Gen Con 09 Day 2

Friday, August 17th, 2009

SHOPPING! Now, you would think that a gaming convention wouldn’t necessarily have a lot to offer someone of the female persuasion, as a general rule, there are far fewer girl gamers. However, (1) the girl gamers that are out there, such as myself, like all females, do like to shop and (2) the number of female gamers has increased recently, mostly because it is becoming cool to be a nerd…especially a nerd in a scanty costume that embodies what so many male gamers only see in their guidebooks.

I swear, Gen Con is like a great big ego boost that lasts a good year…

The general plan (as is usual with Friday at Gen Con) is to start at one end of the Hall and just go up and down the isles. This is of course for shopping purposes, but also to scope out what (if any) free swag is being offered by people who want you to come play their game. This can take anywhere from just a few hours to the entire day depending on what is being offered and any distractions that might pop up (one year it was the girl who was the model for Mara Jade).
But I digress. This year started with hanging out in the front of the crowd to get into the exhibitor hall as it was imperative for us to get our hands on one of the last 30 copies of the Pegasus expansion, and also to hang out with Jon, Laura, and Evangeline, the last of whom was at her first Gen Con (she is only 11 months old). The minute the doors opened, I blasted my way to the Fantasy Flight booth, where anyone who wasn’t at a register was pointing to a corner where two other people were handing out copies. I was the second person in line and $40 later, Pegasus was MINE! MWUAHAHAHA!

Sorry, I’ll stop now.

After Steve and I reconnected (he was after a Balrog…sorry, Balor) we started at one end and just started wandering, stopping every once in a while so I could get my picture taken (Gondor Coronation outfit). We weren’t looking for anything in particular except something for Willow, and the choice eventually was whittled down to a lab rat with tentacles coming out of its mouth or a shrieking Cthullu. Decision to be made later.

Maybe it was the fact I spent so much money yesterday, or maybe I am just becoming more discerning, but the credit card stayed put away.

In the midst of all of this we swung by a booth where they were doing demos where, in about ten minutes, you made your own grassy, treed hill with a rocky out crop. They let you keep the sample, and it was much fun.

We got most of the way through the hall when we realized that the 25th anniversary talk of Dragonlance was coming up. We got to the room and discovered a huge line. Turns out that even though it was free, you needed to get a ticket and the event was “sold out”. WHAAA!? We hung around anyway. Margaret Weiss came out and just had a look on her face that told you she was not happy with the whole “ticketed/sold out” thing. They did manage to get everyone in, and even into chairs. Margaret and Tracey Hickman talked about how they came to work for Wizards (or TSR as it was known) and how Dragonlance was eventually given to them to write not only the modules, but the novels as well. There were definitely some tears. The biggest shock was that Wizards will not be re-launching Dragonlance into 4.0, but rather Dark Sun.

There was a rather unhappy murmur at that.

Once the talk was over, we were walking across one of the walkways when we ran into Madelyn and Justin, two of my friends from college who are also gaming geeks. We hung out with them when Patrick Rothfuss came our way.

Patrick Rothfuss is the author of “The Name of the Wind”, book one of the Kingkiller Chronicle, a so far amazing series that I love. He invited us to hang out in the lobby of the Marriott later, which we gladly accepted. First, Lowell, Steve and I hung out with Madz and Justin and played Small World, a game about taking over and holding territories. Steve ran into some bosses at the Starbucks and talked to them a bit before we played the game, which I kind of won…by a lot.
After that, we found Patrick and talked about the book and other stuff. I expressed my distrust of the main female character, and he said I was not the first female reader to do so, and asked if maybe that was because I was a little protective of the main male character. I answered that he was probably right...but I still didn’t trust her.

Now Midnight, we swung by Steak and Shake to get some food and then made our way back to the hotel for a little bit of sleep.