3am, my old nemesis; We meet again.
But this time, the advantage is … Well, still yours.

I slept until about 9:30, which seemed OK at the time, but here at the wrong side of 3am, seems like a mistake.

The only thing I had to do today was the shownotes on Big Red Couch episode 59, and they got done, though took a while.
The rough cut of the episode was 2.5 hours long, and notes take me maybe 1.5 times the episode length to do on a good day, so that’s basically what I did today.

I did take a walk through the ICC to see what had changed since yesterday.
The Will Call, Event Reg., Customer Service, and Badge Reg. kiosks and signs are up, along with the little fences for queue management.
There are rows of tables going up in the boardgaming halls.
The curtains between the … plots? allotments? stalls? … in the Exhibit Hall are going up, as are the banners hanging over the aisles.

Got a call in the evening from folks in Chicago-ish; Moni & Steven get into town sometime on Tuesday afternoon, so there are plans made there.

So, that was my day.
Maybe should have gotten out more, if that’s the reason I’m still awake. Alarm’s set, so we won’t be having a repeat of the 9:30am incident.

Once I got to my room, I had a lot of shower, because I really needed it.
Felt much better afterwards, so I took a walk to the mall through a mostly-empty Convention Centre to see whether I could find a cellphone SIM card; Turns out I could, so I’ve got calls & texts for the trip sorted. As a bonus, it’s on my iPhone, so I won’t be double-phoning it this year.

Got a call from Tom, who’s up to his eyeballs in work, so we’ve worked out approximate plans for when he & Stacy get in on Wednesday, mostly of the form “Give me a yell when you hit town, and I’ll wander over”.
No wrong numbers yet, but last Gen Con’s “Are You Available To Work Security Tonight?” text is going to take some beating.

In the wake of that trip, I can report that it is hot & humid out there, and that air-con is a good thing.

Frank came by in the afternoon, so we ambled through the ICC, partially to see what was happening this far out from the event (will call & other booths mostly set up) and partially to hit the mall food court, where I was able to try cheese curds (kind of a fried mozzarella stick, in this case) and a root beer. (tastes similar to when you put ice-cream in Coke, at least to my taste buds)
Basically we sat around & talked and did that thing where you’ve not seen someone for a couple of years, so the conversation sort of wanders in all sorts of odd directions.

Looping back through the ICC, we were able to peer into what will be the Exhibit/Dealer hall, and is currently an enormous sauna because the air-con isn’t on yet.
That is a huge space. I mean, it’s bigger than it was the last time I was here, but without all of the dealer stuff, it looks ridiculously large, like it’d be impossible to fill it. And yet that’ll happen.

Oh, and some of the signage is up.

Attempting to give the impression that I know a damn thing about Catan

Back at the hotel, we sat around in the bar, as is the way of things, and ended up chatting to a couple of the former VIG Lounge Volunteers, who have moved on to be involved in a sort of “High End Con Experience” thing they’re starting up.

My understanding is filtered through a very tired brain, so bear that in mind, but the idea seems to be to have tailored convention experiences, adding onto what’s already at the con.
I’d initially thought that they were talking about an operation which would essentially take over providing Very Important Gamer stuff at cons, but this proved to be completely wrong. This looks to be an externally-provided thing, with such things as a concierge option, and exclusive events,  and that sort of thing.

The idea that a person might not even need to have a con badge, because all of the con stuff would come to them, was mentioned a few times, and the more I think about that, the more it feels like their target is People With Money Who Want To Have Gone To A Con, But Don’t Want To Actually Go.
That, and it feels like they’re basing a business on Ghosting the con. This year they’re apparently setting up in the mall, and I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t going to check that out, but being off-site and having nothing to do with Gen Con looks kind of parasitic to me; Piggybacking on Gen Con’s popularity & advertising.

In any case, I suspect that their services are not my sort of thing.
I got a VIG badge the first time because it guarantees that my hotel is sorted, and that I’ll get, if not exactly what I want, something that will easily do what I need. The VIG lounge is nice, the free drinks and swag are nice, the early-entry to the Cavernous Realm Of Things To Buy is nice, but the hotel room is why I have the badge.

Anyway, it’s 5am here, I got to bed at 9-ish and slept through to 3-ish, so I’m going to try for some more sleep.
See you tomorrow, Internet.

OK, I’mma gonna warn you in advance; This’ll have a lot of frankly annoying praise of the JW Marriott Indianapolis.

Email saying that my room was ready arrived at 9:17.
Said room was, in fact ready, and because I was the first identified Gen Con person to check in, they gave me some of last year’s JW Marriott dice that they hand out on check-out. (which I don’t get because I’m checking out after the Gen Con period is over)

JW Marriott 2014 Gen Con Dice

Oh, and the view from the room’s not bad either.

Indiana Convention Centre, as seen from my hotel room

And now, I’m going to go and have a very long shower.

And possibly store the clothing I’ve been wearing for a long damn time in a lead casket, so that it can be buried in a salt flat, lest it rise to exact it’s vengeance upon the world.
That can happen; Saw it in a movie once.

