Gen Con: Between 8 and 12 at the Embassy Suites

[Judd]

I'm shocked no one has posted this yet.

If you could put on a blindfold and throw a dart; you'd hit a table of people playing Inspectres, two forum regulars talking shit face to face and digging just meeting another member of their community, someone playtesting their game or just someone jotting down notes on their next game or someone running their own published game for a new group.

This is what game club nights should look like.

It was the Forge forum LIVE.

It was the Forge's rockin' demo's writ large.

It was my favorite part of Gen Con.

I really was digging the community vibe.

I managed to:

Played Ron's Dr. Chaos.

Watched my friends play Inspectres (I had taken a nap and missed a night) and caught the tail-end of Keith running a blood opera of a Conspiracy of Shadows one-shot.

Played Sorcerer, setting made from the ground up, with Ron running, shared characters with some things working and some things not.

Sat in as Ron talked about what he thought was coming down the tracks.

I wish I had a chance to play Polaris with Ben and A-State with the Scottish crew, my only real regrets.

[Clinton R. Nixon]

Yeah, holy shit, the Embassy Suites. We're going to have some interesting Actual Play reports soon. I:

- Ran a 7-person game of InSpectres, featuring Emeril Lagasse as an NPC. I win an awesome point: Jared's wife was in the game, and she'd never played her husband's own game before. Meg Baker and other subversives were in this game wit' me.

- Ran an awesome game of The Shadow of Yesterday. We fleshed out a new culture in the game, the horselords of Oran and played out their rituals for making boys into men. This was some raw action coolness.

- Played in one of the most unsettling, yet satisfying, games of Dogs in the Vineyard I could imagine, run by Vincent.

[Jared A. Sorensen]

It was fun seeing everyone again. I got to watch a great InSpectres game, played JUNGLE SPEED (2x fun when completely fucked on sleep deprivation) and played a fey barbarian with some woman issues (which is to say, myself). Hah!

The Embassy Sweets (the name I've given to anyone playing there next year) was an awesome meeting/gaming place. If an RPG session should ever end without another starting, I think the ghosts will return and kill everyone sleeping in the hotel. Or maybe that's something else and I'm just confused.

Also: just so it's perfectly clear...I hate Andy K. the most. Ripoff indeed!

[Ron Edwards]

My Embassy Suites list goes like this.

Thursday night: Doctor Chaos playtesting, very useful, I'm quite happy with the "first half" of the arc of the game's function now

Friday night: Barbaren - that's right, I said Barbaren, little girly-boy!!

Saturday night: raw, unadulterated, core-book Sorcerer (and my take on the experience differs from Judd's)

Sunday night: The Shab-al-Hiri Roach (my second time with this outstanding game)

What I'm sorry not to have played: Lacuna, FH8, and Paul's new funky thing.

Also, someone needs to remind me what we played on Wednesday night; my brain is melting just trying to find the "e" key right now.

Best,
Ron

[drozdal]

My GenCon 2005 Embassy Suites experience rolls like this:

Thursday night: Shadow of Yesterday (Revised) - great game with some setting and culture creation on the side. Thanx Clinton - that was really good (heroquestlike if i may say) experience.

Friday night: Awesome game of Conspiracy of (Yesterday Burning) Shadows ran by the man Keith himself. AP will follow son (so I heard from Thor) - that game kicked some serious ass. Destiny pool is da shiznit!

Saturday night: Nine Worlds with Matt Snyder - Hot Mars on Sun action! (I've heard that Matt will post AP too).

Sunday night: Citadels and Jungle Speed with many, many great people.

Sorry Ron, but as You know, we were insanely busy on sunday and I haven't got a chance to play in Your S&S demo :( Maybe next year.

[Luke]

i ran a cool little BW game on Thursday night, but aside from that, I was working while y'all were slacking. I'm glad we found a little niche to hide in and play games, though. By the end of the con, the rumors were starting to leak out that we were gaming hardcore. (Un)Fortunately? No one could find us.

Anyway, I have to admit, I like the jawin' with my peers after hours more than playing at Gencon. I wish I could do both, but I get to see you all so infrequently, I crave the exchange of ideas and the bonding, more than the rp.

love to all,
-L

[Eric Provost]

Lisa and I got the lowdown on the afterhours gaming Friday afternoon and had to leave Indy on Sunday afternoon so we were able to get in two nights of groovy Forgite gaming.

Friday;  I got to run tMW for Tim and Lisa and a whole bunch of really cool guys who's names I just can't remember. 

