So here I am the night after Gencon in a Comfort Inn in Springfield Missouri, downing Nyquil, cheap whiskey and chili (my poor, poor wife) looking and seeing my weekend recap is GONE from the site, I apparantly forgot to push send last night after writing it up.  Ack. I'm not writing that again!!!!

Well, instead of a blow by blow account I will instead offer several bits, pieces and observations about Friday-Sunday when I got EXACTLY five hours of sleep (mostly due to Adder and Smarmy dragging me to a 2-4 am Tower of Gygax game after the 1 am ending of the auction Friday night).  Think of these as snapshots of the weekend, and speaking of LOTS of pictures were taken my Acaeum members, including myself, so hopefully these will be available during the next few weeks.

First I will say I was amazed and delighted to see the amount of spouses and kids of Acaeum members in attendence this week, it bodes well for the future of the hobby. Bracton, Dbartman, Rabbit, Blackmoor, Killjoy, Guido, and of course Stratochamp (the poor kid had no choice) all had kids who attended and obviously really enjoyed themselves. Nice to see families of old school gamers are now making the pilgrammage. I hope to one day bring my grandson along so he can also have a great time.

Tower of Gygax was interesting, basically each round contained 12 players---six starters and six alternates.   As soon as someone died the alternate took over...if he died the original came back, and so on.  The idea was basically to die horribly and get the "I died in the Tower of Gygax" ribbon for yourself. The "dungeon" was merely a series of rooms that each had a puzzle or trap or combat that had to be solved in order to move to the next room.  The tone was supposed to be old school and deadly.  The dungeon ran 24 hours a day the entire con, in the same room, and sometimes luminaries like Frank and Tim were the DMs.  

After the 1 am end of the Friday night auction, Brendon and Ryan dragged me to the 2-4 am session against my will (well, we had decided early in the week, the three of us, to hit this at some ungodly time of the morning so we would be guaranteed a seat).  When we arrived Netrodent was there also, so the table held an Acaeum member majority!  Little did the other two saps know what was in store.  The DM started overly serious and the other players were playing far, far too cautiously for a "killer" dungeon. Since we were handed pregens ( I got a dwarven fighter with 18STR and a 6 CHR) we had to work with with what got, and I decided my dwarf was a unruly beast.  Ryan's character turned out to be a transvestite named Divine.  Don't ask.  After a room we had softened up the group enough that after I died horribly the spirit continued and the game turned out to be really, really fun. The DM played along, and Ryan's errant missile shots into the backs of character's heads was the icing on the cake. Several times the room broke up into laughter and a great time was had.  

BTW the weirdest room we hit was one where a dude had sex with a cat....I'm not lying.  At least he was rewarded after the adventure with a 1E module, IMO not nearly enough for the humiliation heaped upon him. Hey, if he can live with it, no prob, but NOT the way I would want to spend my vacation.

I was able to collect quite a few of really cool limited, numbered signed goodies this weekend:  Frank's Emphyria adventure, Al's Tegel Manor adventure, and a copy of the room the Burntwire Bros had written for Tower of Gygax (The Romb of Horrors).  Later in the con Frank auctioned two copies of his adventure and they both went for over $100.  Safe to say this item won't turn up often if at all, since almost all copies are in the hands of Acaeum members who won't part with copies under any circumstances.  A nice collectible to just the people who will cherish it!

Got to meet for the first time members Smarmy, Guido (the Gypsy), Dbartman, Rabbit, Yaya, Contrarian, Increment and of course the Man From Down Under, Adder.  It was Brendon's first time in the US and I didn't see him once without a huge smile on his face.  He even brought some vegamite for snacking on (very salty but not awful), and better than that some Tim Tam cookies which were absolutely incredible milk chocolate delights!  Plus Brendon was funny and witty, and it was great to finally meet the guy.  The absolute beating of the never ending auction gave Acaeum members in the audience lots of time to sit back and chat about everything from jobs, kids, collections, and really made these people you see post all the time into "real" people who were fun to get to know.  Also shout out to Bracton who I talked to for awhile Saturday night and is a great guy not the least because he bought a copy of R4 I had put in the auction for $300...thanks man!  Hope you don't find the cigarette burn...

