Gen Con 2025: The Way

I got on a plane to Indianapolis after three days of unrelenting anxiety with nights ranging from one to four hours of sleep. I normally prefer the road trip, but there were Reasons. 

Some of the anxiety was about the trip, but most of it was just my stupid life. Somehow I made it through the shoddy cardboard halls of an airport under construction (again) and shambled my way through two flights and a layover without freaking out or completely losing consciousness. I drifted off occasionally and jolted back to reality when I forgot where I was and thought I was falling asleep at the wheel of a car. 

Tom couldn't get away, but one of his friends from work was kind enough to pick me up and deliver me to his apartment. Tom came home later and found me passed out on his couch. He fed me something. I think we watched TV. Then sleep. Real sleep. That was Tuesday. 

The next day, we picked up our badges at GM HQ, had a look around, and settled at the Level One bar in the Hyatt, one of my favorites of the Gen Con hotels. They had some special Gen Con drinks, one of which was a black Manhattan. I've had plenty of regular Manhattans, but that was my first black one. The difference was a Sicilian cordial instead of vermouth, and it was really, really good. I only had one, though, because they were expensive and I still didn't feel quite myself after all the stress stuff before. 

The "old home" dinner was at High Velocity in the JW Marriott. Mostly familiar faces. John brought Kirsten, his new lady friend. Mark, who I had previously only known through social media, was there, and excited to be at Gen Con promoting all the new material coming out for his cool B/X Gangbusters game (a new printing of the one I ran at BASH Con a few years ago). His energy was infectious. 

Tom and I also went to the most depressing (and hot) office supply store ever, and I think I helped him adjust some margins or something so he could print stuff that would fit on index cards. Later that night, a storm came through. We were already home, so it was just pleasant rumbles of thunder and rain. And it left behind the nicest Gen Con weather I've ever seen. It was like, on top of all the other things we were taking a vacation from, we got to take a break from summer, too. 

We grabbed a parking space in the Oort Cloud lot we had used last year. There was a little bit of friction as we walked to the convention center because I thought Tom's game was an hour later than it was, so I didn't understand why he was rushing us and he didn't understand why I was acting like we had plenty of time. Anyway, we got to his Gotham City police game and I wandered off. 

Apparently I'm not the only one who loved the old carpet pattern. In the course of my wanderings, I was asked by a woman sitting in the Marriott skywalk (Marriott Classic, not that upstart JW) if this was my first Gen Con. When I said it wasn't, she offered me a badge sticker with nothing but the old carpet pattern on it. I was delighted. This year suddenly became the first year I ever cared about making sure my badge was turned frontside-forward all the time. 

Also, I visited the exhibit hall and came back to watch Tom's players take on the menace of the Condiment King. 

Tom had a Crawlspace game later with a hilarious crew. It was so much fun to watch that, when someone else in the room offered me a spot in his Apocalypse World game, I turned him down in favor of continuing to watch the show. I probably should have taken the offer. I mean, try new stuff, right? But it really was a great show. He had these ghost hunter media personalities all competing for attention and our friend Brett giving a hilarious performance as the constantly-maligned groundskeeper and I couldn't look away.

Somebody in this or maybe one of Tom's other sessions said he had actually run TerrorHog! I knew one or two people bought and liked it, but actually playing the game is a whole other thing. 

At some point on Thursday, I got out of the first of the two games I had scheduled. Tom had asked me to run two Qalidar games, so I scheduled two sessions of "The Cave of Crystal Souls," the scenario I had written for the Qalidar Basic book in one of my previous lives. I didn't really want to run it. Funny, though: I read through the adventure again in case someone did show up and was like, "Damn, this is good! Who wrote this?" But, as expected, nobody signed up and nobody appeared at the last minute. 

Saturday, Tom had accidentally signed himself to run a game at the unholy hour of eight in the morning, and, for reasons I will never understand, didn't correct it when he had the chance. I scheduled an Uber the night before, for 2PM, and slept in while he went off to punish himself for his short-sightedness. 

