So, Gencon and other stuff
Aug. 15th, 2011 10:45 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
mythicfoxFirst off, a really late Gencon report.
First off, I feel the need to explain my usual routine when it comes to flying places. I usually go for the earliest flight I can manage and take a big nap the day before and just stay up all night and drive out early. I find it's a little easier than trying to get up early for a flight while still getting an early enough departure that I'm not getting where I'm going in the middle of the night.
This year, the routine didn't quite work out for me. My first flight got cancelled and I was transferred to another airline (as an aside, I usually fly Continental but that turned out to be a mistake because they're in the middle of a merger and that screwed up a lot of things). And as tends to be the case when this has happened in the past, my luggage didn't make it past my layover. And as a result of the transfers, I got into Indy a little later than expected (on Wednesday, by the way). And then the taxi driver, despite not only confirming with me that I was staying at the Hilton Garden Inn and not the regular Hilton but also checking the address with me, dropped me off at the wrong hotel. And I didn't notice until I got inside. So I had to hoof it to the right hotel, where I caught my breath and headed back out to the convention center -- too late to get my badge (I went Will Call this year rather than pay an obnoxious shipping fee and risk, say, having my badge in my luggage if it gets lost like what happened one year). I got there at the last minute before the Will Call booths were supposed to close, but after waiting a few minutes in a slowly forming line, the staffers who had stood there and watched people starting to line up waited until someone got impatient and asked why we weren't being let up to the booths to tell us that they'd cut the line off at 8:30 because it was so busy.
So I just grabbed a bite to eat and stayed up until way too late for my luggage to arrive. (I was told that it would probably either arrive with a 10pm flight or a 12am flight and it didn't get to me until 4am) Good thing I'd brought a book to read and had my iPad with me. What sucked though is that I was still wearing my clothes from the previous day and was hoping to get cleaned up when I got to the hotel (I'd even packed an extra set of clean clothes to change into once I arrived in Indy). If I'd had to do it over again, I'd have just planned to skip the 10am tournament (the L5R world qualifiers, affectionately known as the 'grinders') the next day. Because I had no clue that a) the Will Call line would be so long and b) the line would be so slow.
Yeah, that's right. I was one of the poor bastards stuck in that line for over two hours on Thursday morning. Someone just screwed up somewhere, logistics-wise, since the average wait for picking up a pre-registered badge was two hours yet people were signing up at the door in less than twenty minutes. Last time I've had a wait like that for a preregistered badge was at Anthrocon 2003 (I think it was 2k3, at least), when all of the badge printers but one broke down and they were letting people signing up for 'sponsor' badges at the door use the 'sponsor' line (which, since then has been exclusively for pre-reg sponsors). To my understanding, what happened this year was a combination of a lack of cut-off dates for online preregistration and just everyone missing the memo of 'Hey, we've got a lot of folks going for Will Call this year, might wanna see if we can make sure that goes smoothly.'
So I waited forever, starving and miserable, to pick up my badge. I wandered a bit, intending to get a bite to eat but wanted to make sure I could find where the CCG Hall was this year (with the remodeled convention center, everything was someplace different). In the process, I wound up wandering through the Dealer's Room and got a lot of my early shopping done. Then I took a bit of a nap (I spent most of the convention exhausted, partially because my sleeping patterns were so thrown off by that first day I came up and then had to wait on my suitcase) and hit the Mantis Clan dinner at the Rock Bottom Brewery. One of my highlights of the last couple of Gencons is making it out to these, as the other Mantis players are always a delight to hang out with. It warms my heart a bit when I get there and they're genuinely pleased to see me even though I don't know all of them as well as I'd like.![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
mythdude was there this year as well, and appears to have enjoyed himself. Also, pictures were taken (particularly, the first four), and I appear in a couple of them. (The fellow in the red shirt on the left, for context, is one of the company's new art directors, Adrian Burton.)
Then I had a really crappy night's sleep that night (due to the fact that most of my rest for the previous couple of days had been catnapping, my body seemed to have decided that I wanted to limit my sleep to two-hour spurts.)
Friday was pretty straightforward. I got to play in the Grinders, dropped after going 1-3 so I could enjoy more of the convention. I got to talk toinnocent_man for a few minutes, which was cool as I didn't know he was going to be able to make it to Gencon at all. So that was a pleasant surprise. Afterwards I got cleaned up and attended this geek speed dating thing. It was a fun experience, overall, but I have to admit that one of my first thoughts afterwards was "People actually do this and take it seriously?" There was going to be another Mantis Clan gathering later that night at the home of one of the guys who's a local, but I was sadly unable to manage a ride out there and I was so tired I probably wouldn't have been any fun to be around.
