Gen Con 2006 Report: Saturday

Yeah, I know, it's been 2 weeks since Gen Con. At this point, what I'm about to write is probably only 50% true and 50% what my mind thinks is true after 2 weeks of memory loss. But, here goes:

Saturday:
Gen Con did not start early for John on Saturday. After the 7-hour Magic tournament on Friday night, I needed some serious sleep. So, I didn't get downtown until just before noon. I met up with RD, and we went to our 12pm event, to play a board game called "Cleopatra and the Society of Architects". Another fine game from those folks at Days of Wonder. In the game, you play architects who are competing to build Cleopatra's palace. You collect resources to build, but you also have to manage your corruption. Certain actions will cause you to accumulate corruption tokens, which are stored in your own little pyramid "corruption piggy bank". At the end of the game, the most corrupt player is fed to the crocodiles. If the game didn't require a minimum of 3 players, I would have bought it immediately. It's still on my list. I think RD liked it, too, even though he ended up being crocodile food.
After lunch at the RAM, we hit the dealer hall for more demo fun. We played Zombies!, Easter Island, Thurn & Taxis, and a few others. I ended up buying Zombies! and Thurn & Taxis, and RD bought T&T and Power Grid. I bought a couple of polyhedral dice sets from the Chessex booth, and a nice gray linendice bag. We soaked up the dealer hall until just before 6pm, when it was time to check out the Mythbusters seminar. I'm a big fan of the Mythbusters TV show on the Discovery Channel, so I was stoked when I found out that Tory Belleci, Grant Imahara, and Kari Byron were going to be at Gen Con. I had a chance to snap a few pictures of them at their autograph booths, but RD and I also had tickets to a special Q&A seminar that they were holding. The line was quite long to get in, so we were happy that we had confirmed tickets. We had to sit in the back, but it was a relatively small room. They started by showing us a bloopers video that included footage that they couldn't show on TV. Very funny stuff. Then they answered questions for a while, and then proceeded to do some recreations of some of the "vodka myths" that were done on the show. Watching Grant wash some gamer's foot in vodka was pretty hilarious.
After that, we decided to head back to the boardgame room and rent a game. This was a nice little setup - for a couple of generic tickets, you could rent a board game to play (from a rather generous collection). We chose a game called "Louis XIV", which I had heard good things about. It was pretty decent, athough it took a while to get the rules down. A little too dry for me to buy, but a fun way to spend 90 minutes while at Gen Con. After returning the game, we ran into Cody and Raeliste from our NASCRAG team, who were playing a card game with a couple of folks. Raeliste was dressed in full superhero regalia, a character of her own design called the "Deodorant Dame". The neon green wig was a nice touch.
Surpriingly, RD and I had a little trouble finding something to do after that. We walked around a bit, and finally ended up playing in a game of "Are You a Werewolf?" with about 10 other people in the hallway outside the North Club Lounge. But, for me, I could sense that my Gen Con experience was winding down for the year. I headed home and got some more much-needed sleep. I didn't return on Sunday, even though I had a 4-day badge. My money was all spent, and I had pretty much done everything that I had wanted to do (and then some). It was a truly wonderful experience, and I can't wait until next year!!

I posted my Gen Con pictures here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/thesc1ence. Enjoy!

Gen Con 2006 Report: Friday

I have to get this down in writing, or I'll forget it completely....