Some of that might have been Friday. I was just enjoying life and doing fun stuff. The best thing about this vacation was that I was only thinking of time in terms of what's up next, rather than trying to look down the road. There were drinks at bars and delicious big salads and foldable slices of pizza outside in the beautiful weather where everyone was happy. And there were a couple of Crawlspace games where I got to ham it up just like the players I had enjoyed watching on whatever day I was watching them play. 

One exchange:

Tom: You can each choose one item that's always with your character no matter what movie they're in. 

Liam: (I don't remember what Liam had.)

Me: I've got a pet rat, Nibbler. And the whiskey flask from when I leveled up. 

Tom: I was hoping you wouldn't mention the whiskey flask when we've got teenagers here.

Teenager2: I've got a bag of cocaine. 

Me: Good thing we're not talking about whiskey in front of the teenagers. 

Player5: I've got one of those short novelty baseball bats. 

Tom: Okay, that works. 

Player5: It's full of heroin.  

I didn't come home with much loot. Crystal Caste was selling Gen Con d6's for two dollars apiece. I felt kind of ripped-off, even at that price, because, in addition to the Gen Con 2025 logo on the six spot, they put their own logo on the spot opposite. I mean, come on! You sell dice, so maybe just sell dice; don't sell commercials for yourself on the dice you've already been paid for. Gen Con used to give us those things for free, and, even when they were free, we didn't have to get them with extra pimp stamps burned into them. At least I've got the carpet-pattern sticker.  

We didn't go the con on Sunday. It felt wrong to miss a day, but, parking and other things considered, it made sense. We went to see the new Fantastic Four movie (which rocked) and continued testing our theory that there is no such thing as a weekend with too much pizza. So far, we have found no evidence that this "too much pizza" thing exists. Research continues. 

We chilled in Tom's apartment and I helped him do some computer stuff. Just took it easy. 

Monday, I had to begin my journey back to summer and anxiety and drudgery, but at least I'd have my cats and I was ready to get back to finishing my novel (in between drudgeries, of course). I'm getting really close!

And, in the halls of the Indianapolis airport, people were still gaming.  

 I've been experimenting with Substack, so I posted this over there, too. 

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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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BASH Con 2023: Many Paths and Errands Meet

I went back to BASHCon this year, after couple of years away. I might have gone last year, if I had known it was happening before it was almost over. 

Tom and I left Indianapolis Friday afternoon and, despite some car trouble, made it to Toledo in time for Jerry's D&D game. Once we got into our room, though, we looked out at the sideways thunder-snow and suggested putting it off. Jerry ended up running it for some peeps at his house, instead. We ordered pizza and salads and stayed in.

On Saturday we got registered for the con. It was probably the fastest it's ever been, but we found out later that this was because nobody was there, because somebody thought it would be a good idea to schedule the event for UT's spring break. Didn't much matter, though, because we weren't relying on con guests for players.  

We got some coffee and our crew (sadly, minus both Cory and Paul, who couldn't make it this year) trickled in. The first game on the convention grounds was Tom's Crawlspace scenario, Florida Man II: Sinkhole. I played a water department worker who Tom described as a cross between Ellen DeGeneres and Kramer from Seinfeld. I had a lot of fun with that, turning every statement into a breathless declaration of impending doom with names like "Level 5 Aquatic Eruption Event," acting like my job at the water department gave me some kind of emergency authority, and trying to get the National Guard called in. I guess it was a lot more Kramer than Ellen. The scenario itself was more comedy than horror, but that was more our doing than Tom's.

I asked Jerry for the file for his cool Crawlspace character card and he did me several steps better by bringing a stack of them printed on cardstock and already cut to size. 

Tom and I hung out with Liam and had lunch at Phoenicia while Jerry ran some errands. I picked up a new dice bag with Smaug and the Lonely Mountain embroidered on it. There wasn't much in the dealers' nook. Craft stuff, dice, and a few board games. That was about it. 

