Gen Con 2024: Who Missed Me?

It's been a couple of years since I went to Gen Con. We were still wearing plague masks last time. A few people had them this year, but they didn't stand out amidst all the other cosplay stuff. One disturbing change is that they replaced the carpet in the convention center. I'm not sure it even counts as Gen Con without that carpet. 

The drive to Indy went well. I mostly listened to audiobooks (The Silmarillion and Unfinished Tales). My left arm is now noticeably darker than my right because of the sun coming through the car window. Anyway, I got to Indy on Wednesday night, had some drinks with Tom, and that was pretty much it for Wednesday. 

I didn't have any games to prep for or find. I guess the last time I ran games at Gen Con was was 2018. When it was time to submit events this year, I wasn't even sure I'd be able to make it to Indy. I'm thinking next year I actually will run a game or two. We'll see.  

Parking was a bit of a challenge. Even the insanely expensive hotel lots were full. Eventually we found a $20/day lot somewhere in Kentucky and were able to walk in from there.

Tom's games were all Crawlspace this year. I wandered off during the first one to have a look around. That was Thursday morning, and the exhibit hall was still super crowded. Actually, I think that's the thickest it ever got, even more than the usual Saturday influx. I wandered back, futzed around on my laptop, and the game ended. I never really followed what happened. 

The afternoon game, "The Seance," was crazy. I didn't play in this one either, but I did stick around to watch. Two tables full of players hamming it up as a mix of skeptics, believers, and grieving family. Some of them were wearing Ghostbuster costumes. 

After that, we poked our heads into the exhibit hall and stopped to see what was up in that stadium thing on the way back to the car. Looked like Goodman Games was selling stuff out of a van. We joked about how Gen Con was setting up for one of those "Who's The Werewolf" games with the whole stadium playing and 200 werewolves scattered about. 

Friday's game was in the Hyatt instead of the Marriott. It was fun to revisit that one. I haven't had any events there in a long time and always liked it. We had some mall pizza for lunch and settled into our cozy hidden room for the event. Tom brought some weird cinnamon beer.

There were only three of us playing "The Sleep Study III." I was the nepotism-hire administrator working with one assistant, one PC subject, and a bunch of NPCs. It was a trip. Tom listed it as IV instead of III in his blog, so maybe I've got it wrong, but I know he said III at the table. Anyway, I'll never relax to the sound of birds chirping again. 

We had some drinks at the Crowne Plaza Bar, chatted with the bartender and whoever was next to Tom. The hotel or maybe Gen Con was offering "Dragon Punch," a mix of red wine and Coke. Seriously. Even the bartender was disgusted. I had a couple of Manhattans instead. We looked around the convention hall some more, and had dinner with some friends. Still no Jerry, though. He was a slave to the auction the entire time, as far as I know. 

Tom and I bought some generic tickets and looked for events over the next few days, but nope. He knew some people involved with Tower of Gygax or Gaxx or whatever, but the people piling up at the door for it got scary, so we ran away. 

We didn't have any more scheduled events to worry about on Saturday. We took a more serious run around the exhibit hall. I bought a One Ring book. Tom talked to some people and found a couple of things. I mostly tried to avoid making eye contact. I can only take so many elevator pitches.

We were going to meet some more friends and they suggested the Omni bar, but there turned out to be no Omni bar this year. Blah blah remodeling blah. We did meet the Nieblings out in the hallway, though. They worked on the original Dungeon Master's Guide for TSR, although their names are buried in the acknowledgements on page 8. 

Our friends showed up, agreed that it wouldn't be any fun to eat in the weird little space the Omni was offering, and moved on to Taggart's (Crowne Plaza) again. Fine with me. I love Crowne Plaza. As it happened, several of the group were late for a LARP event because of all the shuffling, but they were too polite to mention it until dinner was over. 

I can't believe neither Tom nor I thought to get pictures of Brett and Natalie in their excellent Achilles and Artemis costumes.  

My feet and I were wiped out. After a nap, Tom brought back some Long John Silver's and we watched a bunch of Blake's 7 on Freevee. I had never seen the show before, so that was neat. 

We had thought about just staying in on Sunday, but some of the stuff we saw in the exhibit hall was sounding more appealing to Tom, and of course it would be silly to blow off a day when there are only four, especially with my feet finally adapting. So, whatever, we had another look around, had some drinks, bought some stuff.

Stopped at the auction to talk to Jerry for a few minutes.

And here's the loot. Well, mostly. I already had the pendant. It came from a giant Halloween festival and it has captured the light of some good times. 

So we had another nice evening of sci-fi and beer and that was about it before the trip home. 

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