Gencon Indy 2008

Long overdue, but here’s my thinking on Gencon.

Sure, back when I was in high school I heard about Gencon. I even went a few times in the late 90s, but I never knew what was going on there. We’d truck up there to Milwaukee for the day and wander around the vendor area for the day. That was entirely satisfying – there were insane numbers of vendors and it was fun just to look.

When I heard that Gencon had moved to Indianapolis I was dubious. First of all, why would anybody want to go to Indiana? Second of all, what could justify a three hour drive down for just wandering around vendors? Well, I decided that now with the wedding paid off and the vacation days piling up, I could try out a Con again. Gencon it is.

To start off, I completely understand my previous self’s inability to grasp what was going on at Gencon. There were giant books of page after page of what amounted to Excel spreadsheets to pick events from. I didn’t even know what I wanted to do up there. Now, the events literally are enormous Excel spreadsheets. This is a blessing. Sean, Lauren, and I all sat down, marked the events we were interested in that were still open, and pasted them all into one document. Use that to build a weekend schedule and we were golden.

Luckily we showed up Thursday to get used to the area, figure out where to park, get our passes, and find the areas. We would have been screwed driving down Friday morning, trying to figure that all out on the fly AND get to our first event..

Getting to that first event was a huge plus – BREWERY TOUR. The Indianapolis Convention Center is blessed with three breweries within walking distance. Beer can be good, but local brew on tap is heavenly. So we get into our 10am event Friday and commence drinking. I’ll run down the beers in another post. The experience was wonderful – we got to try seven beers The Ram brewed right there. Two of the brews they had put on specifically for Gencon. Now that’s an area embracing an event. After an amazing amount of good beer for only 9 dollars,we got to do the actual tour. This sounds a lot more impressive than it actually was, because the brew area was probably about as big as our apartment, but two stories high in half of it. There were a number of large vats crammed in, not much walking space, and a single story cooling area that directly feeds the taps out front. The guy giving the talk was not the most eloquent, and he apparently had only worked at The Ram a month, but he was able to clue us into some good finds at the other breweries. Another plus – we got to taste the hops and barley that go into the beers. It definitely added to appreciation of it all.

In no particular order now – the other things we did at the Con.

The games library is an excellent resource. They have dozens and dozens of games available to borrow for a few hours at just the cost of a few event tickets. It let us figure out that Humans! was not a game to waste $35 on.

There are many small game events where you’re paired up with a group and, in the case of My Word, the winner got to take the game home. My Word is actually a very simple group game that can be taught in a few sentences. It benefits from Lauren and I being good enough at it that we got to take it home – I look forward to trying it out with others.

Unspeakable Words – not nearly as fun as My Word. Kind of contrived – possible for everybody to lose. Fits the Cthulhu mythos, but just not that fun.

Illuminati – now I remember why I haven’t played the game in years. There’s absolutely nothing to do gamewise when it’s somebody else’s turn and these people liked to think through every single possibility before acting. Even after acting! It was a fine event, and it saved me the dollars I had earmarked for picking up a copy.

Lauren is a somewhat finicky gamer. She balks if faced with knowledgable gamers who do not allow her the chance to learn. The guys running the Battletech introductory area and Grinder were exactly what Lauren needed to be comfortable and even get excited about a somewhat complex game. I hadn’t played Battletech since high school and, I realize now, I didn’t really know how to play then – I just had a good mediator. The guys running the Battletech area were excellent at giving Lauren aid and not leaving me to drown in the rules while trying to help her along. The end result was us getting in several hours in a huge melee, approval on purchasing Battletech materials, and a game we’ve played a few more times even after we got home. I really look forward to putting together some environments and diving into the source materials. If you’re reading this because you know me – let’s play!