GenCon Madness

First of all, my apologies... I not only had no internet access all weekend, but I also lost my camera the first day of the con, so I got a not great picture of the larger than life serra angel sculpture and not much else.

I'll do some in depth discussion of some items later in the week, but the highlights went something like this:

Wednesday: Planes have never had much leg room, but the cigar tube planes I ended up stuck on the journey to GenCon had me cursing my great height. To add insult to injury, despite great reductions in fuel costs overall, I still paid more for my flight than last year. By a fortuitous coincidence, I ended up on the final leg of the flight with half of Paizo, who I'm sure were just thrilled to deal with fans before they even reached the con (I'm joking, they really were on my flight, but beyond saying hi, I tried to leave the poor guys alone). That evening I got to see more of the Paizo crew and even caught an advance look at a full color proof of the Pathfinder Bestiary, which Erik Mona had brought with him to the con and was sharing with a group of contributors and Pathfinder Society volunteers. The art director deserves some serious credit, the artwork is stunning and I'm looking forward to picking up a copy of the book when it becomes available.

Thursday: Let it be known, attend your RPGA meetings! I skipped the immediate entry into the exhibit hall, remembering the complete the insanity all too well from last year. Instead I attended a midmorning RPGA seminar... in which Chris Tulach handed out one of the coveted treasures of the delve: an RPGA Player reward card. Okay, so the wooden boxes were much cooler prizes than cards, but to get the card all I had to do was show up! Chris shared some great info about the RPGA scenarios and upcoming events. Weekend in the Realms sounds like it will be a killer event, and the upcoming Worldwide D&D Day that coincides with the release of Dungeon Masters Guide 2 sounds like it will be a really different and innovative event. I am also intrigued with the release of the mini-campaign adventures for Living Forgotten Realms. I wasn't signed up for the premier mini-campaign adventure, so I can't say how it went, but it sounded very cool.

Friday: Two highlights here... first off, 4e D&D Extravaganza... I took notes, but the big revelation was the announcement of the next setting for 2010. As I expected, it will be Dark Sun. I'm really looking forward to it, as Dark Sun is a big step into something different and I'm fascinated to see how they put it together. Second the ENnies... congratulations to Wizards of the Coast who took gold in Best Publisher (Paizo took silver in this category). A special congratulations also to relative newcomer Kobold Quarterly, which took an ENnie for Best Writing.

Saturday: Did I mention that I went to GenCon to game too? And on Saturday that's exactly what I did. I spent the afternoon in an RPGA session playing the LFR adventure Ghosts of the Past. The adventure was sickeningly hard, but we did survive and even managed to get the most crucial of the story rewards. My message: ongoing damage SUCKS at low levels. For the evening I was hosted by the fabulous WereCabbages for their open gaming night. This isn't an official GenCon event, but is a highlight for me, because it means an opportunity to game with some incredibly creative folks. One of the cabbages brought the designer of Venus Needs Men! to the event and I spent the evening learning the game (more on that later).

Sunday: Dungeon Delves are a rather unique experience, but also great fun. I got an opportunity to play an artificer in the Delve - not a class I've looked at much, and managed to accumulate enough tokens to get a second RPGA Player Reward Card - this time Kenku Explorer, which permits the card holder to create a kenku character for Living Forgotten Realms play. After that it was time to wrap up with a too quick lunch, a final pass in the hall, and a sickeningly inconvenient series of flights back home.