Prufrock wrote in Gencon 2013:Into the Demon Idol is the first offering of a new small company putting out DCC modules.  I've read it and it is a fun little read.  Would make a great side adventure.  Basically a small village is about to be destroyed by an army of Lizardmen.  The PC's are sent out in search of magical items that might help fend off the lizardmen.  The PC's stumble into an old mechanical leviathon.  The PC's have to get it running again in order to Kick and fry lizard men.  

Bill only had two left when I got to the booth.  Wish I had bought both!!!  The guys who put if out are planning more adventures.  You might recognize the cover artist:  Poag.

Martin

I was a judge for the 2013 One Page Dungeon Competition - one of the entries was 'Into the Demon Idol' (found here: Meta Gamemastery » One Page Dungeon 2013).  It was one of my top picks.

Hopefully the same guy, putting his work in to official print.

~throwi

Bill you're welcome...

... Barbara is an awesome person to deal with...

And if I didn't confuse the Fazzlewood with the Misty Isles I would have had it earlier... *sigh*

I finally have some time to log in my Gen Con report as my son is playing a fall baseball doubleheader.

The one caveat I will acknowledge is that I attend GC as a vendor now as opposed to the 20 times I attended as a player. The only real difference is that I am in the dealer hall for 10 hours a day and that pretty much eliminates all opportunity to actually game. Still, I get time to hang at the auction in the evening and a few minutes here and there to wander around. The really big change for me was bringing my two youngest kids - Ben, 15, and Anna, 13. Neither has attended a convention before and their only gaming experience is the board game Dungeon and one session of B/X D&D about a year ago. To say the least, they were wide-eyed when we entered the dealer hall Wednesday night!

We arrived in Indy around 3:30 Wednesday and immedieately checked into the downtown Holiday Inn Express (right behind the convention center and across the street from Lucas Oil Stadium). For $225 per night plus another $14 per day parking I was not very impressed. In fact, I recommend spending a few more bucks to stay at one of the Marriotts or other skyway hotels. I will be doing that next year. The hotel was ok, and it's an easy walk, but for the money, I just think it lacked.

After dropping luggage and cleaning up we drove to the marshaling yard to get our parking pass to unload at the convention loading dock. I arrived there last year and it was a snap - I was unloading ten minutes after I arrived. This year, I knew we were in trouble when we pulled into the yard and there were no less than 50 cars and trucks just sitting there. The guy in the yard took my cell number and said he would call when I could pick up my parking pass and head for the loading dock. It was now 4:30 p.m. I knew I was in danger of missing the Acaem dinner not too mention getting unloaded by closing time of 8 p.m. So we headed back to the convention center to pick up our badges (had to have those to even get in the dealer hall to unload). We grabbed our badges and I then decided we would unload curbside at the dealer entrance instead of the loading dock. I called Jon Herschberg - he was setting up the Goodman Games booth - who earlier that day said he had a dolly I could use. We parked on the sidewalk and commenced unloading. Thank you Jon! By the way, the marshaling yard called me at 6:30!

After my kids recovered from the shock of seeing how huge the dealer hall is, we made a half dozen trips to get the goods to the booth. We assembled the displays and did some minor set up. It was then time to jet off to the Acaeum dinner - organized by Mark Greenberg aka Bracton. We parked and fed the meter - as opposed to one Invicible Overlord    It was a nice event and Anna finally got a chance to order potato pancakes, which she loved! I sat by the aforementioned IO and Prufrock. We sang happy birthday to Caroline (sp) on her 16th. She is the daughter of macteets and a fixture at the auction. We called it off early and crashed back at the hotel by 10 p.m. It was a long day and we had to be up early to finish putting the OSR booth together.  

Matt Solarz, Center Stage Miniatures, arrived about 4 a.m.! He got up with us at 6 a.m., had breakfast, and the four of us were at the convention center by 8:00 a.m finishing set up at the OSR booth. The hall opened up for VIGs at 9 a.m. And we immediately got crowded. Honestly, it took another hour or two to get the booth 100% ready, but it went very well. Matt and I ran the booth while the teens got a chance to do some exploring. They would come back every so often with excited stories or some minor purchase or freebie! I immediately put away any concerns I had about bringing nongamers to Gen Con.

The hall closed at six p.m. and we cruised out to grab a quick dinner. We made it to the auction by 7:30. I was going to run a D&D game, but my cell battery died and that did not go off as i lost contact with the group. We will play next year come hell or high water. Spent some money at the auction and closed it out at midnight. I ran into more Acaeumites.

Friday and Saturday were pretty much the same. Work, dinner, auction. On Friday, the kids played a few demo games and the one they liked the best was the Star Wars miniatures game, X-Wing. The Friday night collectors auction - I will not mince words - sucked. The auction crew was awesome, but they just did not have much to work with. I bid on stuff just because I could not stand to see it go so cheap. The auction ended well before midnight which is just plain weird. That collectible auction normally runs well after midnight.

