accomplishedAugust 5th, 2011
I woke up this morning somewhat earlier than the wake-up call that was scheduled. Have a dry mouth and throat, and this must be due to the hotel room and the air conditioning system. After the morning ablutions,
spross and I went to breakfast, and had a pretty good omelette this morning. Either that or I'm just getting used to the way that the omelettes are being cooked, but still, satisfying breakfast. spross and I went back to the hotel room, collected the stuff that we needed for the morning's activities, and headed out. We stopped at the PVC Bank again so he and I could cash $100 in traveller's cheques, as I had somewhat run out of money the day before buying stuff at the Exhibit Hall, and then headed out. I went by the convention check-in areas, and was able to collect my GM Badge that the Cubicle 7 folks had promised me. Andy and Dom had made this happen, and I will get a refund on my GenCon membership, so all is good with the world. :) From there, I went into the Exhibit Hall, starting at the t-shirt place near the Hall H entrance. It had primarily tv, movie, and comic book hereos and villains, and nothing there really appealed to me, so I moved on. From there,
spross led me over to the Doctor Who North America booth, and he snapped a photo of me next to the mock-up of the TARDIS (see below).
I was disappointed that they only had a New Who Dalek there, and when I commented on this fact to a guy dressed as Captain Jack, I found out that he and his dad had built it! I was mortified, explaining that I was a fan of Classic Who, but said that they had done a really good job on it. Since there were no t-shirts at the booth, moved on to other places. Headed over to the Off World Designs booth, and rather liked the time machine Venn diagram t-shirt, but didn't pick it up at this point.
spross and I swung back towards the Cubicle 7 booth, looking for more t-shirt places along the way, but saw none. Boo! Hiss! We came upon Author's Row, where a variety of authors were hocking and selling their wares, and there were several books I liked including some of the works edited by Jennifer Brozek and the fantasy series by C.S. Marks. Moving along, we passed the Exile Games booth along the way, and I saw that lena_of_fargo was dressed as the Daredevil Pilot from the game. She was smoking hot! spross snapped a photo of her for me, since I had always missed seeing her in the outfit at GenCon 2008 (see below). lena_of_fargo told me that she had something for me, but she was busy with a demo of Deadfellas and had to finish that first.
I was able to say "hi" to Shawn again, and also saw Bretbo at the booth and talked to him briefly. We left the Exile booth for a while, and while wandering around a bit towards the west end of the Exhibit Hall, came upon a small indy booth of a guy selling cool fay, wolf, and general fantasy/horror t-shirts. I bought a couple of t-shirts of good looking fantasy women, and then headed back to the Exile booth, but Katie still wasn't free. The third time around was lucky, as she had just finished the demo, and so she was free.
lena_of_fargo had seen my blog entry a few days earlier (For Want of a Boil), and presented me with the perfect kitchen tool - an egg timer that goes into the water!! Go, Katie!! :) After leaving the Exile folks to business, spross and I headed over to the Cubicle 7 booth. I talked to Dom about the arrangements for Story Point and Threat markers for the Saturday 8:00 am game of Primeval, and he assured me that corone would take care of things and everything would be set up. I also was there when Dom and Gareth-Michael Skarka were trading some anecdotes about mytholder, and GMS got Gar's voice down pat, according to Dom. :) LOL! I encountered Jennifer Brozek at the booth, and while she didn't know or remember me from LJ or Twitter at all, I talked with her a bit about post-apocalyptic fantasy anthologies. She said that it could happen if one of the publishers asked for one of them, but didn't seem optimistic about it. I gave her my business card, in the potential hope of doing some editing for her, but we'll see what happens. Since the Airship Pirates game was due at the Cubicle 7 booth some time around 1:00 pm on Saturday (but I couldn't be there, since I was running games until noon then, and then had lunch to get with spross, I jokingly asked Dom whether it would be possible to have a copy of Airship Pirates put away for me at the booth, that I could pick up later. He said that he would see what could happen, but with only 50 copies of the book coming in... the game put away for me.
