My first Gencon was a ball. I came as Parse but only ran into a few who recognised me before the clothing police took issue with my arrows, which I politely returned to my room without further incident. I hoped to catch the creators in costume but, alas it was not to be. Got many compliments though. Love this game!
I saw it near a demo I was playing, but I couldn't listen to both demos at the same time.
I had a blast, and the game I played with Dpt and Grysquirrel was intense, I'm a little sad I missed the others but I really enjoyed the stuff I ended up in.
One night I found a Tower Defense Board Game called Terminus Breach, it was immensly fun with some unique class mechanics and a ton of strategy between the three players. The guy was also completely bootlegging it, in his words, just setting up whereever and whenever people seemed interested.
I got to try Compounded for the first time and I also was able to sneak into a session of the RPG Sunday afternoon that really made me feel better about my decision to purchase it. I was probably going to for just the lore (which is a poor financial decision) but now I could see myself really running this system at home which is a much better propisition.
A lot of my time though was spent running RPG demos for Mythical Eras of War's new system Era of the Ninja. The creator is not only a friend but pays my way into the Con so I can run demos which is super cool. Means I tend to miss out on a lot of stuff though.
Still haven't gotten a chance to try out Fate of the Elder Gods, and only got glimpses of the new art and set-up for Oblivaeon (which looks absolutely amazing) but overall everything was great and I'm curious what next year will bring.
I don't see it as a retcon so much as simply filling in the gaps. The Virtuosos raised the Nexus to the surface a long time back, and then it basically drops out of Sentinels history until the Akash, Nat, and AA visit it during OblivAeon. Presumably other stuff happened in between those events, so why not Spirit Island?
Edit: there is a separate thread made about this so please more further discussion there https://greaterthangames.com/forum/topic/spirit-island-and-nexus-of-the-void-10662
I have been typing! But I am having trouble posting it in a format that looks good. I will try to get the paragraph breaks looking good soon.
Wednesday 8/16
Those reading this who are unfamiliar with the convention center: it may help to keep this link handy when I reference certain rooms. Mods, etc: this is the official website of the Indiana Convention Center: http://icclos.com/media-kit.aspx . Click on the first link under Floor Plans to get a nice map in PDF format.
Finally getting a bit of time to sit and type, so here was Gen Con from my perspective.
I left work an hour early on Wednesday to head home, get my daughter's belly full, change her into her Young Legacy outfit, and get ready to head back downtown to Rock Bottom for dinner with the Greater Than Games crew and fellow volunteers. We got there a little bit after 5 and headed downstairs to meet the group. Since it was only my second time volunteering at the booth, I didn't know a ton of people, but I saw rabit, Christopher, Adam, and anotherletdown (Zach from the Sunday night Handelabra streams) right away. Since I was affiliated primarily with Handelabra, I chatted up Zach for a while before we all sat down for dinner.
My coworker Alex, a GTG booth volunteer, showed up a little bit later, so we sat and ate with him for a while. Around 6, I started thinking that I was pushing my luck with Good Mood Baby, so I asked Jeremy from Handelabra when he was coming over so I could get my badge and be ready to go if/when my daughter got fussy. He told me he would be over in a bit, so I walked Young Legacy around. Once Christopher came over to our side of the room, my wife told me I should take the opportunity to talk to him. I took Young Legacy over to meet him. We chatted and cracked wise at the expense of one of his boothmates for a couple minutes. Lesson reinforced: words mean things and should be used appropriately. Lesson learned: do not be vague with language around Christopher, or he may throw lighthearted jabs at you. ("Did you make that?", someone asked me, referring to the outfit; "I'm pretty sure he was involved", Christopher replied, referring to the baby.) When we were done, he told me that Adam had seen us when we got there, and that I should go talk to him.
I found Adam across the room at a tall table and felt a little bad interrupting his conversation, but no one seemed to mind. He took a picture and we chatted a bit about our kids' ages and being parents. When I mentioned that my daughter wasn't talking yet, he said his life changed for the better when his kiddo learned how to tell him "no"; I laughed, but he insisted that he was serious, because it cut down on the number of fights / tantrums. Having a daughter that increasingly wants to do her own thing but doesn't know how to TELL me that, I can see how that would be beneficial.