So I did the L5R Second Chance event on Saturday (a tournament for folks who couldn't qualify for the main event finals), and again went 1-3. Did some shopping, got some eats, rested up and talked tocama_sotz for a bit and then went out to the convention center to check out the Big Gaming Night that Alderac was hosting. I got a bag full of swag, but I actually missed a couple of minor events I didn't know they were holding then. Nuts. But after that, I stashed a few things in one of the storage lockers at the convention center and went over to the mall where they were having a concert at Tilt Studios. Now, I missed the first half of that but that was intentional (or at least I'd planned for it) -- the band I was there to see, The Protomen was the last act of the evening anyhow. It was an amazing show (here is a little one-minute clip of 'Breaking Out' someone recorded from the show and posted to the net), and if you get the opportunity I definitely suggest seeing the Protomen live. Before the Protomen went on, I also saw Year 200X (really kind of generic 'speed metal covers of video game music') and Armcannon (who actually do have some talent, and a taste in music that Sean described as the 'Saotome school of Anything-Goes Nostalgia,' as they did stuff ranging from video game music to the Ghostbusters theme to Hulk Hogan's theme music). After the concert, I picked up a poster for Sean and got the band to sign it to make up for the fact that I got to see them without him.
Then I got trapped in the mall. I'm not sure which exit we were supposed to take, but it was so late after the concert that most of the doors were locked. I dunno how the others got out, but after unsuccessfully trying the entrance closest to my hotel I wound up waving down a security guy who directed me to the security office where they let me out there. Now, it was like 4am by this point and my only food options were Steak n Shake (which usually makes me sick and was really busy anyways) or buy a frozen dinner from the little convenience store in my hotel and nuke it in the room's microwave. And on top of that, I almost forgot to get my stuff out of the storage locker from earlier (I'm sure it would have been fine until the next morning, but I didn't want to push my luck). So I went back, grabbed that, and went the frozen dinner route before packing up most of my stuff for the trip back.
And then I left kind of early on Sunday, made the trip back home and such.
And now, for the list of stuff I came home with (in no particular order):
An assortment of L5R booster packs and promos
Myth: Pantheons and Nightfall, a pair of card games by AEG that I got at the Big Gaming Night (if I'd had Gencon to do over again, I would have thought to pick up a copy of the Martial Law expansion for Nightfall as well)
Ninja: The Legend of the Scorpion Clan, a board game by AEG
A fresh deck box for my L5R cards (nothing too fancy, but Ultra Pro had a deck box that just happens to be really good for multi-deck games)
An assortment of dice, including the new Crystal Caste set (which aren't as nice as last year's, but I still like them)
I think that's all of it. Did I miss anything?
Also, in unrelated news, I've gotten a little behind on word count for a story I've been working on and the deadline's coming up. So while I'll try to maintain my regular online schedule, it's possible I might be a little less accessible for the next couple of weeks or so. Just offering a heads-up.
First off, I feel the need to explain my usual routine when it comes to flying places. I usually go for the earliest flight I can manage and take a big nap the day before and just stay up all night and drive out early. I find it's a little easier than trying to get up early for a flight while still getting an early enough departure that I'm not getting where I'm going in the middle of the night.
This year, the routine didn't quite work out for me. My first flight got cancelled and I was transferred to another airline (as an aside, I usually fly Continental but that turned out to be a mistake because they're in the middle of a merger and that screwed up a lot of things). And as tends to be the case when this has happened in the past, my luggage didn't make it past my layover. And as a result of the transfers, I got into Indy a little later than expected (on Wednesday, by the way). And then the taxi driver, despite not only confirming with me that I was staying at the Hilton Garden Inn and not the regular Hilton but also checking the address with me, dropped me off at the wrong hotel. And I didn't notice until I got inside. So I had to hoof it to the right hotel, where I caught my breath and headed back out to the convention center -- too late to get my badge (I went Will Call this year rather than pay an obnoxious shipping fee and risk, say, having my badge in my luggage if it gets lost like what happened one year). I got there at the last minute before the Will Call booths were supposed to close, but after waiting a few minutes in a slowly forming line, the staffers who had stood there and watched people starting to line up waited until someone got impatient and asked why we weren't being let up to the booths to tell us that they'd cut the line off at 8:30 because it was so busy.
So I just grabbed a bite to eat and stayed up until way too late for my luggage to arrive. (I was told that it would probably either arrive with a 10pm flight or a 12am flight and it didn't get to me until 4am) Good thing I'd brought a book to read and had my iPad with me. What sucked though is that I was still wearing my clothes from the previous day and was hoping to get cleaned up when I got to the hotel (I'd even packed an extra set of clean clothes to change into once I arrived in Indy). If I'd had to do it over again, I'd have just planned to skip the 10am tournament (the L5R world qualifiers, affectionately known as the 'grinders') the next day. Because I had no clue that a) the Will Call line would be so long and b) the line would be so slow.
