View From the Bushes

Before I get to the report on Saturday at GenCon, I'd like to address the whole issue of forgetting the anniversary. In my defense, I did remember the anniversary long in advance and had already remarked on the unfortunate inevitability of leaving on the very day it fell. Not only that, but I had in fact arranged to go to a Gilbert and Sullivan musical (HMS Pinafore) the Saturday before, which my wife eventually decided to skip because she wasn't feeling well. So yes, I did forget on the actual day, but I wasn't a complete thoughtless idiot, just mostly. In any case, on to a blow-by-blow of Saturday.

The day started off with Wil running a session of the new (soon to be published) Midnight adventure. When I say the day started off, we met at a quarter to eleven, but when you're at the con that is pretty much first thing in the morning. The adventure was a ton of fun, but even better was the fact that I got to meet a bunch of people from Against the Shadow, who were all very, very cool. Of course, by Saturday a certain degree of panic has set in. Everyone comes to the convention with a list of priorities. I imagine that my list was shorter than some, but probably longer than average. One of those priorities was to get pictures for our DireKobold GenCon archives. As of Saturday we were doing okay but not great, but I had a brillant plan to reverse all that. I had a camcorder with me and my idea was to go to the costume contest film that in its entirety and then get someone to make stills of everything. So I skipped out of the Midnight game early and headed towards the contest, only to find that the line to get in was about four people wide and streched for a good 200 yards (or more). At which point I abandoned that plan....

I returned, finished up the adventure and then headed out to dinner for Bree's birthday (Wil Upchurch's SO), but not before dropping $100 on my new-found minature addiction. We had about an hour wait, not merely because there were 11 of us, but also because there was a football game that night and so everywhere was packed. I was actually surprised that the football game didn't have a bigger impact on the con, considering that the stadium is connected to the convention center. Afterwards, I finally got a chance to open up my minatures. I was delighted to discover that I had one of the coveted huge red dragon minatures. Which sort of came in handy shortly thereafter when we invaded the fire temple as part of the Return to the Temple of Elemental Evil and had to fight a Red Dragon as soon as we entered. Afterwards was the 2 am game of Puerto Rico I mentioned earlier in the report. Overall, a pretty satisfying day.

Carpe Diem Quam Minimum Credula Postero
Ross