Hello everyone.  My family and friends were unable to attend this years con and we would like to hear what you thought about it. Thank you.

It was a great time!  I introduced a friend to Gen Con this year, finally met some forumites, and had an all around good time.  Downtown was pretty crazy Saturday because of the Lucus Oil Stadium tours.

It was great fun. I was able to bring a few friends who have never been able to attend GenCon before, and loved their awestruck look they had.

With the exception of being sick most of Friday, the convention was great.  Met some old frends and made some new ones.  Good times.

The Exhibit Hall was not great and the overall con was so-so, but I have to say I had the most fun since I started going five years ago. It was really strange actually and it seemed like less attendance to me then most years. The four days just flew by and overall I just had a blast with my friends. It was definitely good times. I just hope next year they fix these hiccups they had and the companies put more into it to help make it awesome. The swag was just junk, except for the Magic cards and the Blue Dragon game wasn't bad. It was just mainly ads for the most part besides that. I didn't like how a lot of the new items were not even at the con and the special thing they were doing was doing pre-orders. I just think that tacky and they should at least have a limited number on hand or something. 

Thumbs up to White Wolf, as always, Konami, and a few others, but a big thumb down to Wizards of the Coast. Just a horrible presence this year and they didn't even have the big dice to roll.

Also more demos of games would have been nice, but I have to say there were some great prices overall at some of the booths this year that beat the last few. That was a big plus especially if your into minis. 

 I had an amazing time. And I don't know about Attendance, it seemed like there were more people to me. Especially on Thursday and Sunday this year. The dealers hall for me was amazing. I really did love that there were more anime type booths and adding a good mixture.  Hogwarts Larp as always was amazing!!!! And I loved the open crafting area as well. It was nice to get to sit down and knit for a few hours. I'm hoping to spend a few more extra hours there next year. Hopefully I'll of moved on to a far more awesome project to work on!!!

I had a great time :) I did a good mix up of playing games alone, and hanging out with my husband :) Hogwarts, as usual, was a good ol' time! I also had a blast playing in the Pirates LARP run by Fantasy Aspirations (is that right?) and BYOV!! GREAT TIME! WOOO!!
I'm also very excited to hear that Sick and Twisted Productions has a three day Deadlands LARP in the works! Be on the look out for that, it will be great!  I demo'd several games this year, which was great! Lessee, Ticket to Ride Nordic was fun...Wits n' Wagers, Say Anything, and Cluzzle (all by the same people) was awesome! Also played a game called Duck, Duck, Go. It's more for kids (that's why we demo'd) but it was fun and our kids will like it. Playroom Entertainment also had a nice assortment of educational games (always on the lookout for that as a homeshooler).

Wonderful GenCon this year! I am disappointed that I didn't get to hang out with many forumites, but that's typical for me *grin*  

Even tho the Anime wasn't as big this year as it was last year, my daughters still managed to spend all thier chore money they earned. They LOVED IT!     They got to meet some new friends and had a grand time.

My wife and I had a good time as well. Not as fun as last year but a good time.           

Wizards dropped the ball a little but I guesse it was to be exspected with thier late entry.  I too would like to see some more demoing, they had some going on but it semed it was a little difficult to find. May a demo schedule or list of location next year would be useful     ( I know, who wants to micro manage.)

All in all a pretty good Con. May not be my family vacation spot after all but a weekend getaway for the wife and I instead next year

All in all it was a good Gen Con, although it did have a different "feel" this year compared to the last few.

The Good: The Stink, The RAM, Castles & Crusades played at the RAM on Wed, True Dungeon (nice finale to the story arc), Board Game madness (played some nice one's this year including Dragon Lairds and Order of the Stick), met some great people this year and found the awesome game Hollow Earth (pulpish 1930's adventure game - simply fantastic!). Pathfinder by Paizo (really high quality events), The RAM (as always!) and the weather was just perfect the whole Con.

The Bad: It did seem that attendance was down this year, The D&D Championship Series (I made the 2nd round again this year, but not worth the ticket price - this should be put out of it's misery).

The Ugly: WotC (what a pathetic showing).

All in all, I had a great time, h#ll its Gencon, how can you not. I think last year when they opened up some an additional section of the hall for the video/computer games area and put seg-way in the main-hall, it created more space, it would be nice to see it fill up to max though.

The Great: The Ram Brewery, friends, gaming, even friendly staff (least thats my exp).

The Horrid: RPGA's ability to screw the most simple of tasks i.e. run a D&D contest cleanly and effiecently. /rant 

It was good. This year, it seemed a bit more like work than past years, even though I wasn't even working. Then again, maybe that's because I drove down on Wednesday after a 10-hour overnight shift and never really made up for lost sleep.

