Our story resumes with me killing time in the early morning at Dublin Airport, waiting on the last of three flights.

There was some sort of … I’m not sure what … during priority boarding where a couple of folks ( one of whom was loud & deaf ) seemed to be trying to get help with a ticket, or an already departed flight, or something. They did this by joining the queue for boarding and loudly complaining that they’d been sent all over the airport to anyone wearing a uniform.
They were eventually persuaded to take a seat so that they could be helped after boarding, though that took a few repeats to sink in, and one of them still wanted to keep making their case/complaining, while the other one was talking about how it was just their turn to get screwed & everyone else here would get their turn eventually.
I do wonder whether they’d just joined a random boarding queue, or maybe one going to the right country, since Edinburgh was mentioned by the loud one.
They were kind of annoying, so I’m not being as kind as I could be, but it seems unlikely to me that an airport with people that chill has been sending them all over the place and not helping; Seems more likely that they were trying to find someone who’d tell them what they wanted to hear, or that, just maybe, they weren’t understanding what they were being told because having a person who’s deaf & agitated do the communication part wasn’t a smart move.

Uneventful flight back to London Heathrow.
I reached the ‘randomly fall asleep’ stage of things, so the trip happened as a series of napping incidents.
Bag collection was similarly fine, & didn’t even have to show my passport to anyone, I guess because I’d already done that in Dublin?

The Tiredness struck again once I got into the train to Aylesbury. Heathrow Express & the Bakerloo Line were fine, and I was mostly coherent, but once I got myself installed in a mostly empty train, in the quiet section? I was falling asleep between stations.

Made it home around midday.
The flat’s still there, the cheese in the fridge hadn’t mutated, and the boost button on the water heater controller gave me enough hot water for a much needed shower.

The goal for the afternoon was simply to stay awake as much as possible, assisted by an after-work pub trip where I fell momentarily asleep a few times, but made it until nightfall.

Woke up during the early morning to see a thunderstorm outside. (not a lot of point in closing the curtains when you’re on the 30th floor, and it’s nice to wake to the sunrise.

Decided to skip hotel breakfast today, in favour of sleeping in a bit & getting to the airport in plenty of time.
No luggage scale (mine died sometime during lockdown) so I was hoping that it wouldn’t be overweight; Didn’t feel too heavy, but I’m out of practice with judging that.

At the airport I had a moment of terror when the scale at the check-in desk said “29.0”, but it turned out to be pounds, not kilogrammes.
Security was very chill, and the TSA folks were relaxed about … pretty much everything.

Got ‘breakfast’ at a bar/diner where they were just changing between menus, so I got a burger.
The thunderstorm seems to have gone away, but it’s raining hard out there, and the sky is grey.

Fell asleep a lot on the flight to Chicago.

Picking up the suitcase & getting to the international terminal at Chicago was easy enough. Then the lines started.
Kiosks not working. Huge line to check in, and equally huge line for the folks who just needed to drop off a bag.
Slow moving line through to security. There was a very apologetic first time traveler immediately ahead of me, and I couldn’t think of a way to say that the actual problem was her travel partner who apparently hadn’t told her shit about what to expect or prepare, and who somehow needed five or six trays while not understanding the idea that he could move the fuck down the line to free up some space for everyone else.

They seem to be rebuilding everything at Terminal 5. Construction all over the place, lots of airside things are shut, and there’s even less room.

Boarding. Where to begin?
Couldn’t understand the announcements, and there was no significant seating or space near the gate, so no way to hang around and watch to see when boarding was starting. Ended up joining a long-ass line to the gate on the assumption that eventually it’d get me onto the plane.
Crying children, a second line for a different flight parallel to ours, indistinct rapid fire announcements, and I think I maybe got to the gate ten minutes before the designated takeoff time. It’s a somewhat empty flight, so my block of four has a person in each aisle + two empty middle seats for us to dump our crap into.
Entertainment system is just as flaky as the flight to Chicago; Touchscreen interface but no touchscreen means you cannot navigate back once a selection is made, the controller in the seat arm is very twitchy and might just make the decision for you, and it remembers your place, so a shutdown won’t take it back either.

