Let’s call this Gen Con the final edition eh?
I don’t know if it was the mass of people, well over forty
thousand according to some reports, but whatever it was, my T-Mobile phone was
essentially a nice paperweight for my duration in the city. I was lucky to have
2G strength in my hotel room and the phone often just lost connection entirely.
This happened most frequently while I was physically in the ICC.
Some of the vendors in the Dealer’s Hall were not satisfied
with AT&T. Having a good signal is vital when you’re using your phone to
make the credit card charges. Could have cost a lot of money were it to
fail. I know a few people had Verizon
and they did okay. Someone joked that there was a ‘conspiracy theory’ that the
hall was blocking cell access in order to justify their outrageous prices of
$100 a day for internet service but didn’t seem too serious about it.
If this is a result of the tens of thousands of people who
descended onto the city of Indianapolis, then Indianapolis needs to step up. I
don’t know if that’s more towers or what but for me, as much as I’m paying for
my phone, having it go from portable computer to rotary phone status sucked.
In terms of people, the town seemed happy to have us. I
asked about the conventions and reception and was told by several vendors that
it was the biggest convention the city hosted all year around and that as far
as crowds go, we were top notch in terms of behavior.
I come from Chicago.
Gen Con has nothing on a Cubs game. While I haven’t been to many, walk around
after the game for a little while. If you don’t see a fight or some cat
calling, you must be doing something wrong yourself.
In my ways, I think Gen Con is past the ‘gamer’ phase, or at
least the ‘gamer’ phase associated with negative connotations. I think at this
point, too many ‘geek’ things have become mainstream. For the last several
years many of the largest summer movie block busters have been based on comic
book properties.
Several of the ‘surprise’ hits like the original Kick Ass or
Wanted, or even those movies that don’t do well, like R.I.P.D. or 2 Guns, are
also from the comic side of things. Even when movies aren’t comic based, like
Pacific Rim, how much more could it fit into the whole ‘gamer’ field with giant
robots fighting giant monsters?
Computer games that
were once regulated to ShadowGate running on an Amiga, are making MORE money
than those block buster movies. Games like Diablo 3 and Halo are pulling in
massive amounts of people. The World of Warcraft online game, even if not as
popular at its height, still enjoys a massive paying fan base in the millions I
believe.
One of the fun things to see is the costumes. On one hand, I
absolutely hate the potential bottlenecks it causes with people taking photos.
By the time late Saturday had rolled around I wasn’t walking out of my way
anymore to prevent getting in any shots. On the other, there was a lot of
innovation. While there were many well done, even professional traditional customs
ranging from Power Girl to barbarian savage, there were a lot of things I
thought different. For example, a woman dressed as a Tardis from Doctor Who.
Some of the gestalt effects of having so many people at the
convention can be seen where people who didn’t know each other, but were
dressed in same genre costumes, got together to have their pictures snapped.
Seemed to happen several times.
There also seemed to be a bit more age and race mix up. I
saw an older women dressed as a Storm Trooper and another one as some sort of
imperial officer that I didn’t recognize. At one of my games, there was a young
black man who really dug the Lord of the Rings and had even read the other
books including The Silmarillion. My hat off to him because I’ve tried several
times to read that and failed each time. Now that may be the usual fare for
other people but honestly, I think he was the first African American I’ve run
for in the years I’ve been doing it. I
note his age not as a bad thing, but because I’m over the 40 barrier so I’m
glad to see younger people coming into the hobby.
In terms of ladies, plenty of representation there but a lot
of them were disappointed in the pregen characters as they felt too many of
them were men and that at worst, the game companies should provide extra
characters for selection purposes. For example, if the scenario calls for 6
players, have at least 12 characters to cover both sexes. Personally I don’t
see anything wrong with that. How much more work can it take to tweak things
up? I am glad to say that these
conversations came up in pleasant surprised tones as the women were glad to see
a mix of female characters for The One Ring.
For the room that I used at the convention center, room 110,
to run the games, I was disappointed with the place. Last year I ran at the JW Marriot. That room
was smaller, cleaner and came with water that the hotel refreshed periodically.
This room had too many tables, some of which were never used, but they put all
of the games right next to each other which resulted in a lot of noise. In
addition, their ability to keep it clean was lacking. The table cloth needed to
be changed more frequently and the garbage cans needed to be emptied more
regularly. And as far as water? Well hell son, don’t you know you have to buy
that? I mean that may not have been the reasoning as there was free water
available but hell man, make some effort.
In terms of weather, most of the days and most of the times,
it was perfect. On Sunday it was a little hot and there were a few moments
there I was like, “Aw, humidity, you missed me and came to visit from Chicago.
How nice of you you son of a bitch.” But for the most part it was great. I
still wore my coat though. I’m not quite an albino but I am definitely on the
pasty white dude side and burn easily. As a matter of fact my face was quite
red by Monday despite hitting up some face lotion that had a SPF of 15.
Last year I brought my laptop and tablet. This year I
brought the tablet. Don’t’ know why. Never used it except to roll dice for
Keltia because it uses d10’s and I only had the d6’s from The One Ring. Next year unless I get some awesome apps for
the convention, it’ll stay at home leaving me with just good old pen and paper.
I lugged around the slipcase of the One Ring in the dreaded Bag of Holding. It is a great little bag for tacking
stuff to a game but it needs a revision for long term use. For example, the
shoulder strap needs some padding to it. First hour carrying it isn’t terrible
but as time goes on you’re like, “Man, just cut a niche in that and relax
already eh?” It also needs two handles. For some reason it only has one .
Making it a little wider probably wouldn’t hurt things either.
The good news though is it has plenty of pockets so I was
able to drag some prepainted miniatures around, some dice, some pens, some
small note books, a novel and my game books.
Not a bad product but a “Con Edition” Bag of Holding would be awesome.
Normally I take a few pictures with either an actual camera
or in recent years, a cell phone. This year I might have snapped some of the
food trucks, but that wasn’t because of how awesome it was having them, it’s
because I’m from Chicago and there are a lot of things going on in legislation
trying to determine what role, if any, food trucks will have in Chicago. It’s
been a painful messy process and its not over yet. Chicago really needs to figure
out what role it wants them to have.
The way I see it, unless it’s something really outstanding
and I haven’t already snapped pictures of it in yesteryears, I’m done with the photos. There are tens of
thousands of people snapping up pictures of everything under the sun. The way
it’s going, you could do a horror movie put together from different people’s
video cameras and come out with not an inch of that convention hall unexplored.
This last observation may be off the beaten path but I’ll
throw it out there anyway. What happened to the panhandlers? I remember one
year getting up early and going to Walgreens or CVS or something and could
recall a group of them talking about their plan of attack. Where each person
would go, when they’d be there, and other bits. This year there were a few but
no where near previous years. It made me think of when Chicago ‘cleaned’ up the
homeless for Princess Diana’s visit. Same thing happen here?
So what is my summary of Gen Con 2013?
1.
Gen con is the largest convention in the city
for the year.
2.
The city loves hosting the convention.
3.
The convention is growing and still remarkably
well behaved.
4.
Cell phone service sucks. Seriously guys, get on
that.
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