Played in a system called QAGS (Quick Ass Game System). The groups I played with were two of the goofiest I've ever played with, and as a result, those games were hysterical and greatly enjoyable.

This definitely had the feel of a transition year, especially with the pending demolition of the RCA Dome and the Courtyard. I know, it'll ultimately make room for more hotel space and more convention center space.

This was the second year in a row that I had zero events scheduled in the ICC itself. Most of the stuff I played was RPGs, not RPGA stuff. All those events were in surrounding hotels or in Union Station. Don't know the reasoning for this. Not so much a complaint as an observation.

Only made it to the Ram once. Snuck into the bar area, snagged a booth very quickly, and shared it with some nice folks from Cubicle 7 games. Liked the Apocalypse Ale.

Saw Killer Breakfast for my first time this year. Glad I made it, as I've heard plenty o' hubbub about it. It was fairly entertaining to see the PCs get killed in new and horrible ways. Not sure if I'll see it in following years, as there was a bit too much singing for my taste. Again, just my thoughts, and considering that Killer Breakfast draws so many people back every year, it's got to be doing something right.

Don't think I bought as much this year as I have in previous years. I got a couple of prints, a few DVDs, and some game books, but I don't think I was as interested in stuff offered this year compared to previous years.

Overall, the con was great. It was awesome to play games I rarely get a chance to play, and it was great to see folks that I see pretty rarely. I'm already looking forward to next year.

This was only my second con and I had a better time this year than last year. The swag could have been a little better but it was worth it to get the commemerative d6. I didn't get to game as much as I would have liked to but, again this being my second one, there was just too much to see in such short a time. Hopefully next year I'll be able to get in on some good events.

One thing I really enjoyed was the Tower of Gygax RPG. Plus the RAM, the costumes, meeting great people, and the dealer's hall. I got more stuff than I need, really. All in all it was worth it. I loved seeing the Revan costume and the Star Wars droids. The costumes I saw were very impressive.

A few bad spots: The Lucas Oil Stadium opening. It made the crowds a bit more packed than I'm used to, plus some of the Colts fans were just plain rude, especially later that Saturday night. I think only a couple of the Colts fans were nice to us (my bf and myself). I'd like to point out that I am a Colts fan too and I can have best of both worlds, the geeky and the mainstream..to a point. I see nothing wrong at all with people dressing up in costumes and having fun for a few days. Comments thrown at several people from the Colts fans were simply unappropriate. But I really didn't let a few bad seeds spoil the fun. I think next year will be better.

An employee/volunteer at the GenCon giftshop booth. She ignored me and didn't take my order after I stood in line for several minutes while she got everyone else's order. All I wanted was a thermal mug and ended up asking the cahier for it. Other than that, everyone was friendly and helpful.

 The Good:

-The Auction Hall. I went to the con with a short list of stuff I wanted, and I got all of it, and then some, relatively cheaply. Loads of fun.

-India Palace. Had a great lunch there Wednesday, the best place I've eaten at in Indy (thus far)

-Most of the RPGA judges I had for various games (more on this below)

-Great stuff from Crystal Caste (like they need the plug.....) 

-Going alone, and being unfettered as far as.....well, everything..... 

-Return of the Ghostbusters. If the director/writer is reading this? Your script was great, the movie was very funny and the sense of humor was perfectly in step with the official movies. That movie looked like it cost more that $3,000, too. Good stuff. 

-My team for the Championship this year. We didn't advance past the qualifier, but a vast, vast improvement over last year's lineup.  

-The con in general. I had a great time.  

 The Bad:

-My badge being completely missing from my packet. WTF? (In the interest of fairness, this was rectified pretty quickly.)

      Customer Service: "Are you sure you didn't have it set on Ship To Me?"

      Me (for the fifth time in 2 minutes): "Uh-huh......"

 -The Stink. A huge disappointment for me. I thought it would have been an good opportunity to meet some other forumites, but not so much. Too big, and not really structured to facilitate mixing. I met a nice person or two, but I'll probably skip this in the future.