So be it; I have my e-reader with me, plus some Books & TV Episodes on the phone. Plus I’m kinda tired, having already fallen asleep once.

The plane eventually took off maybe an hour late, but they think they can make it up. Or something.

During the drinks service, I saw one of the cabin crew activate a call bell to attract the attention of someone at another drinks cart, then do some sign language to request a few extra cans from their stock. 😁

OK, so that flight could be described as “rough as fuck”. Turbulence for a number of hours, and the ‘stay in your seat’ light stayed on for a decent chunk of the trip.
In Dublin now, waiting on flight number 3.

Had to change rooms, or at least potentially change rooms, for my last reservation of the three today. I could have gone down & checked, but since I’m going to have to pack things up anyway, it seemed easier to set up to leave the room completely.
Housekeeping, or maybe the housekeeping supervisor, intercepted me in the elevator lobby on the floor to check whether I was checking out. By the time I got to the front desk they were already turning over the room, so I needed to go into a different one for the one night stay.

Various messages between Kevin & Frank & I sorted out a plan for the afternoon & evening, and I mostly just killed time during the day & tried not to feel too down about the end of the con & impending end of the holiday.
Had cheese curd things from A&W at the mall. Realised that I never did get to Buffalo Wild Wings; That’s fine, I was always doing stuff with folks, and I like that better.

Put myself outside Victory Field for pickup by Kevin, in the most obvious shaded spot I could. It worked out well, because the place he was planning to stop was blocked with roadworks; he was just wondering what to do when he spotted me & swung in for the collection.

Out at Kevin’s ( Frank met us there ), played Frank’s poo-flinging monkeys card game, then a “vampires taking over the city” game of Kevin’s. ( Masters of the Night https://www.dicebreaker.com/games/masters-of-the-night/news/gather-your-very-own-family-of-vampires-in-co-op-board-game-masters-of-the-night )
Turned out to be a lot more strategic than we’d expected. We only got through two of the three decks of events before people had to go home for sleeping purposes – it was, after all, a school night.
Mac & Cheese for dinner, with peanut butter brownies, all prepared by Amy.
( and they gave me another enormous bag of peanut butter m&ms )

Last day, which is always a bit melancholy, at least for me. There’s been a lot of travel, a whole year of anticipation, and you’ve almost reached the end of ride.

Wandered down to LucasOil Stadium, just to see what was down there. At just before 10am Sunday, … Not a whole lot happening.

There was a community art project happening outside the dealer hall in the side hallway, and previous years artwork displayed along the corridor to the stadium.

Back in the VIG Lounge, hanging out with Tom, I got a picture with the Gen Con Mascot, Genevieve.

I did make a couple of last day purchases in the exhibit hall, but … no games this time.

Last game of the con was Stealing Stories For The Devil, which I spotted in the events list because it was called Stealing Stories For The Devil. Two of the players were a couple who’d played in the Wayfaring Strange game, which was nice.

The Monte Cook crew ( it’s a Monte Cook game ) had plans to have three tables, but were down a GM, so had to divide up those players between the two remaining tables. Fortunately Sunday has a fairly high no-show factor, so it wasn’t too crowded.

The very quick version is that it’s a heist game with people who can lie to reality, either to people ( we aren’t the droids you’re looking for ), objects ( you aren’t a huge solid rock, you’re an easily broken gravel cluster ), or the past ( check again please, we do have an appointment ).

