Four Hours at Gen Con

(The following is best read in the voice of a 40's film noir detective)


I picked up my passengers and grabbed a donut at 8AM.  Traffic was light on Interstate 74 to Indianapolis.  A wrong exit put me 15 minutes behind schedule and I had to park somewhere just shy of the center of the Earth.  A short hike later, we were badged and ready for the exhibit hall by 10:20.  I thought I might catch the presentation “I’m Wil Wheaton, and I’m a Gamer” but the line was crazy long.  Sorry, Wil, maybe next time.

Back at the exhibit hall things were starting to pick up.  The costumed attendees sporting the standard backpack survival gear with bags of dice, rulebooks and the smuggled-in Mountain Dews were gathering around the various vendor booths.  You could smell the money smoldering in their pockets.

That’s when I spotted Matt.  He’d ditched the others and was ready to do a sweep of the room when he decided to bring me along for photo support.  We talked to vendors, drank orange root beer, took pictures and drank more orange root beer, Root Jack I think it was. With Vitamin C.  Sold by Pirates who claimed it would “fight scurvy”.

Stopping by Exile Game Studio’s Hollow Earth Expedition booth, I asked about the long delayed Mars book.  “Not Yet, but soon” was the response.  They directed me to check out All For One by Triple Ace Games.  It uses their Ubiquity rules system and it’s Musketeers vs. Monsters in 17^th Century France.  I didn’t know what to say to that, except “Thanks”.

Next, we came upon the Nexus Games booth.  Typically distributed by Fantasy Flight, they had 3 soon-to-be-released board games with demonstrations going on.  Magestorm, Dakota and Letters From Whitechapel all look excellent.  I’ll keep an eye out for them this fall.

Moving on, we came across a booth that I recognized by the merchandise as Margaret Weis Productions and I said as much to Matt.  Then I looked up.  Margaret Weis was standing there smiling at me.  We asked for a picture, which she graciously allowed us to take, and she asked Matt if he was part of the preferred retailer program.  She directed us to her business manager and we proceeded to get more information.

After this encounter we picked up the pace.  We went past the White Wolf booth but something was wrong.  No merchandise or demonstrations.  Their booth could only be described as a “Goth Lounge”.  The only sign of a game tie-in was a banner with the words The Grand Masquerade, September 23-26.  We puzzled over this but kept going.

We visited the booths for Mayfair Games, Fantasy Flight, Privateer Press, Wizards of the Coast and Paizo among many others.  Matt greeted several acquaintances along the way and introduced me.  I just kept smiling and taking pictures.

Finally, we reached the end.  Independent game developers, authors and artists inhabited this area.  From what we could see, there is potential for many good things on the horizon.  Suddenly, a growl sounded nearby.  We looked around but could not find its source.  Then I realized it was my stomach.  It was 2PM and I hadn’t had anything but that single donut and orange root beer all day.  We rallied the troops and made our way to a local diner where we swapped stories of our encounters.  Once we were finished, we launched the expedition to find my car and head back.  It was 3PM and I had a 5:30 deadline to meet.

See you next year Gen Con.