Saturday;  We were supposed to finish the tMW story but most of the crew ran late at dinner so Lisa and I jumped on board for Sorcerer with Ron.

Oh!  I nearly forgot to include the 20-min demo that Tony gave us for Capes on Friday night.  He's got our vote for best demo of the entire Con. 

We also missed out on Malcom's A|State demo.  Very sad.  On the other hand, we did get to chat it up with him a bit and just loved hanging out with him.

Next year's plan includes us saving up a bit more so we can afford to shell out for a room at the Suites so we can stay as late as there are Forgites hanging about.  This time around we had to depend on the hillbilly shuttle bus driver to get us to our bed and back.  Made us nervous to stay too late.  We kinda imagined him racked out in front of the hotel after midnight, a limp hand resting comfortably on an empty jug labled 'xxx'.

-Eric

[Paul Czege]

The Paul Czege 2005 Embassy Suites Experience:

Wednesday, The Diana Jones Award Ceremony. (You were there too Ron. Did you game afterwards?)

Thursday, Under the Bed, with Ben, Danielle, Vincent, and...Eric (I think. Correct me if I'm wrong. Damn, I met so many people at GenCon this year.)

Friday, playtest of my in-development horror game with Vincent, Matt Wilson, and Greg Stolze. (What a great group for a first playtest of this particular game. Their disparate gaming sensibilities really pulled the game apart for me in the post game conversation.)

Saturday, chilled at the Embassy Suites bar with Ed Heil, Gordon, and Tim "O-Yanma" Kleinert.

What I'm sorry I missed:

Keith's CoS game on Friday. Danielle described later some of what she'd overheard while gaming near the CoS group, and damn what an awesomely great sounding game.

Paul

[Lisa Provost]

Oh yeah, our time at the Embassy Suites was wonderful! 

Friday night, the demo that Tony LB gave us of Capes was fantastic!  In my opinion, his had to be the best demo hands down, we had all weekend!  "Justice will always lead... to Victory!"  I still keep cracking up when I think of it!  (I'll be posting pics to my blog just as soon as I can get a chance today.)  And then we had the game of tMW.  I can't remember the names of two of the guys playing but what fun!  It was Tim, Dave, Eric, those two guys (sorry guys!) and myself.  I wish we could have finished it.

Saturday night, since we missed everyone to finish tMW, we hooked up with Ron and played some Sorcerer.  What a blast!  I really, really enjoyed the six of us playing only two PCs.  A wonderful time! 

I'm totally bummed that I missed out on Malcom's A|State demo but I'm glad I got him to sign my copy and got a pic of him in a kilt. 

I'm already looking at hotels for us next year so that we are close to the convention center.  Like Eric said, our shuttle drivers left much to be desired.  Between the Trailer Park Princess and the Hillbilly Hubby... I'm not sure I'll be all that keen on staying at the EconoLodge again next year. 

[Thor Olavsrud]

My GenCon 2005 Embassy Suites experience rolls like this:

Thursday night: Shadow of Yesterday (Revised) - great game with some setting and culture creation on the side. Thanx Clinton - that was really good (heroquestlike if i may say) experience.

Friday night: Awesome game of Conspiracy of (Yesterday Burning) Shadows ran by the man Keith himself. AP will follow son (so I heard from Thor) - that game kicked some serious ass. Destiny pool is da shiznit!

Saturday night: Nine Worlds with Matt Snyder - Hot Mars on Sun action! (I've heard that Matt will post AP too).

Sunday night: Citadels and Jungle Speed with many, many great people.

My experience mirrored Dro's. Lots and lots of awesome gaming. Keith's game stood out for me, in part due to the fact that it is the game I have the least experience with, though I own the first edition. CoS Revised is seriously hot, and the Destiny Pool mechanic is a winner. At the end of about 2 hours worth of play I felt like we'd generated a really compelling tragedy with overtones of Othello.

Both the Clinton's Shadow of Yesterday game and Matt's Nine Worlds game were fantastic as well. The play was fun in both, but it was the collaborative creation process that we went through for both that really stood out. After half an hour to 45 minutes going around the table riffing off each other we had some awesome conflict/situation/setting going on. Time pressure (having to get up early the next morning in both cases) kept us from mining all the material we'd created, but damn I would have loved to spend five or six sessions (or more) really exploring.

[Keith Senkowski]

My GenCon Embassy Suites rawked too.  best part of the whole fucking con.

Thursday I became a man in Clinton's Shadow of Yesterday game.

Friday I sat back and watched 6 men play out a tragedy in Conspiracy of Shadows.

