the dreaded 4e killed Gary shirts and have been trying to quench that fire ever since.

Over all, I got a lot of good contacts and more importantly we got a booth space for next year in authors row.

On a final note, Ms. Marvel made the whole trip worth while


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## Mistwell (Aug 20, 2008)

der_kluge said:


> Thursday
> Head downstairs and join Reveal's DCC game. Apparently there's an empty slot. I write down a wonderful quote. "We're staying in initiative because of the sheep." When you're 0th level, sheep matter.




Someone ditched on the game (was asleep upstairs and not planning on waking up any time soon).  I was happy we were able to recruit you at the last minute.  Playing NPC 0 level villagers attacking a friggen Ogre was fun, and using our environment (mutton, oil, sarcophagus slab, etc.) well was a great way to remember why the old 1e Slave Trader modules were so fun.   



> Rodrigo's Winter Witch game was brilliant. I'll forgive him for using 4th edition. It was an interesting experiment, though I'm not entirely convinced it creates the perfect mood for the game. It worked, though, and wasn't an issue. He's a great story-teller. I particularly liked placing a bear trap on the troglodytes scrotum. Good times.




I just realized we literally mostly played the same games this con.



> At 3:00, I hook up with John Crichton and his Escape from the Cronus game. I played the starlight, Azure with her pet disintegrator rifle Schnookums. I spent twenty minutes coming up with movie quotes. Hopefully JC will post them. They seemed like a big hit. Though admittedly some were corny. My favorite movie title "Drill me Hard - A love story." What a great game, and great players.




To me, you were the biggest hit of that game (in a game with many hits).  Your quotes had me laughing long after the game finished, and after you had to leave early someone took over your character and was still reading your quotes.  You totally rocked!



> Holy . Can you guys come to my house every week and entertain me like this?




Yeah seriously.  GenCon convinced me I need a better group of players, or I need to become a better GM, or both.


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## Wicht (Aug 20, 2008)

DM-Rocco - if it makes you feel better, the exposure you recieved in this thread initially made me wonder who you guys were (so I could avoid you) and your defense has made me want to check out your magazine.  I'll probably get the PDFs from Paizo here in the coming days and assuming I like what I see, there's a good chance for a subscription.


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## Mustrum_Ridcully (Aug 20, 2008)

Rel said:


> Oh.
> 
> Well nevermind that stuff I said about travelling to New Zealand to see Hyp.  Just come to North Carolina since I'm the reason he's awesome.  Think of the airfare you'll save!




Good to know: I suppose New Zealand is still more expensive then the US for me...


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## DM-Rocco (Aug 20, 2008)

Wicht said:


> DM-Rocco - if it makes you feel better, the exposure you recieved in this thread initially made me wonder who you guys were (so I could avoid you) and your defense has made me want to check out your magazine.  I'll probably get the PDFs from Paizo here in the coming days and assuming I like what I see, there's a good chance for a subscription.




Well, I guess Mistwell isn't going to apologize so I'll take your potential readership as a bonus.  Send me an e-mail at dragonroots@comcast.net, mention this thread and I'll add you to the loss in revenue and send you a free pdf copy or issue # 0 & 1 check out.  At this point, I had to give out so many anyway to make ammends for the same slip up on other sites one more won't matter.

Thanks for giving us an ear, er, so to speak.


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## Mistwell (Aug 20, 2008)

DM-Rocco said:


> Well, I guess Mistwell isn't going to apologize so I'll take your potential readership as a bonus.  Send me an e-mail at dragonroots@comcast.net, mention this thread and I'll add you to the loss in revenue and send you a free pdf copy or issue # 0 & 1 check out.  At this point, I had to give out so many anyway to make ammends for the same slip up on other sites one more won't matter.
> 
> Thanks for giving us an ear, er, so to speak.




Woah woah...I JUST got your email about it not being you guys, was typing my own message when you last posted and so didn't see your post until now.  

I am very sorry I repeated that false rumor, and said so in email to you guys as well (before you just posted that).  I also edited my post.  

I did NOT start this...though I did spread it when I repeated it (and I said at the time "I believe" for what it is worth, since I had some doubts).

I appreciate that you guys are falsely being painted with this, and again apologize for any role I played, but I don't appreciate giving me 20 MINUTES to correct it before giving me a "well I guess he's not going to apologize".  Cut a guy some slack, I can only read so fast man!