My adventure started in Bree. I love Bree. One thing that's different in this edition of The One Ring is that the default focus is on Eriador, which was always more interesting to me, instead of Wilderland. After a little roleplaying, the party was headed off to Sarn Ford to investigate a dead horse and some unusually bitey brigands. 

One thing I wanted to do with this session was try out the Journey mechanics. I thought they worked well, although I was a little too distracted by my own unfamiliarity to come up with good scenes as the rolls came up. There was a decent ruffian encounter mixed in with my fairly obvious omens. Liam's character killed one of the ruffians in cold blood after the fight was over, earning himself a Shadow point. Murder-hoboing is not encouraged in this game.

At one point, I came back from refilling my water bottle to find everyone taking turns saying this one name to each other, then to me. I thought maybe I had had a stroke and could no longer process language, but it turned out they were trying to remember an NPC.

They found some undead things and tracked them back to their lair, where apparently an orc was running things. After they had killed the orc and were digging through the hoard, a voice from somewhere in the cave started talking to them. It turned out to be a human-sized bat creature, a vampire, hanging from the ceiling. I picked this particular creature because of Tom, who likes to make fun of the story in The Silmarillion where Sauron turns into a vampire. She nearly killed them all, but Jerry's dwarf finished her off before she could. Maybe Tom learned to respect vampires a little more. Yeah, I know; probably not.  

I thought it went well, overall. Back when they came out with the 5e D&D version, I had been a little disappointed. I went in thinking it would have the familiarity of D&D with a bit of customization to make it fit Middle Earth, with both aspects stripped down a little to make the combination manageable. This was probably an unrealistic expectation. The D&D adaptation turned out to have all the complexities of D&D with new subsystems from The One Ring (previous edition, which I think is mostly the same as the current one) kludged on top, resulting in a pile of homework that I still get tired just thinking about.

The One Ring is a really elegant system. I love the way all the different pieces interlock without getting too complicated. I love that there's a simple, logical, rules-based reason you don't see a lot of people clanking around the wilderness in full armor. I wasn't sure about the Journey rules at first, but I'm sold. I feel like it really captures the tone of Middle Earth. The black & white art is good. The color art is dark and smudgy and just not much fun, but mileage variance and all that. The book is solidly put together and, a rarity in the age of Kickstarter, not absurdly bloated. It's not petite by any means, but it's more manageable than most of them.

I could actually see myself coming back to running video-chat games with this one. Jerry ordered a copy of the game, so there's another incentive. 

Everybody got together for a late night dinner and there was much rejoicing. On Sunday, Max ran a 5e D&D game set in an alternate history post-Civil War America with magic and stuff, which was fun. I love it when I get to solve a mystery. After that it was off to El Vaquero for the victory lunch and then the ride home.

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Gen Con 2022: Still the Best Carpet in the World

I went back to Gen Con this year. It was better than I expected. For one thing, I didn't see any sign that attendance was down. I don't know what the real numbers were like, but the crowds didn't look any smaller than the last time I was there.

I listened to Children of Hurin on the way over. Poor Hurin, cursed by Morgoth to watch while his wife and children blunder their way across Beleriand, getting all sorts of people killed for no particular reason. 

    Melian: Y'all know this magic sword is cursed, right?

    Beleg: It's magic? Sweet! I'll take it!

    Thingol: I don't think you heard--

    Turin: RAMPAGE!

I showed up in Indy on Friday evening but didn't do any actual convention stuff until Saturday. Tom gave me my Peryton Gamers badge and I went to get my vaccination bracelet so the door wardens could see that I'm not a moron. That went a lot more smoothly than I expected, so I poked around a little in the exhibit hall, where insufficient air conditioning made my plague mask really unpleasant.