Once we were done talking with Adam, I went back to my table and waited for Jeremy to make his grand entrance. A few minutes later, he obliged, loudly proclaiming his arrival in his Guise outfit. I waited for the initial throng of picture-taking to subside, then flagged him down. We couldn't figure out who had my badge (Paul didn't, Craig didn't, and Jeremy didn't), but I was assured that it would get taken care of on Thursday before my shift at 2:00. I stuck around for a couple people to get pictures of Young Legacy with Guise, then we took off for home while Young Legacy was still in a decent mood.
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Thursday 8/17
The three of us got up around 7 on Thursday and got everything together. Even our daughter got up a little earlier than normal after sleeping like a rock through the night. We got to the Government Center South parking garage around 9:15 and had to park on the roof since, y'know, it was still a normal work day and my fellow State employees actually had to use the garage.
From the map: Exhibit Halls B, C, D, and E (and perhaps A as well? I'm not sure) were combined into one massive gaming space, with long table after long table full of demo spaces and tournament setups. The biggest areas were for playing MTG and Fantasy Flight products. Legend of the Five Rings was apparently a big thing this year, to the point where they had a marching group of people in costume carrying banners behind a drumline that entered to kick off one of their events. Exhibit Halls F, G, H, I, J, and K were all combined into one 300,000+ square foot shopping area that is referred to herein as "The Exhibit Hall".
The three of us got into the convention center around 9:30. My wife had a game demo at 10 in hall D, but I didn't yet have my badge, so I had to fight the opening day Exhibit Hall crowds to get to the GTG room (134). Jodie, Mara, and Jennifer were all super nice and allowed me to sit in the room with Young Legacy for half an hour while my badge situation got sorted out. Once the halls cleared, Jeremy had time to bring my badge to me, and I was more free to roam. While I was sitting in the GTG room, several other folks came over to see Young Legacy, including Andy (arenson9), several volunteers, and a Matriarch costumer. Christopher also stopped to say hi to Young Legacy on his way through the room.
Badge in hand and hallways mostly cleared, I was free to roam a bit. I headed over to hall D and found my wife playing Healthy Heart Hospital. Young Legacy was getting a little fussy, so I stopped to feed her and watch HHH for a while. I couldn't quite get the full experience sitting two tables away, but it looked like the "scale up the danger" mechanics somewhat mirrored the dice drawing mechanics of Pandemic: the Cure. Once the baby was done with her snack, I got her out of the stroller and took two trips into the Exhibit Hall, carrying her in one arm. This was probably a mistake - we had an umbrella stroller that was pretty small, so I think I could have handled walking around with it even in the chaos of the first hour of Thursday in the Exhibit Hall. But it worked out, as I bought my wife a Con*Quest Journal specific to the show, and after that, I made my way to the Handelabra booth to make sure Jennifer (Handelabra artist/programmer), Andy (not arenson9), and Mike (my fellow volunteer) got to see Young Legacy.
Twenty minutes in the insanity of Thursday's Exhibit Hall was just about enough excitement for my daughter, so I returned her to the stroller and walked her around the significantly quieter and cooler hall D until my wife's demo was done. After they'd lost their game of HHH, we regrouped and planned. My wife would go shopping while I took care of the baby for an hour or so.
I retreated to the second floor of the convention center, which is usually pretty clear on the whole. The two biggest rooms, again, were Rio Grande Games and Piezo. The RGG room wasn't quite as busy this year, since there was no new Dominion expansion to show off (Empires was relatively new last year), but I wasn't going to subject the baby to me doing a game demo. The Piezo room, on the other hand, was completely insane. And for folks who aren't familiar with the Convention Center, I should specify that the Piezo "room" is the Sagamore Ballroom, a 33,000 square foot monstrosity that is normally used for things like job fairs, speaking engagements, and smaller conventions' entire dealer rooms. In this case, it was filled with tables of people playing Pathfinder and the new release of Starfinder... and there was always a line to get in just to play. Additionally, the usual food vendors in the hallway outside were not present, because Piezo had set up a vendor booth to sell Starfinder - and again, there was pretty much a constant line to buy it.