Yeah, that's right. I was one of the poor bastards stuck in that line for over two hours on Thursday morning. Someone just screwed up somewhere, logistics-wise, since the average wait for picking up a pre-registered badge was two hours yet people were signing up at the door in less than twenty minutes. Last time I've had a wait like that for a preregistered badge was at Anthrocon 2003 (I think it was 2k3, at least), when all of the badge printers but one broke down and they were letting people signing up for 'sponsor' badges at the door use the 'sponsor' line (which, since then has been exclusively for pre-reg sponsors). To my understanding, what happened this year was a combination of a lack of cut-off dates for online preregistration and just everyone missing the memo of 'Hey, we've got a lot of folks going for Will Call this year, might wanna see if we can make sure that goes smoothly.'
So I waited forever, starving and miserable, to pick up my badge. I wandered a bit, intending to get a bite to eat but wanted to make sure I could find where the CCG Hall was this year (with the remodeled convention center, everything was someplace different). In the process, I wound up wandering through the Dealer's Room and got a lot of my early shopping done. Then I took a bit of a nap (I spent most of the convention exhausted, partially because my sleeping patterns were so thrown off by that first day I came up and then had to wait on my suitcase) and hit the Mantis Clan dinner at the Rock Bottom Brewery. One of my highlights of the last couple of Gencons is making it out to these, as the other Mantis players are always a delight to hang out with. It warms my heart a bit when I get there and they're genuinely pleased to see me even though I don't know all of them as well as I'd like.
mythdude was there this year as well, and appears to have enjoyed himself. Also, pictures were taken (particularly, the first four), and I appear in a couple of them. (The fellow in the red shirt on the left, for context, is one of the company's new art directors, Adrian Burton.)Then I had a really crappy night's sleep that night (due to the fact that most of my rest for the previous couple of days had been catnapping, my body seemed to have decided that I wanted to limit my sleep to two-hour spurts.)
Friday was pretty straightforward. I got to play in the Grinders, dropped after going 1-3 so I could enjoy more of the convention. I got to talk to
innocent_man for a few minutes, which was cool as I didn't know he was going to be able to make it to Gencon at all. So that was a pleasant surprise. Afterwards I got cleaned up and attended this geek speed dating thing. It was a fun experience, overall, but I have to admit that one of my first thoughts afterwards was "People actually do this and take it seriously?" There was going to be another Mantis Clan gathering later that night at the home of one of the guys who's a local, but I was sadly unable to manage a ride out there and I was so tired I probably wouldn't have been any fun to be around.So I did the L5R Second Chance event on Saturday (a tournament for folks who couldn't qualify for the main event finals), and again went 1-3. Did some shopping, got some eats, rested up and talked to
cama_sotz for a bit and then went out to the convention center to check out the Big Gaming Night that Alderac was hosting. I got a bag full of swag, but I actually missed a couple of minor events I didn't know they were holding then. Nuts. But after that, I stashed a few things in one of the storage lockers at the convention center and went over to the mall where they were having a concert at Tilt Studios. Now, I missed the first half of that but that was intentional (or at least I'd planned for it) -- the band I was there to see, The Protomen was the last act of the evening anyhow. It was an amazing show (here is a little one-minute clip of 'Breaking Out' someone recorded from the show and posted to the net), and if you get the opportunity I definitely suggest seeing the Protomen live. Before the Protomen went on, I also saw Year 200X (really kind of generic 'speed metal covers of video game music') and Armcannon (who actually do have some talent, and a taste in music that Sean described as the 'Saotome school of Anything-Goes Nostalgia,' as they did stuff ranging from video game music to the Ghostbusters theme to Hulk Hogan's theme music). After the concert, I picked up a poster for Sean and got the band to sign it to make up for the fact that I got to see them without him.Then I got trapped in the mall. I'm not sure which exit we were supposed to take, but it was so late after the concert that most of the doors were locked. I dunno how the others got out, but after unsuccessfully trying the entrance closest to my hotel I wound up waving down a security guy who directed me to the security office where they let me out there. Now, it was like 4am by this point and my only food options were Steak n Shake (which usually makes me sick and was really busy anyways) or buy a frozen dinner from the little convenience store in my hotel and nuke it in the room's microwave. And on top of that, I almost forgot to get my stuff out of the storage locker from earlier (I'm sure it would have been fine until the next morning, but I didn't want to push my luck). So I went back, grabbed that, and went the frozen dinner route before packing up most of my stuff for the trip back.