Tom was running TerrorHog, so I went back to the JW to watch that. Upon arrival, I was immediately shanghaied to play one of the unused characters (I had actually promised to do this a long time ago). It was fun seeing someone else run my adventure and I always enjoy playing Crawlspace. The other players seemed to dig it. It's a pity they knew who I was when I joined the game. Would have been interesting to hear more candid thoughts.

After a bite and some drinks, Tom had another Crawlspace game, this one about a haunted radio station. I didn't play this time, just sat nearby. I worked for a while, then stopped to listen in. Had a late dinner and drinks at the fancier of the two JW restaurants afterwards.

Sunday was shopping day. I came back with Swords of the Serpentine, a fold-up dice box/rolling tray, and some sparkly purple dice. I already had the tote bag. Swords of the Serpentine looks really promising. In many ways, it seems to be what I've wanted from a fantasy game for a long time. Even though it's made with darker stuff in mind, it might be a decent Middle Earth rule set. Whether I can or can't find both the motivation and the players to actually run the game remains to be seen.

Tom picked up some stuff too, including a couple of setting books and a cool picture consisting of several layers embedded in a clear acrylic block. I think that's about it. We had some good Mexican food and enjoyed a quiet evening. I listened to Conan stories on the way back, but got tired of them somewhere in Missouri. I like Robert E. Howard, but the dosage was just too high.

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Try Nihilism

Last weekend would have been Gen Con if not for the plague. I wasn't going this year anyway, so I didn't care, but most of my friends were bummed. Tom even resolved to come up with a "hoot" to fill the void. Once everybody agreed to have it in Point Pleasant, West Virginia (home of the Mothman) I was on board too.

My original plan was to do a Mothman-inspired adventure I had run at Gen Con a few years back, but a request for D&D inspired me to finally try out the 5e Adventures in Middle Earth rules. This was a last minute switch, so I went with one of the adventures in the Bree-Land Region Guide instead of making up my own. That area has always been one of my favorites.

Tom and I got to Point Pleasant on Wednesday, snapped a picture of the statue, confirmed that the Lowe Hotel (right across the street) really was closed, and proceeded to turn our room at the Quality Inn into a walk-in fridge. Tom did Tom stuff while I read through the adventure and crammed as many of the Middle Earth rules back into my brain as I could.

BASHCon 2020

Had a great time at BASHCon this year. We missed out on gaming with Jerry because he put his Friday game in the system and a ton of people signed up for it. Tom and I would have been late anyway, so maybe it was for the best. The rest of us just arranged to get together for private games because convention registration was a mess.

Chili's was good, met Liam's friend Max, conversation, all that. Tom canceled his Saturday morning game on Saturday morning, which made his upcoming award ceremony even better.

All the usual stuff: vendors, auction, the always-awesome Phoenica restaurant, the cool student center. I got some loot and Tom surprised me with a t-shirt.

 

Cory ran Feast of Legends, an RPG designed by Wendy's as some sort of bizarre marketing scheme. The menu puns are hilariously corny. We had fun being all stupid and corporate the whole time. Cory hammed it up just right.

My Gangbusters game started off normal enough, with a gang of whiskey runners trying to find out how a rival gang was suddenly getting so much cheap, high-quality booze. Then it started getting weird, with a whole town coming out at night to search for bits of something in the grass, then screaming like pod people upon seeing an outsider spying on them. Then it was all monsters and slime and a meteor and a creepy old lady talking to metal box which she called, "mother." Tom has a bit more about it in his blog.

I always wanted to do a surprise session like this, because there's one thing about horror games that always gets lost because the players know they're in a horror game. If people were really exposed to freaky supernatural stuff, they would keep looking for another explanation. Part of the horror is the inability to accept it. And it worked, which is good because now they'll always see it coming, even when it's not, so this was my only shot.

At the El Vaquero after-party, Jerry and I presented Tom with his Quitters' Club award.

BASHCons and Wobbles and Facebooks!

"... oh my!"

