GenCon 2013 Report

What a whirlwind! GenCon 2013 was so exciting and fun the whole thing passed by in a near blur. It was my twentieth GenCon in a row, and one of the best I’ve been to. Here’s my report on all the coolness.

The drive up, despite frequent rain, was unusually relaxing. Traffic was light throughout until I got to Dayton; from there to Indy it was pretty hectic. But I made it in safe and sound, and later that evening picked up Jason and Tina at the airport. We were assigned to the Westin this year, which was superb; it’s right across the street from the convention center and connected thereto by a walkway.

Wednesday was booth set-up day. We were looking forward to a much easier than usual set-up because of our new booth arrangement and fixtures. That fell by the wayside when our stuff arrived about five hours late. If there’s one thing I can’t stand it’s wasting time, but there was no way around it. So instead of finishing up mid-afternoon, it took until 8:00 PM.

After that I showered and headed out to the first social event of the con, the Diana Jones Awards party. I don’t really care a fig for the award itself; I go to talk to friends I only get to see once or twice a year. On that score the party was a rousing success and a great kick-off to the con. I even got to talk with this year’s DJA winner, Wil Wheaton, briefly; he came by the Hero/IPR booth later in the show to buy a game and I got to chat with him a little more.

Thursday started off with a bang. I don’t think I got to leave the Hero Games/Indie Press Revolution booth for more than ten or fifteen minutes total because we were selling books practically non-stop. But my reward for working so hard came to me that evening. The Gamerstable podcast held its annual Fan Appreciation Dinner, and they decided to appreciate Larry Correia and myself. In addition to buying me a superb dinner (at St. Elmo’s Steakhouse, one of the best restaurants in Indy, if not the entire Midwest), they gave me a lovely crystal statuette and a red and black bowling shirt with my name monogrammed on it. It was a wonderful evening, full of great conversation and delicious food. Thanx guys!

After that I returned to my room to rest briefly, then at 11:00 PM headed over to the Columbia Club to see the premiere of the latest episode of GenCon: Behind The Screen!, a web series from Hostile Work Environment (Peter Adkison’s film company). It takes a lot to get me to stay up that late, but I’m glad I did; the webisode was fun, and getting to hang out and socialize with friends (and eat yummy hors d’oeuvres) was worth it.

The MHI RPG Game Session

On Friday, for the first time ever at GenCon, I went an entire day without working in the booth. That’s because I had even more important and fun stuff lined up! I started the day off with a meeting with Sean Fannon to discuss the novella I’m going to write for his Shaintar setting a bit later this year. Really, though, it was mostly just us catching up, since we’ve known one another twenty years now and have been so busy in recent years that we haven’t had much chance to catch up. Since he only lives one state over, hopefully we’ll run into one another at a local con sometime soon and can maybe even get in a game together. Sean’s a great GM whose sessions I’ve always enjoyed when I’ve had the chance to play in ’em.

The next part of the day was the big one: the MHI RPG game session for four of the major Kickstarter backers and Larry Correia himself! We had a great room in the Union Station building and the group was a fantastic one, full of cool ideas and hilarious jokes. The PCs I created especially for them, based on their input and ideas, were:

Radovan Valanova, former Serbian mercenary who likes to wield a battle axe

Cormac O’Connor, a blunt-spoken former Royal Marine from Ireland who’s an explosives expert

Eugene, an elf tracker from the Enchanted Forest Trailer park, skilled with the bow but not at leaping over hotel reception desks

James “Red” Redmond, former cat burgler turned MHI employee to fight monsters (and to hide out from the cops)

Raymundo “Ray” Velasquez, former Miami PD detective (this was Larry’s PC; names of the other players kept private unless they wish to reveal themselves in comments ;) )

The team started out graduating from MHI training and being assigned to open a new office in Columbia, SC with the help of Harry Pepper, a wheelchair-bound former hunter working for Uwharrie Special Security Services. No sooner had he finished explaining their new HQ and the basics of the situation to them than they heard about a possible zombie attack at a local hotel via the police scanner.

They raced off to the hotel and were soon up to their eyeballs in zombies. (Hotel map take from Fabled Environment’s line of map products for gaming.) Fortunately, slow zombies aren’t too much of a threat to guys in body armor armed with AR-10s, but it was a lot of zombies. They also weren’t stock issue; they couldn’t create other zombies by bite, and decomposed very quickly once killed. Red had the bright idea to use the security cameras to spy out where the zombies were and direct his teammates. They soon learned that most of the rest of the zombies had converged on one particular room. They headed that way and removed the problem with the help of one of Cormac’s grenades.

