Hey folks, I wanted to post a few random awesome moments, just because. Please chip in. Here's my first:

It was unequivocally awesome for me to see Dalys (Michael S. and Kat Miller's daughter) and Tovey (Meg and Vincent Baker's youngest son) at the booth regularly, and have them be at the convention with the whole cray-zee crowd of game designers. It reinforced a sense of family, of mutual respect, and of the bright, bright future we have ahead of us. Dalys is so excited about running her dad's game next year, it gave me goosebumps. Tovey was just a glowing bundle of joy with a story-filled childhood of warmth and fun ahead of him.

I felt blessed to meet them both at the time we all come together to celebrate each other's work and play.

It was awesome for me when I was talking to a guy who came to the booth, and I saw he had a white sticker (that was the "I bought stuff" sticker). I said "So you're back! Anything else I can help you find?" and he said "Not really. I just wanted to browse some more - this is my favorite booth here."

I felt like we were doing something right.

Seeing the first-timers embrace the spirit of the Forge booth:  talking to customers about all the games, helping out with the demos, and taking responsibility for the welfare of the booth including the more awkward jobs like breaking up "walls" of people congregating around the booth.  Everyone was great and the booth was hopping most of the time (there always seemed to be a short lull midday).  And yeah I'm going to point at two of them -- Kevin and Nathan -- for their excellent presence in the browse area of the booth. 

Julie

Daily highlights:

Wednesday: We got there early enough this year!!! Watching the booth take shape was so cool, as books got unpacked and I met people I'd only seen on-line. And the demo workshop was great.

Thursday: I got to do a full game of 1001 Nights with Paul Tevis, Ben Lehman, and a couple who had bought my game earlier in the day. Paul got to play a talking camel, and it was awesome.

Friday: Nathan dropped extra-gem-like dice in my demo kit. It was totally cool how much we like each other's games.

Saturday: Watching Vincent demo Mechaton to everyone, especially to kids. And playing Death's Door *at LAST*, and it being even more awesome than I expected, which was a lot. Some of the costumes were amazing - I took some really cool pictures. I played my first ever game of Jungle Speed, and would have won if I hadn't been holding someone else's fussy baby and playing one-handed.

Sunday: I played carry.a game about war, which ROCKED!!I loved hanging out with Jasper about musicals after hours.

The newbie pod-cast with Judd and Jeff was a total love-fest, plus way fun, but I can't remember which day it was. Tovey was generally his laid-back and happy self, except when he got tired/hungry. And he learned to crawl at GenCon!

Yay for Tovey!

I was doing my whole "Watch for people who focus their body language into the booth thing" when this guy makes a bee-line right up to the edge of the booth and stands there with his whole body oriented straight toward it.  I like to think that I was there within five seconds of this spectacular display of raw interest, and I can't imagine it was more than ten.  We had the following conversation:

Me:  Can I set you up to play a game with someone?
Him:  No.  You wrote one of these games?
Me:  Yes, I wrote Capes (gesture to poster)
Him:  Tell me about it.

So I gave a pitch, about what excited me about the game.  He asked questions about how it fulfilled the promise of that excitement, and I sketched in a few rules points.  I said "I'd be very happy to demo it for you, and you can see all of this in action."  "No," he says.  "Do you have a card?"

I excuse myself for a moment to grab an info-card from the register (dammit!  should have had them on my person!) and come back.  We exchange cards, with me always being conscious of the Japanese overtones of such ritual.  I glance down at his card.  My heart doesn't skip a beat, it simply stops.

"Oh my god," I say ... not squealing, but just a deadpan recognition that those three words must be said at this time.  "You're Robin Laws."

He agrees that, yes, that's who he is, bids me good day and goes off to check out the next booth.

This thread, of Robin's creation, is what convinced me that salesmanship was a skill worth plowing energy and thought into.  I am thrilled to have been able to give a pitch to him.  I am eternally grateful that I did not look at his badge before the pitch.

My totally awesome moment of the con came when I was walking back to the hotel on Friday afternoon.  The reason I was doing that is totally gone from my mind.

I'm standing waiting for the light to change between the convention center and the mall, and from off to my left I hear "James?  James!"  and it's one of the guys who played Death's Door for at Forge Midwest (I'll let him chime in if he wants to be non-anonymous; I know he's active on the forge).  We chat for a little bit of identity confirmation and "this is my friend" and that kind of jazz, and then he says:

"I signed my will last week."

Then we talked a bit more, and talked to his friend about the game, and he said something about wanting to play Death's Door with his parents, but I gotta be honest, the rest of that conversation was kind of a blur.

thank you.

James

Thoughts about GenCon... there are so damn many...

Tovey kicked ass!  He and I had fun for a few minutes sucking on our fingers and making strange noises at each other.  Kids are *the* awesome.