spross and I spent the next couple of hours walking around the Exhibit Hall, seeing as much as we could see. I bought a couple of t-shirts with various GM and gaming expressions on them, and then we came upon the Atomic Overmind Press booth. Jason Soles and Nicole Vega were there hyping and selling the Revised edition of Unhallowed Metropolis, and I bought myself a copy of the book on the spot and was able to get the two of them to sign it, while spross also snapped a photo of them (see above). He and I chatted with Jason and Nicole for a while, learned more about plans for upcoming UM stuff, and chatted about real life stuff with them. Both are fascinating, kind individuals, and I felt really pleased about actually meeting them. spross and I wandered around some more, looking for t-shirts, but I didn't see anything else that I really liked, although I did come across several buttons that intrigued me, so I picked those up. By that time, I had been wandering the Exhibit Hall for about 3-1/2 hours, and really needed to head back to the Omni. spross had a game to run at 2:00 pm, and I was scheduled to run the "Prey for Life" scenario of Desolation at 4:00 pm. We dropped stuff off in the hotel room, and then went down to the 40 West Coffee Café where I ate some broccoli soup and a tuna salad for lunch. After lunch, we went back up to the hotel room, so spross could get what he needed for his game, and I lay down for a little bit and caught up on the journal stuff. After spross left for his game, I went down to the lobby to relax, and write some more of this stuff, as well as get ready to run the game. I got distracted by Joe Kushner, and got distracted as he talked about his runs of Primeval and Victoriana at the convention to this point. I got the surprise of my life when spross walked back in to the Omni some 20 minutes after his game was supposed to start; the game of "Frontier Justice" for Desolation that he was supposed to run only had one player show up, so it was cancelled. Not good, and not a good omen for my run of "Prey for Life". :(About half an hour before I was due to run my game, I said goodbye to Joe and >lj user="spross"> and I went back to the room so I could collect the stuff I needed to run the Desolation game of "Prey for Life".
spross decided to come with me, and I arrived early enough that I could set up for the game. Chatted a bit with Stephen, Matt, and Jamie of Greymalkin Designs while I did so. When the time for the game came, I only had three players show up at the table, including my virtual friend danicia, and was somewhat disappointed. spross agreed to sit at the table and play, so that brought it up to a foursome. The group decided to play the characters of Denner Khent, Sasha Veng, Menelaris Covalanar (Steve played him!), and Tarl Ishrak. Once again, the players decided to use Lem Ollender as an NPC for his combat skills. danicia was really new to the game, and did a good job for herself in play, and the game went pretty well. The players of Menelaris and Sasha sacrificed themselves at the end of the game to save the other two from *censored!*. The four players had a pretty good time of things, and there was some good roleplaying on danicia's part and the fellow who played Sasha. spross did a remarkably good job as Menelaris, and handled the spellcasting elements pretty well, too. After the game was over, spent a bit of time talking with
danicia about all manner of subjects, ncluding gamer cleanliness, sexisim in gaming, and some other topics. After saying goodbye to danicia and confirming breakfast at Le Peep for Sunday morning at 9:00 am, spross and I went back to the Omni and the hotel room to decompress for about 1/2 an hour. We went over to the Old Spaghetti Factory for supper this night, and had a pretty good meal. It was pretty crowded, but we were able to get a table within about twenty minutes. I had a good house salad with pasta and a delightful mushroom sauce. The meal was marred only by the fact that spross made a bit of a pig of himself by eating an entire plate of 12 garlic cheese bread slices, but that's between him and his waistline. :( I had hoped to get a few other people to go out with us to the restaurant, but since I don't have a mobile phone and had no computer at the convention, couldn't really arrange much of anything. Ah, well. After dinner,
spross and I headed back up to the Omni hotel room, and talked a bit before crashing for the night. I spent part of the time before going to sleep updating this journal entry, had a couple of Tylenol for the pain that I was in, and settled down rather early to sleep. This was a good idea, since Saturday was going to be a very long day, as I was to start running games at 8:00 am. We left a very early morning wake-up call...Another long entry, as you can read, but hoped you all enjoyed it. The Friday of GenCon was a relatively easy day at the convention for me, and I managed to once again pace myself pretty well, even if I was still suffering somewhat from the lower back pain, and the hip and right leg pain.
That's the wrap-up on the fourth day of the trip to Indy, and the second official day of GenCon 2011. The Saturday report on events will follow when I get the time.