It was about then that the MCB showed up. The local MCB SAC was not happy about MHI operating on his turf without prior warning, but he made it clear that as long as they kept him in the loop and weren’t jerks about everything, they could all Get Along.

With the help of Eugene’s tracking skills and spells, the PCs followed the “trail” of the zombies’ creator back to a storage locker which had only recently been cleared out. It was obvious from a few things he’d left behind that he’d stored magical paraphernalia here. From there the trail led to the New Urbana Galleria, a slightly run-down mall (that I borrowed the maps and descriptions of from Champions Battlegrounds). Something definitely wasn’t quite right. For one thing, nothing was moving in the parking lot — no cars, no people walking around. They got a little closer and could see people inside through one of the glass doors, and they weren’t moving.

After calling up a map of the mall on their smartphones, they drove around to the loading dock, got into the access corridors with the help of Red’s lockpicking skills, and took the service elevator up to the second floor to get to the security office. But when the elevator doors opened, there was a gargoyle standing there! So commenced the Gargoyle vs. An Elevator Full of Hunters fight. It started with the garg sinking its claws into Radovan’s chest through his body armor and then flinging him down the corridor. What followed was the gargoyle slicing the elevator car (and occasionally a hunter) with its claws as the hunters desperately tried (and largely failed) to penetrate its stony hide with small arms fire (and in Radovan’s case, his battle axe). Red, not being a particularly good shot, went up through the elevator’s hatch and began scouting for escape routes, which quickly took him into the ductwork.

The hunters finally resolved the situation when Cormac took out a grenade, shoved it into the gargoyle’s mouth, and pulled the pin as he withdrew his hand. They all got hurt by the force of the blast and the gargoyle skin shrapnel, but the monster died and none of them did. Meanwhile, as he crawled through the ducts, Red got over the security station and saw a middle-aged guy inside, standing in a magic circle, chanting a powerful spell. Not being an idiot, Red dropped a grenade into the room and blew up Sebastian Moreaux, the villain of the piece. All the zombies infesting the mall (my tribute to Dawn Of The Dead) collapsed, as did the gargantuan mega-zombie Moreaux had been creating in the center of the mall from all the bodies buried beneath the structure. (It had, of course, been built atop an ancient Indian burial ground.) The spell paralyzing all the people in the mall dissipated and the heroes declared a well-earned victory.

All in all the game was a blast, filled with great tactics, hilarious one-liners, and superb roleplaying. I think my favorite line was when Radovan’s player (himself from “the former Yugoslavia”) said, “I hit him with my battle axe, as is traditional among my people.” But all the players had their moment to shine. Larry (himself a great gamer) took plenty of notes, and I think may end up using some of the characters and lines in future fiction. All the players expressed interest in participating in a similar event in future years, so I think they were satisfied they got their money’s worth. I even have an idea for a follow-up adventure, he said sinisterly. ;)

If any of the players are out there reading this, they’re welcome to chime in with their own memories via the comments below, or over on the Facebook post I’ll link to this blog. ;)

The Friday Evening Of Awesomeness

The fun didn’t end there! We took Larry, the four gamers, their “plus ones,” and some other high-level Kickstarter backers who could attend out to dinner at the Adobo Grill, a great Mexican restaurant a few blocks from the convention center. It was a great coda to the event, featuring lots of margaritas, delicious guacamole, and other delectable food.

But the best for me was yet to come. I returned to my hotel room to find an e-mail awaiting me that said the short story I submitted a few months ago to a significant market had reached the second round of consideration, and could I please send in the whole story now. Woot!

After that I went out drinking in a positive frame of mind. I hung out with several friends at two different hotels and talked about all sorts of things. When I finally returned to my room I had acceptance e-mails for two more short stories, and a confirmation for the sale of a third that I’d already been told about. Double woot! Two and a half sales in one day, not bad at all. :D As you can imagine, I spent the rest of the con telling everyone about it. ;)

Saturday And Beyond

Saturday and Sunday I spent pretty much the entire day in the booth selling games (aside from a half hour or so signing copies of Hillfolk over at the Pelgrane Press booth). I barely had time to walk around the hall and do a little shopping; we were busy busy busy from pretty much opening to closing. (In fact, I was so active throughout the show that despite eating more heavy meals than I usually do in the same amount of time, I came home two pounds lighter. The GenCon diet!)

