The Best Four Days in Gaming 2023

 I pride myself on being a geek… a “multifaceted geek” which really means-I’m a geek that can’t make up his mind.  As I have said in past posts, I’m trying to figure things out after having been locked into being a teacher for almost 40 years.  As a teacher you spend a lot of time & energy on the job outside the job. As an elementary school teacher, the entire world is something you can bring into your classroom, so you can’t go anywhere without seeing something that could help engage kids.  It could be a book, an exhibit, or even just sand on a beach.  Sadly, real teachers have a hard time flipping the switch and just being human.  Last week marked the start of school for most of Indiana, it also marked the annnual arrival of Gen Con to Indianapolis.

What is Gen Con?

To a large part of the population who focus on sportsing, they have no clue about anything outside of whatever sport season it is… Gen Con is just a bunch of weirdos downtown.  Over 70,000 weirdos but like sportsing there are different kinds of weirdos. From now on the word “weirdo” will be replaced with “geek” because it has a slightly more positive spin, and this is “My Geek Odyssey” after all.  Let’s start off with what Gen Con is not-  it is not a comic book convention, it is not a toy convention, it is not a collectible convention, it is not a place where stars of TV and movies tell about their latest projects. What is it?  It is a gathering of people from around the world who like to play games.  What kind of games?  All different kinds.    It all started with war games, and playing with armies, reenacting battles, and coming up with rules to govern how things worked. It morphed into fantasy and science fiction taking characters from beloved stories and reacting those adventures. Does it have elements of any “Pop Culture Con”? Yes, because so many games are based on pop culture properties.  Everything at Gen Con ties back to games. When I was a kid I had heard about this mysterious gathering in Geneva, Wisconsin… I never could get up the nerve to convince my parents to vacation there.

You may have heard of Dungeons & Dragons, it was in “Stranger Things” and in the 80’s caused a ruckus dealing with satan worship, just like comic books caused a ruckus in the 50’s.  So if you go to Gen Con, you’ll see people dressed as elves and knights and Robin Hood.  You’ll also see characters out of Anime, comic books, television, movies, and… *shock* books.  You’ll also see a lot of people who have found their tribe in a group that doesn’t fit in.  Who were bullied, who escaped the torture of of “real world” by diving into different worlds.  I’m an introvert… in D&D I play an obnoxious bard.  In real life if put in a room of strangers, I quietly sit back and watch, hiding from everyone.  My character, on the other hand, does the opposite.  I draw, which is a pretty solitary exercise… my character plays music and tells stories and is the life of the party.  When you are with people like you, who understand what you are talking about, you feel at home.

So… what did I do at Gen Con?

This was one of the first times I actually could attend all of Gen Con.  I decided I would take some time and tryout some things.  In the past I’ve gotten a badge, and then wandered the exhibit/vendor hall looking at stuff and, being a teacher, buying games for my classroom.  I’ve done this at most Cons the first time I attend, it’s a chance to learn about the community.  It’s basically like a giant focused marketplace with an entrance fee.  For years this is what I had done.  This year I branched out, and at Gen Con, this meant getting tickets.  Your badge gets you into the hall, tickets let you participate in the fun.  Ticketed events can be free, or cost a pretty penny it just matters what you are doing.  You pick your events and on a certain date they open it up and via a queue you get to try to get into the events you want.  This year I was lucky, and was at the front of the queue.  I got everything I wanted.  My friend… not so lucky.  It also matters what you want to get into.  I was trying for a series of workshops dealing with puppetry with a few games thrown in.  While popular, since not directly tied to games, puppetry has a limited audience.  My friend, was trying to get into a bunch of games with limited seats. 

Puppets

I decided since I was looking at all my various options to look at the puppetry program.  Yes, Gen Con has a puppetry program.  It was really amazing, but after spending most of Thursday going from session to session (all in the same room, fortunately) I was exhausted, both physically, and mentally.  I learned a lot and like the time I spent at Disney learning about animation, started thinking that I might have looked into this art form a little late in life.  Just the stretching to prepare to learn how to properly move the mouth of a hand puppet was a bit much for my old body.  I decided like anything- it takes time and commitment.  I’m just not sure if I have either for a new area of study.  It’s still on the list, but the test was did I purchase a full blown puppet while at the show… did I build one?  I didn’t sign up for the basic puppet building workshops – I probably should have, but… I decided not to devote my entire Con to puppetry.  I figured if I liked it, I can do more in the coming years.  I think the performance piece was something I just wasn’t sure of.  While I appreciate constructive criticism I can say as a teacher the first person tends to get hit hard… that was me.  As it got to the end of that session the last few people got a little, but when you have an inferiority complex coupled with anxiety- it kind of is hard when you are the example for everyone on how not to do it.  Everyone does better than you because, you showed them everything that you shouldn’t do.  Then again, I am probably taking it personally.  Like I said, I haven’t said “Never Again” but I also know I have a lot of room for growth.

