Last day.
Not sure what I’ll do with it, to be honest. Hanging out at the hotel seems like a waste, but my motivation is always a bit iffy post-con.

• I can wander over to Victory Field & see whether they’re doing tours today
• I can head to the Circle Centre Mall & have a Cinnabon, as a tip of the cap to last year, when I met up with Steve & Monica & probably Rob on Gen Con Monday, just before they left, to have Cinnabon
• I must pack my bags, at least as a dry run. FedEx downstairs no longer do tiny rolls of bubble wrap, just the 50′ Monsters, and while they’re still pretty cheap, it’d be a waste.
  Fortunately the nice people at said FedEx offered to wrap things for me, at a low, low price, if I brought them down.
• There’s White River State Park out there, so I could amble about in there for a bit, but the humidity & muggyness here is still kind of getting to me, so it doesn’t appeal as much as you might think.
  Was talking to someone in the elevator here at the JW who was also unimpressed by the humidity, and JUST the humidity, as he was from Utah

My alleged thinking on the luggage front, after the Dude, Where’s My Suitcase fiasco getting here & the I Have Been Ransacked incident of last year, is that I’m going to try to get the mission-critical stuff into my carry-on, to lessen the impact of any problems.

Actually doing anything today is being made harder by the existence of The DIY Channel, feeding my Terrible Addiction.

~~~~~~ time passes ~~~~~~

It seems that today is pack the bags day, or at least pack the bags mid-day, all to a soundtrack of DIY renovations & building disasters.
I’m about to hit FedEx, to see whether they can wrap a shot glass & a pint glass for the trip home.

~~~~~~ tick tick tick tick tick ~~~~~~

Turns out they can!
Seriously, I’d be happy playing tennis, or maybe hackysack, with the shot glass.

I’ve done a complete pack, and both bags are well under the weight limits. Not that I was worried I’d be over; My concern was over whether I’d be able to get all of my important stuff into carry-on, and it’ll fit easily.

Not really sure what to do for the afternoon.
I’ve not got a sore throat or anything, but I did have some mild fever & headaches over the course of the con, and it has developed into an intermittent deep hacking cough & a vague feeling of ‘blegh’, so I’m picking that whatever I do will be pretty laid-back.
What I mostly want to do is take a nap.

I just now realised that things must have calmed right down for the hotel staff here; Most days, the housekeeping folks came by sometime in the afternoon, occasionally as late as 4pm. Today, the room had been done by 11am

I went for a wander, just to stretch my legs & get out of the hotel. It’s 30 degrees out there.
No wonder I feel like taking a nap.

Well, bottom line is that I did almost nothing today. I got stuff bubble wrapped, and packed my bags, and went for a walk through the spookily almost-empty ICC, but the thoughts of touring baseball fields, getting Cinnabon, or wandering in a park?
Didn’t happen.

Turns out I’m OK with that.

So, that was Gen Con 2013.
~ sniff ~
It was pretty good.
~ sniff ~
Actually, it was really good.
~ lower lip quivers ~
I had a fantastic time, even when I wanted to kick the people in front of me in hallways right up the arse.
~ sways back and forth, singing ~
So that was Gen Con,
A great time of year, …
~ is crash-tackled & hog-tied by two hotel porters who have had just about enough of this weird-ass gamer shit, sir ~

The wee message blinkenlight was going on the phone in my room, but the message itself was at the desk; Turns out I’ve hit the limit they’d authorised on the card, which is to be expected.
No big deal, they were just letting me know, and the total is more or less where I’d expect it to be.

Things are much quieter here now, and the contrast between the wall of noise when I entered the lobby at 11pm and when I did so this morning was amazing. I think the staff outnumbered the patrons at breakfast.

The people at Starbucks had enjoyed the Gen Con experience, despite someone quitting & leaving mid-shift, and someone else waiting until the end of theirs to leave; They did more than $9000 in a day, over $2000 in cash alone.
Apparently the Gen Conners are friendly, laid-back, and tip well.