Speaking of the auction....well, the procedure was ok. Didn't have a problem with listing items, finding my auction totals, collecting partial payouts, or my final payout and items the last day.  However, execution itself was rough.  In particular the 1 am end Friday and the incredible 3 am end Saturday night.  I mentioned this to Jon Huston Sunday and he agreed and said it was inexcusable and would NOT happen next year, I hope he's right.  The problem seems to be the length of the Charity auction, which went slighty over time last year and severely (2 hours) over time this year.  The problem is that on Saturday, dealers see they have too much stuff, and think they will make something back by dumping crap in the charity auction so as to have a write off, and then the charity aucion goes long because there are 100 sets of Spellfire cards or something.  Perhaps a charity store would be a better ideas for eliminating some of the extras?

More later!

Mike  B

Hello everyone,

Well we can put GenCon 2008 into the books now.  I really was prepared for a bit of a let down following last year's Con.  I just did not think last year's experience could be topped.   WRONG.

The second annual Acaeum Dinner went off just fine Wednesday night.  Everyone seemed to enjoy themselves and Frank made a very interesting announcement.  (I will leave it to Frank to announce it to the forums himself.)

Meeting the new folks that showed up for this year's con was fantastic.  Brendon (mcAdderOne) was as fun in person as he is on the forums (yes I did try the veggimite; It wasn't that bad at all).  He also brought with him these chocolate treats (Tim Tams) that were so very addictive.  Brendon was the MVP of the dwarven group in Frank's game.

Smarmy1 (Ryan) fit into the group just fine.  His eyes were huge the whole con, which is great.  The enormity of it really surprised him, I think.  He was taking pics like a beast.  I hope he will post them here soon.  He was even "Zingged" by Frank in the Auction.  He was having no luck winning sitting with the rest of the Aceaum members so he moved to the other side of the room and lost there prompting Frank to "Zing" him.  In the haze of the con, I cannot remember exactly what Frank said but I'm sure Smarmy1 will fill in the details in a future post.  Super nice guy.  I look forward to seeing him here again next year.

Badmike brought a ton of boardgames and other stuff to be auctioned off.  Seeing his stuff doing so well gave me the idea of auctioning off some of my stuff.  I went home Thursday night and culled what I thought would be approximately $500 worth of stuff from my collection.  My stuff went for just short of $1000.  I plan to put that money toward some artwork in the near future or perhaps next Gencon.

Playing in Franks Emperya game on Friday was a highlight.  Yes, my team lost but the Elves had one more player on their team yet could only manage a one point win.  We dwarves do not feel too bad about it.

Saturday is really just a blurr to me.  The lack of sleep and amount of wear and tear on my legs and feet caught up to me big time.  I did manage to snag a second print "Bunnies and Burrows."

It is simply impossible to not enjoy yourself sitting with Blackmoor (Jeff), Badmike (Mike), KingofPain (John) and Killjoy32 (Al) at the auctions. You just have no choice with these guys.  The chloroform (my plan of attact was to knock him out with chloroform) did not work on Blackmoor.  Some sort of Canadian immunity.  He carted away quite a few rares and not so rares.

I knew that Al would do his homework for The Return to Tegel Manor game he DMed.  But WOW, what a game.  Every character had a secret mission in the game, often at odds with another character.  Frank played an Anti-Palidin that had to kill John's character.  It was my character's mission to protect John's character at all costs.  As it happened, I never saw the attack on John's character or I would have had to attack Frank's character.  Great DMing and great role playing.

Saskia (Al's daughter)(age 10) was just delightful.  If you have had the pleasure of meeting Al then you can understand where her wonderful personality comes from.  She was not bored by 15 hour days at Gencon.  She's a little gamer in the making.  She volunteered at the Card Halla event and rooted around in the fallen cards for the coins.  The guy running the event even commented that she was the best at grabbing the coins.  We took great pictures of her with Darth Vader, a pirate (her favorite) and R2D2.  She just goes nuts for dice.  Whenever we passed a stall selling dice in the exhibit room we had to stop and pick out some dice.

A final, improptu, dinner was had at the Hardrock Cafe late Sunday night.  Al, Saskia, myself, Brendon, Mike his wife, John, Jeff his wife and son, and Frank had a great time going over our experiences of Gencon 2008.

Well this post is long enough.  I will follow with other post's as I remember the stuff.  As Al says, right now I'm just shattered.  

Hope to see more of the Aceaum members next year.

Martin

Sounds great - would be good to get the highlights.  Anyone got any pics?

Besides Blackmoor's character killing Frank's treacherous anti-paladin with the disintegrate spell and Brendon's unbelievable backstab that took out our demonic nemesis, I got the luckiest hit of the adventure when I took out Blackmoor's flying mage.  Lots and lots of plot twists in that game....but I will let Al flesh out the story for you guys.

