Before Gencon
Another Year's Gen Con has come and gone and with it a lot of challenges and fun times so let's start gencon started in September of 2025 when I started putting on my cork board all the adventures that I wanted to run I first put the settings I put two adventures per setting on the board and then try to break it down into different styles of adventures.
Different styles so I wanted some exploration based I wanted some investigation adventures I wanted a dungeoncrawl I wanted some site-based to explore the setting. Some point crawls where the PCs went from one situation to another give you some choices along the way. As a software man, make this into a finite-state machine
I reached out to the GM crew about writing adventures for Gencon, and now-veteran writers Bill (Olympia), Brandon (Akhamet and Olympia)Chris (Ozaka), and Rebecca (Tarsyn) stepped up. Newcomer Matt-A stepped up for an Akhamet adventure. Every year, I plan to have all the "regular" adventures I am writing done by Memorial Day Weekend (last weekend of May), and the Specials done by the weekend after the 4th of July. This gives the GMs time to review, comment, and address any weird issues.
Jumping forward to Memorial Day, I got all the regular adventures done. Rebecca could not attend and continue her series of adventures. So I made the decision to have "only" a single Tarsyn adventure. I took one adventure from Brandon, since I had a great idea for it. His idea may get developed next year. I still had some work to do (formatting and cleaning) on others. All good news.
During June, I worked on the four specials I had to complete, getting the last one exactly at my limit. This included completely redoing my idea for the Sunday special for Akhamet.
So... Rebecca could not make it, so I had to remove her adventure from the program and expand my own Tarsyn adventure to every day slot. The GMs who were to be my roomies had some issues and could not make it. I was able to get JJ, to cover one extra slot and I took the other two. No last minute surprises, so I was happy.
Without a roommate, I took a chance and posted to a few local groups that I was looking for a roommate. And well... I was able to meet someone new: Charles! He got a good deal and agreed to come. It would be interesting, as my same-old stories would find a new pair of ears!
Miniatures
Most of the miniatures I painted and prepared for the convention.
Wednesday
Wednesday came... I had packed everything into the Elantra and waited for Charles. I didn't wait long and off we were. For the first time, I took the 109 to completely avoid Nashville and we made good time. A quick pit stop for gas and that would cover us for the whole weekend AND the return trip. I love my Elantra (Auntie is her name) as she is good on mileage and gets me where I need to go.
We went to the ICCC where I got in an hour-long line for GM badges. Meanwhile Charles got his tickets quicker than I, contrary to everything I normally knew.
We went to the room. I really love the JW. It is comfortable (not freezing, not to warm), and all the rooms have a fridge.
Continuing the tradition, we went to the Denny's where I ate a Grand Slam... At the hotel, I crashed out and snored off the meal. Funny as I asked for a roommate who didn't snore too badly... Funny indeed.
