GenCon report

Okay, here it is, my con report, such as it is. I pretty much took notes on highlights from the con that I'll share, as I'm sure people don't need to hear an exact accounting of all of my movements.

First off, my roommates were cool folks. There was Ed, who works at a hotel in Vegas and had a lot of fun stories about that and also the period of time when he was a VIP Wrangler (my term, not his) for one of the Disney parks. Ed also bought appetizers for all of us at the Ram on Wednesday after we arrived, when the two random dudes (whose names are Jake and James, and I have a business card from one of them) offered us table space as we desperately searched for room at the bar.

There was also Jeff, who was a nice guy, fun to talk to, but the guy snored like he was choking on his lungs. And yes, I'm aware of sleep apnea and know that there's a chance that was what was happening, I'm just saying that the con became a lot more enjoyable on Friday night when I discovered that the hotel had complimentary ear plugs available.

Which segues into one of the cuter moments of the convention... there was a Don't Rest Your Head game on Saturday morning I didn't get a chance to sign up for but was planning on showing up and seeing if there was room to squeeze in with generic tickets. At least, that was the plan. But between the ear plugs allowing me to finally get more than a couple hours' sleep and tuning out noise from the rest of the room when people woke up and started moving around, I wound up sleeping in and missing it.

For those of you familiar with the game, I am totally aware of the irony.

I spent a good chunk of the convention dealing with Legend of the Five Rings stuff. I played in both qualifiers (one on Thursday, one on Friday, more details below), dropping out of the first one early when it was clear I wasn't getting anywhere so I could get some time in the vendors' hall. I went ahead and played all the way through on Friday, though, because I just love playing the game. I also got to meet some of the other well-known Mantis players, who were really friendly and welcoming folks. They even gave me a Mantis t-shirt from a couple of years ago because they happened to have a spare that fit me.

Maybe it's just me, because I only started getting into the series a few months ago, but it seems like there were a disproportionate number of Bleach cosplayers this year compared to all of the other assorted franchises that tend to spawn costumed individuals. Perhaps it's because of the entire pack of folks wandering around dressed as Arrancar that skewed the numbers.

At one point I wandered by the Champions Online booth, and half-considered trying a demo but decided against it in the end. However, I saw something that almost completely cracked me up. A kid was playing the demo, and he was about 14 or 15 years old. The character he'd created for said demo was a female character with massive tits and wearing a mask, a bikini, a cape, and that was it. If I could have done so, I'd have taken a picture of him with the character on the screen visible in the background -- it would have made for a great de-motivational poster. I'm thinking something with the caption "Your Online Girlfriend" or something to that effect.

Seriously, I wish I could have gotten said picture.

And before I get on to the L5R tourney report, a couple of random thoughts and observations from the weekend that aren't directly con-related:

Are the airlines really still convinced that people who fly on planes only want to read about travel-related stuff and have no other interests? I mean, I know in-flight magazines aren't meant to be the height of interesting material and nobody picks an airline just for the magazine, but you'd think someone would attempt to spice it up a bit. Namely, I wonder if any of those companies have considered putting fiction in the in-flight magazines, even if it's just excerpts from upcoming/popular novels as part of the magazines' larger advertising aesthetic.

And speaking of airlines, on the way back from Indy one of the flights took us past some impending storm clouds. Among the fluffier clouds, though, were a bunch of smaller cirrus clouds that were small, nearly two-dimensional nearly-black swirly disks. It was weird, and I couldn't take my eyes off of them for fear of missing out on an opportunity to finish a story with "And that's how I was one of the first people to see the portals open to unleash the alien invaders upon our planet."

And now we get into my tournament report, which I've decided to call the "'People Who've Beaten Me' Chronicles."

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( L5R tourney report )

Edit: Oh, I forgot to include a little bit talking about the various Problems with my L5R deck. I've gone back at the end of the tournament report and added those in.

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And now, I leave you with a list of the books and stuff I picked up, in no particular order:

• Geist: The Sin-Eaters
  
• Pathfinder
  
• Keys to the Supernal Tarot
  
• Mage: The Awakening Tarot
  
• Equinox Road (I'm really behind on Changeling releases, I'll admit, partially because we haven't had much opportunity to play it around here)
  
• Seers of the Throne (a gift for Sean)
  
• Night Horrors: Wolfsbane
  
• Shard (two copies, one for myself, one for furryjackal)
  
• Legend of the Five Rings: The Vacant Throne
  
• Humans!!! (from Twilight Creations, the folks who make Zombies!!!, and yes it is what it sounds like in that context)

I meant to take a look at Don't Rest Your head as well but it just slipped my mind with other stuff going on. While I was there I also played in a demo of the new Hackmaster edition, and while I like the feel of it I think I'm going to wait until the full book is out before I spend any cash on it (as opposed to the 'Basic' edition they have, which has enough rules to do characters from level 1-5).

Is there anything that I left out that I should be talking about here?