That Chair Looks Mighty Comfortable - Gen Con 2015, Day 1 Part 3

Friday, July 31^st, 2015. 3:13 a.m.

I’m in a chair.

I’m in a chair in my hotel room, and in a little while, I’ll be asleep. In this chair. That’s because one of the guys I’m sharing a room with has decided to Bogart one of the double beds. I’m not even sure which guy it is.

Not that I'm complaining -- I DID  tell the guys earlier that if I was out and about later than most of them, which was likely to happen, that it didn't matter to me if I ended up sleeping on the floor. Of course, I didn't think that statement through when I said it.

We’re all tired, some of us more so than others. I only got 3 hours sleep before this journey began today, and I should be sleeping now. But the excitement of being here with so many other members of my Tribe is pretty strong, and I kind of can’t help myself.

While still on the road, John, one of the guys I’m with, told me about the 1-2-3 Rule of attending Gen Con.

1.    Get at least 1 shower per day.

2.    Eat at least 2 full meals per day.

3.    Sleep for at least 3 hours per day.

I need more than 3 hours’ sleep in order to function. At 11:00 a.m. tomorrow, I’ll be running one of my homebrew games using a new RPG system I developed, and on Friday, I’m going to run another Mega Fiasco for up to 10 people. With all the thousands of people around here, I’m hoping there are a few that would like to just hang out and play a fun game. So many people come here for the premieres from popular game companies and publishers, for game tournaments, for the True Dungeon experience, for the meet & greet autograph panels with A-list and sci-fi celebrities. You know, the big tentpole events of a convention this size. I’m hoping that some people will take a chance on a new game, or a new spin on an old game.

So before we made our way up to the room tonight, we had dinner at The Ram Brewery, which goes all out whenever Gen Con comes around. They put up signs and posters, they put geek-centric viewing on the TVs (we saw parts of Gremlins, Indepedence Day, Legend, and Time Bandits, among other things, while we were there), and even change the menu to reflect the fantasy setting akin to many RPGs. While we were there, another Booter, Ed, came by and ran a short module for Star Wars: Age of Rebellion. The game was COMPLETELY foreign to me, but he was a great game master and helped me and the others figure out what to roll and when.

After that, we spent some time down in the lounge on the ground floor of the hotel and played a couple rounds of Pandemic. We lost the first game pretty swiftly, then had to bite our nails through the second game until we were able to cure all 4 diseases and win the game.

From what everyone's telling me about Gen Con, impromptu games pop up all over the place, and many of the scheduled events have already sold out, so there aren’t many things to fill in those gaps unless you play a pickup game. I’ll barely have time to scour the Exhibitor’s Hall on Friday, and I may have to wait until Saturday to hit it, since it closes at 6:00 p.m.

We’ll see what happens. In the meantime, I’m gonna catch my Number 3.

There Is No Box.
Zach