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## Scott_Rouse (Aug 20, 2008)

Rel said:


> Correct.  And spiteful.
> 
> On Friday night he's at the ENnies in a gold, poofy shirt that would make The Rouse drool with envy.  So incredibly poofy.  Then he goes and turns the second best idea ever for a gaming product into the best idea ever for a gaming product.  Keep a ing eye out for it, folks.




I smell a enworld poll (or is that my bag from GenCon?) on who has the tackiest shirt

Me or Hypersmurf


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## DM-Rocco (Aug 20, 2008)

Mistwell said:


> Woah woah...I JUST got your email about it not being you guys, was typing my own message when you last posted and so didn't see your post until now.
> 
> I am very sorry I repeated that false rumor, and said so in email to you guys as well (before you just posted that).  I also edited my post.
> 
> ...




Okay, settle down.  I am just hitting ENWorld now and a little dismayed that ENWorld, the place I started my magazine and grand dream of making something to take the place of Dragon and Dungeon in print, is also host to the same false rumors that I just spent 24 hours trying to clean up elsewhere.  So I apologize if I am a little on edge about the whole deal.

I just checked out your e-mail.  Please e-mail me back on what other thread you read this on so I can check that out as well.

I have already sent you out a link to download our premiere issue and issue #1.  I hope you enjoy and in the future can say nice things about us.


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## Mistwell (Aug 20, 2008)

Scott_Rouse said:


> I smell a enworld poll (or is that my bag from GenCon?) on who has the most tacky shirt
> 
> Me or Hypersmurf




Wow.

I gotta go with The Rouse on this one!


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## DM-Rocco (Aug 20, 2008)

Scott_Rouse said:


> I smell a enworld poll (or is that my bag from GenCon?) on who has the tackiest shirt
> 
> Me or Hypersmurf




I think the black makes you look thinner (er, not saying you're fat) and more like a magician while hypers screams, "How you doing?!"  If I was in Vegas, I would say Hyper fits right in, but at GenCon, his looks a tad out of place.  For my two cents


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## Mistwell (Aug 20, 2008)

DM-Rocco said:


> Okay, settle down.  I am just hitting ENWorld now and a little dismayed that ENWorld, the place I started my magazine and grand dream of making something to take the place of Dragon and Dungeon in print, is also host to the same false rumors that I just spent 24 hours trying to clean up elsewhere.  So I apologize if I am a little on edge about the whole deal.
> 
> I just checked out your e-mail.  Please e-mail me back on what other thread you read this on so I can check that out as well.
> 
> I have already sent you out a link to download our premiere issue and issue #1.  I hope you enjoy and in the future can say nice things about us.




No problem.  And sorry again.

I was already considering getting your magazine before all of this (from a CircvsMaximvs thread that had good things to say about it).  From what I have seen it's high quality, and I will definitely check it out.  Thanks for the link.


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## Scribble (Aug 20, 2008)

Mistwell said:


> Wow.
> 
> I gotta go with The Rouse on this one!




Dude come on... Gold Lame' is ALWAYS the tackiest option!


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## DM-Rocco (Aug 20, 2008)

Mistwell said:


> No problem.  And sorry again.
> 
> I was already considering getting your magazine before all of this (from a CircvsMaximvs thread that had good things to say about it).  From what I have seen it's high quality, and I will definitely check it out.  Thanks for the link.




I find that humorus since me and the folks at CircvsMaximvs haven't really seen eye to eye.  Although, ravencrowking does like that site and he has good things to say about us, so maybe you read one of his posts.

Anyway, I hope you enjoy.  Try the print versions in the future, 70 pages, perfect bound, it feels like a magazine should.


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## DM-Rocco (Aug 21, 2008)

Not to change the subject, but I haven't been on enworld for a few months and I notice a fund raiser for the new servers.  Trying to dance around the forums, I can see that it is indeed slow.  What kind of money are we trying to raise here?


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## Wicht (Aug 21, 2008)

DM-Rocco said:


> Well, I guess Mistwell isn't going to apologize so I'll take your potential readership as a bonus.  Send me an e-mail at dragonroots@comcast.net, mention this thread and I'll add you to the loss in revenue and send you a free pdf copy or issue # 0 & 1 check out.




Thanks for the offer, but I have some credit to spend at Paizo and don't mind paying for the digital read.


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## DM-Rocco (Aug 21, 2008)

Wicht said:


> Thanks for the offer, but I have some credit to spend at Paizo and don't mind paying for the digital read.




