My first Gen Con, back in 2012, was done very much as a ‘trip of a lifetime’ thing, under the assumption that I’d only do this thing once.
As it turned out, it was rather more fun than I’d anticipated, and indeed, I enjoyed it more than the Chicago WorldCon which followed it.
(though that may have been due to said WorldCon being on the far end of nearly a month of travel; I can’t be sure that it was “Craig is over WorldCon/Conventions”, and not “Craig is getting sick of these goddamned hotels & traveling”)

Thus, this year’s trip happened, and a part of this trip was the question, “Is This Still Fun, And Do I Want To Do It Again?”
I think the answer is ‘Yes’.
It is still fun, I do want to do it again, and I’m going to make plans based on that.

Next year I’m going to WorldCon in London, which completely clashes with GenCon, but I’ll be back at GenCon in 2015, regardless of where the 2015 WorldCon ends up being.
The only location of the three bids which really grabs me is Helsinki, but while there is a three-day gap between the two, making it possible to attend both, it would be kind of insane to try to do that & expect to enjoy yourself

I’ve been back in NZ for at least a full day now, and am awake at 5:30am due to acts of storm, which includes a whole lot of rain & some thunderclaps loud enough to rattle the house. (One of them was strong enough that the floor shook)

Part of today’s plans need to be The Unpacking Of The Things, so that my suitcase is no longer cluttering up the lounge, and the rest of my clothing from the trip makes it to the laundry hamper.

Turns out I hilariously over-estimated my spending money for the trip, as I have half the cash & a third of the debit card balance remaining.
~ shrug ~
It’s not like it goes stale or anything, so provided I keep it all safe, and use the debit card occasionally so as not to trigger the not used within twelve months charges, it’ll still be there for Gen Con 2015.