And then I left kind of early on Sunday, made the trip back home and such.
And now, for the list of stuff I came home with (in no particular order):
- Amaranthine, by Machine Age Productions
- Don't Lose Your Mind, by Evil Hat
- Signs of the Moon, by White Wolf
- The PoD version of The Testament of Longinus, by White Wolf
- Grimoire of Grimoires, also by White Wolf (not a new book, but I'd been meaning to pick it up and found a store selling it half-off)
- Trail of Cthulhu and Mutant City Blues by Pelgrane Press
- Snips, Snails, and Dragon Tales, an Order of the Stick book
- A big honking stack of Pathfinder stuff:
- Ultimate Combat
- Inner Sea Magic
- Goblins of Golarion (and an extra copy for Sean)
- Dungeons of Golarion
- Adventurer's Armory
- Pathfinder Society Field Guide
- The Harrowing
- Carrion Crown Part 6: Shadows of Gallowspire and Jade Regent Part 1: The Brinewall Legacy, both pickups from my Adventure Path subscription.
- The Combat Pad
- Ultimate Combat
I think that's all of it. Did I miss anything?
Also, in unrelated news, I've gotten a little behind on word count for a story I've been working on and the deadline's coming up. So while I'll try to maintain my regular online schedule, it's possible I might be a little less accessible for the next couple of weeks or so. Just offering a heads-up.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2011-08-16 04:47 am (UTC)Yeah, that line was crazy. I lucked out to find a friend in the middle of the line so that myself and my sister could get our badges sooner. Was the speed dating really fun? I couldn't do it. Not in a "Ha ha it's dumb yer a loozer" way but in a "I'm not comfortable speed dating 10 strangers in a short amount of time"
It was great seeing you again! GO MANTIS CLAN! *does weird mantis chop*
no subject
Date: 2011-08-16 10:31 am (UTC)Well, the whole speed dating experience was fun, but the actual 'sitting down with people and trying to chat them up with only four minutes to work with' was actually really awkward. It might work out for some folks, but I definitely can tell it wasn't my thing. The highlight of it, for me, was talking to a couple of the other guys who'd finished kind of early (there was a disproportionately low ratio of women to men, unusually so according to the girl who ran the event) about just Gencon stuff in general. In the end, I'd file speed dating under "things everyone should probably do once just for the experience."
no subject
Date: 2011-08-16 06:07 am (UTC)I've been wanting to get more into L5R recently, in general (eg, learn to play the card game properly and be not-craptastic, get more involved in mega-game events, make some costumes) but I'm totally at a loss on where to get started. The AEG forums are so chaotic, I feel very intimidated by it all.
*hugs* I'm glad you made it there ok, and back, even if it was kind of a circus ride for you and your luggage. There should be some sort of "zen-lounge" kind of place to go to just decompress and get a free massage or something =p
no subject
Date: 2011-08-16 12:05 pm (UTC)As for differences between the clan player groups, I'm honestly not entirely sure. I mean, I know there are differences, but I honestly don't feel qualified to comment beyond "Those guys did this that time and these guys did that once" and so forth.
If I could make a couple of suggestions, though... if you're looking for a forum to start that's a little more general-purpose and not as clan-specific or insane, try the forum for the Strange Assembly (http://www.strangeassembly.com) podcast. And I've also been suggesting to people to take a look at the deck archetypes (http://www.l5r.com/emperor-edition-themes/) being designed for Emperor Edition. They're not all posted yet, but it should give you a pretty good idea as to what each clan is going to be doing thematically in the card game. (Just keep in mind that part of each write-up is written by the Story Team and the other part by the Design Team so there might be small contradictions) That said, this is a very good time to get into the card game, what with the new base set about to come out in a few months. And don't worry about being craptastic -- if I got a copy of [insert random broken 'autopilot' deck of the moment, at the time of this writing "Embassy of the Crane bully-dueling"] I'd probably still only go 2-5 at a tournament at best.
And there was sort of a booth at the convention center where they were doing shoulder-rubs and stuff but I think it cost money and just didn't feel like going through the hassle. Really, my "zen lounge" was my slightly-crappy hotel room.
no subject
Date: 2011-08-17 12:16 am (UTC):P
That's not true. I mean, they're a pretty great place, but I find all the forums are pretty great places. I only hang around the AEG, Mantis, and the Spider one (just for story developments, I swear!) but that's because there's a lack of a proper Naga forum. *sad face*
/mantis chop
no subject
Date: 2011-08-17 09:56 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-08-17 10:32 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-08-17 10:36 pm (UTC)