Woo, yay, etc.
So, past Gen Consonants: what’s the deal with generic tickets? Do I want a bunch of them, or can I find stuff to do without? (Context: doing four days, have about half a dozen specific tickets)
Also, woo Gen Con.
You're coming to Gen Con? Excellent!
In my experience, generic tickets are primarily used if, e.g.
- you want to go to an event that's sold out (so you couldn't buy the corresponding ticket) but one of the people that bought a ticket doesn't show up
- you see people getting ready to play something that looks interesting and you want to drop in, but don't have time to pick up a ticket before it starts
Personally, I tend to plan one or two things each day and found that it tends to be enough. I haven't needed generic tickets in the last few years. Your mileage may vary.
Yeah, Generics are more for "This looks cool, I want to sit and play this now". I'd get a handful (I think you can redeem them back for cash but I might be remembering Origins and their tokens instead of Gencon) so it doesn't hurt to plan.
We must get together! Please email me: arenson@spatzel.net
You can redeem them back for credit, minus something like a 10% processing fee.
Shiny – glad you're coming! 
Looking forward to seeing you!
Do you want to do a lot of organized, official events, or do you want to wander around the expo hall, look at all the cool stuff, and spontaneously demo games there and other places where they don't require tickets? Both are totally valid, awesome times at Gen Con, and I've done both as an attendee.
If the former, sign up for as many as you possibly can and then get generics if you have specific events in mind that are sold out and you want to try to slip into. If the later, don't get any generics.
A simple request for the gtg staff:
last year you dropped the bomb about prime Wars during your state of gtg panel and those of us who couldn't make it to gen con were super confused on what's going on because it was the first place we heard about it and some of us were not super happy about. As a request if you drop any bombs this year like this we could get an official statement hopefully later that night so it's not as huge of a shock.
I don't think we are going to drop any bombs this year.
thank you.
Except possibly smoke bombs.
In that case, the bomb isn’t the surprise…
Not sure whether to post this in the Citizens thread or here, but this seems more a generic Gen Con thread while the other is a little more time sensitive, so.
Fellow volunteers and other GTG types: I know some folks took pictures of the Young Legacy costumer at dinner last night. That was my daughter, and my wife and I spent so much of our time wrangling her that we never got a decent picture ourselves! I would love to have pictures of her trip to the GTG dinner last night, so please send me a message or reply if you could send me a picture. Thanks!
GenCon!
Man, oh, man today was rough for me. I was traveling for work yesterday and pulled something in my back. Had to hobble around airports and got in late Wed, stopping by the convention center to get my badge from Will Call. For much of yesterday and last night I thought it unlikely that I'd be able to even make it to GenCon. The worst was at 4am, I woke up needing to use the bathroom and could barely stand.
But by the morning I was better and with some trepidation I got my bike ready and gave it a try. It worked well enough. Though I needed to take a lot of rests, I was able to do just about everything I wanted at the con today, including picking up a heavy package that was delivered for me at GenCon, meeting folks for dinner a few blocks away, and lugging a ton of stuff all the way over to Lucas Oil to teach some friends Spirit Island in the evening.
In the end, despite the pain and missing a couple of things, the sheer excitement of overcoming diversity and actually getting to GenCon made this one of my happiest days at the con.
GtGs is once again set up with both a booth and a large side room. The booth was doing brisk business, including, I hear, a rush in the morning on the 50 or so copies of Spirit Island put out for sale today. Craig said he hadn't seen this before, in which a large group of people make the GtG booth their #1 stop first thing on the first day. The booth looks especially dazzling this year, with tall, black bookshelves ringed by small, bright lights. The booth is long and narrow -- 40 feet by 20 feet, I think. One end has walls to make a storage room, with Handelabra set up on one side doing demos of Bottom of the 9th and, I think, showing off the prime wardens. Bottom of the 9th looks really good! Someone (Jeremy, I'm almost sure) was dressed as Guise wearing a baseball uniform and looked SO GOOD. After the storage room there's a register area and then shelves of product forming an organized area for a line to the register. Then, on the other side of the shelves the rest of the space consists of about 8-10 small, standup tables. There were demos of Lazer Ryders, Spirit Island, Bottom of the 9th, and I'm not sure what else. Traffic looked brisk the couple times I was by there with most if not all of the tables in use.
GenCon completely sold out this year. Not sure how many people that is, but I think there were 60,000 last year. In past years, Thursday has been fairly light, but not this year. The space has expanded enought that it wasn't too hard to get around in the exhibit hall, but there were a LOT of people. The exhibit hall opens at 10am. Around 9:30 I was trying to get through the area outside the hall where people were crowded, waiting to enter, in order to get to the GtG side room, and it was really packed. Luckily, a small corrider was roped off for people who needed to make their way through, but it was a long, slow process.