On the money front I do need to check with my bank on Monday, to make sure that those JW Marriott charges get reversed. I get that it can take some time, and I don’t think that the hotel would try to get paid twice, but this situation happened because they didn’t explain things properly, and didn’t know the full consequences of their own systems, so it bears keeping an eye on.
Worst case, I have around a month to challenge the charge, and I have the bill from them to prove I paid in full.
~~~ ~~~ ~~~
OK, so the JW reversed the charges without a problem, but there are two other charges of a non-specific nature on there, which look distinctly like they’re applied by the credit card company.
~ sigh ~
Well, that’s a thing to do on Monday, isn’t it?

Who turned off the warmth?
I mean, it was a little chilly in the transition between plane & embarkation tube thingy, but that’s to be expected. This on the Big Red Couch with a blanket thing, on the other hand, goes to show just how quickly you can get used to Indianapolis weather.

The flight back to Auckland was pretty uneventful*, just long & dull. Napping occurred, but not uninterrupted sleep, and I’m trying to stay awake during the day so as to accelerate the adjustment to a new time zone.
* there were two people in my earshot who either hadn’t pre-ordered the special meal, or who had done so in such a way that it didn’t get through to catering

Breakfast happened early on flight NZ7 thanks to possible Clear Air Turbulence on our route at a bad time for food service. The turbulence didn’t eventuate, and an entirely ordinary landing happened.

No luggage hassles this time, thankfully, other than the delay of a 747-load of luggage all at once & the difficulty of spotting your personal bag on the carousel through all of the other people doing exactly the same thing.

Biosecurity was a non-event, as cooked seed things aren’t a thing they’re worried about, though they did X-Ray both of my bags, I’m assuming as part of the “well, since you declared things …” process.

Kevin & Tonya had braved the cold, dark & fog to pick me up, and drove me back to the flat, putting up with barely-coherent Wooo Gen Con! ramblings along the way.

My goal for the day was to go to bed at a reasonable time, and not to sleep too much during the day.
Yes to the first one, but given that it’s 2:40 am, may have taken too many micro naps, or macro naps.
~shrug~

Aside from the horrible cough, I feel pretty good, and I have already started the preliminary noodling with bits of paper for 2015.
WorldCon 2014 in London almost exactly overlaps GenCon, but the same is not true of the proposed but not-yet-voted-upon Helsinki 2015; There is a three-day gap between the two, so it would technically be possible to attend both.

It is just short of 6am, and I have used the language of awful cowboy movies to name myself Craig Sleeps-Like-Crap.
That was a bad night.
On the positive side, maybe it’ll make sleeping on the SFO-AKL leg easier?

I’ve had a fantastic time this Gen Con.
Once again, the people I’ve met have been friendly, and I don’t think I can point to any interaction and say that that person was being deliberately rude, or offensive, or bringing the whole scene down, man.

The closest I can think of is someone who was very loud, kind of excited, and didn’t really listen to anything happening around him because he was stuck on broadcast mode the whole time. Even he was just a little irritating, and the calm & wry chuckling when he left gave a real sense of camaraderie.
Or something.

Turns out that there were some unexplained consequences to the message Blinkinlight from a few days ago.
The total of room charges, tax, & misc. stuff had gone over what had been approved/reserved on my NZ credit card. I asked them whether they’d like me to wander down with said credit card to re-authorise at a higher amount, but they said it wasn’t necessary.
The reason it wasn’t necessary is because their system automatically charged the card, which is not what I wanted, because I’d get hammered with currency exchange fees.
They reversed the charge, and I paid with the US debit card; Next time I’ll ask them to reserve a larger amount.

Checked out just in time to catch the shuttle bus to the airport, wildly early of course, and checking in was a lot simpler than last time.
Then again, last time I had an extra bag, tried to use the kiosk for the wrong airline, and then got a non-functional kiosk at the right airline, so the bar wasn’t exactly high.

I saw a sign at the check-in counter at IND which was simultaneously promising & annoying; Direct flights between Indianapolis and Los Angeles will be starting on (or near) August the 27th.

Security was likewise pretty easy, with very few people going through the system, so it all flowed fairly smoothly. Even the guy who opted out of the scanner got dealt with in about the same timeframe as I did.

I took the precaution, just before sealing my suitcase, of photographing the two items in the package from The Family Lewis which seemed the most likely to cause concern at NZ Biosecurity, in the hope that it’ll speed up the process.

Frankly, I think there’s nothing of concern, given the cooked nature of both items; Whatever Biosecurity risk those seeds possessed, it went away somewhere in the roasting & salting process

Indianapolis International, in addition to looking like a mall with check-in desks, has free wi-fi; You have to watch a short advertisement, and you get 45 minutes or so of The Internets.
Chicago lacks this; Their version wants you to download & install an app, and, well, … that ain’t happening. NoSir.

The Indy-Chicago flight went well, I think. Not many passengers, so the guy on the aisle moved to a couple of empties, and I had two seats to myself for the less-than-an-hour flight.
I fell asleep during landing.
Not sure how I manage to keep doing that.

I’ve had lunch in the form of an ordinary ‘Chicago Style’ pizza. Not bad, as such, but I’ve had better.
Once.
In Chicago.

There is a little over an hour until boarding might start for the Chicago to San Francisco leg, and the airport is kind of cluttered with people. It’s not packed, there are plenty of empty seats at the gates, there are just people all over the place.
Kind of like the dealer hall crowds at Gen Con, but without some of the basic good-will & attempts to make things easier on other people.
Rolling backpack behaviour is about the same though; I saw someone go sprawling in Indianapolis airport, and it was only a fast-acting member of the ground crew catching her that stopped a nasty impact with the floor.

I finished Redshirts yesterday, so I bought myself a copy of The Hunger Games, and I’m now most of the way through it. Then again, I’m also most of the way to San Francisco, so I guess that worked out OK.

San Francisco got … Interesting.
What I’d thought was Terminal 1 on my schedule was actually Terminal I, as in ‘international’. The person at T1 sent me to TI, but to the United counter; Air NZ was in the next row.
Security was mercifully short & calm though, which beats the hell out of my previous SFO experience.

Turns out that SFO wifi works, eventually, if you hit it enough. Also, while it threatens to make you watch advertising, it doesn’t actually DO it.

I have dubbed my seat neighbour “Captain Fidget”, because for the love of God will you stop adjusting the nest of blankets, pillows, bags and other crap you’ve wrapped yourself in!?

Watched The Croods again, and also GI Joe: The One With Bruce Willis.
I don’t think I got a decent chunk of sleep, but I did get a number of naps in.

Gen Con 2013 Attendance Figures

Here’s the really important bit:

INDIANAPOLIS (August 20, 2013) Gen Con Indy 2013, completed August 15-18 at the Indiana Convention Center, experienced record attendance numbers and unprecedented growth. Weekend turnstile attendance of 159,364 and unique attendance of 49,058 grew the convention approximately 20% from 2012’s previous record of 41,000+ unique attendees. These metrics show continued growth of more than 75% over the past five years.

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.