Games

While a large portion of my time was spent in the puppet room the first day I did try out some gaming sessions with mixed results.  The first session I attended was basically two companies going over how they worked together to create characters for a fantasy role playing game.  Most of it involved the features available to create online 3D printable miniatures of your character.  It ended with everyone getting their pick of a miniature.  The only problem was that the first few people weee extremely picky… looking at every single option. I’m surprised there aren’t still people in that room waiting to choose.  I was running late to my next session and just reached in to grab one- I got a ranger. Very cool looking and having done some CAD I was impressed by the user interface and detail.

My next sessions were either demos or “how to play” with mixed results.  I may have had a preconceived notion about what “How to play” meant- learn how to play a game, by playing the game.  This was not the case initially.  In my first instance was dealing with a role playing game – enough time had been allocated to give people time to create a basic character and go through a scene.  Instead about half the time was spent going over the entire game system.  From what I could tell the fame system decided the important role for the Game Master was to move the narrative along.  This gave them a lot of leeway throughout the game.  For the most part characters could not die.  I’m not going to go into details, because it works for the concept, but a 90 minute lecture conveying information that could have been done through playing the game… after two hours the presenter was done and I left trying to figure out how to actually play the game.

I then had a chance to play Aerodrome 1.1 which is a dogfight game in this case based on Battlestar Galactica but traditionally based on World War I flying aces.  In the time we had, we played a number of sorties and while flying a MKII Viper I was never killed, but that doesn’t mean we won every time also.  Pilots were given laser cut controls where they put down three moves… direction, altitude, and weapons.  It reminded me of many of the dogfight games I had played in the past.  You needed to think a few steps ahead and hope you guessed right.  The biggest issue was the Cylons were precise.  When human pilots would need to roll a piloting check or lose control and go into a spin after a difficult maneuver… they didn’t.  My issue was running out of ammo.  While I did hit a few bad guys when it came to rolling to decide who had fired the killing blow- like when I play D&D the dice were not in my favor.  I play to try to get into more games in the future if possible, this was fun.

At the end of the day I had a demo of a space combat game.  This I played with a friend of mine and it was fascinating.  The game allowed players to customize their ships and build their ships accordingly.  I think the hardest thing was dealing with the size of the ships.  While it was a dogfight game it had few things different from the Aerodrome game.  First it was more old school- measuring turns and moves with templates and rulers where Aerodrome used a hex map.  Secondly it was turned based so instead of resolving combat and movement at once, each player took turns and allocated energy throughout their turn.  Weapons had ranges and firing arcs, so while the customization of ships was cool, it also added complexity to the game that might make it more difficult in the beginning.  I enjoyed playing and was happy think about the possibilities.  Unfortunately, I have a thing against games that deal with a collectible component- it can throw off gameplay as one player gathers the most powerful parts.

The last day I signed myself up for another “Learn to Play” this time it was for a game that had been introduced last year, and I had actually bought the moment I could… I just never had played it and the rules seemed a bit more complex for me to figure out just by reading them.  I decided I had a chance to have someone teach me the game- so let’s see if I messed up.  I didn’t mess up.  The game is Starship Captains and it was a lot of fun to play.  I say this not because I won.  In the game you are a newly minted captain, with a ship that only a newly minted captain would love.  Your job, fly through the galaxy completing missions and gaining experience as you fix your ship, train your crew, and fight space pirates.   While just reading the rules may make your brain go numb, the actual game is pretty simple to understand.  Like I said, it was a lot of fun.  Sadly, I’m sure I would have had the same feeling from my first learn to play session, if we had played.

