“Hey, Cool Shirt”, and Pallet trucks on carpet kind of suck
Before I made it into the central bit of Gen Con at the ICC (which I think of everything East of the Crossroads Concourse), one of the proprietors of Off World Designs spotted my LonCon3 shirt, so we did the whole Good Luck For The Con/Hope You Enjoy Yourself thing. (Off World Designs do shirts and other merchandise for a huge number of cons, so their stuff, & they, get around)
Shortly afterwards, while ambling around before the VIG lounge opened, I passed someone from Upper Deck heading in the other direction with a big-ass pallet of boxes on one of those unpowered pallet truck things.
A short while later I passed him again, he’d not made it that much further, so offered to help.

Did I mention that those things suck on carpet?
It’s very hard to gain, or keep, momentum, so we went with a process of taking one half of the handle each, leaning into it, and going full steam ahead. It worked, though a few calls of “We’re not stopping” were needed, and we did end up on a collision course with the previously mentioned Off Worlds person; Fortunately, she seemed to understand the need for constant forward movement, and dodged.

We achieved our objective.

Catching up with Tom & Stacy, and general hanging out
Ran into Tom & Stacy in one of the hamster tubes (didn’t have the pallet truck by this point; we couldn’t have got it up the escalator anyway), and after a brief diversion to get water, sat & talked until the urge to wander past the VIG Lounge got too strong, so we did, even though it didn’t open until noon.
Except they’d organised themselves faster than expected, possibly due to lack of Swag Bags, so they’d opened at 10-ish.

Sadly, they had no furniture beyond the various desks, so after sorting out our stuff on the floor, I dropped off my stuff at the JW & we sat in the lobby for a while, until the hear & tiredness required naps, or at least even more air-con.

Meeting Frank, getting lunch
Some time later I met up with Frank, mostly by accident, so we ambled off to the foodcourt to hunt down a food.
(sometime in there I was able to identify a My Little Pony costume he’d seen as Rainbow Dash, making it about 20% cooler than other costumes)
Steve & Monica showed up sometime between ordering & food, followed some time later by someone whose name I’ve forgotten, who has something to do with a promotional event happening at the Indianapolis Zoo. As a note, the phrase “Everything’s Open” when referring to a zoo makes people like me think that there will be events like “Can gamers outrun lions?” and “Roll to dodge monkey poo”.

Hitting The Stink
I was able to try Vegemite Chocolate, thanks to the GenCon U.N. folks.

Yeah. That’s a thing I have now done. Crossed off the list.

The Stink was kind of loud. They went with a Hunger Games theme with this one, which meant frequent announcements about which randomly-assigned District had been eliminated.
This is something I’ve often found amusing/annoying about geek social events; There’s the stated plan to set up an event where people can meet, talk, play games, etc., and then the environment is such that every ten minutes or so, all of that is interrupted so that you can listen to someone you’re not talking to & can’t see.

Post-Stink
Tom & Stacy & I wandered off to get dinner, which is pretty easy with a mall foodcourt nearby.

Post-dinner, and after some rambling & wrangling with air conditioning systems, Tom & I ended up back in the JW Lobby, up on the third level, going through the coupon book to see what looked interesting, and where the various booths we wanted to visit could be found.
In my case this was “Scattered From One End Of The Hall To The Other”, but this worked out OK, as I had a pretty short list of must-visits, and on the day I’d already spent $100 before I needed to look at the wee map to figure out where to go next.

Sometime before the JW, we were looking in the display cases outside the dealer hall, and I noticed something called Mysterium.
I know almost nothing about it, other than that the cards & game pieces on display were very pretty, so I may need to take a closer look.
Yes, actually, I am that shallow with my potential purchases.
(that said, the pieces & cards I found on a quick web-search don’t look quite the same, so maybe what’s there is a deluxe version, or something prettied-up for display)

I started today with some plans to go and do tourist things, but a walk to find the CVS demonstrated just what I was in for.
I did do a lap of the State Capitol building, to see whether I could spot a sign for tours of the building (according to the website they do happen), but couldn’t spot one, and the heat & humidity were getting pretty bad, so I inhaled a litre of water & retreated back to the land of air-con.
Naturally, I wandered through the ICC, to see what had changed. Quite a lot more signage, and a number of the company-specific rooms were being set up

Wall Hanging at Gen Con 2015, possibly having to do with Ortus Regni. (which I have probably spelled wrong)

I’m not really sure what this is about, but it looks Very Piratical

Coming from a bitterly cold Auckland winter into an impressively, oppressively hot Indiana summer, combined with jet-lag, is doing an excellent job of kicking my ass for me. 🙂

Sometime in the afternoon Steven & Monica got in from Chicago (or maybe Chicago-ish?), so we met up in the lobby of their hotel, where they presented me with a bag of the stuff from last year’s VIG swag bag.

2014 VIG Swag-Bag Contents

Frank turned up after work, and after a shuffling of cars out to the suburbs so that Steve & Moni weren’t paying $40 a day for hotel parking, we went to dinner at Bonefish in … some suburb. I have no idea where it is.
“Indianapolis somewhere” is my best guess.

It was a good night, and involved birthday cake (Monica had a birthday).

There’s not really a lot more to be said about the evening; We were joined by Mac (who is the chap who got my VIG badge last year), and later Kevin (who is a friend of Frank’s).
I’m not 100% sure when the evening broke up, but I think I got back to the hotel a bit after 11pm.

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.