BASHCon was this weekend in Toledo. I had fun hanging with the usual group. The organization was kind of a mess, but you know... BASHCon. I helped run part of Jerry's giant Keep on the Borderlands event and had a great time playing in Tom's Stay Alive game. Tom provides a bit more detail about the trip in his blog.

I helped Tom put Wobble together. I'm still helping actually, because the print version needed one more update to get it ready for distribution. Hopefully it'll go live soon. The PDF has been doing well.

I deactivated my personal account on Facebook. I'm calling it Operation: Faceblock. I just kinda started to think that Facebook was not the best thing for my mental health. I have some ideas why that might be. For one thing, there's the constant barrage of political and advice memes. I'll listen to anything any of my friends has to say, and I keep up on the news for the most part, but these regurgitated slogan pics don't help anybody. I had gotten to where I was even hiding the ones I agreed with, but it was a losing battle, because that's exactly the shit Facebook wants you to look at (and react to, and re-share). And then there's all the stupid little things it's constantly nagging me about. I'll miss being able to easily keep up with my friends, but I don't think it's worth it.

Anyway, what matters is that I'm taking a break to see if I'm right. I'm still on MeWe and Twitter. They don't seem to be as destructive, but we'll see. I'm feeling pretty good about it, so far.

Carnage 21

Okay, so, there were some bad spots and, to top it all off, I think I came home with con crud. All I want to say about the bad spots is that they had nothing to do with Carnage or the resort. Most of it is on me.

On the good news side, I got to hang out with friends I don't see often and made one or two new ones. I even reconnected with a friend I hadn't talked much to in a few years. I got to spend a long weekend on the mountain and stay in a nice room.

I missed my role-playing game session, but the other game I was running was Dungeon! and it was awesome. I had forgotten how much fun that game could be. I'll definitely be doing that again.

Oh, and there was lots of fog. Fog is cool.

And I got some writing done on the way home. I don't have any pictures for that.

Gen Con 2018

The main thing about Gen Con this year is that I took it easy. I only ran two games. Both of them were in the afternoon so I could sleep in every day. I didn't try to promote anything or even hand out business cards. I just gamed, shopped, and hung out with people I like hanging out with. I didn't find all of them, but it's always like that. I even managed to keep up my meditation schedule.

Here's what I ran:

Archer: Phrasing (Thursday)
Vortex System
Nobody's sure what year it is, but the Cold War is still a thing and Mallory Archer is in charge of a spy agency.

Just Another Layover (Friday)
Star Frontiers
Diverting to a newly-charted system to answer a distress call, you find an outpost crew claiming it was a computer error, saying everything is fine. Of course, everything is not fine.

I was signed up for an interesting-looking seminar by Shanna Germain about staying creative in stressful times but the "Will Call" booth was unapproachable through most of the convention, so I never picked up my ticket. I've never been more glad that our GM badges come from a different booth. See that line, going off around the corner into the trees? That's nowhere near the beginning. It also runs all the way to the booths close to the main entrance.

So anyway, Tom and I slogged through the Indianapolis rush hour on Wednesday and arrived at the Marriott a little after 5:30. Check-in was quick, but it took a while to get rid of the car. They had a newly remodeled lobby. I was disappointed at first, because I always loved the old one, but this one was really nice and a lot of fun to hang out in, so it grew on me fast.

Curtis was already there, so he, Tom, and I had a drink at one of the two lobby bars. Someone gave me a sparkly d20 pin. Then we headed over to High Velocity in the JW for Old Home Night. We had a long table there. I think it's the only time I saw Jerry but we did get to chat some about D&D so okay. After dinner a lot of us went to the upstairs lobby and made a nest there. The idea was to discuss plans for Brett's giant superhero LARP, but several of us were just there to socialize.

I think they got stuff worked out. I don't know. We were out pretty late. I had a good time anyway.

Thursday I was hung over, but I still made it to my Archer game. Six of the eight people who signed up were there, so Curtis jumped in to play Lana. It went well, which means there were traffic-related deaths, plane crashes, mad scientists (more than one!), infighting, and alcohol.