Friday:
RD dropped me off at the ICC a little before 8am, giving me an hour to kill before my first game at 9am. I decided to head over to the McDonalds at the Hyatt for some breakfast. Let's just say, I'm glad that I had an hour to spare! The ol' Mickey D's was not quite prepared for the onslaught of gamers at 8am on a Friday. But, the food was pleasantly predictable, and I ended up striking up a conversation with a fellow gamer about the Song of Fire and Ice book seried by George Martin.
The first game of the day was called "Be a Hero: Intro to the Hero System". It was my intention this year at Gen Con to try out a couple of different RPGs, and I had heard good things about this system. The GM was a very knowledgeable, very friendly guy who gave us some handouts and set us to work on creating a character. The Hero System (previously called "Champions") allows you to create superheroes and other comic-book style characters. I created a character named (naturally) The Science, who was a metamorph who could change into things like elephants and tigers. Creating the characters was quite fun, and very detailed. We then used our characters to participate in a battle versus a villainos bank robber named "Slamburger" and his evil sidekicks. The concept is great, and I think the roleplaying would be fun, but I just couldn't get into the battle system. It's d6-based, and was a little over-complicated for me. But, I'm glad I got exposed to the system, and I wouldn't be opposedto trying it again.
The rest of my day was scheduled relatively lightly, partially because I was planning on spending the afternoon with my friend Mike O'Brien and his son, David. We met up around lunchtime, and Mika and I headed over to the RAM for some yummy food. We even were able to get a "skip in line" card from IndyDave, which would allow us to jump to the front of the line at the "Wizards of the Coast" booth to roll the gian d20. We walked back to the ICC just in time to watch David playing in a "Halo 2" tournament. He advanced past the 1st round, but kind of got smushed in the 2nd round. Mike and I spent the rest of the afternoon playing demos in the dealer hall. We tried the EVE card game, which didn't impress us too much. One highlight was a demo of the Fantasy Flight game Runebound, which I'm pretty sure I'm going to buy. By that time, RD showed up from work, and we did a few more quick demos before the dealer hall closed. After another mall food court dinner, RD and I met back up with Mike and David in the board game room. We rented some sort of pirate board game, but we didn't have time to play much before it was time for RD and I to go to our Magic tournament. We said farewell to the O'Briens and headed to the TCG hall.
And thus began the 7 most painful hours of the entire Con, entitled "Magic: the Gathering Ravnica Block Limited Tournament". It's pointless to dwell on the details, except to say that 1) I sucked and 2) I don't think I'm cut out for the Magic tournament scene. I lost every game I played, and only scored points when another guy dropped out and I had a bye for one round. Brutal. I really like playing Magic, but perhaps in a less structured, less competitive environment. Anyway, the roughest part was the fact that the tournament didn't end until 3am. So, I hit my pillow at ~4:15am, with visions of foil dual lands dancing in my head. Ugh.

Gen Con 2006 Report: Wednesday/Thursday

Well, I've had a week to recover from Gen Con, so I guess it's time to start posting my "Gen Con Report".

Wednesday:
A sub-group of the Gen Con forums called the "Kentucky Fried Gamers" (KFG for short) hosted some open gaming at the RAM restaurant downtown. Since I am a proud member of said organization, I joined them for an afternoon of fun. I taught a few people how to play Killer Bunnies and the Quest for the Magic Carrot, and KFG founder Bubba Ho-Tep taught me how to play Dungeons & Dragons Miniatures. There were lots of other games going on as well, and it was just a great time. After 5 months on the forums, it was great to meet so many of the forumites in person.

After the open gaming, I drove home to pick up Rachel, and we went back downtown for the forum's big pre-Con party known as "The Stink". Sponsored by Gen Con, but run by forum members, the Stink is an opportunity for all of the forumites to get together, laugh, win swag, and generally enjoy the anticipation of Gen Con. Kind of like a Christmas Eve party. It was quite fun, and Rachel and I got to meet lots of folks. Our recent affiliation with the Mavens really helped us to feel more like a part of things. We left at 10pm, so I could get home and get some sleep before my first game on Thursday morning.