The hallway outside Sagamore Ballroom was a great place to chill last year, but it was pretty trafficky this time around. So, after I got a diaper change accomplished in the one men's restroom I could find with a changing table, my daughter and I headed around the corner of subdivision 1 of the Ballroom, where there's a nice quiet area of chairs and low foot traffic. She'd fallen asleep in her stroller during the walk, so I left her there and prepared a snack for when she woke up. 20 minutes of poor wireless reception and Twitter browsing later, she woke up and ate.
Around 90 minutes after we'd split up, my wife e-mailed me and let me know she was done shopping for the day. We met up and went back to the car, then my wife and daughter went home while I headed back to the Exhibit Hall for my shift with Handelabra. I only had about half an hour to roam the halls before my shift, so I didn't get to do much; I mostly checked out the Rio Grande and Looney Labs booths since they were both close by. It was still pretty crazy in the hall even at 1:30.
Jean-Marc (Handelabra composer/programmer) and I took over the booth at 2:00 and worked until the halls closed at 6:00. We had a good amount of visitors, almost entirely focused on Bottom of the 9th. Several people bought it on the spot after they tried the demo; many others assured us that they would be purchasing it just as soon as they could get to a wi-fi connection. (One disadvantage of the ICC Exhibit Halls to attendees - wi-fi access is exhibitor only. The closest public wi-fi connections are two blocks away at the Indiana Government Center, or through the tunnels to the Circle Center Mall. Most people don't know about the public wi-fi at Government Center, but some of you folks might want to keep it in mind in the future if you don't have access to wi-fi otherwise - it's pretty fast, only State employees tend to even know about it, and you can access it from shaded benches along the south side of the IGC building.)
Handelabra was giving away 50 hats per day to folks who bought the game and showed it to us on their phones, and we gave away somewhere between 35 and 40 hats on Thursday by my estimation, with several people promising they'd be back for one later.
A vast majority of the folks who tried the Bot9 demo on Thursday chose to bat. I only saw two people choose to pitch in my four hour shift, and one of them was my next door neighbor from college, who stopped by to see me in the 5:00 hour and finalize dinner plans. He tried out pitching solely because I told him that only one person had pitched thus far.
We again had a continuing problem with people being too impatient to read directions. Last year, folks would jump into the SOTM demo and expect that the UI would be at their fingertips from the beginning (it is not - it teaches you different ways to manipulate cards before it turns you loose). This time, a strong percentage of the players did not pay attention to the fact that Training Mode resets the outs, fatigue meter, and baserunners after every at-bat. Thus, when their first batter walked, they tried to figure out why no one was on first base (or they realized it even later). I tried to gently remind people to read the directions after that happened a few times.
Two forum regulars that I recognized stopped by through my shift: Andy (arenson9) and pricyprovinces. Three costumers came by: a Captain Cosmic, the Matriarch I had seen earlier in the GTG room, and #Guise4MVP.
At 6, Jean-Marc and I shut down the booth and made plans to meet the next day; neither of us had a booth shift, and he wanted to meet my wife and daughter. We'd planned on bringing the kiddo over on Thursday and Friday only, having a babysitter on Saturday, and then Sunday I would come over alone.
My wife and daughter came back downtown at 6:15 and we all went out to dinner at Ali Baba's on Market Street. We mostly caught up with some old college friends about what we were up to, then Young Legacy got fussy and we had to leave. We all made our way back through the convention center halls toward the parking garage. My wife peeled off for a few minutes to stop at Gen Con customer service on the way.
The customer service line was pretty crazy, moreso than I would have expected. When my wife got back from what she needed to do, she let us know what the issue was. There was a They Might Be Giants concert at Banker's Life Fieldhouse (NBA stadium a couple blocks away from the Convention Center), and the Fieldhouse was strongly enforcing their "NO BACKPACKS" rule. Let's just say that rule is a problem for most Gen Con attendees, and since this was the first time that the Fieldhouse was used as an event location for Gen Con, communication wasn't at its best regarding this rule. The confusion caused Gen Con to alter their normal refund policy for ticketed events, because with so many people whose hotel rooms were 15-45 minutes away by car, there was no mechanism for those people to get back to their hotel rooms and dump their bags before the concert. Many refunds were issued that day, and the concert likely had disappointing attendance as a result.
The three of us continued back to our car, and we went home with a very tired baby girl.
