GenCon 2009: Thursday

Ugh, the day started early. 7am is earlier than I'd normally drag myself from slumber, but for tickets to fun, I suppose I could do it. Signed up for a Diplomacy game at 10am, a SF film by Richard Garriott and others actually filmed in space, and picked up 10 generic tickets at $2 apiece for use all over GenCon.

The line took forever. If it's possible to line up generics beforehand, that's the plan for next year. I mean, sheesh, why waste valuable time in line!?!? Luckily, this gave me time to figure out my schedule for the next few days. Also a good thing that I tried to sign up for things on Friday afternoon, so the dude behind the counter could remind me that the Civ game is actually Friday, not Saturday. Good thing he told me or I'd have missed it!

Then off to games, and the exhibition floor. I found the floor a bit overwhelming, with all these vendors pushing their products with vim and vinegar. Nice to see the gaming world pushes ahead full throttle despite the many reports of a dismal economy out there. WotC had a glossy exhibit; Crazy Egor had a nice warehouse of all you'd ever want feel. There was everything in-between. Next year, we may try to get a table if we start printing our modules. Stay tuned for news of this over the coming months.

Got into a few games over the course of the day, including Diplomacy, Pompeii, and Junta. I'd say the Junta game went best, with everyone really getting into it. Pompeii is a nice 45 minute fire-and-forget kind of game. Diplomacy is hard if people come in as a strong voting block. I got screwed by a strong Turkey/Austro-Hungary alliance and my Russian people were forced to take Berlin at the cost of losing Sevastopol to Turkey, Warsaw to Austria, and St. Petersburg to Britain. Can you say "squeezed?!?"

Back to the focus of this blog. I was excited to see so many role players, people dressed up (photos perhaps to follow), and general goodwill toward gamers all in the first day of the con. Looking forward to tomorrow, where I hope to get in some good old fashioned role playing after an 8 hour Advanced Civ game. Where else other than GenCon can you get in a game?