| Thursday, August 16th I'm here at Gen Con, on a slow high-speed internet connection. Wheee! Anyway, here's how things are going so far. Brenlo, Ashlanne, Grimwell, and I started our journey Thursday morning; let's just call us the fantastic four so I won't have to keep naming us! After waking up in the wee hours of the morning to catch our plane, everything pretty much went as scheduled. From San Diego, we head to Las Vegas, I guess we thought we were going to Fan Faire again, and then connected to Indianapolis. It wasn't until I arrived here, that I realized what state I was going to. *grin* We all arrived safely; unfortunately, my luggage was not as lucky. When the carousel came around I noticed a shirt hanging out of an open bag and the bag was in a square security container. They broke my zipper from checking my bags and didn't bother to fix it. I guess they thought I was carrying my torches and whips in it. So after settling into our hotel, we headed over to meet up with someone to get our Gen Con Badges. Afterwards, we head over to some pub, I have no idea what the name of it was, but Flying Labs (Pirates of the Burning Sea) were having a get-together there so we hung out with them a bit and got some dinner. Tired from our trip, we head back to the hotel and hung out at the pool area a bit. Then we hung out in Brenlo's room to chat, watch tv, and plan ultimate doom. Brenlo and Ashlanne were trying to set up for a Live Podcast for Friday night. I don't they think they ever got it working though. Awwww! By 1 am-ish, we were all a bit tired so we headed back to our own rooms. I slept for about 3 hours then woke up and watched 2 episodes of the original Star Trek on TV Land! Friday, August 17th Early in the morning, we met for breakfast and then walked to the convention center. Okay, I didn't quite know what to expect at the convention. Of course, I knew there would be plenty of games to play and tournaments to participate in, but I had no idea it would be as much fun as it was. There were card games, board games, table top games, video games, any type of game you could imagine. We also saw several people dressed up in costumes too. We hung around the SOE Booth several times throughout the day. We went to Jillian's to check out things for our party later in the evening. While there, we ate lunch and chatted. We then headed back to the hotel to relax. While resting up for our party, Grimwell and Brenlo taught me how to play Magic the Gathering while Ashlanne worked! I had played the online version when it was in beta, but didn't retain any knowledge of it. In the evening, back to Jillian's we went. This time we brought boxes of SOE Gamer T-Shirts with us to give out to everyone that showed up. There were about 200 people there overall. I met up with Wycca, Swampfunk, Sunbur of Sunbur Designs, Saffaron, Kay-the-Cleric, Abatoir, Mahalito, Auzarin, Cronic, and Cayt. I spoke with many others but these are the ones that actually gave me their names! As Wycca mentioned in a thread on the forums, we talked for quite some time about Battletech. Unfortunately, I discovered later that he was the enemy! Absor got cornered by a few people as they asked him more pressing questions. Of course, he probably didn't here me saying, "I'm not sure, ask Absor!" As usual, people wanted to chat a lot about the community too! After the party, the fantastic four traveled back to the hotel, grabbed some snacks and then met up in the restaurant area to play Magic until 3 am in the morning! Yes, we're crazy! I didn't have my own cards so Brenlo let me borrow one of his many decks. Saturday, August 18th Again, the fantastic four met up for breakfast, this time Grimwell was a bit slow arriving. I guess late nights don't go well with him. Back to the fun we went. We walked around and did more shopping and learned to play some of the newer games. Grimwell and I played each other in a friendly match of Halo Action Clix during a special WizKids demo. Sort of an EQ versus EQ2 match. EQ players will be happy to know that EQ won! Okay, my timeframe may be a bit off of which came first but Brenlo, Ashlanne, Grimwell and I also participated in a magic tournament. Yes, I know I had just learned how to play the night before. The funny thing about it was that when the judge matched up the opponents, I ended up being against someone who had the appearance of being an expert. Eeek! It was a 2 out of 3 match. The first game went fairly quick and I of course lost. The second game went a bit longer because I managed to destroy his uber card and had cards of my own that gave me life. Unfortunately, as the game progressed, I found out that he had more uber cards to destroy me with. It was good fun though! We did more shopping and more hanging out at the SOE booth and then headed back to the hotel. Later in the evening, we met up with some SOE gamer friends to have dinner. After dinner White Wolf/CCP Party at a goth club. What was the name of that place?! I think we got bitten by vampires and they made us forget the name of it. After the party, we head back to our hotel and met back up with friends to play Munchkin Cthulhu and then played magic the Gathering again until the wee hours of the morning. By now, I had my own magic cards. Sunday, August 19th We met up for breakfast yet again, this time, I was the late arrival but only because I only had 1 hour of sleep! Once back at the convention center, the first thing on our list was to meet the Cheerleader from Heroes! After watching Ashlanne geek out and Brenlo take a million pictures of her, I told her they were my friends and apologized for their behavior! Just kidding… wink wink. Actually, I let her know about our heroes countdown counter on our community whiteboard and asked her if she played games. She said she didn't but I told her we'd convert her! We did more shopping while we picked up a few extra things. Before leaving the convention, I got Larry Elmore to sign a magic card container that he did the art work on. Thanks Larry! After we wandered around a bit more, we headed back to the hotel and then headed to the airport to go home. I slept on the plane, but evidently, I did not get as much sleep as Grimwell did! I'm sure I'm missing something in this write up but I'm tired of typing! Check out Ashlanne's Diary over on the Station Forums. Check out Grimwell's Gen Con Report over on the EQ2Players website. |