As for pics, everyone got quite a few.  My camera died on me on Friday so I was only able to get a handful but I will post them as soon as I can.

By the way for those interested in the Castle Zagyg: Upper Works, I have looked through it a bit and it looks fantastic.  I spoke with Jon Hershberger for a bit at the TL booth and he was a really great guy.  I didnt get to meet Robert Conley (not sure if he was even there) but his Points of Light supplement for Goodman Games is also a very cool item IMO.

There were a few more rares in the auction on Friday night that werent mentioned.  There was a nice looking Nomad Gods that someone picked up for cheap and one other item that I considered bidding on and then ended up not winning was Fantasy Game Company's 1975 version of Two Towers:

http://www.boardgamegeek.com/image/219139

I think I have only seen this game on Ebay once or twice and I have heard it is unbelievably rare.  Pretty sure whatever the final price was it was a steal.

so...having now got back from work (hardcore or what...work 2 hrs after getting home)....heres what i managed to pick up:

space opera box set
set of 25 men attacking/melee sheets (judges guild)
merc box set
wilderlands of high fantasy 1st print (complete)
2 patrick gagner prints (from the charity auction)
best of dragon games box set (in the shrink)
a ton of dice, including a special gencon limited commemorative dice set
aussie G2 and G3 (courtesy of brendon)
minty batch of JG hex map sheets
spellbound # 3 (fanzine)
JG caverns of thracia (2nd - courtesy of martin)
GG - the golden auroch / tower of the black pearl (gencon 1E)
GG saga of the rat king (gencon 1E)
multiple sets of the JG maps
abyss magazine / fanzine issues 43,44,45,46,47,48,49 and 50
the book of sorcery
against the romb of horrors (for the tower of gygax courtesy of the super burnie bros # 16 of 20)
tower of elbrith
the frank mentzer empyrea adventure (dwarves v elves) # 34 of 50
hall of wonders (tim kasks tower of gygax adventure (#6 of 15 - with 2 ral partha coins)
tom wham original artwork (paula & friend from the game elefant hunt) - my daughter has the same button
some JG books
tollenkar's lair
behind the rose
JG thieves of fortress badabaskor 1st print
2 x JG city state of the invincible overlord map sets
the mines of keridav (2nd) (courtesy of mike)
the forest-lords of dihad (courtesy of mike)
cthulhu - MU return of the ripper
and i am sure there are more, but havent quite found everything yet....

last but not least for the moment:

prototype of tom wham's search for the emperor's treasure - a most excellent box full of amazing stuff, with some super-fab art!

all in all, a great heist...i missed on a few other things i would have really liked, but they all went to very good homes, so that was cool.

Al

Hi All,

Just arrived back in the UK this morning from Indy -- spent this afternoon asleep! I think the lags going to hit me hard!

Great to meet everyone at GC -- special thanks to Martin and Badmike for help with the booth!

I've put up a couple of pics of my booth (that's the Missus and my henchman Mark), and some rares from the Auction cabinets, here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/malcolmlawrenson/

Really please with the Fazzle I bought, plus the other stuff (have to list later when I've unpacked). Couldn't BELIEVE how cheap some of the stuff in the auction went. If it wasn't for the fact I'm attending a big Terry Pratchett auction this coming weekend, and saving some pennies for that, you lot would have had more competition!

One thing I didn't mention at the Con was that T&T actually offered me $4000 for the cheaper of the 2 ST1s -- but I decided that I really didn't want one going to someone that, erm UNAPPRECIATIVE  

Will post more when I wake up properly  

Cheers,
Malc

red_bus wrote:Nice haul Al!!  

You must have been close to your encumbrance limit on the way back

stephen...i was right on the weight limt...and we are talking micro-grams inside. i even had to carry stuff in my carry-on too, so yes, it was very close. once again i had to leave behind a load of traveller books, but martin is going to very kindly ship them to me.

Al

And a very special Thank-You to Al, without whom some things would not have been possible!

Cheers,
Malc

lawrenson wrote:And a very special Thank-You to Al, without whom some things would not have been possible!

Cheers,
Malc

btw malc...didnt get a chance while there either.....nice one offloading the big rolling items too! if that was me, i would be taking the next 4-5 months off

well done on a successful operation there.

beasterbrook wrote:That number just blows me away.... you can buy a whole game company for less than that I'm sure.... That has to be the most expensive game item there is, I can't think on anything else that will come close...

increments 5 cent purchases about as rare afaik. why so high a bid on that when could have wiped floor with dozens of key ebay auctions instead last few years for same $??