Similar to last year, the side room was narrow and deep, with space for a gaming table to come out from each of the side walls and then about that much space again in the middle, but extending for about six tables down each side. A life-sized Bunker cutout (so, like two stories tall), was at the front of the room. Very cool. Lazer Ryderz, Fate of the Elder Gods, Spirit Island, OblivAeon, Viva Java, Compounded, Brewcrafters, and Exoplanets were all being run, with some of them on multiple tables. I enjoyed getting to see lots of people again and getting to meet some folks I hadn't met before, but was very sad to have missed the Wed night dinner. I wasn't officially volunteering, but enjoyed pitching in a bit -- putting some items in bags and teaching Spirit Island. The tables were mostly full every time I was in there. Getting to meet the mentioned-in-a-previous-post Young Legacy was delightful. She had a great big smile and enjoyed grabbing on to my fingers. I also was impressed with the Harby costume I saw today.
The Sentinels RPG was being run elsewhere and I didn't see that, but I heard from a friend who really enjoyed it.
With little agenda for much of the day I spent a lot of time wandering the dealer hall. I found a Buffy game I was interested in and was directed over to Hall D to play a full game. Getting there (in a lot of pain) I learned that it was a paid event, for which I would need a ticket or generic tickets (which I didn't have), and that it was over for the day anyway. A bit annoyed and disappointed I started heading back to the exhibit hall only to run into a friend of mine, at GenCon for the first time with his successfully Kickstarted Game, Diceborn Heroes, who was setting up to run a couple demos. I stopped to rest and chat and learned that a bunch of people signed up, but none were there -- somewhat concerning when the game was supposed to start in a couple minutes. At that point he realized that he'd come to the wrong hall, that he was supposed to be in Hall A. Seeing his look at the bits and pieces all spread out, I offered to go over to Hall A as quickly as I could and let the people know that he was coming. I did and it all worked out. The poor guy ended up trying simultaneously to teach four groups of people how to play the game. I did what I could to help, but I'd only played it once six months ago and struggled to remember details. Still, it was fun to see him and help and I never would have if I hadn't been sent on a wild goose chase.
I also dropped by the Cheapass Games booth and ended up teaching Tak to a bunch of people because for some reason noone was manning their Tak table and I really love that game, so it was fun to do.
One of my goals for this GenCon is to gather signatures on a copy of a game that I'm giving as a present to a friend's daughter for her HS graduation. More than a dozen of the designers are at GenCon and the lead designer is a friend who's offered to help, but it's REALLY hard to track down where these industry folks are going to be at any given point. I know enough people that I seem to be regularly running into folks I know, but finding PARTICULAR people at any given time? Seemingly impossible.
Which reminds me of Adam, Paul, and Christopher and how most if not all of the con is just a series of meetings for them. Once upon a time those guys gave demos and worked the cash register and then fit in their meetings at crazy hours of the day. It's been a while since those days, and I'm glad to see it. Still, I'm nostalgic for that first GenCon in their 10x10 booth way in the back of the hall, with Christopher working the crowds, inviting people to come play at SotM and get a promo card -- one of the 500 Young Legacies. I wonder how many people idily took that card and discarded it later.
Oh, also, guess where I gave that Spirit Island demo to my friends? On the field at Lucas Oil stadium. THE FIELD. Life is weird.
the sheer excitement of overcoming diversity
Not sure if this is exactly what you meant 
It is, I think.
I'm supposed to be downtown at breakfast in under eight hours, so ... here are my incomplete notes from the State of GtG panel:
- There will probably be another pre-order or Kickstarter for Prime War once it's ready, to gauge interest in whatever the product has become at that point. Anyone who wants their money back now can have it. Anyone who wants their money back when they see what Prime War is can have it. Anyone who sticks with Prime War will get something for their patience.
- OblivAeon will take at least a dozen cargo containers to ship from China. Because of the mammoth size of the order, the various pieces that make up an individual's orders will be packed together in China and then put into the container. In St. Louis, then, it will just be a matter of putting a label on the box and giving it to Fedex. The publisher can't ship all of those containers at once, which is a good thing because GtG couldn't receive them all at once. Ideally, they'll ship two a week, so even in the _ideal_ situation it will take six weeks to ship out Kickstarter rewards. In reference to how long OblivAeon has already taken and the expected amount of time that shipping will take: "We have not _begun_ to disappoint you."
- At GenCon (and soon if not now, I imagine, on the website) one can pre-order a Sentinels RPG starter kit. It contains six heroes (Freedom Five and Unity) plus six "Issues" -- scenarios one can play through. These are connected, so choices the players make will affect the order (at least) of the scenarios.
- The Sentinels RPG Kickstarter will contain, at least, a core rulebook and some sort of history of Sentinel Comics -- a history of the publishing company of Sentinel Comics, not the lore from the stories of Sentinel Comics. Christopher says it will be, "A lot like the Letters Page, but even worse. I'm sorry."