Took the opportunity to upload all of my photos to date to Flickr, with titles & comments where needed, and during that arranged to do lunch with Frank, who has today off work; He’s picking me up mid-afternoon, and we’re going to Bonefish.
I know almost nothing about this place, other than it being his favourite

For them as wish to see my photos from the trip, they’re in the Gen Con 2013 set at this location; Craig’s Holiday Pictures

Went for a wander in a very vague search for a CVS or Walgrens, so as to buy something in the cough medicine line, but was unsuccessful, although I may have spotted Monument Circle.

I also cut through the ICC, so got to see what some of the rooms look like nearly empty.

While futzing around with the hotel wireless, I ended up chatting with some folks from Hawk Wargames, who’d been promoting/exhibiting their new mass battle game, Dropzone Commander, and had met with a whole lot of success in getting people interested. That said, they’d been standing for four days.
Ended up chatting with Louis for an hour or so, & guarded their stuff for a little while as they arranged to post things out into the world; He kindly bought me a coffee & explained the basics of how they’d brought their game to market, and was absolutely fine with my mentioning them in a possible Big Red Couch Bonus Gen Con episode.

Soooo, guys; Want to do a bonus episode about Gen Con?
I think a “Craig blabbers on about Gen Con” would be dull, but maybe do it as an interview or question & answer thing?

I got to the pull-through area of the JW just as Frank texted me, which worked out nicely.
Basically, I spent the afternoon & early evening hanging out with Frank.

Bonefish is a restaurant/bar south of the centre of Indy, where a gamer friend of Frank’s tends bar. (the guy in question is the chap from yesterday, who’s on a gaming podcast his own self. makes a very good non-alcoholic berry drink, as it happens)
Lunch was Cajun Fish Tacos, which were very good, & came with garlic mashed potatoes, which were fantastic.
We hung out at Bonefish for a good long time, chatting about gaming, Gen Con, podcast stuff, and the My Little Pony RPG. More specifically the artwork in said RPG.
Also, they gave me a hat.

Post-lunch, visits to a couple of Dance Studios so that Frank could drop off some Gen Con swag, or at least trinkets, to various dance partners & friends, and then back to the JW.
It was an awesome way to have a relaxing day without just sitting on my arse, and a good wind-down from Gen Con.

Woke up vastly early at 6*, when I didn’t really want to be awake until 7, so I spent my time weighing things; I think I can get all of my Gen Con purchases into cabin baggage, which pleases me.

* OK, so not that early for me in normal circumstances, but I got to bed at 1:30am.
You Can’t Judge Me! I Am The Night!!

Plans for the morning involved having breakfast with Frank, probably at the JW, and that’s exactly what happened; This was in marked contrast to many other meals, mostly because large groups of people, or at least of the people I know, cannot make a decision quickly, nor can they easily stick to it.
So we breakfasted, and Frank paid, and we ambled back to the ICC, picking up a friend of his along the way; Said friend is on a podcast, or possibly a vidcast, called Counter Slam, so we did the trading of business cards thing, though he also gave me a promotional D6, so I guess that’s a win for him?

Ran into Tom & Stacy outside the VIG; They were on their way home, so it was kind of lucky to catch up with them, however accidentally, before they went.

I did a final run through the Hall Of Capitalism to pick up a few things, including a copy of School Days, which the author signed, & a D30, because I’ve never had one, despite having no use for it.
Along the way I wandered past a booth with a possibly-interesting game called Flatpack, which I think I need to do some more looking into before making a buy/no buy decision, but it wasn’t a particularly good environment due to a somewhat desperate “please buy things” vibe the noise of being on a corner & there being multiple semi-independent vendors in the same booth.
One guy asked me, seemingly out of curiosity, which games I’d heard of out of what was in the booth, but his reaction on discovering that none of his were in that list was a resigned “yep, none of mine”. Turns out he’d had a dreadful Gen Con, and about the only things leaving his table were business cards.
Sadly, of the two games he mentioned, one was a love-letter to horror movies, which might be interesting but was too big-ass a book to get a feel for right there, and the other … I cannot imagine wanting to play about Angels Of Death reducing the population by killing them in a manner related to how you died.
(The phrases “Gothic as fuck” & “White Wolf without the bullshit” were used)