Saturday I played a sleepy James Bond who acted a bit more like Johnny English in Nine Worlds.

Sunday I bowed before the monsters of RAWK, Iron Maiden, while playing Citadels and Jungle Speed.

Keith

[Andrew Cooper]

I was there for two nights.  I don't even really recall which two.

First, I played BW with Luke, Ralph, and... um, I can't remember the other guy's name.  Sorry man.  Luke was an excellent GM and the other two players were great.  Somehow, there just seemed to be too much to the BW rules to really digest it all in a short 2 hour session.  I never really got past trying to figure out how the rules worked so I could play without really thinking about them.  Still, the players (GM included) made the game enjoyable and I had fun.

Second, I played a 4 hour session of Capes with Tony, Andrew Morris and 3 other players who had never played before.  This was the best game of the convention for me.  The coolest part was the young lady who was very shy and didn't think she could play a game like Capes because of the spotlight time it required.  The turn around came when she, playing The Iron Brain (a villain), won the Conflict "Who is the best hero?".  Sitting there with a straight face, she narrated, "After mentally reviewing all his memories and calculating all the facts with mechanical precision, The Iron Brain concluded that the best hero was....   a dead hero."  We all just died laughing.  From that point on she was out of her shell.  Beautiful (yet amusing) moment.

We have *got* to do the Embassy Suites thing again next year.

[Ben Lehman]

This is my hitlist, just in brief.

Thursday: Under the Bed with Paul, Danielle, Eric Finley and Vincent.  An emotionally intense game, Under the Bed with all the gloves off.  This game isn't horror, people.  It's stone-cold realism, and that's just so much worse.

Friday: BARBAREN! with Ron, Julie, Jasper, Emily, Jared and a couple of spectators.  Frank, we had a good time, but we have a ton of feedback for you.

Saturday: Blood-pact Dogs.  I had fun at this game, then it went head-smashy, but it's going to inform my play and design for a couple of years, I think.

Sunday: PTA with Joshua, Allan, Emily and Eric Finley, also starring Star and Meg.  Just an incredible game.  Emily: post up your scene outline in actual play.  I can't do it justice.

The after-hours gaming at GenCon is the bomb.  Judd is right.  It's like hanging out with the great big functional RPG club I wish I had before.  Shame we only get in one meeting a year, but whaddayagonnado?

yrs--
--Ben

[Meguey]

I got to stay at Embassy Suites, which made afterhours gaming an option for me. Yay! This was a fantastic happy coincidence for me. I got to hang out with amazing people, and I got to play the following;

Thursday: Ran Primetime Adventures for Star, Andrew Morris, Eric Minton, and Dave, with Joshua as fan-base occasionally. Series title: Hospital at the End of the Universe: Hinky Hospital Go!, an anime soap-opera. Actual play to follow in the proper thread, probably tomorrow.

Friday: Had a great conversation with Clinton about life etc. Played InSpectres (thanks Clinton!) with Becca (scoop!), David, Tod (?). Jeff, Jay-Jay, and Brian. I have great Actual Play notes for this, see above about posting them. Enough for now to say it was great, and again with the giant rats.Hung out with Gregor and co talking about gaming culture and stuff.

Saturday: Played Bacchanal with Tom Russel et al. Again with th Actual play note. Had a great conversation with Star, Eric, and others about 'why Americans don't just move to Canada' and also about the ethinic break-down among ES and ConCenter staff (cleaning, serving, trash) vs. the same among Con-goers.Hung out with Joshua, Vincent, Gregor, Morgue, Emily and others and talked about meaningful social connection and stuff. 

Sunday: Taught the great new card game Murray Hula!, invented by Vincent's two youngest siblings, to Julie, Ralph, and Iain (thus passing new games to other contries!). Checked in regularly with the PTA game Joshua ran for Emily, Ben, Alan, Star, and Eric. Hung out with Jasper and others briefly about gaming sociology and psychology, then giggled a whole heck of a lot with Alan, Joshua, Vincent and Drew. We were very, very tired and very, very silly.

I also got to eat breakfast (!) each morning with great people, particularly Ralph. I saw a couple other hotels, and ES seems the hands-down best one for the afterhours play/hang-out. Thanks to all; it was joy to meet you.

[Bankuei]

Hi,

Thursday night I got to try out Ron's Dr. Chaos, and Friday night I got to play some HQ with Mike Holmes, and tried a quick demo of Kayfabe (which was a lot more fun than I had expected).  Next year, I'll plan for more than two days, to get some more gaming in, though, like Luke, I did enjoy just getting to know folks.

Chris