Games on Demand kicked ass!  I was there all the time.  I ran Capes, Dogs in the Vineyard, and Great Ork Gods (twice).  I played Universalis, Dogs in the Vineyard, and With Great Power.I don't know what the official viewpoint is on the GoD tables (I hope Kat will post something about it) but my take was that it was wildly successful.

Afraid kicked ass!... even late on Saturday night when my mind was fried.

Jungle Speed kicked ass!  It also kicked my ass!  Eric Minton is wicked fast on the All Grab.  Tony is pretty silly and from what I hear, I don't even want to sit at the same table with Luke.

This may sound odd, but my highlight was basking in the glow named Tovey. It was my first real trip away from my own 8-month-old. Every time I saw his smiling face, I was both giddy and homesick at the same time.

As far as gaming goes, I got in 3 demos: Shock:, Mortal Coil, and Mob Justice. All three were superb: tight, focused, grabbing. I don't think it's any surprise that those were the 3 books I bought at the con. I suspect that short of, say, WotC and its ilk, the Forge runs the most professional demos in the hall.

My only real regret is that I didn't get a chance to demo my own Passages after hours. I feel like a missed a significant feedback opportunity.

For me, this time, it was basically entirely the people.  I barely played anything, though what I played I mostly had fun with.  I also got my ass moving on a game, since another one had been produced that was similar.  I wrote the first draft of the rules on a notepad during the drive home, and will probably have something playtestable relatively soon (though I will have to be there because I probably won't have the time to write it all out).

Two words: Flaming Taft!

Getting repeatedly punched in the face by Tovey! he's a great kid, full of curiosity about everything around him.

Iain running 5 Mob Justice demos back to back. He rocked conspicuously.

Joes attempt to distract the police by getting them to dance during the Mortal Coil game: "Here's my new song 'Rockin' Bacon, Let's Get Shakin''!"

Hearing gales of laughter from the Best Friends demos.

Clinton getting really hyped about Cold City.

Alexander and his breathing exercises.

And so many more.

Cheers
Malc

* Meeting so many people; reconnecting with those I've met before.  Specifically sitting next to Joe on the plane ride out - running into a Forge guy before I even made it to Indianapolis was great.

* The Breaking the Ice game between my country singer and a were-rat.  Our first date went horribly, but after that we were on a roll, and I know they'd have made it together, those crazy kids.

* Universalis in the GoD area: a lawyer/cop drama on a mining asteroid in deep space!

*playing Purge in WGP and going invisible from the sheer amount of energy I was using

*Getting to playtest my new game, Ensemble.  Running Fastlane with Jason Morningstar.  And, in the most unexpected moment of the con for me, running Dogs at the GoD table.

* Go Play

* TonyLB and everyone doing the rpg-theory-porn thing.  "If you're thinking about cinematography, you're not jacking off."

And finally:  Actually having people come up to ME and say hello, 'cause they'd known my name and wanted to meet me.  That's never happened to me before, and it was awesome.

Guy pulling out a copy of Best Friends for some light reading while waiting for his flight home to Dallas at Indy Airport on the Monday. That was weird. I didn't see him at first but the frantic eyebrow raising and nodding from Malc and Iain soon had me noticing him.

He started reading Mortal Coil once he was done with BF.

Gregor wrote:
I didn't see him at first but the frantic eyebrow raising and nodding from Malc and Iain soon had me noticing him.

Hottest moments that leap to mind:

• Playing Cold City with Rob, Malcolm, Tim WK, and Paula & Steve Dempsey. That was some gnarly shit and I'm very happy to have experienced it with you guys.

• Playing Shock: with Rob and Judd. You know, many of my all-time favorite gaming moments are with you two. Issues: Innocence and Suicide. Shock: Immortality. We had to draw some pretty weird moral lines there.

• Playing Mortal Coil with Brennan, Remi, Paul (sorry I didn't get to play Shock: with you, man!), Steve D, and Judd. Flaming Taft was the most magical episode of Behind the Music imaginable. That game was fuckin' funny.

Yeah, my best moments were games that I played with people I like, or got to liking right quick. No big surprise there.

Indeed, Joshua, most of my fun at the con involved you, too.  From my favorite game of the con (Shock) to boneless wings and trash-talking people, to that horribly upsetting wonderful game of Cold City, to working on my game (no status minigame anymore, by the way).  I hope you can get down to Dreamation so we can continue the legacy.

RobNJ wrote:
Indeed, Joshua, most of my fun at the con involved you, too.  From my favorite game of the con (Shock) to boneless wings and trash-talking people, to that horribly upsetting wonderful game of Cold City, to working on my game (no status minigame anymore, by the way).  I hope you can get down to Dreamation so we can continue the legacy.

I don't have moments, I have People of Awesome.

* Recharging the Clinton battery. Man, I miss that guy so bad. And his impromptu demo of the new Princes' Kingdom system thing on Sunday just floored me. Clinton is making the world a better place.