-The judge I had for my 1-5 Core 1 RPGA game on Saturday afternoon. Honestly, I think most of the RPGA volunteers do a kickass job given the circumstances they have to work with. Most of the judges and other RPGA folks I had interaction with throughout the con were friendly and organized. When running a game like 4E D&D that has many combat variables, you need to be prepared. That means NOT LEAVING YOUR DAMN RULEBOOKS IN YOUR HOTEL ROOM. That means using some means of clearly indicating marks, bloodiness, challenges, etc. That means not shrugging at the players when asked a question. That means not letting players overanalyze a situation when every other judge is like, "Ok, this is a skill challenge. Here's how this works......" That means not saying stuff like "18 Reflex? Your fighter has an 18 Reflex save? I don't believe you........" I see so many examples of gamers who refuse to perpetuate stereotypes of the typical gamers, then I see schmucks like this judge who do nothing but perpetuate said stereotypes......the next time I have a judge that crap, I'll go right ahead and tell them where the dog died.....

-The new RPGA numbering system, in which I was told to record my RPGA number a different way by literally every other judge I had.

*headdesk*

*headdesk*

The Ugly-

-The Downtown Days Inn. Hey, I can't say it was bad. The beds were clean and comfortable, and there were no roaches. However, it certainly wasn't pretty....

-The decorum of Security at the con. Ranting about "faggots" and "homosexuals", fighting with girlfriends/wives on the cell phone, etc, etc. See above rant RE: Perpetuation of Stereotypes. 

-And the ugliest of all? The crowd going to the Colts game on Sunday, grinding outgoing traffic to a halt and substantially increasing cab fares.  

Dylanesque30:

-My team for the Championship this year. We didn't advance past the qualifier, but a vast, vast improvement over last year's lineup.  

Is your name by any chance Mike? If so, I think we played in the Championship together. Would like to keep in touch with you if this is the case.

In terms of the post in general, I will post my own review of GenCon shortly, but largely agree with what I have seen thus far.

LarpPrincess:

I had a great time :) I did a good mix up of playing games alone, and hanging out with my husband :) Hogwarts, as usual, was a good ol' time! I also had a blast playing in the Pirates LARP run by Fantasy Aspirations (is that right?) and BYOV!! GREAT TIME! WOOO!!
I'm also very excited to hear that Sick and Twisted Productions has a three day Deadlands LARP in the works! Be on the look out for that, it will be great!  I demo'd several games this year, which was great! Lessee, Ticket to Ride Nordic was fun...Wits n' Wagers, Say Anything, and Cluzzle (all by the same people) was awesome! Also played a game called Duck, Duck, Go. It's more for kids (that's why we demo'd) but it was fun and our kids will like it. Playroom Entertainment also had a nice assortment of educational games (always on the lookout for that as a homeshooler).

Wonderful GenCon this year! I am disappointed that I didn't get to hang out with many forumites, but that's typical for me *grin*  

Hogwarts  and Pirates LARP?  I missed it @!!!!   [:'(]

I had a great time I got there on saturday morning around 4am. Checked in early to hotel. Slept in, and then headed to the Con. Took me hours or just walking around trying to find stuff I had to do. I was so LOST. Good thing people there were nice and helped me out. I hated bothering people just because I was a NOOB. Only real thing that sucked for me there was the following:

1. Sucky Hotel that I had to drive to 5 miles to get to from the Con (It was being renavated, the rooms looked trashy, the beds were uncomfortable, you could hear people in the hall and two doors down through the walls)
   
2. Not really knowing anyone there to hang out with and see all of the wonderous things there.

Other than that I had a fantastic time up there and met a few people I liked up there. I am looking forward to next year. a few people talked me into checking out a few other cons/gatherings coming up I might attend.

I did pick up a new game there for $20 that retails for over $40 at the stores. So it was a great deal. There was not much choices in Anime that I could see. I bought a movie and a game. the Game is ok and the Movie was awful!

I spent way too much up there on small things here and there. I thought that the ultimate back pack deal was a great deal for the money and after I got home and saw all that was in there I was like wow this is cool.

 This year was a lot of fun. I didn't get to do Tour of Duty to a misunderstanding on my part about tickets. I learned that event tickets could be bought at the Con if there were openings. From what other Hordes/Warmachine players told me, they were full before I was even remotely awake. Didn't get to play a lot but had loads of fun and met many nice people. Definely will go in 2009. If things work out right, maybe a 4 day trip again but most likely it will be a one day trip.

I must admit that my husband and I were both a bit disappointed with this year's con.  Our hope is that it's a bad year due to things like the economy and it will be better next year.  Fun was had, don't get me wrong... just wasn't up to the standard we have gotten used to.

My first big beef came with the media guests.  I'm sorry but did we really need half the cast of Who Wants To Be A Superhero?  I apologize to anyone who likes that show but personally I can't stand it.  And after attending the past couple of years and having guests from much loved shows like Battlestar Galactica and Farscape, the guests this year just felt like a huge let down.

