Dealing With The Swag

I had two years worth of VIG Swag to deal with, far more than could be fitted into my suitcase, so a ruthless culling process had to happen.
My first year at Gen Con I brought almost all of the swag home, which required an extra bag, and was a mistake.
This time around, I went with a strict “Can I Use This” system, and it just worked, so I then had to get rid of the unwanted swag; In past years (well, 2013) they’d had a donation bin in the VIG Lounge, but they weren’t doing that this time around.
I figured that I’d drag the extra swag around, let people pick over it, then pile the rest on a table somewhere in the ICC with a “Free To A Good Home” sign on it and walk away.

Fortunately for me, when I met up with Tom, Stacy, and Kevin in the Hyatt for breakfast, Kevin was happy to take on the whole lot, minus the satchel which Stacy wanted. (I’d already grabbed the 2014 satchel, because it was awesome, and has a pocket just the right size for Pangur Ban, my laptop/tablet)

Before hitting the Hyatt, I passed through the VIG Lounge for a coffee, some water, and the very last of the Swag, a card game named “R”, translated from Japanese;

 

In The Hall, and Out To Lunch

The GM in the “Paging Dr. Dinosaur” game had been using Fate Coins as fate point markers, and they had a nice heft to them, so I bought a couple more sets, because … I have poor sales resistance to shiny things.

Sometime in the hall I met up with the Lewis Family, who were down from Michigan for the day.
I was able to inflict NZ chocolate on them (going to have to remember the NZ chocolate thing for next year), and we caught up briefly, then met a bit later for lunch at The Ram, for a somewhat longer catch-up.

It feels like there should be more written there, but it’s hard to sum up beyond “we had the sort of conversation where you re-establish a friendship after a couple of years, and also eat Nachos”.

 

Back To The Hall, For A Desperate Last Gasp Of Commerce

Well, it might have been a desperate last gasp of commerce if I’d bought anything, but, …, I didn’t.
This did not, however, mean that I walked away empty-handed; Such is the power of the last hours of the last day.

Almost immediately after saying goodbye to the Lewis’ (How do you pluralise that?), I spotted this;

The poster next to it is for the “Archer” game, but despite having recently discovered that said show now grabs me, … , I’m not sure I want to know how the board game might work.

Sometime in here I found that Tom, Kevin, & Stacy had had to leave suddenly; She’d fallen ill, and they’d had to go.
I’d planned to go find them and say Goodbye, but … Such is life; I’d said a preliminary farewell in the Hall earlier.

I also found this, over towards the Entrepreneurs Area of the hall, and I can’t tell if it’s Strangely Meta, Incredibly Literal, or Both;

 

Unexpected Things

I decided that, since I had maybe an hour before the Hall closed, I would go to the very back corner, aisle 30 or 31, in an area which hadn’t been opened up the last time I was at Gen Con, and was designated as the Entrepreneur Avenue, where all of the future Wizards of the Coast, TSRs, White Wolves, and Fantasy Flights were hanging out.

Somewhere along the line I’d heard that there were three New Zealanders at Gen Con; One of them I’m pretty sure of, another was Norman, but I had no idea who number three was until I found a booth with a little tray of NZ snacks (so I’m not the only one to think of that, though I didn’t consider the Cookie Time range) with an invitation to try them.
I enquired, and after an initial bout of confusion over whether I was asking about the snacks or the product, I was told that NZer number three was this guy, who wasn’t there at the moment;

The booth seemed to be one of those shared-booth sort of things (like the one in which I saw Flatpack a couple of years ago, but without the Angel Of Death sitting at the back poisoning everyone’s sales), and the guy I’d been talking to (Tom) did a very quick demo of his game, Pics & Circumstance.

It’s similar in play, I’m told, to Cards Against Humanity, and involves one player relaying the whim of the Glorious Leader by playing a card, and the other playing pictures to represent their solution to the problem, then justifying it.
I feel that my suggestion of Tanks & Landmines as a way to make golf more interesting indicates that I have understood the concept, and the game designer did not seem displeased by my approach. In fact, he said “You’re gonna be great at this”, but he was trying to sell me on a game.

They have a kickstarter on the go right now, which I’m linking here; Pics and Circumstance, by Tom and Pete Games

In a thoroughly unexpected event, he gave me one of the Demo decks, and offered me another if I promised to get it into the hands of someone who’d play it a lot. I declined, because I couldn’t promise that, but I did promise to get various game-playing types to, as it were, give it a crack.

 

On the way out of the hall, I passed by a booth selling miniatures-painting supplies, specifically paintbrushes; I’d seen some advertising for these as part of the lead-up to Gen Con, but hadn’t paid much attention at the time, so I stopped to take a look, and ended up talking to one of the folks behind the counter, who turned out to be the product creator/designer.

Chatted with him for a little while about how the con had been (He arrived with 4 suitcases full of stock, and was down to half a case), and about a silicone-tipped brush, which it turns out is good for fine linework because it won’t splay on contact & won’t take up a lot of paint, so it’s just what’s on the surface.
Add to that the fact that the brushes were set up to be travel brushes, so the end of the brush came off and was a cover, and I was very impressed, and told him so.

So he gave me one.

 

Quoth The Raven, Take A Nap

With the closing of the Hall, I ambled back to my room, put away the surprise swag, and took a nap. It was everything I thought it could be.

Some time later I got a text about plans for the evening, so ambled over to the Westin, where Steve, Frank, & Moni were playing Nevermore, a card game involving Ravens, though not eyeballs, which is sad for the ravens.
It was interesting, though tricky to summarise, as Steve demonstrated while trying to explain the rules; Works better, it seems, to just plow right in and sort it out as you go.

I did take Pics & Circumstance, but Nevermore was already set up, and it has a lot of bits.
Plus there were SEKRIT PLANS for the evening, involving dinner at a fancy-ass seafood restaurant for Moni’s Birthday.

The restaurant was the seafood equivalent of a high-end steakhouse, and had things like oysters, & fish I’d never heard of.
Not being much of a seafood fan, … It was OK. Wasn’t blown away by my meal, but everyone else seemed to be enjoying theirs, and being able to try Key Lime Pie for dessert definitely kicked things back into the ‘enjoyable’ category.

Steve was feeling increasingly unwell over the course of the evening, which made me wonder about the wisdom of having a dozen chunks of snot on the half-shell oysters, and by the end was looking bad enough that Frank fetched his car and gave him a ride back to his hotel.