My first GenCon: Day 4

The last day of gencon started out hazily, as I only got 4 hours of sleep the night before uploading pics to prep for my blog on the hotels crappy wireless connection. It was less than adequate and sleep deprived me didn’t think of just using my phones 3G connection to get the job done, hindsight is 20/20. We checked out of our not so comfy Comfort Inn around 8 and @momanatrix ate one single bite out of a stale bagel with cream cheese (which was probably expired too) and we decided to just skip breakfast. We got to the con early, so early in fact that I could park in a parking garage on ground level, which was a first.

We planned to make the last day one filled with shopping for souveniers for our gaming comrades who couldn’t make it to the show, and family members who weren’t necessarily gamers but deserved something brought back to them. This was a confusing endeavor as we couldn’t find the perfect gift for a few people – particularly my mom who isn’t a gamer in the least unless you count pac man or tetris. At this point I had a sick kid, and my wife was also feeling sick from the bad food and empty stomach so we were probably only there for 3 hours tops. I did make it a point to capture a lot more photos on the last day, get some videos (which I’ll be uploading soon) of a massively cool dungeon setup as well as just some of the general chaos that is gencon.

I stopped by the Green Ronin booth and talked to one of the Dragon Age writers for a short bit, he was a nice fellow can’t remember his name but he almost had me convinced on buying the Dragon Age RPG DM screen but, I figure I better hold off a bit and wait and see how my group turns out. As much as I love buying new stuff, I hate having it go to waste on a shelf. Also hit up a booth where a guy had everything 50% off, the last day of gencon is the day to find the best deals people! It might be slim pickin’s by the time sunday rolls around but a lot of people are eager to not have to ship/haul back massive loads of product and start bargaining it seems.

I almost managed to get a sweet weapon sword and dagger but I stepped out of line because I thought I’d lost @momanatrix and the minion and lost my chance, the dude in front of me jumped all over the awesome looking weapons. Oh well I convinced myself I wont have a good place to display them until I get a room dedicated to gaming in my home anyways so more power to him. But a real steel sharpened blade for 8$ and a dagger complete with chained sheathe for 6$ is a really hard deal to just not think about losing out on.

I also stopped over by the Paizo booth and grabbed a basic grass/stone flipmat and boy am I amazed at it’s quality, super glad I grabbed it. I also picked up a copy of the Plot Twist Cards for use in my upcoming fall campaign, only after realizing they existed because a friendly Paizo staff gave a sample card to my wife. They were all really nice folks and I look forward to buying stuff form them again online and off. Then checked out the artwork one last time and grabbed my son his magic wand he’d been dying to get from one of the costume booth’s – cant remember the name for the life of me but they had some pretty nice steampunk goggles / corsets on sale there. Speaking of corsets, way too many girls wearing them that probably couldn’t breathe.

That basically sums up the day other than the ride home and the sick kid details, overall I had a great time but there were a lot of lessons to be learned while there. Where to park, where to eat, what to bring, etc. I’ll be posting soon with a bulleted list of some of the most important things to know before going to gencon with the con-newbie like myself in mind because if anyone else can learn from my mistakes I’d be super happy knowing I made a difference! I may not have went to any press conferences, or actually gotten to play D&D, or any games at all for that manner, live blog or tweet or really meet too many people I wanted to I’ve still got to say it was an awesome one of a kind experience I plan on revisiting year after year!