GenCon 2023: "Of course. You're hip."

 

 The short data is:

• 87% average attendance rate at my Crawlspace events. 38 overall players.
  
• 100$ then 140$ PDF sales in two days. We'll see how online print and distributor sales pan out throughout the month.
  
•  Three possible new convention GMs and two old ones may be returning next year.
• Over half my players were return players and eight would-be players emailed me asking for an extra session.
  
• I only ran 2/3rds of my events.

Well, it was a remarkable couple of days. I was at the JW Marriot, which has become the normal place to be for smaller, somewhat unaffiliated game runners.  I say somewhat unaffiliated because there were a lot of Pathfinder players doing both impromptu as well as official events all over the place. Of course the guys from Tower of Gygax, David, from my Cthulhu Vs Rat Pack days being the name I remember, many of the other event runners had packed tables every time I peaked.

 

No easy Thursday

 

"Gotham City Major Crimes" game-wise, the cops and robbers dynamic worked like a dream. The cops worked together but with friction and drama, while the criminals betrayed each other at the drop of Saving Roll. A player got to be a super-villain from get go, and he was Kite Man, much giggling was had. One bell and whistle that I honed this year was the lucky player-character becoming a superhero/ villain by the end of the game, I basically got two, Plastic Boy (Plastic Man's son) and the Red Panda the Jewel Thief Extraordinaire.   I was lucky enough to have fellow DC enthusiasts, but we all liked different parts of the "DC Universe." We would diverge from the game and fill each other in on stories that the table was not familiar with.
Game mechanic was full of drama at just the right times. A Critical Fail helped the cops and criminals helped Kite Man get busted right away. Now because of the ASTRO Rule Red Bat tends to have a lot of multiple rolls of the dice. Ties though are rare. This session we had a tie and then we had A TIE. First was an Old School cop and criminal Gangster foot race. Two of the players, a cop and a robber at the table, dating in real life and as PCs, at the climax of things, rolled ASTRO eight times and then tied. In short, Plastic Boy got the bejeweled Penguin's Egg but the Red Panda got away. They were starting to suspect each other's secret identities at that point. The criminal Hacker then Critically Failed his roll to encrypt seized computers, and the New Guy cop broke it in a single try. Plastic Boy then knew the Red Panda's alias then. Kite Man escaped with kite made out of chair legs and a tablecloth.

 

 

  

 The evening's Crawlspace event started with me learning how to download apps onto my phone, without sending money to scammers, by forgetting my playing cards for the game. So for "The Dig II" with the help of James of Milwaukee, we used Random.Org's Randomizer. I also somehow only printed six Character Sheets when there were eleven people at the tables in front of me. Kal Luin, from PeryPubbers LARPs in previous years, played in this one as well. For all the technical difficulties, the players helped me turn the session into a raucous good time. Not a player left early as I killed them off one by one because our conclusion was that good. I forgot to get any pictures.

Friday was straight-up Crawlspace

Because of the real world, I could only do two out of the three Crawlspace: Florida Man saga. I was surprised at how many return players that I was getting this year. I don't want to name them because if I miss one I'll feel like a heel. The stories flowed nicely and the players alternately tried to "break the game" as well as make it interesting for everyone. They would laugh at me as I stopped everything to make notes for the good stuff that were feeding me during these playtests.

 

 

 

 

Friday Night/Saturday Morning Hand of Buddha 

Reality rudely broke up my night. I don't want to talk about it. Though the drama would finish around the time that I thought it would (9-10 in the morning), at four AM I knew I wouldn't have the energy to be run sessions at 1pm and then 5pm. Cancelled Saturday in an email and with messages on my phone.
I have to admit, having Saturday night to recover was awesome. I might just do only five, maybe six, games next year on Thursday and Friday. Maybe go to a party on Saturday or take a hot bath and do laundry, who knows?

 
Jealous much?

 

This goes out to, they know who they are. Overall, just not enough older, white males with beards, for sure. Probably only about 30,000 of the 55K that attended were over 40 years-old-- who could a WOTC-hating D&D fanboy talk to? Grognards and froggies of "true gaming" were online talking about GenCon and why they wouldn't come to it yet another year. They were on about stuff like there's a strip club within two miles, too many people in one place being akin to a gangbang, and, of course, the place was full of groomers looking to seduce children. When you say stuff like that, what do you think the real world thinks of you? 

When I spoke to Peryton over the weekend, I was recounting all the return players this year. She replied, "Oh course. You're hip."