I still wasn't feeling well, so after a brief visit to the exhibit hall, I went back to the room to chill.

Later on I met Tom and Caed at The Ram, and then Curtis, Dylan, and Jordan showed up too. I walked with Caed & Curt to get ice cream at Steak & Shake, but didn't have any myself.

Yeah, that's pretty much it for Thursday.

Friday, like every other day on the trip, started with me lounging around the hotel. Eventually I wandered off to run Star Frontiers. I had a good group, including at least one who was trying it out for the first time. One guy did show up an hour late because he was still on Central time, but it wasn't hard to work him in. They did well with the mystery and the alien communication stuff.

After the game, I stuck around the table for a while listening to Tom and Curtis run their games. He was doing a Crawlspace World War I horror thing, and Curtis was doing an Icons game about sharks. There was a third game going on, but I never really figured out what the deal was. In my head, I started labeling it, "Garden Party, the RPG" because it seemed like all they were doing was role-playing ordinary people hanging around a suburban neighborhood. The GM had a great voice, though and, whatever the game was, the players were way into it.

I wandered off for some more shopping, then hiked out to meet Tom, Caed, and Dylan at Scotty's. It was a good time, but the waitress was busy or something. They were giving away free dice, though, bringing my freebie total to three. Gotta love the free dice.

Later on, we hooked up with Bill and Darrenn at the one of the Marriott bars (Conner's) and closed it down, even going back to the room for a while. I don't remember that night very well, except that it involved a lot of whiskey sours and then just whiskey. It's not easy keeping up with Bill.

I was hung over again on Saturday, but it didn't last as long as the one from Wednesday night. Tom came by and we grabbed some bratwursts at one of those lobby concession things. I was done with all my obligations, so I just wandered around after that.

Eventually, Tom texted me about meeting for dinner at the Omni, so he could go from there to Rise of the Overlord, Brett's superhero LARP. He also wanted me to bring him some game stuff that he had left in the room. That restaurant was super-expensive, so I just had a salad, but I was introduced to a piece of alcoholic poetry called the Sazerac. It had whiskey, bitters, and absinthe and it was awesome. John showed up too and we opened the little bottle of wine Tom had bought to share. 

While Tom started constructing his cardboard villain costume for the LARP, Curtis got in touch with me and I talked him into coming over to watch the game, despite the fact that he was actually hoping to go eat.

Brett neatly divided up the room, set out some props, and got started. It wasn't as much fun to watch as I had hoped. I mean, the players seemed to be enjoying it, but nobody came in costume and it was impossible to follow all the different groups doing their stuff.

Curtis and I decided to go eat and maybe come back later. We stopped at the Old Spaghetti Warehouse, but there was a long wait and people were just packed in all around. Waffling on where else to go, we eventually found our way to Rock Bottom.

Curtis went back to the room to pack. I was going to go back to the LARP after dinner, but I had the beginnings of a blister on my foot and decided to just stay in. I had new stuff to read, anyway. Around four in the morning, Curtis woke up to catch his flight home. Tom and I wished him a groggy farewell and went back to sleep.

Tom had a game Sunday, so I wandered around some more. I thought I had done all the purchasing I was going to do, but then I found those Dice Saber things on sale. They had green, red, and blue, so I grabbed a blue one. I brought it over to Tom's game to show him, then went back to the room.

Later, after a brief return to the exhibit hall because Tom wanted to pick some stuff up for a Cleveland friend, we met up with Jordan to have a few drinks and play Imhotep, the board game he had just bought. It was faster paced than I expected. Good game, except that Tom won.  Then we headed over to Acapulco Joe's for our traditional farewell to Gen Con meal. Not much to say about that, I guess. It was good and, you know, margaritas.

And after that it was pretty much just winding down. We've been booking through Monday for the past several years because it makes Sunday so much more fun. It was a great Gen Con, a real vacation. Also a real expensive vacation, but oh well.