Nerd Con, er, Gen Con 2004

I decided to go to Gen Con - "the best 4 days in gaming" according to their advertising - with Theovis this year because I wanted to get an idea of what it was all about. He's gone a few times before and I've happily had a quiet weekend to myself but since I've been doing a little more gaming I thought I might have a good time too. I figured if nothing else, I would see a different city - Indiannapolis - and spend some time at the mall which was attached by skywalk to the hotel.

We decided to drive to Seattle to save about $200 each on airfare so we packed Jeff in the car with us and headed off early Wednesday morning. There was some excitement before we hit the border because Jeff was joking about how he'd decorated his passport with some "awesome" stickers - a leopard print stripe and a Green Lantern. Since I was driving, I couldn't tell that he was holding up a notebook the same size as his passport rather than his actual passport and I was completely freaking out inside while trying to remain calm. I couldn't figure out what would make him think that the US border guards were going to appreciate his decorations but decided that if he couldn't get into the country, we were leaving him at the border. It wasn't until we were approaching the crossing and I asked everyone to pass me their passports that I realized he hadn't done anything to it and he and Theo laughed at me for quite some time when he showed me the notebook with the stickers. I think I might still be trying to unclench a couple sphincters after that bit of 'fun'.

We made it to Seattle with tons of time to spare but it took ages at the Park 'n Fly to get the shuttle to pick us up. We were listening to the loudspeaker that was attached to the shuttle radios and heard them arguing about who was going to come pick up the passengers. We weren't entirely sure anyone would ever show up but after about half an hour someone did. Some high quality kibbitzing took place as we waited ("I've got a potato in my tailpipe") but next time I'm not pulling into the first Park 'n Fly I see.

We caught our plane to Detroit (which looks much greener from the air than the concrete wasteland I imagined) and had a great meal at a José Cuervo Tequilleria in the airport. When ordering our drinks it was the first time I've been ID'd in about 10 years but it was only the first of many times I was ID'd while on our trip. It was very flattering because I know I don't look old but I really don't think I look younger than 21. We were thankful for the good food because our meal from Seattle to Detroit was phenomenally awful. I don't know why airlines mistake vegetarian for health nut but I'd like to declare for the record that Fritos are just as vegetarian as a lowfat, kosher, vegan brownie wrapped in plastic. To sum up, it was chocolate and I couldn't eat it. That's bad! We caught our plane to Indiannapolis then returned to waiting as the limo that was supposed to arrive instantaneously took ages. Eventually we arrived at the hotel and checked in. To my delight there was a Starbucks in the hotel lobby which lead to much coffee happiness over the next few days. We had a lovely view of a fountain and the capitol building (which I kept calling the parliament) from our room even though I wasn't able to take good photos from the window thanks to the rain.

We got up early the next day to get registered and pick our games, since we hadn't been organized enough to do it online despite registering very early. Boy did we learn a lesson as we waited in line for 4 hours to find out much of the stuff we wanted to do was full although we did have some interesting conversations with a couple young gamers from Michigan. Eventually we got registered for a few things and headed off to different line ups to try to win a chance to buy Galactus - yes, it was a raffle you had to win in order to get the opportunity to purchase a giant sized comic book figure. We ended up in yet another line to switch tickets around that we'd mistakenly bought for the same time but ended up playing a game of travel-sized Settlers of Catan while waiting. That was pretty awesome. I really wished we'd brought a set of those walkie-talkies that are everywhere at the moment because it would have made it a lot easier to find one another when we decided to go off to do separate things.

We had dinner that night with Chris and Nicole of Green Ronin Publishing with their lovely daughter Kate. We don't get to Seattle nearly often enough to visit with them so it was great to catch up. Nicole was told we needed to take a cab to the restaurant but as it turned out it was barely a 10 minute walk, which we happily did on the way back from the restaurant.

The second day involved playing some games and wandering around trying to solve clues from a ridiculously difficult scavenger hunt in the dealers room. It did certainly keep me occupied, though while Theo was doing other stuff. There were guys selling "urban kilts" which were not in tartan fabric and often had all kinds of handy pockets etc. They were pretty stylish and looked good on many of the guys we saw wearing them over the conference days. I'm thinking that most of those kilts ended up in the closets of middle America never to be worn again as the gamers returned to less "dude in skirt" friendly environments. Kudos to them to be willing to try it, though. The largest disappointment of the whole con happened when we played a game of True Heroes, which was a live-action super hero game based on the Vs. card game. It was loosely based on True Dungeon, which we couldn't get into and by all reports was incredibly awesome. I can't express just how lame True Heroes was but believe me, LAME!

On the Saturday there was a costume contest so all kinds of people were wandering around in great costumes. I got my photo taken with Boba Fett even though he kind of freaked me out. The dorky look on my face in the photo is because I was saying "I love a man in uniform" as the photo was snapped. A dude dressed as Darth Vader walked by with some Stormtroopers while I was in a hallway. I had to dodge into the bathroom because my Darth Vader nightmares are still a little too frequent to have him walk right by me. One of the best costumes of the whole event was a dude dressed up as a Samurai Gnoll (a creature from Dungeons and Dragons). We managed to snap a photo of him sitting on the dragon that was being sculpted during the 4 days of the convention. I also got to play a game of live-action Devil Bunny Needs a Ham and ended up winning the game with my partner. I used my winnings - a gift certificate - to buy a couple Cheapass games, including the aforementioned Devil Bunny.

On the last day we walked a few blocks to a little Mexican restaurant for breakfast and happened across a beautiful Civil War monument. We didn't have time to tour the accompanying museum but admired the stunning craftsmanship. I sat in the park by the fountain for a little while and noticed these crazy and huge bees buzzing around. They were about the size of the last joint of my thumb and were the weirdest bees I've ever seen because they were the size of bumble bees but weren't fuzzy and had shiny, black butts. You heard me, shiny, black butts.

Before checking out from the hotel we received a slip of paper saying we owed for drinks taken from the mini bar. We had done no such thing. Unfortunately, Theovis had rearranged a couple things to accomodate some leftovers before I discovered a sign saying there'd be a restocking charge of $24 if you put your own food in the fridge. When talking to them at the desk they told us that all the mini-bar items were on a sensor and were considered consumed if they were removed or moved. Now I don't know about you but if I see a bottle of beer I've never seen before, I'm going to pull it out to look at it before I decide to drink it or not. At the Westin Indiannapolis, you're going to be paying $6 to look at that beer. I explained that we are used to Canadian beer and wanted to know what kinds they were before putting them back and Theovis said we'd be happy to pay for the beer as long as we could go back into the room and take the 2 beer we were accused of taking. It is such a bizarre system because there's no way to prove you didn't take the beer. The housekeeping person said you did and you say you didn't - how can you prove you're right? I guess the 'customer is always right' mantra was applied eventually and they cancelled the charges from our room. I'm putting a bolt around the mini-bar next time.

We flew back to Seattle - with Walter Koenig of Star Trek fame on our Indiannapolis to Minneapolis leg - and part way back to the Park 'n Fly I realized I'd left one of my bags on the carousel. We picked up the car around 11:45pm (1:45am according to our lagging brains) and headed back to the airport. Luckily I caught the woman just as she was moving the bags out of the area - a lot of people seem to do this - and we started the long drive home. We stopped at Taco Bell for snacks then headed through the border around 2:30am (4:30am) and made it home around 3:15am (5:15am). Since we'd been up since 7am Indiannapolis time the day before, we'd been up for a hell of a long time. I was thrilled to be back at home in my own bed with the kitties, Gen Con finished. Until next year.