- Spirit Island expansion timline is unsure: Maybe next year, but at least 18 months after a Kickstarer until delivery, as Spirit Island takes quite a lot of work to be sure that everything is balanced.
- Dice Hate Me Games that are likely coming: Home Brewers, a followup to Brew Crafters. Ligher weight. Dice rolling. Capturing the bullshit of brew clubs. Will have a Kickstarter, hopefully in the first half of next year. There's a backlog of Dice Hate Me Games products. One of them is an 'embiggening' of Isle of Trains, as an expansion. Another is a game called 'All Aboard'.
- Christopher, in reference to fan made SotM expansions: "I'm not going to play them, but I think they're amazing". They love fan made stuff.
- In reference to The Cauldron and the possibility of any sort of endorsement of other fan-made SotM decks they shied away from saying that they 'blessed' them, but they are willing on a case by case basis to recognize fan-made products that reach some nebulous level of quality to be considered quasi-endorsed, allowing the use of their trademarks.
- Conventions and other events: Some of these are great for making connections with fans and others are great for various business reasons. Chris tends to go to places where people might pitch games. Toy fair, GAMMA in Vegas, and some others are entirely business to business meetings. Essen is important for meeting with people. Some shows are important to have a demo presence, though maybe only a small one. I get the idea that the PAXes might fall in this category. The two that rate a big presence are GenCon and the UK Games Expo. UKGE has come on strong lately and has a per capita attendance equal to GenCon in the US.
- They plan to do more with supporting fans running their games in various places through the Envoy program. I don't know any details about that.
- They would love to update the website, but it's not a higher priority than other things, so it may be a while yet.
- They're mostly unwilling to pick amongst the characters as to which is their favorite, though Adam did say that Blade is his favorite villain.
There was probably a bunch more stuff. I'm sorry I don't remember it! Adam, Paul, Christopher, and Chris were on the panel. Virtually the entire room raised their hand when asked who had listed to The Letters Page. Apparently it has rather a large number of listeners.
I didn't see the booth at all today and was only in the room for a short while, as I was running around getting signatures on a game from a friend's daughter's HS graduation gift. Spirit Island continues to sell out immediately in the mornings. The exhibit hall seemed more crowded today, which surprised me since the show was just as sold out yesterday as it was today, but I can imagine some people might get four day badges but not actually make it to the show until Friday or even Saturday.
I managed to ride my bike all the way to the convention center before realizing I left my phone at home. Luckily there was great weather, so it wasn't too big a deal just to go back and get it.
So I'm running around getting these signatures, asking each person if they know where other contributors are, and not really knowing who most of these people are, when the person signing casually drops that he designed Pandemic Risk and Pandemic Legacy (amongst other things) and worked at Hasbro for 12 years. His new company is taking old games that were once popular, but have fallen behind the times due to problematic mechanics and punching them up for today's audience: Rob Daviau of Restoration Games.
In my looking for people to sign I ended up meeting a woman who was helping to organize games for Ultra Pro. After chatting a bit I learned that she actually works for another company (Cascade?) and they provide these organizing/event services for multiple companies -- six of them simultaneously at GenCon. It makes sense, in retrospect, that you would hire people who know what they are doing to run these events, but it had never occured to me before.
For those of you who haven't been to GenCon, it is dizzying. There is so much going on simultaneously that I find it kind of mind blowing to try to consider it all. On one hand, it can be categorized into a few broad categories: Board games, miniatures, RPGs, panels, activities, etc. but there's just SO MUCH OF IT. Puzzles, Japanimation rooms, foam weapon fighting, cosplay, musicians, game auctions, art, etc. And those are just the official events. People are around tables and using the floor around the convention center and the nearby hotels and restaurants, playing and talking about games and gaming. There are fewer games and booths than at Essen, but still FAR, FAR more than I could ever grok. I happened to walk by someone I knew listening to a demo of a game, so joined him. It was a cute little game about rolling dice to get the numbers one needs to get hexagonal pieces to put together in ways to get points, yadda, yadda, yadda. We learned these rules and it was a reasonable game, and I'm guessing I will NEVER SEE THAT GAME AGAIN. Or if I do, I probably won't remember it.
We wouldn't think we could go into a bookstore and grok all the different titles available, so I suppose it's not a surprise with gaming, but it's so different than when I was young, I'm still quite amazed by just how many games exist.
I think you meant "overcoming adversity".
And reading all this reminds me that I wish there was a board game playing community where I live. I'm always reading about all the new board games coming out and being like "Darn it, that looks awesome, I would totally buy and play that IF I HAD ANYONE TO PLAY IT WITH…"
Thanks for doing these Andy, sometimes I think these reports from fans are far better representations than the pieces put out by the companies!
adversity/diversity. My brain, oy vey.!