Friday 8/18
Without any events or work shifts on either of our schedules, my wife and I decided two things: 1) we didn't need to be to the convention center until 10:00 when the Exhibit Hall opened, and 2) we would take turns with the baby through the day so both of us could do some shopping. I also tried to send messages to Jean-Marc so we could set up a meeting.
The plan mostly went without a hitch. We got to the IGC garage around 10 and headed straight to the Hall D entrance that we had become familiar with the previous day. On our way toward the Exhibit Hall proper, a Gen Con volunteer approached and handed us a button for Young Legacy. They had 11 different buttons they were passing out throughout the convention, ostensibly for those who were bringing children. If you collected 10 of the 11, you could get a big Gen Con 50 button as well. We pinned it to the umbrella stroller we were using and noted the collection points for later.
The three of us started out by heading to the GTG room and getting a picture of Young Legacy with the 8' Bunker cardboard cutout. She looked absolutely delighted. We also got a picture with a Matriarch cosplayer before we went to the Exhibit Hall. There, we ran into a married couple, Eric and Valerie, from our bi-monthly library game nights. We talked for a couple minutes, but we'll see them on Friday at game night, so we didn't linger too long. Our big stops in the Exhibit Hall:
- Fowers Games - I am a big fan of the Tim Fowers production, "Paperback", and I wanted to make sure to stop and tell him so. (Paperback, if you haven't heard of it, is a cross between Dominion and Scrabble, effectively.) He thanked me and we discussed the new multiplayer implementation in the iOS app, along with the fact that he's got an expansion for Paperback in playtesting. He offered to show the expansion to me, but I told him that I'd be back later when I didn't have the baby in tow. Tim was also demoing his co-op heist game Burgle Bros, and its follow-up logic/deduction game Fugitive. I took a quick look at both but didn't have time to absorb them.
- Miniature Market - My wife wanted to take a look at some small containers they'd advertised on their website, and we also discussed St. Louis and the physical Miniature Market location a bit. (We love vacationing in St. Louis - it's a relatively short drive and it's not terribly expensive. We've gone on 3-4 night trips there 3 times in the last 5 years, and we can't wait to take the kiddo when she gets a little older.)
- Hrothgar's Hoard had some very nice dice towers and other containers; we entered a contest to win $100 in store credit because we weren't prepared to pay $90 for a dice tower when we already have a foam core one that my wife assembled and decorated for Betrayal at House on the Hill.
- There was another booth that had crocheted hair clips and dolls from various video game / anime properties (a Metroid hair clip, a moogle, several Katamaris, some kodama from Princess Mononoke, etc). They also had quilts from Tetris, Mega Man, and other such.
- We also swung by the Handelabra booth to see Jeremy and Crista (community manager), to make sure Crista could meet the baby (and so the baby could see Jeremy sans Guise outfit).
Baby girl was getting hungry and needed a change, so we headed back to the corner of Exhibit Hall K where they had a kid-friendly area set up. After a change and some time playing with another little girl about her age, Young Legacy was in a better mood and had a snack while my wife went off to shop some more. Upon her return, we all went to Foam Brain together to take a look at all the SOTM pins and shirts they had available. There were a couple dozen different pins, though it was disappointing that the pin I was most looking forward to getting (Argent Adept) was unreadable. The entire musical staff and all the lettering was all done in gold - the lack of contrast meant that it just looked like a gold blob instead of an actual logo. I bought a Visionary pin and moved on to look at the shirts. They had a base set SOTM shirt, and shirts for Tachyon, Absolute Zero (made to look like his suit), Bunker (Turret Mode), Argent Adept, and one lonely 3XL Legacy shirt.
Kiddo was getting really restless in the stroller at that point, so we left and went up to the same corner I'd occupied with her the previous day. My wife took over baby duty with a bottle and a book, and I went back to the Exhibit Hall myself for an hour.
It occurred to me around this point that I hadn't heard from Jean-Marc, and it was probably because of my low-end cell phone plan. So, I sent him a message by other means and hoped he would see it.
First up, I checked out the vendor part of the GTG booth and fulfilled an order for the set of SOTM soundtrack CDs and SOTM promo cards. Also got a set of the promo cards for myself. This year's set was the Prime Wardens and Rogue Agent KNYFE. I was really excited to get these since the original art for PW Argent Adept is my favorite character card art in the game. Sure, his outfit is bizarre, but I love the stained glass background with his instruments inlaid.