In that case, give it a few days before you buy.  We did a massive overhaul of both issues to fix a bunch of typos and such and I haven't had a chance to up load the new files yet.  I planned on contacting paizo when I got home, but I haven't had a chance just yet.

I'd say either by next Monday or Tuesday it should be good to go or read with an objective eye since I am warning you now.


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## Harley Stroh (Aug 21, 2008)

Scott_Rouse said:


> I smell a enworld poll (or is that my bag from GenCon?) on who has the tackiest shirt
> 
> Me or Hypersmurf




Hypersmurf's is way more tacky. The Rouse makes that sh*t look good. And Perkins gets all his clothes stolen anyhow, so he doesn't get to play.


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## Mistwell (Aug 21, 2008)

DM-Rocco said:


> I find that humorus since me and the folks at CircvsMaximvs haven't really seen eye to eye.




There isn't really one group of "folks" at CM that speak with a single voice.  It's more like a rowdy bunch of pirates that sail on the same ship, drinking rum and patting each other on the back one moment and taking a knife to each other the next.  Some will like you, some will not, some will change their minds, and it will rarely be a boring trip.  You should think about giving it another try.  In general they are a really good group of people.


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## Terwox (Aug 21, 2008)

My experience was fairly brief -- I only came on Saturday, and spent from about 9am til 5pm playing the Warcraft card game with a silly deck.  Didn't know the hall closed at 6pm, so I ran down there frantically looking for the Forge booth at about 5:30.  Eventually found it and picked up Spirit of the Century, Sorcerer, and Universalis.

Was a bit bummed they were all at retail price.  Can't say I enjoyed it very much -- it was very crowded and pricey, and all the events I'd of liked to attend were overbooked or dry by about 8pm.  I left Sunday morning.

I was glad I got to pick up the indie games I'd been considering, although I'm not sure I'll be able to get anyone to play.  I very much want to give Universalis a try, although it's a game that's certainly not for everyone it seems...


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## Rel (Aug 21, 2008)

Scott_Rouse said:


> I smell a enworld poll (or is that my bag from GenCon?) on who has the tackiest shirt
> 
> Me or Hypersmurf




Can I get in on this action or is it limited to what I was wearing at the ENnies (where I was impeccably dressed)?







Yes, my shirt depicts a pinup sitting in a little red wagon and the title on the wagon makes reference to genitalia.  Also, I'm riding an invisible motorcycle.  What of it?


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## Kheti sa-Menik (Aug 21, 2008)

Scott_Rouse said:


> Longshadow,
> 
> I would like to personally apologize for the total lack of professionalism and customer service you received at the Wizards of the Coast booth. Yes we under ordered the FR books and lots of people were  probably asking about them and likely upset about us being sold out but that is no excuse for apathy and rudeness.
> 
> ...




Wow, that's just wow.  I may be fundamentally and diametrically opposed in every way to the direction you're taking D&D, but this is quality customer service in every way.  I also tip my hat to you, The Rouse.


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## Kid Charlemagne (Aug 21, 2008)

Scott_Rouse said:


> I smell a enworld poll (or is that my bag from GenCon?) on who has the tackiest shirt
> 
> Me or Hypersmurf




See?  Aren't you glad I got you to step in for that picture with Chris now?


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## MonkeyDragon (Aug 21, 2008)

This was my second year, and I had a GREAT time!

Mistwell--I saw your lovely wife breifly on Thursday as she was trying to fight her way into the dealer room.  I was going to stop by the booth, but by the time I found it I was on a mission for stuff and didn't want to interrupt her with her guests.

Thursday--Dealer hall!  So much to see!  So much to buy!  I wandered around, happy as a clam.  I played a round of the Paizo delve and immediately went to purchase their initiative tracker.  Probably the best find of the con, next to all my pretty new dice.  Chatted a bit with The Pirate (Nigel Sade), who is an excellent artist.  He also comes to my local convention, so I always like to say hi to him.

In the afternoon, my friend Gnora and I played a Cthulhu viking LARP, and it was great fun.  Afterwards we all went to the Ram together and ate tastiness.

Friday--Started off the day with two writing forums: "Creating Non-Linear Narratives," and "Coloring in the Lines."  Took some good notes and greatly enjoyed the talks.

Played in a very silly baseball meets the Phantom of the Opera but with D&D game, and enjoyed it thoroughly, except for the math puzzle, and the very end when it was discovered that the ending was predetermined and could not have been influenced in any way.