Saturday night Jason, Tina, and I had a very productive and enjoyable business dinner with some folx I can’t name just yet about a potential major project on the horizon which I also can’t describe, but which I think will make my friend Tomas “The Spymaster” Skucas happy. Later that evening I hung out primarily with a bunch of folx from ProFantasy/Pelgrane, but also Jaym Gates, C.A. Suleiman, Lucien “Coolest Name in Gaming” Soulban, and others. Sunday night the Hero/IPR crowd, Jaym, and some other folx went for a delicious dinner at Greek Isles (mmmmm, flaming cheese...), where some of us spent a lot of time talking about various “storytelling” games and related design theory. (We’re a thrill-a-minute crowd, I tell ya.) Afterwards I got to hang out with Jamie Chambers and his awesome fiancee, Nikki Crites. As usual, the best thing about GenCon was all the cool people, and my biggest regret was not getting to see some of them (or spend enough time with them).

The drive back home on Monday was its usual misery of sleepiness and too many energy drinks, combined with doing some interesting “in my head” design work on a couple of games I’ve had in mind for awhile. I have lots of notes on my microrecorder that I need to transcribe, and hopefully y’all will see the results in the not too distant future.

Sales

Sales at the Hero/IPR booth were record-setting strong, up 14% from last year. Most unusually, sales were up 30% on both Friday and Sunday from last year, and for I think the first time in eleven years Friday was our strongest sales day at the show. Usually Friday is our slowest day by a considerable margin. The part of me that wants to believe the world is a rational place subject to analysis and explanation would like to know the reason for this, but danged if I can figure one out. I guess I’ll just blame dice trolls or something.

Another unusual thing was that an extremely high percentage of customers paid in cash — as much as 75-80%, I think, during many extended periods. Most years it runs more like 60% credit cards. C’mon, people, get with it; it’s the twenty-first century and I don’t like having to open the cash box to make change. ;)

Stuff What I Bought

Naturally I did a little spending myself — or in a couple cases trading. I don’t trade nearly as much as I did back in the Nineties, but I’m still happy to swap Hero Games books for cool stuff from other companies when I get the chance. ;)

Aside from presents for certain people and filling the shopping lists a couple friends sent with me, I mostly seemed to pick up stuff from Pelgrane Press: Rob Heinsoo and Jonathan Tweet’s excellent new d20-based game 13th Age (which I’m reviewing with an eye to running a campaign); Hillfolk (which I contribued a series pitch to as part of the Kickstarter campaign) and Blood On The Snow; and Will Hindmarch and Jeff Tidball’s mega-campaign for Trail Of Cthulhu, Eternal Lies. At Paizo I got Mythic Adventures, which I’ve been looking forward to a long time. I also got the Battlestar Galactica and Kingdoms board games from Fantasy Flight Games.

Other Interesting Stuff

The weather in Indianapolis this year was delightful. It was much cooler and less humid than normal, which made walking around much more pleasant. More like that, please.

Many years, between the weather, the perspiring, and the constant standing and walking, I end up suffering from unpleasant heat rash. I’ve tried many things over the years to stop the problem or ameliorate it, with mixed results, but not this year. The new Gold Bond Friction Defense did the trick perfectly; not one bit of pain did I suffer. That’s definitely going in the convention kit from now on.

Another great idea I implemented: I went to the drug store and got some of those seven-compartments-in-a-row pill boxes. I put all my vitamins, meds, aspirin, and suchlike in them. Carrying those rather than all the individual bottles of pills saved a lot of space in my toiletries kit.

Didn’t get to eat at any of the food trucks this year, sadly. Rarely got to eat lunch at all, outside of maybe a slice of pizza eaten fast at the booth, because we were so busy and Jason and Tina often had to leave to take care of subsidiary chores. Next year I need to remember to bring some booth snacks, just in case.

I’m already looking forward to next year!

Comments

[Cynthia Celeste Miller]

It was great seeing you at the con, even as brief as our interaction was. Perhaps next year, we can have more time to catch up. :)