Don't be offended, there really was a lot of that this year... Too much even, and I'm French!
I’m back from Gen Con.
I didn’t live blog, because I decided to sleep more and the Internet connection of the hotel was, at best, as fast as a horny turtle trying to reach a lonely Crocs at the end of a garden. I didn’t Twitter much either because I don’t yet have a phone smart enough to handle it… nor a data plan that allows me to use it in the US without bankrupting the State of California (which, I’m told, is not that exaggerated a claim).
I didn’t GM games for any companies this year. I ran only 2 sessions: Drunken D&D and Mouse Guard.
I skipped all industry parties because I had other things that came up that worked better toward what I was looking for.
What I did have though is have fun. Turns out that fun was exactly what I was looking for.
I hung around with friends. I walked the floor a few times, gave a seminar to a full room (of chairs… with people on all of them!). I had an awesome interview with Chris Perkins (Killer of PCs, maker of TPKs). I ate high calorie comfort food, signed and sold lots of books and gamed gamed gamed!
This translated in very high values of fun. Fun to the Nth power…
(Rimshot)
I attended Gen Con as Press specifically for Musings of the Chatty DM and as such I intend to cover it, but not like Dave and Bartoneus will (they’re the real ‘journalists’ here). I will do it in my own, stream-of-consciousness style.
Here are some of the subjects that come to mind that I could tackle, alone or grouped, in the upcoming weeks.
- Learned lessons from Gen Con 2010
- Forget freelance, band together, rebrand and launch
- Drunken D&D highlights and sneak peek
- Mouse Guard demo and how GM better at cons (self reflection)
- Free Market (Demo game with Luke Crane)
- The games I bought (Savage Worlds, Free Market, Apocalypse World, Last Night to Live expansion)
- The games I played: D&D (Drunken, Dark Sun, Chaos Scar), Mouse Guard, Zombie/Chthulu Dice, Free Market and a real Magic the Gathering draft!
- Gaming Advocacy is a very rewarding job!
- Hawking one’s book at a booth
- Meeting fans and dealing with them
- Re-evaluating our role as bloggers.
- Nico’s new game!
In the mean time, I’m not jumping back in the blogging routine too fast, mostly because today and tomorrow are dedicated to playing with my kids and spending some quality time with my incredibly understanding, supportive (and not to forget, insanely hot) wife.
Have a good one!
See you later!
“Meeting fans and dealing with them”
You were wearing the BIG ring on your pimp-slapping hand, weren’t you?
You avoided a memetic joke about power levels and for that, you have my eternal gratitude.
Philippe– great seeing you this trip. I really enjoyed playing Freemarket with you, and getting a chance to sit and chat. Sorry I missed the book signing, as we were pimping our book at the same time. Sounds like the book sold well, congrats.
@Tiorn: Ha ha ha! Quite the contrary… but I love the imagery.
@Trabant: See, I’m now quite proud that I don’t actually know what the memetic joke was. 🙂
@Phil: It was great finally gaming with you Phil. I know so many friends at Gen Con that spending time with any of them is becoming a challenge. Free Market was awesome and chatting with you and Martin after was like a super extra bonus.
Come and see me in Toronto man!
“Come and see me in Toronto man!”
When will that be? I am an ex-Montrealer living in Guelph. Would love to meet you, if given the chance 🙂
Yellow Eagle
@Yellow Eagle: I’ll be at the Toronto Fan Expo from August 27-29. I’ll use Twitter (@chattydm) like mad to tell people where I’ll be. I,ll run games, do one panel with Robin Laws and Ed Greenwood and chat random people up I meet.
I’d love to meet any Canadian (and nearby American) readers!
Chatty, the meme has to do with Vegeta, and that’s about all I’ll say. 😉
That sounds spectacular. There’s always time for fun, especially when you’ve been doing a lot of business and such. Hopefully either next year or (more likely) the year after, things will open up for me to go to GenCon. I want to do it at least one year…
Glad we finally got to meet up in meatspace this year Philippe! This year’s gencon was busy and hectic, and I only went to one “party”. I didn’t get near the amount of time to hang out with people I normally hang out with at conventions, but it had a lot of good moments. I picked up my one page dungeon codex and will be using that with Eureka to run some impromptu games. Hope to see you next year mon-ami!
Drunken D&D was awesome, and I was happy to stay at your table for the vast majority of the game Phil! Also, you’ve officially solidified the Mouse Guard RPG as a game I will be playing quite a bit in the coming months, and for that I am thankful. Had a lot of good times this year, but man was it tiring!
@Chatty Gah, I misread your schedule and went to the booth to get a book and meet you on Sunday instead of Saturday. Alas. Next year.
more pictures, more pictures, more pictures
hope you had fun
stef
It was great to meet you at Gencon Phil! I hope to see you again down the road. (Andrew)
@Andy: Oh, no I would not abuse my secret knowledge of Dragonball Z on such a post 🙂
@John: We met at the 11th hour! I’m glad we did though, now I know you and when next we meet we can high five each other… or do lunch and talk about Silvervine!
@Bartoneus: I’m so happy to have helped make you such a die-hard Mouse Guard fan. Now’s the time to play it and tell me/us all about it.
@stef: I have none… you have to come some day… 🙂
@The O: Andrew, I’m so happy we finally met. You guys are a cool bunch and it was a blast to fight you all! 🙂