The more complicated version is that in the 39th century a ship went exploring into other universes & got into trouble. They turned around and headed for home, but not all the hibernation pods were working, so the crew who arrived were a mix of Sleepers (original crew) and Scions (descendents of the ones who stayed awake), all of whom have been bathed in 500 years worth of strange interdimensional energy. The ship made it back, but to the 21st century, and there are reality disturbances messing things up on Earth, so the hope is that by fixing them, the ship can make it home. ( There’s a structured storyline, and I’m assuming that all that complex backstory comes in somewhere )

Game was fun, and I like the system. We had seven players because they were a GM down & trying to allocate their players to other tables. Again, and maybe this is just me being grumpy, had the problem of playing who just would not stop talking, would not stop involving themselves or their characters in stuff, and wanted to use their cool abilities so much that they really weren’t paying attention to the idea that other people wanted to play too. The GM was trying, but with seven players there’s only so much you can do when the loudest voice is right beside you.

The heist was set at the British Museum, and I was one of the folks who voted for that, partially because it’s their turn to have something stolen from them for a change. People’s idea of the working & layout of that museum, and London in general, were pretty funny, but I stayed quiet to not be that guy.

Caught up with Tom/Stacey before they left, and saw the enormous amount of stuff Tom bought; Full bellhop trolley, which the valets somehow fitted into the car boot.

Caught up with Frank & Ben once the Exhibit Hall closed & the con officially ended, and after a quick side trip to the rapidly closing food trucks, the general tiredness caught up with everyone, so we went out separate ways.

I was thinking of tracking down some open gaming, and even chatted to someone about it in the JW lobby ( we maybe knew each other, but didn’t know where from, as tends to happen at big cons – still, we talked a bit on the seating there while she tried to muster the energy to lug her stuff back to her room ), but the unwell start to the con was definitely catching up with me. Did go for a walk outside, and had the healthiest option I could find on the sports bar menu for dinner ( club sandwich ).

I can also report that the vaccination wristband survived the whole convention from last Monday to Sunday evening, and was not easy to remove without a knife.

Wayfaring Strange is another of the Weird Americana games I found in the event catalog, run, in this case, by the game designer.
It’s about hidden paths & folklore & limnal spaces. We were a bunch of Wanderers who all found ourselves in the same roadside dinner with no idea how we got there, where we were, where the diner staff were, and who the guy making enigmatic statements & eating pie is.
Over the course of investigation I accidentally made friends with a creepy bipedal deer with blood & viscera adorning its antlers. (I’d seen something in the woods behind the diner, thought maybe it was avoiding the creepy guy inside, and brought it a sandwich. I was dead wrong, but … Worth a shot)
The resolution turned out to be that the creepy guy was a crossroads entity who’d given the diner owner 50 years of ownership of this wandering diner, had just collected, and the diner had brought us there to finish out the shift. Took us a while to figure it out, and it was mostly a shot in the dark, not helped by creepy guy trying to profit off the situation.

This was my Vendor Hall & “Wander Around Looking At Stuff” day.
Didn’t attempt to see everything or anything like that. I visited the booth where Wandering Strange was sold, but they’d sold out, so grabbed the online ashcan edition instead. It’s an interesting game; diceless but not GM less.

I saw a booth with a plushy tentacle on the table, which turned out to be for a game called Tentacle Town. Couldn’t get the timing right for a demo, but looked it up; not my kind of game, I think.

Caught up with David the Teacher, who I met at a game run by Mikey Mason in 2016 & kept in touch. ( Was going to meet him at the show he was setting up for, but then he saw me in the hallway )
We chatted a bunch while he set up for ticket & merch sales for Mikey’s show.

David had been working at the Q Workshops booth, selling dice, and I ended up finding that booth by accident. Bought some cat polyhedral ( they’d run out of some amazing purple & gold ones, but they had black+white. The purple+gold are absolutely for a game with magical cats in it; it’s the first thing that came to my mind when I saw them )

Avatar Legends was the second game of the day, playing teenage rebels in the Fire Empire during the 100 years war. Decided that my characters assumed name was “Wang Fire”, as a nod to the show, a recognition that he’s a bit of an idiot, and because the the idea that in the show Sokka was unknowingly using the name of a folk hero.
We had to rescue a theatre troop before they were arrested for their farce about the Firelord. Had a good plan, worked well together, and the one fight ( when guards wanted to search the barrels we were transporting ) was over quickly thanks to them already being completely surrounded before the fight started. We planned well.