Next I hopped over to Rio Grande since it was right next to GTG. I scouted their Dominion sets, but the only one they had that no one I work with has was Hinterlands, and I have no clear memories of that one, good or bad, from my digital time with Dominion, so I left it on the shelf. Hilariously, the most expensive Dominion set was the original base set; now that it's out of print and will never be reprinted, it's a hot commodity. Seems weird to me since most of the cards that were removed from Dominion 1E were actually pretty bad, but whatever floats people's boats.
The RGG booth was also weird because it had three random baskets full of Hallmark Christmas ornaments of various nerdery (mostly Star Trek and Star Wars), all priced at original Hallmark prices. I, uh, can see the appeal to the kinds of folks who were there? But I don't understand why it was at the RGG booth.
Finally, I continued my tour of "tracking down people whose stuff I like and making sure I tell them" by stopping at BoardGameTables's booth and telling Chad DeShon that I received and like my Duchess gaming table from the epic Kickstarter they did.
My hour was just about up, so I went back to find my ladies. My wife hadn't had any luck getting our daughter to nap, so they were both getting a little antsy to get moving. My wife went back to shopping while I took the baby for a nice, long walk over to Lucas Oil Stadium to begin Button Quest 2017. She fell asleep after about 10 minutes of walking and stayed out for over an hour while I pushed her around.
The entire football field of Lucas Oil Stadium was covered with a slightly raised platform. The majority of the platform was comprised of tables for tournament setups, and the absolutely massive game library where you could check stuff out and play. A smaller section was devoted to the history of Gen Con, with an area the size of the original building at Lake Geneva, WI set aside for historical displays. Old Gen Con brochures, newspaper articles and newsletters about early conventions, IDs from dozens of old conventions, copies of many games from throughout the years, and lots of stand-up plaques that told a chronological history of Gen Con. What particularly stood out to me was the early 1990s Macintosh computer that they had plugged in and running - one of the games visible on screen was Might and Magic II, which was my first RPG of any kind.
The overhead monitors at the field were taken up with a slideshow of pictures taken the previous day. When my wife and I returned on Saturday to do the History of Gen Con spread together, we noticed that a Matriarch cosplayer ended up on the Big Screen.
On the way to and from the stadium, I noticed several rooms devoted to Japanese-specific things; an anime viewing room and discussion panel room; an import video game collection available for play; and a manga library.
I picked up two buttons at Lucas Oil, then continued back through the Convention Center, gathering and displaying buttons on the stroller as I went. I finally heard back from my wife after I'd collected 7 out of the 11 buttons, and together, we decided to finish up before we finally went and got some food. Coincidentally, right as we finished up the collection, I heard from Jean-Marc and he hadn't eaten yet either! So, we made arrangements to meet for lunch at a local place called Pearings (mostly a soup/sandwich/crepe/frozen yogurt joint), and while he made his way over, we stopped where my wife used to work and showed off the baby for a few minutes.
"Lunch" was around 3:30. After we ordered ("Cheech and Chong" paninis for me and my wife, and a "Mario and Luigi" crepe for Jean-Marc - all the menu "pearings" are named like that) and got Young Legacy changed, we sat down to chat with Jean-Marc. My wife and daughter have also been fans of his music, particularly the remix he and his wife did for OCRemix's FFIX project. We talked kids for a while (Jean-Marc's son is about a year and a half older than my daughter), went over what we'd bought and planned to buy at the con, talked about Bottom of the 9th and other GTG stuff, etc. After our sandwiches, we took turns getting frozen yogurt while passing the baby around. Baby girl enjoyed spending time with Jean-Marc; he's really good with kids.
As it got closer to 5:00, the baby was getting tired after her long day and Jean-Marc said he had a meeting to get to, so we parted and the three of us went back home. Young Legacy fell asleep in her car seat and was out for nearly an hour, then went crazy running around her pen burning energy for a couple hours before bed while the two of us mostly just chilled and rested our feet.
My wife bought a d4 Christmas ornament and a base set SOTM shirt.
Saturday 8/19
We'd arranged for a babysitter for Saturday since my wife had an event at 3:00 and I had to work the booth from 2-6. She got to our place around noon, and we went straight to the con, getting to the Convention Center around 12:30. Parking was much easier since it wasn't a work day.