My last game of Gen Con was Rocket Age, which only came out this week, which lead to a certain “How does this work” vibe, and kind of a linear play to the game. Granted, everyone was pretty tired, which didn’t help, and the GM had had less than a week to learn the system & the scenario.
(one of the other players was someone I’d chatted to at last years Gen Con after checking out how Games On Demand worked)

Ran into Norman after that; He’d been having a whale of a time, including LARPs & a live performance from the people behind The Gamers.
There was a vague thought about dinner, but as I was meeting people, Norman took my warning about the inherent delay in actually eating & went off to hunt his own unhealthy foodstuff.

Catching up with Frank was pretty easy, and eventually Monica & Steve showed up, along with a couple of friends.
Hunger seemed to win through over the usual indecision & multiply-changing-plans, and we ended up at the sports bar in the JW for a meal before Steve & Monica had to race off & catch a bus back to Chicago.
Given the lack of fun had on the trip down, they weren’t looking forward to the trip back.

Hung around with Frank for a bit before The Tireds started to take hold, so we went our separate ways, and I came back to the hotel to relax, read for a while, and watch a show about fixing bad tattoos.

Dropped off a couple of board games with the collection for Military Persons in the VIG Lounge. This, I think, is an awesome addition to the lounge, since there’s always something a person’s not interested in, and I know I dragged a bunch if useless crap back home last time, so this gives me a way to cull stuff without throwing away or abandoning it.

I met up, by accident, with Tom & Stacy & Frank in the VIG lounge while waiting for the dealer hall to open, and Frank tagged along as I picked up my free Dungeon Die from … Inkscape, maybe? … and bought a copy of Better Angels. (he ended up buying a copy himself based on me telling him about the session I played last night)

My 11-3 game was another QAGS session: Lemuria Rising: Why Are You Dressed Like A Cow
Same GM as Funkadelic Frankenstein, and we were variously non-human Pinkerton Detectives investigating cattle mutilations.
At a point towards the end my character had an illusion placed upon him so that he looked like a cow, and one of the other players (the pixie engineering tinkerer, who built a voice magnifying device which had a form of Tourette’s, or maybe multiple personalities) gave me a cow hat to wear, then told me to keep it at the end of the session.
(while disguised as a cow, I got to do the Invasion Of The Body Snatchers Sutherland scream to draw the attention of a pack of Klansmen to the ponyboy in their yard, said ponyboy being the Klansman Big Earl with a glamour on him. Never did find out whether they beat the crap out of him.)
((Also got to do a “Cow stands on hind legs and empties revolver at flying monster” bit))

In theory I had a Games On Demand ticket for the next session, in an hour, but The Tireds hit, so I took the option of chilling out for a bit. Possibly related to this was the GM for both the Funkadelic Frankenstein & the Lemuria Rising QAGS games mentioning his next session of Lemuria, at 7pm, and that he’d be OK with going over the player count if people wanted to play & had generics. (the game was sold out, but that doesn’t mean that the people will actually show up)

So I chilled, then met up with the Lewis family & sort of hung out for a while, then wandered off to my third QAGS game of the con, making a total of 12 hours of that game with the same GM.
This one had the Pinkerton Monster Hunters investigating disappearances in a Tennessee town, discovering, eventually, that it was all the fault of Civil War era Confederate Zombies.
The game has personal messaging ‘pagers’ using ticker-tape, and people started writing down messages broadcast to everyone. It got out of hand, and ended when we ran out of paper & the GM declared that we’d all run out of ticker-tape.
The final message read “SHIT OUT OF PAPE”

as I was finishing up this post, two people from the School Days game wandered past, remembered me, and we got to chatting. they, and their friend, were podcast listeners, so I may have increased our listener’s geographic & demographic confusion by a bit.

Woke up to my alarm, which was deeply confusing to me for some reason. In retrospect, maybe “The Weekenders” by The Hold Steady wasn’t the best choice for wake-up music.
Good song though.
She said “The theme of this party’s the Industrial Age”,
And you came in dressed like a train wreck.