The next big beef came with the event staff.  Every person I encountered seemed to immediately have this look on their face of 'I don't care what you want, go the frack away'.  I understand they are dealing with people all day and people can be a huge pain in the behind, myself included, but treating your customers like something horrible you stepped in from the moment they say hello (with a smile on my face despite having a problem, thank you very much), is not the way to get people to return to your event in the future.

Finally, and I'm sure plenty of others will agree on this one.... while the scheduling was better than the year from hell where everything said it was somewhere that it wasn't, is it really that hard on a 'smoother' year like this one that if something is moved or wasn't scheduled right to put some sort of post up where it was supposed to be saying 'this is not the event you are looking for, please try again over here'?   Heck, I'm sure someone could even come up with a pre printed form saying something along the lines of Event # _______ has been moved to _____ so it's just a quick fill in and go.  Attach it to the seating chart boards and there ya go, nice little notice so that you're not sitting around with your thumb up your behind wondering why your GM isn't showing up because he's 3 rooms over wondering where his players are.

I do have a few more issues, but most of it is stuff that those running Gen Con don't really have much control over.  Lack of WoW hype with WotLK right around the corner - Blizzard dropped the ball again.  Swag bags sucked - sponsors dropped the ball.  Hyatt has idiots at the front desk who are too lazy to do their jobs at 9 AM Sunday morning and expect much praise when they finally do what they were supposed to. 

But enough of the ranting.  As I said, we did still have fun.  Was nice to run into some familiar faces. The games with the MU Skulls were a blast as always and I look forward to seeing what you guys come up with for next year.  MW demos were good as always and left me looking forward to the Supernatural book once again.  The Dr. Who demo was a pleasant surprise, even if it did take a couple tries to get tickets for the time slot I wanted thanks to some very unhelpful event people.  And Joshua Brining's Buffy game 'Dark Rooms' left me itching to run a Buffy game again.  Union Station was pretty darn cold but a nice new sweatshirt from the Stylin booth took care of that. Event the weather wasn't too bad after that drenching on day 1. 

The good:

1) Friends: both the new ones and the friendships I renewed from previous years

2) True Dungeon: My first year doing it, but definitely not my last

3) Parties: Awesome people (see 1 above), free drinks, a hard combo to beat

4) Running into my favorite web artist at one of those parties, being able to BS with him for about 45 minutes and getting an improptu sketch done of me done by him in the process-I really can't emphasize the amount of awesome

5) The suitcase full of swag and GenCon exclusive items I've got sitting in the other room. 

6) Embassy Suites-amazing hotel, I'll definitely be doing my best to get a room there next year 

The bad 

1) Getting a late start because of some last minute work I had to do combining with once again forgetting about the hour time difference leading to missing the Stink. Next year I'm either going to skip Wednesday all together, or get there very early in the day-rolling in at 7 PM just seems like a waste to me anymore. 

2) Not running into some friends I was hoping to spend some time with, but with Fan Faire being the same weekend, I'm not overly suprised. 

3) 3AM fire alarms because the water pressure in the mall connected to the hotel dropped-of course that was just when I was coming back to go to sleep and the elevators were down. After 30 mins we gave up and took the stairs-trudging up to the 11th floor SUCKS when you're already exhausted.

 Wow I think this may have been one of my best cons ever.  SO here goes...

The Good:

1) Playing in Man in the White Car's Wednesday Cthulu game and nearly rellieving Sep Childs charactrs family Jewles. (by the way andy... that would have been 3...   be glad you backed off at 2)

2) Meeting som many forumites.... including the 2 mentioned above and Valen who played in my Thursday WWII game.

3) Meeting Mock66... He may of have been abit vitriolic on the forums... but in person he is one of the nicest players I have ever run through a minis game.

4) Running RPGs for the 1st time in dozen years... nice to know I've still got it. Great players... lots of laughs... lots of fun.

5) Running into one of my college buddies I hadn't seen in 20+ years.   Gerat guy who I spent quit a bit of time with over the weekend.

6) Hanging out with the Exile Games crew...  If you Haven't played a Hollow Earth Expidition game yet try it next year.   It's a great game run by a very dedicated group of talented GM's. 

7) Buying Duck Duck Go and playing it with my kids.  WHo knew my 5 year old daughter would rather be a ninja duck than a cute little girl duck.

________________________________________________________________________________________________

The Ugly-

 Partking... total nightmare and ripoff this year.

Not being able to find my game space for my Wednesday morning game. 

Not being allowed to set up for my 9AM Thursday minis game till 8am on Thursday.  Wedding receprion on Wednesday night did not allow us to preset.  Thanks to the palyers helping me ste up the table... we were only 10 minutes late in starting.