My wife and I did the walk over to Lucas Oil Stadium and saw all the stuff I already mentioned. We then headed back to the Exhibit Hall and walked around for a few minutes together before I had to get to the booth.
While I did another shift with Jean-Marc, my wife went off to shop a bit (buying Burgle Bros from Tim Fowers) and did her demo of Freedom: The Underground Railroad. She also bought a plush d6 decorated with Hogwarts fabric and tags for the baby to chew on and stumbled across an upcoming game called Ancestree, in which you somehow have competitive geneaology?
Poor Jean-Marc had an 8-hour shift at the booth since most of the Handelabra crew had set aside time to be in costume. I was sad that I missed the costume gathering; while the general convention costume contest was at 4 PM, the GTG specific costumers showed up at the booth in the morning before I got there, and dispersed before I saw any of them. I hear tell that there were two Wraiths, Greazer, Tempest, multiple Matriarchs, a Super Scientific Tachyon, Setback, Captain Cosmic, and many more. Someone will have to point out where I can find pictures later, because that sounded really neat.
We were under orders to be a little more liberal with the hat dispersion on Saturday, so we handed one out to everyone who finished the demo. Foot traffic was pretty heavy from 2:00 - 4:00, then slowed dramatically after 4:00 as people went out to watch the costume parade. Crista came by the booth around 4:30 and told Jean-Marc to go take a break, which he happily did. In dead zones, Crista and I talked about the neat artwork on the back of the Handelabra business cards and some SOTM strategy. We had multiple visitors on Saturday that wanted to ask SOTM questions, specifically advice on team-building for unlocking Fugue State Parse and Dark Watch Setback. I tried to help out with those as best I could. We also had someone come by who had only purchased the base set and only had enough money for one season pass. After talking to him for a while and learning that he only ever uses the same five heroes, I recommended season pass 2, and he agreed; "more ways to play with the heroes you like" trumped "here are a bunch more heroes that you might never use".
Press-wise, we had someone come over who was live-streaming their show floor experience on Twitch, and who was looking for info about the Sentinel Comics RPG. Jean-Marc went over to the nearby display case of six RPG booklets with them, and gave them an overview of what he knew from a previous event with Christopher.
We also had a pair of people from a local sports talk radio station come by to play Bottom of the 9th. I recognized their employer on their badges and set up a pass-and-play game for them rather than the demo, since they said they'd already demoed the physical version. They seemed pretty impressed and were happy to take hats. Hopefully they say something on their show.
My wife wandered back to the booth around 5:45 with a headache from having not eaten enough, and we headed home as soon as my shift was done at 6.
Sunday 8/20
Sunday was my day to head to the convention alone. I got in around 9:15 and got into the Exhibit Hall early with my exhibitor badge, knowing that the Hall would be nuts again. Sunday is the day you can get "Family Fun" badges, where one badge set can get four people in. So, foot traffic is usually very high, though sales might not necessarily increase proportionally.
First, I went to the booth for "Buy the Rights", a movie-pitching party game that was produced locally in Indianapolis. My wife was in on the Kickstarter and we enjoyed the game, so I stopped there, bought a pin, and let them know we liked it. We talked for a bit before I moved on, they seemed really friendly.
Next, I stopped at Formal Ferret Games to visit Gil Hova and talk to him for a couple minutes. I wanted to demo his new game, Wordsy, since I am a sucker for word games and I liked his previous title, The Networks. A demo of Wordsy was all I needed to know that it would be worth the $20, so I bought it. Instead of being limited to words in your hand / on your rack / whatever, you can make any word you want! You just only get points based on the 8 letters available for common use. I liked the freedom and creativity involved, and I think my game group will too.
Next up was my promised return trip to see Tim Fowers, who signed my copy of Paperback and showed me the upcoming expansion. I like what I see, it looks like it'll be really neat and add more strategies to the game.
Finally I stopped at Looney Labs to let Andy Looney know how much my game group likes Chrononauts. (One of my coworkers has been a longtime playtester for Looney, and is so enamored with their games that he used one of them to propose to his then-girlfriend.)