My first game was Funkadelic Frankenstein, and was hilarious; I got to play “Fishbone” Jenkins, a Deep One Aquarium Researcher, part-time P.I., and committed Dagonist, as we investigated a religious group looking to ‘purify’ monsters.

Really looking forward to the Lemuria Rising game tomorrow, which uses the same system.

Post-game, I picked up part 2 of the VIG swag bag, which had a much higher proportion of “stuff that isn’t my sort of thing” than part one.
Fortunately, and I only noticed this after dropping off the stuff at my hotel, they have a donation bin for unwanted stuff to go to Military gamers.
(it turns out that there’s a playable preview of D&D Next in there, if anyone’s keen?)

Today’s Game On Demand was Zombie Cinema, which we set at Gen Con. One person actually lived; I could have too, if I hadn’t gone back for that pesky kid.
It’s a fantastic game, as I’d thought it was, and I’m glad I’ve already bought a copy; Got it during VIG early entry.

My final game was a Better Angels game, and it was a rolling tonne of fun; We adopted a signal of forefingers used as horns to indicate when we were talking as each other’s demons, stole an oil tanker for no readily explainable reason, blocked a channel with it once we gave up on that plan and … OK, I’m going to buy said game tomorrow.
‘Nuff Said.
Also, I gave out a couple of Big Red Couch bookmarks at the end of the game, to people who at least SEEMED interested

I hung out with Moni, Frank, and sporadic Steve for a while as we tried & failed to get our act together on the dinner-having front, but then the elephant of sleeping laid it’s trunk upon me, and I started flagging, so I ambled off to sleep.
Then smelled the foods from the bar at the JW, got instantly ravenous, & washed up here, typing an update with distressingly greasy fingers in the bar & eating a pretzel burger.

I set an alarm this morning, then woke up a solid hour & a half before it.
~sigh~
Still, breakfast with steel-cut Oatmeal was good, and then, on my way to the VIG lounge, this happened;

We, by which I mean Tom & Stacy & I, ended up in the line for early VIG access about 45 minutes before the actual access was to happen, but once in the line there’s little incentive to leave it, even if staying there is stupid, so we nattered & stood & walked & eventually got into The Halls Of Spending.

My checklist with booth numbers came in handy, though I keep forgetting that a booth on aisle 1700 might face onto the connector between 1700 & 1800; Missed a number of places on a first look that way, and it took me a ridiculously long time to find Jeph Jacques, by which time he had no books left for the day – More coming tomorrow.

Mark from Campaign Coins remembered me from when we chatted last year, which was kind of cool.

I didn’t get video of the hoardes of people rushing into the hall this time, I was kind of wandering around with Frank, who didn’t want to be trampled by the aforementioned frenzied hoardes. From memory, we were chatting with people from the crew behind The Bob & Angus show, including meeting Claire the Intern & her puppeteer, which was just awesome.
Also met Bob & his puppeteer, but Claire came first, and was just so friendly & well-meaning.

Played in a Savage Worlds Blue Planet game which was kind of fun; The game’s not out yet, though it’ll hopefully be released in November.
There were only 4 of the six players there, and as a combination of that & some cleverness* we burned through the 4 hour scenario in 2 hours.
I picked a character with ‘squid’ on the sheet, but it turned out to be a modified human with gills, and only the standard number of tentacles; Still fun to play, as we got involved in salvaging a cargo of guns which everyone wanted.
* when being chased by goons, why NOT call the Harbour Patrol & report shots fired?

While wandering around post-game, I took a lap through the card/board games hall, and spotted the tables for demos of the My Little Pony CCG.
I must try this game.
Apparently setting aside about 45 minutes for a demo would be about right.
yessss

Tom & Stacy showed up at precisely the right time to tag along for dinner, and after approximately a billion hours of conversation, we ended up staging out in a multi pronged voyage to The Spaghetti Factory, where nobody had spaghetti, and the food was really good.
also, Tom very kindly paid for everyone

Post-dinner, I had a ticket for Games On Demand. I still didn’t quite understand the GoD system, but I got into a game of School Days, which was a hell of a lot of fun, and which came to a natural conclusion in a little over an hour. (it was a two hour slot, but the game was ending)
The guy running it is the guy who wrote it, and it’s a good narrative game about high school. We went with a Noir high school where a member of the Math Club had been murdered, and it was hilarious.