The Horror of the Vendor Hall and Beyond

When you first attend a Con, most people, unless they came for a specific purpose, spend their time in the “Dealer Room” also know as the Exhibit Hall, or Vendor Hall. This is where people sell you stuff. What kind of stuff? The stuff dreams are made of… sometimes the stuff nightmares are made of… sometimes just stuff to “crap up the house.” The larger the Con the larger the vendor space. every year there is usually something special or exclusive items that can only be purchased at the Con or or eBay later for “millions of dollars.” The San Diego Comic Con is notorious for their exclusives and the rarity of them. People run from booth to booth to get tickets for the raffles to be allowed to buy whatever it is. Gen Con isn’t that different, but each subcategory of geek, will have something they are searching for… this year it seemed to be something called “Lorcana.” Without going into details (and all games, like most pop culture things you can go into details for hours) Lorcana is a Disney collectible card game. Pokemon, Magic, and other collectible games in which some cards are rarer and more powerful than others. Having these cards makes you special, you get invited out by popular people, you get elected to high positions in the government, you get fame and fortune or something. Basically what I have seen is you get to brag to everyone who cares that you have… whatever. Those in the know go “oooh!” those in the know with money will offer to buy it from you. Lorcana being a combination of Disney & a CollectibleCard Game was the perfect storm. Lines were long and in the beginning unruly. Having gone through that phase a long time ago with “Heroclix” I avoided the line as much as possible. For days a line formed the night before, and the limited product sold out around lunch time. By dinner time, cards were already on eBay, selling initially for over $1000 each. by the end of the Con the economics principle of supply and demand had started to go into effect and card prices were a bit more reasonable.

What did I buy? Not as much as I had in the past. When I had a short time at Gen Con I would usually run through looking for games that were 1. easy/quick to learn and 2. quick to play. This was so I had new games for kids to play during recess or if we had a spare moment. I’d also look for themes that might tie into what I was teaching. One year I picked up an entire set of games based on fairy tales. This time was interesting, because every time I saw a game that would be great for kids… I walked away from it. Many people post photos of their “haul” I actually prefer to support my local game shop and while I do buy stuff (It’s like an auction, you just can’t stop yourself) I try to limit my purchases to things that are carried at Saltire Games.

• My friend is planning on running a Star Trek Adventure Role Playing Game so I picked up a few books for that game to better prepare me… including the yet to be released Lower Decks book. I also picked up dice for the game. I’m a trekkie, so this made sense.
• I also picked up some dice… because I don’t have enough dice. I don’t have enough dice in a certain shade of violet with and without sparkly bits.
• I also picked up tea… because I’m a trekkie and “Tea, Earl Grey, Hot.” Although in Indiana in the summer, I have taken to brewing a pot of iced tea each week. The two I picked up were the “Exclusive” Gen Con Tea for 2023 Arcanist Desire and a tea called TARDIS – 11 “Geronimo!” both black teas with various other stuff mixed in. I have brewed the Arcanist Desiret and it is really good with blueberry and black currant tones.
• A LARP viking sword- For Going Caching in October I decided I “needed” a sword. A real sword would have been awesome, but it also would have come with some safety and legal issues. A LARPing sword (Live Action Role Playing) looks pretty real, but is actually safe since it is foam.
• A viking belt pouch. Cecil needed a place to rest while at Going Caching, so I found a really cool one with Freyr’s boar, Gullinbursti, on it.
• Pins- You see Gen Con does this thing called the “Pin Bazaar” where some vendors have “exclusive pins” and if you buy enough pins , you can then get “super exclusive pins” and even “super duper exclusive pins.” The only issue seemed to be some places never got their pins.
• A t-shirt. Yes, like I need another t-shirt. I actually have given almost all my school t-shirts to Goodwill so maybe I do. This one goes with the Going Caching viking theme.
• A bottle of wine- Dragon’s Blood was the Gen Con Exclusive wine, by a local winery, just down the street.

Outside of stuff Gen Con has what they call the “Block Party” in which they fill the street with food trucks and other food and beverage vendors. This place was great, a lot bigger and more open than the past, that didn’t stop the lines from still being long and the wait sometimes being very long. To get to the Block Party you had to pass through a Pinball Alley. A corridor lined on one side with pinball machines, and a high score contest going on the entire Con. My favorite as I walked by them was a James Bond themed one which focused on my favorite movie- “You Only Live Twice.” I never had a chance to play it, but since I am local, and the group that brought all the machines is local, I’m hoping to take a retirement day and go out and try it out sometime.

So there were pros and cons Gen Con, and in this day and age all you usually hear about are the bad things that happened. Were there crowds? Yes. Were people oblivious to their surroundings and bumping into people? Yes. Were people apologizing when this happened? For the most part, Yes. Did I miss the destruction of Cardhalla and the life size balloon lunar lander? Yes. Did I miss the costume parade? Yes. Did a lot of people for a brief moment not feel like they were weird and had time with people who understood them? Most importantly, Yes.

Being local, I’m sure unless something comes up and I am out of town, I will return to Gen Con. Will I do more? What will I do? I don’t know… yet.