Gnora and I then went to a showing of the Call of Cthuhlu movie, and then to a writing forum that was supposed to be about portraying aliens in writing, and turned out to be an hour and a half of "This is my AWESOME process of writing!  Buy my books!"

Saturday--My LONG day.  I started out with the welcome to Blackmore game that turned out to be fairly frustrating.  I arrived at 8:30 for a 9am game and was given the adventure background spiel.  Cool.  I make my 1st level character, and since I was in the mood for a fighter, it didn't take long.  Then I spent about an hour helping the four people who had no idea what they were doing.  Finally we get a DM, and since they're shorthanded, we wind up with a table of nine, five of which are very, very green.  It made things very clunky.  Then the game runs late.  Then later.  Then later as they don't have any of the paperwork for the game ready.  In the end, the game ran 40 minutes late, so I had no time for lunch.  Or coffee.

I ran from the Crown Plaza to Embassy Suites for my first ever EN World game, and since I didn't know what anyone looked like, I wrote my screenname on my notebook and wandered around like a bewildered airline traveler.  They found me, and we played a very fun module.  Kobolds were involved.  MarkCMG is as delightful in person as on the internets.  The other gentlemen in the game were great as well.  I felt bad because I was so tired, but I found the free coffee in the lobby, and then combat started, so that perked me up.

Then run to PF Changs to buy dinner for my friends (my promised DMs Day gift).  The waiter was FULL of awesome and got a huge tip and a note written to his manager regarding his awesome.

For the last bit of the evening I wound up back at Embassy Suites for an awesome talk on adventure writing by the guys from Goodman Games.  Hilarious!

Sunday--One more writing symposium in the morning before picking up my last few purchases in the dealer room and heading to my last event.  This was another blackmoor game, and although the details were different, the crowded table and frustrating delays were the same story as Saturday.  The DM explained that all the delays have been caused by severe understaffing throughout the weekend.  Then on the road home.  End!

Overall (aka, the tl;dr version)
Dealer Room:  A-.  A bit crowded, but that's to be expected.  And the funk was at a minimum.
Gaming:  B+ overall.  The good made up for the bad.  I don't plan to completely avoid Blackmoor in the future, but honestly I'd probably not play it again if there were other options.
Seminars:  A-.  Everything was fabulous except the one.


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## n'haaz-aua (Aug 22, 2008)

Filcher said:


> Rouse is keeping the soul in D&D. All hail.




Scott, you are a class act.


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## WizarDru (Aug 22, 2008)

They are much too long to repost here, but I have two GenCon posts on my Livejournal, with pictures.

You can read them  Right Here (Part 1) and Right Here (Part 2).

And just for reference, that isn't me in the first pic, but it IS my son.


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## Hypersmurf (Aug 22, 2008)

WizarDru said:


> They are much too long to repost here, but I have two GenCon posts on my Livejournal, with pictures.




You played in Piratecat's M&M game, and you aren't sure if you liked GenCon more than Origins?






-Hyp.


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## Brown Jenkin (Aug 22, 2008)

WizarDru said:


> They are much too long to repost here, but I have two GenCon posts on my Livejournal, with pictures.
> 
> You can read them  Right Here (Part 1) and Right Here (Part 2).
> 
> And just for reference, that isn't me in the first pic, but it IS my son.




Glad to see the photo of Rogue Judges. As I am a GM there I hope you had a good time.


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## Jengenritz (Aug 22, 2008)

I'm told that there are games and auctions and art shows and what-not at Gen Con, but Goodman Games' DCC Open Tournament is my thing. 
I spent almost every day at Union Station shepherding people to their rounds, making sure everyone (or at least every Judge) has Player's Packs, and doing the scoring.

It's always cool to see familiar faces make another attempt at the tournament, and getting their stories as they leave ("We TPK'ed but it was a blast! Greatest _300_ moment ever!") kinda makes it worthwhile.



			
				monkeydragon said:
			
		

> For the last bit of the evening I wound up back at Embassy Suites for an awesome talk on adventure writing by the guys from Goodman Games. Hilarious!




Glad you liked the seminar! We try to mix the entertaining and informative.



			
				Noumenon said:
			
		

> The delve really made me wish it were possible to have professional DM services.




If you like high-quality GMs, check out the DCC tournament next year. We screen them pretty heavily, and end up with only the best (including a few people found here on ENWorld).