But mostly the games.

My suitcase is somewhat packed, though I’m increasingly unconvinced by the rolling technique as a way to make clothes take less space; Folding + Brute Force, I think, might be more effective.
The case is nowhere near full, and has maybe 10kg of mass allocation left, so I’m good there; Just wondering about volume.

More out of a desire to keep busy than from anything useful, I thought I’d post the game descriptions for the events in the previous post.

The Sinister Secretions of Stan’s Rug
Horrible, horrible things happen in the mossy dankness of Stan’s Rug. Why would anybody go there on purpose? It’s a mystery… An introductory adventure for Living Low – The Low Life Living Campaign.
I found out about this one by searching for Savage Worlds games, and I found this description;

Gazillions of years in the future the Hoomanrace is extinct and the dominant lifeforms evolved from cockroaches, snack cakes, and the dregs that survived the various apocalypses in this highly detailed and whimsical Savage Setting for the Savage Worlds RPG.

Spork and Sorcery adventure in a shattered world inhabited by the descendants of cockroaches, worms, snack cakes, and stranded aliens. Discover the arcane secrets of hocus pokery, dementalism, smellcasting, and contanimation. Battle hideous beasts risen from the rubble of ancient civilizations. Enjoy a light lunch at the Primordial Soup Kitchen.

Party Pontoon, Ahoy!
All hands on deck! Buckle your life vests on because your team will be in over your heads. Strange happenings and sightings are all in a day’s work though, and it will be up to your team to dive right in. Inspectres is player-driven storytelling, rules light, with roleplaying and fun emphasized. “We fight the forces of darkness so you don’t have to.”
Not played Inspectres yet. Want to. It has a very different approach to how investigation-type games work, and seems to let the GM do almost nothing, if the actual play I heard is to be believed.

Death on a Dangerous Planet
It’s the height of the Cold War, and a strange new planet has been discovered orbiting an exotic star. Planetary Expedition Alpha has disappeared, and it’s your mission to find them. But beware, the Soviets have sent their own teams to this dangerous, psychotropic world. You must overcome enemies both familiar and alien and secure this new world for America.
I’m honestly not sure what to expect here, but it’s QAGS as a system, which lends itself to a certain madcapness.

Trick-or-Treat
On Halloween night, you & your friends are all that stands between the evil candy-stealing pumpkins & your classmates. But can you put a stop to these ghoulish-gourds once & for all?
This is using Fate Accelerated Edition, which I’ve not played before. Also, it seems like a good choice for the last day of the con.

Paging Dr. Dinosaur
When psychics using “though crystals” attack Tesladyne’s headquarters, everyone immediately suspects their favorite time-traveling super genius.
Atomic Robo RPG, possibly featuring Dr. Dinosaur. This was an easy choice, and I only got the ticket by pure luck; Someone out there was assigned this ticket, and returned it to the pool. No idea why, but I’m happy that I hit the “what’s become available” button at what I assume was precisely the right moment.

Operation Crossover
Since 1947, the brave soldier-scientists of Majestic 12 have toiled in the shadows, waging a secret war against threats the average civilian doesn’t want to believe exist.
Another Atomic Robo game. Remember that stroke of luck with “Paging Dr. Dinosaur”? Well, it happened twice.

Midnight Sub Rosa
April 1936. To mark the 200th anniversary of his hanging, group of scholars and interested parties have gathered near the burial place of early American colonist and reputed necromancer Ezekiel de la Poer. They plan to discuss his life and how he bridged the European and American occult heritages. When his necromantic journal disappears, parties are quick to accuse each other of academic motives, until the dead begin to come home. Can the Investigators unravel the tangled agendas and secure the journal before something worse happens?
This uses Trail Of Cthulhu as a system, which is itself a version of Gumshoe. Had I known that, I wouldn’t have assumed that ‘Trail’ was a Western game of some form, as opposed to the Investigation game it actually is.
I’ve heard good things about T.O.C., so I’m looking forward to seeing it in action.

Around this time tomorrow, all going well, I’ll be at Britomart in Auckland, waiting for one of those Airport Express busses to take me to, …, Well, to the airport.
I mean, it’s sort of built into the name, now that I think of it.

I figured that, as a cunning way to make sure that this blog still works, and also that the integration into Facebook & G+ work, that I could do a quick “This Is What My Gen Con Events Schedule Looks Like” sort of thing, so here it is.

Here’s the “locked in” bits of the schedule. Sort of.

This is, to use a phrase I learned today, descriptive not prescriptive.
I’m unlikely to actually spend three hours in the Exhibit Hall. Said hall, incidentally, exhibits things you can buy; At other conventions, it’d be the dealer room.
I’m also not certain what time queuing for Hickman’s Killer Breakfast starts, but I’m hoping it’s somewhere in the realms of “Not 8am”, so that I can have breakfast. H’sKB does not, as it happens, include breakfast.