We had an extra player join at the last minute; they were there to play the Root RPG, but the GM had been in a car crash, so they joined our game instead.

Caught up with Tom & Kevin, & returned the huge bag of medications; Can’t take them with me.
We tried to find somewhere open for a snack, and got in at a place on the Westin with 8 minutes before the kitchen closed. ( Pub next door sent us that way after they told us their own kitchen was already closed )

Early morning recording went pretty well, I think.

The Orc Stomp 5k was my first event of the day, but … Not a game. Much more sweaty.
I beat my time from 2019 by about a minute, coming in at under 10min/km. ( To be clear, I walked it, apart from a couple of short ‘jog’ segments, one because I thought I should maybe try that, and one to pass some folks on a congested bit )
Didn’t feel like braving the hotel restaurant for breakfast afterwards, for no reason I can really articulate, so I just kind of skipped breakfast.
( Wasn’t in the mood for a friendly morning conversation with the server, and you’re not going to avoid that without bluntness or rudeness )

Yazeba’s B&B was happening in the least easy to find room in the JW, numbered according to the scheme for the rest of the floor, but way the hell off in the ass end of the hotel, with terrible signage.
I hadn’t realised that it’s a legacy game, so the characters and the house itself change as the game is played. It’s still in playtesting, maybe?, so the book was a big-ass binder being lugged around by the designer, and the character sheets were a mass of alterations and additions from previous games.
I played the robot maid, and the central bit of the sheet was her program; got to add a line to it at the end of the game.
We played a couple of sections, one where we hunted for fireflies (which is about growing up) and one where we went fishing (which I think is about friends). Fun, glad to have played it, and looking forward to playing it again. (Some folks changed character between sections, others didn’t. There were a few characters who needed to be in a given section, and the rest was more mood dependent.

Indy isn’t great for quick food options which aren’t awful, so I grabbed a biscuit sandwich thing from Starbucks.

Meet me in the Pit ( Bulldogs ) was … OK.
Had the same problem as a few other games this year, where there were a couple of players who just kept talking, and involving themselves in other people’s actions, and the GM wasn’t keeping a lid on that.

One of the players was quite unwell, and kept having to leave the room. By accent & overheard conversation, he’d traveled in from Scandinavia, so being sick must have really sucked.

Are those bite marks? (Nowhereville).
Also had some of the Not Shutting Up problem, but the game was more interesting. It’s another one with character types; I was playing a 12 year old kid, and apparently did it fairly well, given the number of times “you’ve spent time with a 12 year old recently” was said. ( Nope, I just turned up the enthusiasm & went for it )
The game has a thing where you unlock your own weird powers, but I never got a chance to use my ‘pull object from nowhere’ ability.
Maybe worth getting on PDF?

Late night at the Con feels a bit emptier this time. Not as many simultaneous Werewolf games, not as many groups hanging out in the games hall, chatting or playing something they’d found.

I’ve given up on figuring out how the JW assigns people to tables for breakfast. I got a 6-8 seater to myself, having been walked past a few two-seaters, and I was in a section which maybe wasn’t assigned to anyone, as it had no silverware, glasses, coffee cups, …
These things eventually happened, piecemeal, over the course of the meal, though I did go and ask someone in a neighboring section for silverware.

The Exhibit/Vendor hall Running Of The Nerds was entirely over by ten minutes after opening, when I got there, so I was able to grab the all-important souvenir dice.

Tales from the Floating Vagabond.
It was … OK.
The GM hadn’t run the thing since the 90s, and it was his first time GMing at Gen Con, so he did pretty well. There were only three players; me, Frank, and one other guy who was making a hobby of sticking polyhedral dice with magnets on them to stuff scattered around the con.
That said, game was done in 2 hours, and that included making up our character. I think I actually made one skill check or dice roll during the game, to pretend to enjoy a terrible beer. Probably goes longer if there are more players.

Somewhere along the line the VIG Swag arrived.