Thursday:
On Thursday morning, my first game was at 8am, entitled "You Too Can Cthulhu". This was an introduction to the Call of Cthulhu RPG, a game based upon the horror writings of H.P. Lovecraft. Our group played a team of people who are investigating a mysterious family in a small town, and we end up encountering some sort of ancient supernatural lizard thing . The subject matter doesn't interest me that much, but the game was quite fun, and the GM was fantastic. He used a lot of audio-visual stuff to set the mood, including background music and projected images. I'd highly recommend this event to anyone who's interested in this game, and I may do it myself again next year. By far the best GM I saw all week.
After that, I went to the dealer hall to get a first look at all the stuff. The dealer hall is like Christmas morning for gamers, with games and books and dice and t-shirts and just about anything you could possibly ever want to buy and more. I checked out a demo for Wizard of the Coast's new collectible miniatures game, Dreamblade, which was premiering at Gen Con. Kind of a cross between Magic: The Gathering and chess - it was pretty fun, but I don't think I need to spend money on anything else that includes the word "collectible".
I atteded a minatures painting class and discovered that I'm not a big fan of that hobby. My little miniature knight didn't turn out too bad, but I just don't have the patience to sit and paint these little tiny things for hours. I guess I'll have to stick to games with pre-painted minis, like Heroscape and D&D Minis.
After the painting class, I spent a few more hours in the dealer hall, doing demos and picking up swag. Wizards of the Coast had this deal where you do demos for their games and then you get to roll a giant foam d20 for a prize. I got a pretty good roll (a 17), and ended up winning a D&D v3.5 Player's Hndbook. That's a $30 book for free (hooray!).
RD had to work on Thursday and Friday (ah, the life of a junior high school teacher!), but he came downtown after work and we played in a Heroscape tournament. We brought our own 400-point armies to play in a single-elimination tourney. Unfortunately, both of us were singly eliminated in the first round! But, it was fun to play with some new people, and it's a game that both RD and I really like. After that brief hour of Heroscape play, we went t the mall food court for dinner.
We didn't really have anything else planned after the Heroscape tourney, so we started looking in the program book for another event to enter. We decided on NASCRAG, a D&D team event that I had heard a lot of good things about on the forums. We got some tickets and quickly was able to get a group together, which included Cody and Raeliste from the forums. NASCRAG emphasizes role-playing in their tournaments, which is a good thing since RD and I are only somewhat familiar with the rules of D&D. So, it was 4 hours of craziness, with each of us using cheesy accents and trying to figure out how to escape angry nuns and steal a submarine.
So, the first day of Gen Con 2006 started at 8am and ended at 1:30am for me, but it was more fun than I could have imagined. More of my report to follow!

The 2006 Great Parking Experiment

So, the company that I work at has a large parking lot that wraps around the building. Next to the front of the building, there are approximately 10 parking spaces marked "Visitor Parking Only", as well as the requisite battery of handicapped spaces. We are surrounded by elevated railroad tracks on 2 sides, a privately-owned cornfield on a 3rd side, and the street on the 4th side. So, we're pretty limited as far as parking expansion goes. Management has recently rectified this situation by leasing a remote parking lot down the street, with a shuttle bus that take people from the parking lot to the building. So, why did I just describe all this? Because that is the setting of the 2006 Great Parking Experiment.

A girl that I work with (we'll call her "Jane") moved here from California last November. And, for months now, I have seen her consistently parking illegally in the visitors parking spaces. When she does, she purposefully removes the company parking permit from her rearview mirror, and her California license plates definitely help in the deception. I was quite surprised that our security guards hadn't noticed this yet. Well, I'm by no means a tattletale, and on a practical level, I couldn't care less. But, some inner sense of justice within me just wouldn't let this go. So, I told "Jane" that I was starting an experiment. Every day that she parked illegally, I would too. And we would see who got caught first. My hypothesis was that, since "Jane" is a tall, attractive blonde, perhaps her offense was being overlooked by the predominantly male security staff. OK, my main purpose was to find a funny, non-threatening way to get her to stop parking illegally.

Well, it all came crashing down on Wednesday of this week, when both Jane and I were contacted by security staff to move our cars. I smiled when I got the news, and cheerily moved my car to the back, mission accomplished. However, Jane was quite ticked off, and called me into her office to talk about it. At first, I thought she was mad at me. It turned out that she was mad at a co-worker (we'll call her "Sally"), who had apparently ratted us both out to the security federales. She was so mad that Sally had gone behind our backs and told security about our 'illegal' activities.

"I can't believe Sally did that! She's such a b****!" Jane said.

"Well, we were in the wrong, weren't we?" I reasoned.

"That's not the point!" said Jane. "She should have talked to us in person instead of getting us in trouble. I mean, it's none of her f***ing business."

"But, it doesn't change the fact that we were in the wrong, does it?" I asked.

"Yes, we were wrong. But that's not the point!!" she replied.

This whole experience has helped me to realize something about people in general. We all screw up, sometimes unintentionally and sometimes very much on purpose. And more often than not, when our crimes are exposed, rather than confess and beg for mercy, we try to make excuses and justify our behavior. Jane apparently thought that whining about the way her wrongdoing was exposed might mitigate or deflect from the fact that she was wrong all along. I wonder, how many people will be doing that with God when the final judgment comes? Will we be saying that it's unfair the way God revealed our sins to the entire world? Will we try to justify and point fingers? How much mercy should we expect from a holy God for that kind of behavior?

I would much rather live a life of continual confession and repentance, submitted to God's will and receiving his mercy and cleansing every day. As for the blame for my sin, the only place I can point to is towards myself. And for mercy and forgiveness, the only place I can point to is the cross of Christ.