Two hours of shopping and demos later, I dropped most of my stuff back at my car and did my 1-4 shift at the Handelabra booth. Due to a communications mix-up, I spent the first hour with Jennifer and Andy (not arenson9) rather than Crista, but that's OK - I hadn't had a chance to talk to Jenn yet. I told her "good luck" with the visual design on OblivAeon, and she seemed a bit overwhelmed at the thought. I'm sure she'll come up with something, Villains looks great on tablets.
Crista and I finished the show with lots of foot traffic from kids that seemed excited about Bot9. I made sure to ask what devices they were using if they were on iOS, since the iPod Touch 5 can't run Bot9 (requires iOS 10, iTouch 5 stops at 9.3.5) and I was concerned that the Touch 5 would be a common device among children. Apparently I was wrong, or at least I was wrong in the context of Gen Con attendees - most of them had actual phones, and if not, they had Touch 6s.
A group that I knew via my coworker Alex, including his wife, stopped by around 3:00 and did the demo before moving on to demoing stuff in their last hour on the floor. Richard Launius also dropped by to watch the demo video, though he didn't stop to talk.
The lights went out promptly at 4:00, and I said my goodbyes to the Handelabrats (minus Jenn) and went home. Another Gen Con in the books. Honestly, it wasn't that much more crowded than the previous year despite the badge sellout. Though I did see more people this year getting into the exhibit hall by showing badges that were for the wrong day.
Wow, that's a lot to write! Thanks for sharing. You have a very, very cute baby! Note: Paizo.
I wanted to say that bolnerap was wicked awesome to/for me. Since I've lamented a few times that me being the only geek I know out in the boonies where I live + no car or driver's license = me never getting to go to cons, he offered to pick me up Sentinels stuff at GenCon that would otherwise be difficult or impossible to find.
So I mostly wanted some Handelabrat trading business cards and SotM CDs (though I wasn't expecting to be able to get them signed!), but took advantage of asking him to get me a set of the PW promos since I thought it might be fun to have some hard copy collectibles of the Prime Wardens since they're my favorite SotM team (and I agree that the original PWAA art is the best), and was stoked that they had Argent Adept t-shirts since I had tried buying one (along with a Unity shirt) from Foam Brain's Cardboard Clothing website ages ago only to get a refund and apology in response because apparently they were actually out of stock. I also asked him to have AnotherLetDown sign something for me because I thought it would be a fun thing to have and I thought it might give Zach a bit of cheer to have a celebrity moment.
So thank you for letting me have a little con fun even if I couldn't actually go. :D
Honestly I wish I could go, it sounds so much fun listening to all you folks talk about it. I once again regret not having any chance to play any board games that don't have digital apps.
And I hope people have pics to share; GTG and Handelabra have put some on their Twitters, but it sounds like there was a lot of great cosplays and displays and peeks at products and other fun things. I want to see Actual Baby Legacy. :D
And Jeremy says he never plays Guise. :V
Great writeup!
Trying to make time to go through my pictures from the Con… Hopefully soon! 
Maybe I missed it in the above summaries, but does anyone know if the State of GtG thing was recorded this year? Would love to watch that when (if) it's made available.
It was! We'll post it on our YouTube channel once it is edited and ready to go!
Does anyone know where the official pictures will be posted from the 2017 Greater Than Games costume contest? I didn't take many because of the professional photographer...
Same, here.
Trevor (the photographer – yes, that Trevor! 
) said he'd share them with Greater Than Games. Beyond that, he didn't know what they planned.
In case email notifications aren't working, I sent you a PM with a link. 
Got it, thanks!
Handelabra posted some pictures on their Facebook page, including a group shot from the costume contest. There is an adorable young Tachyon in the group, as well as a Dr. Medico, a Green Grosser, and a Greazer. Definitely a wider variety of costumes this year.
Edit: And a Bloogo? That must have been interesting to move around in.
*pops over to Facebook* That was an awesome album. So many Tachyons. Only four of the Prime Wardens, tho. And I'm guessing that's what ALD meant when he said he was working on a special Setback outfit? Sentinels of the Ninth!
Hey guys! I just posted up my album of the Sentinels pictures I took! https://m.imgur.com/gallery/IJ3DS check it out!
edit: alternate link since people on Reddit said the other one wasn't working. https://imgur.com/r/ImagesOfThe2010s/IJ3DS
Those are some seriously impressive costumes!