Gen Con 06

Last weekend was Gencon Socal, the gaming convention in Anaheim. The rpg-sandiego.org (online forums dedicated to rpgs in San Diego) community and I had a lot of plans for this one.

I left Thursday morning only to get stuck in heavy traffic for an extra hour. I arrived at the Marriot next to the Convention Center (across the street from Disneyland) around 1:30. My friend Andy was running late and I waited to make sure he got to the game he was running just in case I had to let his players know he was going to be late.

After that I attended a World of Darkness storyteller panel (2pm - 4pm) by Will Will Hindmarch (Vampire the Requiem developer)but had to duck out early to play in my first game: "Iron Kingdoms, The Five Fingers." (4pm - 8pm) The game was set in a steampunk dark fantasy world and was a lot of fun. Players where cool and the GM did a good job except he read the dialogue straight from the module.

After the game I grabbed something to eat and a group of us went to watch "The Gamers 2" which was delightful and even better then the first one.

Friday morning we grabbed some breakfast at Cocos (American diner) and I then went to run my game "Blue Rose, Love of the Land." (10am - 2pm) I actually had two players for the game (unlike last year when I had none) and we had a good time.

After the game I finally got to go down to the dealers hall. I bought some dice for my D&D library kids and demoed some game. Wizards of the Coast (creators of D&D, Magic tG, D&D and Star Wars Miniatures) has the ultimate strategy for demoing games. Basically for each game you demo you they sign part of a card. For each signature you get to add +1 bonus to a d20 (die with 20 sides) and the higher you roll the better prize you got. I demoed 4 games and got a 23 so I got some miniature for my D&D library game.

After hanging out in the dealer room for awhile I met up with my group to play True Dungeon (6:15pm-7:40pm). This is my fourth year and I was just going to have a link to a past blog entry describing True Dungeon and realized I never described in these pages so it is described in the next blog post.

A new member to True Dungeon was a girl who I gamed with named Liz who was amazing at the game. She was the thief (see TD description) and was able to solve the thief puzzles with no problem. As a matter of fact she was able to solve them while talking and solving room puzzles (the egg problem).

After TD we grabbed something to eat at the fancy steak house in the hotel and then hung out in the bar for awhile.

Saturday morning was a quick breakfast and then I went to my game: Mage the Awakening (10am - 2pm) which was run by the same group who ran the Werewolf game I played in two years ago. This was the worst game of the weekend as it was slow and the players were a little wierd. However, I got to learn the game better and will probably use it in the future.

I then hung out in the dealers hall until 4pm and met with Jonathan to see the publish your game panel(4pm - 5:30pm). Things got a little wonky. The big plan was for Saturday night when my friends Andy and True Dungeon Liz rented a large suite. There plan was that we get the rooms right next to the suite. Marriote did not originally put us next to the suite so on Saturday we had to change rooms. Andy and Liz had no problems changing over but my roommate (also named Andy) and I did. I asked three times throughout the day if our room was ready and they didn't say it was until 6pm when we changed rooms.

After arriving in our room a bunch of us met in the suite. We decided to head out for dinner and ended up walking quite a ways only to end up at Cocos when everything else was booked for 45min. After dinner we headed back and the party started. There was plenty of booze and craziness which includes two guys passing out and the arrival of the guy who did Dungeon Majesty, a program about gaming with hot girls (who were also there).

At around 2 in the morning one of my friends, Albert, appears with a short girl and says there is a problem. My roommate Andy and I check it out and apparently they had double booked us in her room. Andy and I went down to the clerk and fixed things up.

Sunday morning Andy and I headed down to Cocos and got something to eat and then hung out in the dealers room talking with Jared Sorenson and John Wick (two independant game developers). I then headed to a Shadowrun game (12-3:30pm) which was probably my favorite game of the weekend. At 3:30 I headed out only to discover I had a cold.

So far, best con yet. Can't wait until next year which will be in LA and probably have more video games due to E3 being canceled.