Back to Gen Con:

One of my highlights was _Castle Whiterock_ winning a silver ENnie for Cartography. We were also nominated for Best Adventure, but when you're up against WotC and Paizo, what are you gonna do? 

I got to eat exactly _one_ White Castle slider, which for health reasons is really all I should have, but it was sooooo delicious.

I actually got to walk around the Dealer's Room on Saturday (a rare treat). Made a bee-line for Fantasy Flight's booth, picked up _Kingsport Horror_ expansion, but they were already sold out of _Black Goat of the Woods_ (NOOOOOO!). 
Hit the T-shirt booths, missed a chance to get the wife a Flash Gordon hoodie (anyone know who had those?) 'cause I got distracted by Fat Dragon's terrain.

Lastly, there was much fun hanging out with the Judges, the Goodman Games staff, and a friend of mine I see about once a year.
Like has been said already this thread, the people make the trip worthwhile.


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## sjmiller (Aug 22, 2008)

WizarDru said:


> I purchased some of Dr. Wizard's Patented Elevators.



(from your livejournal blog)
Glad to have sold you some of Doctor Wizard's Patented Elevation Indicators.  Did you get any of the large or huge base extenders?  In case you are wondering, I was the wizard wearing the blue outfit with the circlet.  Sure had a lot of fun selling those things, I can tell you!


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## MonkeyDragon (Aug 22, 2008)

Jengenritz said:


> Glad you liked the seminar! We try to mix the entertaining and informative.
> 
> 
> 
> .





It was by far the funniest and most informative seminar I attended all weekend, and I'm a whore for a good writing seminar.  

I did have one question that I didn't quite get an answer to, mostly because I didn't word it properly.  Is there an addy I could send an e-mail to to rephrase it?  I'm really awful, I didn't even manage to catch the names of all you fabulous folks.


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## Jengenritz (Aug 22, 2008)

monkeydragon said:
			
		

> I did have one question that I didn't quite get an answer to, mostly because I didn't word it properly. Is there an addy I could send an e-mail to to rephrase it? I'm really awful, I didn't even manage to catch the names of all you fabulous folks.




If the question is about writing in general, you can email me through the ENWorld system or at:
adrianATgoodman-gamesDOTcom

If it's about submissions and publication, however, you'd be better served checking out the Contact Info on THIS link.


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## MonkeyDragon (Aug 23, 2008)

Thanks!


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## WizarDru (Aug 23, 2008)

Hypersmurf said:


> You played in Piratecat's M&M game, and you aren't sure if you liked GenCon more than Origins?




Yeah, but I live in the US...and only a couple of miles from PC's uncle.  I don't have to fly 9 thousand zillion miles to play a game with him.  Heck, once in a while he comes to ME.


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## Hypersmurf (Aug 24, 2008)

WizarDru said:


> Yeah, but I live in the US...and only a couple of miles from PC's uncle.  I don't have to fly 9 thousand zillion miles to play a game with him.  Heck, once in a while he comes to ME.




I knew there was a reason for hating all you people.

-Hyp.


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## Rel (Aug 24, 2008)

Hypersmurf said:


> I knew there was a reason for hating all you people.
> 
> -Hyp.




Speaking only for myself, there's much better reasons to hate me.


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## DM-Rocco (Aug 24, 2008)

Wicht said:


> Thanks for the offer, but I have some credit to spend at Paizo and don't mind paying for the digital read.




The files have been updated on Paizo so if you are interested, go for it.  I am always open for feed back so feel free to e-mail once you do.  Thanks for giving us a try.


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## Varianor Abroad (Aug 24, 2008)

Ah! I finally have enough time to search out journal entries and post here. I only managed to game with two other (full-time) ENWorlders, but I did manage to game a lot in Indy. Plus Psion came by to claim the table right after I was done. (Okay, he came during the game, actually, and then returned.) 

Gen Con was great. Too much going on. Too short. Too many fine folks. My full updates are on LJ here:

Day One
Day Two
Day Three
Day Four

I'm already ready for next year!


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## nerfherder (Sep 1, 2008)

I had a fantastic time gaming mostly in CM/ENW organised games again this year.  Managed to play in 13 games between Wednesday and Sunday night (the last one technically finished about 2am Monday morning) and did lots of socialising.

I've posted my photos here (I still have about a third to process): http://flickr.com/photos/lpmcc/sets/72157606853900440/

and this is a fairly typical example featuring Rel, Hypersmurf and Queen Dopolopolis/DangerGirl!:


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