Finished up by eventually finding the cafe where Steve & Monica were hanging out, and, well, hanging out with them. Very good coffee, so if you’re ever in Indy, do hit Bees Coffee on Capitol; Try the Agave Latte.

I slept pretty well last night, woke up feeling good, and headed down to breakfast to find that a storm of gamers had blown in, littering the lobby, the restaurant, and most importantly the Starbucks, with throngs of people.

Around this time I got a text from Tom & Stacy from Indiana, who’d just hit town, so we did coffee, and I’m my case a breakfast muffin, in the lobby of the Hyatt, where the Starbucks was bafflingly uncluttered with gamers.

The VIG room opened at noon, so we got there a little early & stood in line for a few minutes before the sedate amble to pick up badges/swag/cold water.
A certain amount of hanging around & going through the swag-bag happened.

After some sitting & nattering time there was a move towards lunch, via people’s hotels to drop off the aforementioned swag, and it was as I returned from the JW that Frank called, having just hit town, so I met him in the VIG lounge & he came along to a rather nice lunch at Johnny Rockets. Or maybe Jimmy Rockets; Not sure.

Post-lunch, it was back to the VIG lounge to meet up with Steve & Monica, then we ended up staging out to The Stink, for the acquisition of Free Stuff!
OK, so I got a “Stink 10” D6 and a bag thingy, but I also got to see people try Vegemite

After that, off to Scotty’s which is apparently a Gen Con hangout, but was mostly crowded & loud, and struggling to cope with food & drink service.
Still, we stayed there for a few hours, got the free die for ordering off the Gen Con menu, and eventually people drifted off, mostly to get sleep, I suspect.
Ended up wandering through the ICC with Frank, Monica, Steve & a couple of guys from Boston, Charley & Graham, mostly to see what was happening. Talked to some people behind a student-made ARG, the name of which escapes me, but which seemed all multi-media-y & complex.

As things do, the evening wound down, and we all wandered back to our respective hotels. (in the case of Steve & Monica, this involved getting a lift from Frank, because they had to spend one or two nights at a hotel out of the city centre. naturally, when it was time to go, the third person they’re staying with had vanished, said he’d be back soon, and wasn’t answering his cell, so I think they abandoned him after a half-hour or so.
there was also the issue of Frank’s van being parked outside a government building; he was concerned about being towed, where I was more concerned about it being surrounded by caution tape & being investigated by a bomb-squad robot

Tom picked up a Goblin mask


City-Building at Cardhalla.

A possibly recognisable person, “The Professor”

Last year, I wound up chatting late into Wednesday night with the Family Lewis, eventually wandering back to my hotel sometime after midnight, suddenly realising I was hungry, and ordering room service at 1:30am.
That totally didn’t happen again, because today was a Tuesday. Other than that, and a different hotel, it’s bang-on.

Surprisingly, they brought me a gift-bag of assorted Michigan-related stuff, which makes me feel guilty about not being organised enough to track down mini-bars of L&P Chocolate to give folks.
Then again, maybe that’s a kindness?
Is the rest of the world ready for the taste sensation that is lemon-flavoured pop-rocks in white chocolate?
Would I be able to resist telling them that Paeroa is a type of edible frog?

(Turns out that their youngest is obsessed with maps; Not sure whether to give helpful advice, or warn him off)

My book for the trip was Abraham Lincoln, Vampire Hunter, which was quite good, and which I have now finished. And started reading again, thanks to the Insomnias.

Clearly I need a new book, so I picked up an on-sale copy of ‘Redshirts’ from the one bookstore I could find at the Circle Centre Mall, because I don’t think I can make it through the next day or so without some recreational reading material.