Crossroads Carnival.
That was awesome; carnival sideshow freaks try to save people from the encroaching darkness in dustbowl America.
I had the Dog Faced, and we had a Geek, a Snake Charmer, and a Fortune Teller, trying to save a town a few days away from falling into darkness .
The game isn’t out yet, but I can see myself picking it up.
Also, the words Creature & Preacher sound very similar through a mask, which caused confusion.

The VIG Mixer.
Big space, crowded with people. Folks seemed to be having a good time?
I left pretty early because of an early start, but also because of crowd & noise issues.

I did a lot of walking this day.

Slept well, so the lurgh is definitely on the way out. Or mutating.
Met up with Tom in the ICC. He was in line to buy stuff from the Official Gen Con Swag stand.
Yesterday, or maybe the day before, we’d seen them setting up a big Line Starts Here sign on a pole, with the idea that it’d get handed down as the line grew. ( I’d assumed they’d just have someone standing with it, like they do with the Will Call line ) System works well, it seems; people were getting into it, though I’m told some had to have it explained.

Tom’s cousin Stacey arrived, so Tom got her situated in her room for the con. She’d also been sent with half of the pharmacy aisle of Walgreens thanks to Tom & Dawn, so I now have enough drugs to bomb this thing back to the stone age.

Badge & Ticket pickup occurred sometime around here, I think?

Went to lunch at Goodwood again, having picked up Frank’s friend Ben ( from the Bonefish meal ) somewhere along the way.
They are not coping with the Day Zero rush, which doesn’t say good things about how days One through Four will go. Wrong item, missing items, bad vegetables, … Mine was fine, as was Frank’s, but everything else had an issue.
That’s not going to be a fun time for the servers.

Went to The Stink in the evening. ( this is a social event, sort of semi-official )
Much quieter than previous years, with way fewer people. The vibe going in was how it normally feels righ at the end, with a bunch of empty tables & not a lot going on.
Caught up with Stephanie, who was handing out dice (as part of the Indy Mavens, I think?), so I now have a sort of sea glass effect D20.

Went for not quite dinner but more like a snack at Loughmiller’s Pub, or at least Frank/Staphanie/Tom did; I just had a drink as I’m still not feeling 100%, and I eventually dipped out early to go get some sleep.

Did breakfast at Patachou with Tom.
Sat & chatted a while, then went wandering through the ICC to see the con coming together.

I was feeling a bit dehydrated, so we regrouped at the JW to take advantage of lounge access so that Tom could sort through games he was interested in. I’d thought that there was no water in the lounge; turns out I’m just a dumbass, and should have looked on the other side of one of the counters.

Pretty sure I’ve picked up a cold from traveling, because I started sneezing today, so grabbed some dayquil to bomb the damn thing flat.

Caught up with Frank back at the ICC, & went to get dinner at what used to be The Ram, but is now Goodwood.

Eventually took Tom & Frank’s advice to get an early night, to head off whatever this bug is. And yes, I’m keeping an eye out for Covid symptoms.

Move out day, or at least room change day.
I packed up my minimal stuff, expecting to be stashing it for a few hours until the next reservation’s check-in started, but at the desk they offered to let stay in the previous room. Seems like the desk person was wrong when I first checked in, or maybe didn’t know?
Anyway, according to the Marriott app the next room was WAY better, so I declined staying in the room I’d already left; they had one of the other/better ones free, so I was roomless for maybe 10 minutes?
New room is on the 31st floor, with executive lounge access 😁

Went to TJ Maxx for a suitcase for operation “Bring Back All The Swag”. Probably looked like an idiot adding up the dimensions to get the biggest case which would still be within the boundaries of checked luggage, but got the job done.
I kind of understand why those 4 wheel cases are so popular; they’re pretty fun to push across the floor.

Tom came down around midday, so we wandered around, got our “I’ve been vaccinated” wristbands, and just generally hung out for the afternoon.

The con is coming together; gaming halls look done, the exhibit hall is a maze of booth setup & stuff for the booths, and the new official Gen Con Swag store was coming together.