* Vincent, after hearing only part of our Galactic playtest, says two sentences and we are all enlightened. You know in Mononoke when the Elk-creature walks and flowers bloom wherever it steps? Yeah, that's Vincent.

* Emily Care Boss. She made me feel like I wasn't a newbie visiting a strange land, but a loved family member returning home. Also, Shooting the Moon is my pick of the con. It is friggin' brilliant.

* Meg Baker. Is it okay for me to adopt an awesome mother-figure slash kickass game designer? Because I did.

* Alexander. ALEXANDER! You are the coolest person on Earth, and I say that without a trace of hyperbole. I'm so glad we got to game together, even if it was brief. Your plea to your god in the Agon game was lovely.

* Jonathan Walton gushing about my game. I practically wrote it as a love letter to one of his old designs, so this was basically all I needed for a happy GenCon. I still feel like a rockstar. Plus! Jonathan is a great guy! I hope he lands in my neighborhood for grad school.

* Matt Wilson and his quiet awesomeness. Another guy I miss very very badly. Our game of Galactic (with Emily and Snyder) was definitely a high point of the con for me.

* Meeting all the Forgies and confirming that yes, you are all wonderful, amazing, inspiring people. I'm looking at you Morningstar, Remi, Chris, Judd, Jeff, Mike, Gregor, Luke, Snyder, Brennan, Ron, Alexander, Shreyas, Selene, Malcolm, Tim, Dro, Thor, Keith, James, Dave, John, Jared, Jye, Jake, Reagan, Ralph, Fred, Rob, Thomas, Jason, Joe, Joshua, Carrie... and all the rest I might be forgetting. I feel so honored to be among you.

Playing The Prince's Kingdom with Clinton, Meg, Ben and Emily.

Hearing people get stoked over each other's games. Hearing Clinton get mad excited over Hero Banner, for example.
You could hear his voice from a full booth over: "You make this hard choice, then you DIE!"

Someone told me that Perfect was "the first game I have ever bought because I liked the setting and content."

Having Polaris pitched to me.
Playing was fun too... but for some reason just having the game pitched had a real impact.
No idea why.

John wrote:
* Meeting all the Forgies and confirming that yes, you are all wonderful, amazing, inspiring people. I'm looking at you Morningstar, Remi, Chris, Judd, ... Jye, ....

The whole con for me was a giant rolling ball of awesomeness.

Well once I got my badge sorted anyway...

Joshua wrote:
• Playing Cold City with Rob, Malcolm, Tim WK, and Paula & Steve Dempsey. That was some gnarly shit and I'm very happy to have experienced it with you guys.

I dunno. When someone who may want to remain nameless pointed out that we were ending demos too soon with a full resolution, but said it as "you're jerking people to a climax too fast", that certainly made my day.

Greg Porter
BTRC

Another thing I had to chip in at this late date is I absolutely loved the energy and diversity at the booth. I'm mostly tied to a single rpg system (EABA) and can't really experiment too much with dedicated system-gameworld synergy like many of the games I saw and/or own (MLwM, Dogs, Polaris, Perfect, Mountain Witch, Best Friends, etc.,etc and some more etc.), but there's a lot of great inspiration to be had from just being there, and I'm currently using it on an idea that's been gnawing at my brain ever since about 11pm on Sunday on the way home.

And using that to reference a different thread, the post-Bambi car repair cost was minimal (replacing a few sheared exhaust bolts). However, the shop would not touch the bottom of the car until it had been professionally steam cleaned, which was a few hundred bucks. In addition, they took off all the wheels to steam Bambi bits out of the brake rotors. Or as Ron said, "eeewwww".

Greg Porter
BTRC

btrc wrote:
I dunno. When someone who may want to remain nameless pointed out that we were ending demos too soon with a full resolution, but said it as "you're jerking people to a climax too fast", that certainly made my day.

Watching a 7th Sea fan, in full costume come up to meet John Wick. Listening to John explain every detail of the guy's costume. Then watch the fan scurry off, and come back with three of his friends, all in full 7th Sea costume.

I can see why John misses big games.

Nev wrote:

btrc wrote:
I dunno. When someone who may want to remain nameless pointed out that we were ending demos too soon with a full resolution, but said it as "you're jerking people to a climax too fast", that certainly made my day.

Better/worse:  "Judd's sucked everyone off FOR his interviews."

That was my bad.  The 30 minutes of riffing on it thereafter was only partly my bad.
Almost as good as wondering why there were so few Forgizens in the Embassy lobby one night and getting the reply, "Oh, Judd's sucked everyone off doing interviews in one of the rooms somewhere".

D.

About half way through one of my Covenant demos, Tony jumps up and says "That's it! I am soooo stealing that! That's the mechanic I was looking for! I'll buy your game just for that!"

That was really awesome.

That and finally meeting all you folks.

-Matt