On the way back from said purchase I had my first “Hey, I know that guy” moment when I crossed paths with some folks I’d met on the VIG tour last year. (I think one of them is on the Gen Con forums, and cropped up as knowing me on a How’s Your Con Prep Going thread)
He and his Crew had just rolled into town that morning.

Shortly after getting back to the hotel I got a call from Tom from Indiana, who was up to his neck in work, but wanted to say “Hi”, so there are now clever plans to go & do coffee or something once he rolls into town tomorrow morning sometime.

Just before I started writing this update I got a text from some other Gen Con folks, Karen & Tom & The Family Lewis from somewhere in Michigan, so I may well be catching up with them later on this evening.
I passed on the trading card stuff from my VIG pack to their youngest last year, and he was honest & cautious enough to make sure I knew that some of it was rare & valuable stuff

Note: There were a crapload of Toms at last year’s Gen Con, or at least it seemed that way from the people I met.
Tom from Indiana, Tom from Michigan, Tom from Ottawa, and I’m pretty sure there was another Thomas as well, and three of those were at the same table in the VIG lounge.

There was a Star Wars exhibit at the Indiana State Museum, conveniently located across the road from the hotel, so there went a couple of hours.
T’was interesting, with various models, and some hands-on technology stuff to do with robots & mag-lev which were overrun with children.
Since I was there, I did the rest of the museum, and got to see evidence of the Earth spinning.

More by luck than judgement (apologies to Ned’s Atomic Dustbin for the blatant theft of their lyric) I wound up seeing the pendulum knock down two pegs, some time apart, and there was evidence of the movement of a third.
Also, I took a nigh-useless reflected self-portrait.

I don’t want to tempt too much fate, even though I found the fourth die needed, but I’m more alert than I was yesterday, so hopefully I’m adjusting to the climate & time zone.
If not, there’s always the hotel gym & blatant caffeine abuse.

My book for the trip was Abraham Lincoln, Vampire Hunter, which was quite good, and which I have now finished. And started reading again, thanks to the Insomnias.

Clearly I need a new book, so I picked up an on-sale copy of ‘Redshirts’ from the one bookstore I could find at the Circle Centre Mall, because I don’t think I can make it through the next day or so without some recreational reading material.

On the way back from said purchase I had my first “Hey, I know that guy” moment when I crossed paths with some folks I’d met on the VIG tour last year. (I think one of them is on the Gen Con forums, and cropped up as knowing me on a How’s Your Con Prep Going thread)
He and his Crew had just rolled into town that morning.

Shortly after getting back to the hotel I got a call from Tom from Indiana, who was up to his neck in work, but wanted to say “Hi”, so there are now clever plans to go & do coffee or something once he rolls into town tomorrow morning sometime.

Just before I started writing this update I got a text from some other Gen Con folks, Karen & Tom & The Family Lewis from somewhere in Michigan, so I may well be catching up with them later on this evening.
I passed on the trading card stuff from my VIG pack to their youngest last year, and he was honest & cautious enough to make sure I knew that some of it was rare & valuable stuff

Note: There were a crapload of Toms at last year’s Gen Con, or at least it seemed that way from the people I met.
Tom from Indiana, Tom from Michigan, Tom from Ottawa, and I’m pretty sure there was another Thomas as well, and three of those were at the same table in the VIG lounge.

There was a Star Wars exhibit at the Indiana State Museum, conveniently located across the road from the hotel, so there went a couple of hours.
T’was interesting, with various models, and some hands-on technology stuff to do with robots & mag-lev which were overrun with children.
Since I was there, I did the rest of the museum, and got to see evidence of the Earth spinning.

More by luck than judgement (apologies to Ned’s Atomic Dustbin for the blatant theft of their lyric) I wound up seeing the pendulum knock down two pegs, some time apart, and there was evidence of the movement of a third.
Also, I took a nigh-useless reflected self-portrait.

I don’t want to tempt too much fate, even though I found the fourth die needed, but I’m more alert than I was yesterday, so hopefully I’m adjusting to the climate & time zone.
If not, there’s always the hotel gym & blatant caffeine abuse.