Saturday was a really busy day at the OSR booth and we had tons of traffic and we were visited by lots of people. I have to make special mention of Frank Mentzer and Tim Kask who dropped in several times. Frank came by every day and spent more than hour at the booth several times. He is just a fantastic ambassador of the OSR as well as a great supporter. After the hall closed, the OSR staff went to dinner at the Marriott - we really wanted to sit down and have a good meal. I had never been over there and it was amazing to see how much space GC occupied in the hotel. They pretty much had the entire floor filled with events, ec. And that is quite a bit of additional con space.  We then went to support the charity auction. I had donated a RQ1-4 Boxed Set and it sold for just over $50. I probably spent another $100 on stuff. Seems to be a pattern here.

Sunday came and we checked out and prepared to make a hasty withdrawal at closing time. I took a few minutes to grab the X-Wing miniature game and some additional miniatures. After waiting in line just to get into the Fantasy Flight vendor area, I grabbed a complete set of all the minis and basic game. Then I saw the check out line and put it all back. The check out line was at least an hour wait!  I just ordered it on-line and got a discount.

We snagged a large loading cart prior to close and managed to break the booth down in 30 minutes. We were on the road back to Michigan by 5 p.m  I had a great time at the convention, in large part due to my kids and all my Acaeum and Pacesetter friends!

I know the attendance was just short of 50k    I can say that it did not "feel" that much more crowded that last year. The con organizers have clearly done a fantastic job with spreading out the crowd. That said, it sure seems like GC draws a very diverse crowd. I guess GC is still the "best four days in gaming." However, there is a great deal more than gaming at GC. The entire Cosplay thing is huge. I really don't understand it, but there are numerous vendors devoted to it. Add in the non gaming-related vendors and GC is almost unrecognizable to its earlier incarnations. GC llc wants to grow the con. That's the business side of it. For them it's a trade show more than a game convention. I am good with that because we have great pure game cons such as the North Texas RPG Con and Gary Con. I do enjoy GC, and I recommend it to everyone.

Matt and I have already committed to running the OSR booth again next year. We have discussed changes for next year and we are using our two years of running the the thing to make more improvements. We doubled the size this year and we are increasing the size again next year. We are investing in permanent displays and some other things (top secret for now).   We will also make the booth more available to our OSR community including an open gaming table!

Gen Con 2013 Slideshow by bbarsh19 | Photobucket

sauromatian wrote in Gencon 2013:

bbarsh wrote in Gencon 2013: The entire Cosplay thing is huge. I really don't understand it, but there are numerous vendors devoted to it. Add in the non gaming-related vendors and GC is almost unrecognizable to its earlier incarnations. GC llc wants to grow the con. That's the business side of it. For them it's a trade show more than a game convention. I am good with that because we have great pure game cons such as the North Texas RPG Con and Gary Con.

Obviously NTRPGCon will have to adopt cosplay practices in order to stay competitive. If for fandom in general it means dressing up as sci-fi characters, for the fandom of old-school D&D it should mean dressing in costume as old-school gamers:

The MAR Barker costume- Appearance is only a portion of the effort here; much of the effect is implied by acting the part. Discuss the details of human sacrifice rituals, or of obtaining confessions from witches. Ask if everyone's seen the latest snuff videos on the internet. Carry around several yellow-pages phonebooks with the covers replaced to read "F.A.T.A.L. Rules." Study for the part by watching depictions of Igor in old Frankenstein movies.

The PEI Bonewitz costume- Think turtleneck sweaters & very well-groomed facial hair. Talk about how horrible it is that certain fanatics think that RPGs are all about worshiping Satan. Then ask if anyone would like to join you in an act of worship to Satan.

The Heavy-Metal Dude costume- An Iron Maiden t-shirt & rich, flowing locks of hair. Append each critical hit with an outburst of "righteous!" Express confusion with all the rules. Describe the teachers at your middle-school as "bogus." Take lots of smoke breaks.

The Old-Old-School Gamer costume- Tell people you're stopping in on the way to a model-railroading convention. Carry in bags of playground sand to make a sand table (extra points if you actually start pouring it out onto any tables in use). Begin playing RPGs, but refuse to acknowledge that the game is anything but historical-simulation tabletop wargaming. Likewise refuse to employ funny polyhedral dice. An actual costume for this role is unnecessary, as we generally look more & more the part with each passing year.

I like the possible cosplay opportunities, but for the forseable future the only cosplay allowed will be the serving wenches dressing up as "girls in high school there was no way in hell you were going to score with, even if alchohol is involved".  



(Examples of NTRPG con cosplay.  Man in the middle wins prize for "Classic Fatbeard D&D Player")

Mike B.

Badmike wrote in Gencon 2013:(Examples of NTRPG con cosplay.  Man in the middle wins prize for "Classic Fatbeard D&D Player")
Mike B.

