Gencon 2016 AAR

Wednesday

Most of the day was spent at work, focusing on getting my release completed in time. Lucky for me, I have been cramming like crazy and from 4 to 5, I did nothing really: drank coffee, talked to my peers, and watched CNN (my office has it on a loop all the time).

Five o’clock and I drove on home, happy to be done and that I left without any bug to do (I was waiting on some to be tested, but no on-going work). Once at home, I packed what I had left to pack: some food, Florent’s stuff, some of my own junk pre-packed junk and the jitters.

This year again, my good friend Florent came over from Paris to see us with the two of us driving up to Indianapolis together. All along the road that took us up from Tennessee, through Kentucky and into Indiana. We talked about gaming mostly, about the situation in Paris, in Tennessee, here there and everywhere. I dropped him at his hotel in downtown Indy and headed to my own off outside the beltway.

Thursday

Got up early. Showered. And drove back to Indy. I parked under the Hyatt, as I did last year, found my game room tucked all the way in the back before getting my badge and convention paperwork.

I will admit to feeling quite nervous as this would be my first running of an adventure in/for 5e. I was so worried no one would show up.

But I worried for nothing. Everyone showed up and had a great time: the adventure flowed very well in 5e. Ka-ching! JOY!

My afternoon had no tickets and no one showed up. Oh well, I took the time to report my game and visited the dealer hall. I did not spend as much time there and actually walked around the place, making sure I knew where I would have to go in the coming slots.

Back to my table for 7pm, it was time to run Randy’s excellent “Fate of Zealots”. I know he had worries about the adventure he is a writer after all. I will admit I had some myself, but along different lines: worries about run time, about challenge, about DC numbers. However, I was very confident in one thing: it is a solid adventure. The choices are interesting and well-defined, making it a solid entry. It is particularly good for those who have either played the previous Onero adventures or those who own the Onero book. I am trying to swindle Randy into writing more stuff in the City of Sins…

Friday

Again, my first slot was running Saggakar using 5e. Again, the results and feedback were extremely positive. I will admit to some extremely… “Creative” solutions which made me chuckled and they chose of their own free will.

My afternoon was without sign ups, so I took the opportunity to head upstairs to the Rokugan room and played one of the adventures with my newly created Crab bushi. He was dumb, grumpy, rude, and wanted to hit things with his tetsubo. The adventure was clearly over his head so he walked around waiting for something to hit. He was disappointed. I will share my thoughts about this Rokugan thing in a later post. I had a good time is all I will say here.

The evening was back to more Pathfinder. The table had Daniel-M, with who we ruled over Tusmit back in the days. Yes it is now over a decade since I left Tusmit… He and I kept in touch through social media, but really it was great to catch up with him in person. The table created some interesting solutions to the problem at hand.

Saturday

This was my play-day. I took the opportunity to play the L5R finale, still with Hida (now Kobe) Kenji. Playing someone who is a major antisocial character (5 points) and obtuse (3 points) during a LARP was a challenge I thoroughly enjoyed. That I had not shaved in 3 days helped me look the part.

So Kenji who is a complete thug and brute is fascinated by origami, but like his player, has no talent for it. I spent time making some origami then showed it to people. Eventually the Jade Champion turned it into a minor nemuranai I went and showed everyone. It was a fun event, one I preferred over the Arcanis event, because of the many threads going on and the more active intervention of the NPCs.

In the afternoon, I attended the battle interactive part and now I finally got to use my tetsubo. Chris-H who had run me through a number of HoR3 adventures called me to his table and I gladly joined him. The first go-around resulted in my death and the defeat of my table. Lucky for us there was a “reset point” and we then kicked a lot of butts. The tetsubo smashed things left and right, it was great. We fought the battle of Oblivion’s Gate again. The table was very good and we were very good and we each took it in the face a few times, but dished it together. I can claim that I scored the final hit on the shadow dragon with my tetsubo. Splat. We win!

I then went and played an adventure of Adventure League, playing Baldman Game’s convention-only material. Seems there was a little muster snafu and we ended up being only 3 of us. Well things went as you’d expect, as our GM did not adapt much and we got our butts kik-didley-icked. The GM was good, but he needed to learn to scale for three players vs. six or seven. Oh well.

Sunday

Final day of the con! My voice had held thus far. I had but one game to run: the Saggakar special, Dreams of Dust. There was a lot of interesting lore in there, most of which I hope Chad got. I had to keep him from strangling that young kid sitting next to me… But otherwise things went well.

Then long drive home, and sleep.

Gencon 2016 was over. Time to start looking at 2017…