Should be more of it

Rabbit_67 wrote in Gencon 2013:Well, after a two year hiatus, I was back again for my 5th Gen Con in the past 7 years.  I guess I could mimic much of the sentiment stated previously.  It was great to see the many Acaeum members that I have known from previous visits and to also meet a couple more new ones.  The new layout (for me) of the Con was a bit confusing and it took a while to get accustomed to finding the auction hall or the dealer hall. To me it seemed like the dealer hall was smaller than before (maybe it's a perception thing) but definitely missing was many of the old standby resellers like Crazy Egor and others.  Only a few booths had old TSR product to peruse.  Even Troll and Toad don't bring the old product with them much anymore and focus more on CCG's.  The place was packed and many people were in costume which is fun to see.   I managed to pick up a few items at Chimera Hoby Shop, purchase the DCC RPG items I had not yet gotten from Goodman Games, and also a few items at bbarsh's booth including Lich Dungeon Level Two by Frank Mentzer, who also graciously autographed it for me.  While it was great to be back, I left the Con feeling just a bit underwhelmed, unlike previous years.  The feel of the Con is definitely changing.

My apologies, I mixed up Acaeum names.  Obviously, Doug introduced us in the vendor hall.  I met too many people in a couple of days.  Sorry about the mix-up.

It was my first GenCon and I was a bit blown away by the sheer size of it all - there are so many aspects of gaming that were represented, especially board and card games... it did slightly overshadow rpgs.

I found the auction store and hall to be favorite places.  I was surprised to see how little was available on Saturday morning... I guess that's to be expected.  I did get some good stuff on Friday.

I keep hearing how good Gary Con and NTX is for RPGing - I think I've got to hit both in 2014 to find out for myself.  Plus, the list of auction items from NTX was pretty impressive for a small con.  GenCon is still king for buying and collectors (from what others have said, even if this year was less than previous years).

~throwi

Thunderdave wrote in Gencon 2013:I was pretty underwhelmed by the auction hall - didn't arrive til Saturday afternoon... I guess I should have been there earlier?

How is Origins as a con from a collector's point of view, worthwhile to make the trip?

OH MY GOD NO DON'T DO IT!!!

Heh...

Many years ago, it was well known that Origins was the premier wargamer's auction, and Gencon was the premier RPG'ers auction. Now that Troll and Toad has stopped running Origins (well... they were kicked out more or less...), it has never been the same size of product, or quality.

Don't get me wrong, the silent auction and [professional] auction being run by Katie and Soren has been great for me as a seller. But if you're looking for a brown box or a Tsjocanth from the Detroit days, you won't find it there.

Also there aren't a lot of sellers selling old modules, etc. at Origins either.

Gencon is where it's at.

Invincible Overlord wrote in Gencon 2013:

Thunderdave wrote in Gencon 2013:I was pretty underwhelmed by the auction hall - didn't arrive til Saturday afternoon... I guess I should have been there earlier?

How is Origins as a con from a collector's point of view, worthwhile to make the trip?

OH MY GOD NO DON'T DO IT!!!

Heh...

Many years ago, it was well known that Origins was the premier wargamer's auction, and Gencon was the premier RPG'ers auction. Now that Troll and Toad has stopped running Origins (well... they were kicked out more or less...), it has never been the same size of product, or quality.

Don't get me wrong, the silent auction and [professional] auction being run by Katie and Soren has been great for me as a seller. But if you're looking for a brown box or a Tsjocanth from the Detroit days, you won't find it there.

Also there aren't a lot of sellers selling old modules, etc. at Origins either.

Gencon is where it's at.

IO is on point, but as a war game and board game collector, I like Origins. Back in the day, it went toe-to-toe with GC, but as Andy has said, that has gone by the way. I really want to get down there next year, even just for a couple days. It has been more than a few years since I attended an Origins. There was a time when I actually preferred it to Gen Con. I know a great deal has changed, but still...

About Troll/Toad. When you run up all the attendees at the auction and basically deal in insider trading, you should get the boot. I can say without question Troll/Toad-less auctions were much better. Everyone knew they were using the auction at GC and Origins as their own private little pipeline for oop materials.

bbarsh wrote in Gencon 2013:!

IO is on point, but as a war game and board game collector, I like Origins. Back in the day, it went toe-to-toe with GC, but as Andy has said, that has gone by the way. I really want to get down there next year, even just for a couple days. It has been more than a few years since I attended an Origins. There was a time when I actually preferred it to Gen Con. I know a great deal has changed, but still...

About Troll/Toad. When you run up all the attendees at the auction and basically deal in insider trading, you should get the boot. I can say without question Troll/Toad-less auctions were much better. Everyone knew they were using the auction at GC and Origins as their own private little pipeline for oop materials.

I guess I've really softened my stance on Troll & Toad since I've become more of a seller than a buyer lately.

What I do like about them at the auction, is that they'll buy stuff no one else wants, which is great for the seller. And at the auction it's all about getting the seller their best price right?  

I used to have to bid against them at our local bi-annual auctions here in Chicago until a year or two ago, when they stopped coming. So I understand why they're here... a necessary evil perhaps...