I survived GenCon!

Well, I'm back from GenCon.  Had a great time(even when running games
back
to back with little to no sleep, food, or restroom breaks).  I met Allan
and
Mark from the list and they seemed to be having a good time.  The
highlight
of the event was meeting Jon Tuffley.  He's an interesting dude with
plenty
of knowledge regarding gaming and military stuff.  He also likes Anime
quite
a bit and always has a joke or two to share.

When running some games it was interesting having Jon standing right
next to
you.  If any question came up that you weren't sure of, you could ask
Jon
and get an immediate answer.  One player asked: "Why does that guy seem
to
think he knows all the rules?"	I replied: "He designed the game." 
Player:
"Oh."  I hope he can make it back next year.  No funny jokes about
elephants, OK Jon?

Allan Goodall wrote:
>There was certainly more of a buzz in
>the dealers room last year and it looked busier (though the dealers
room was
>a bit smaller last year). There were many of the same dealers as last
year.

Unfortunately most of the dealers were not offering "deals", just access
to
a lot of stuff(and junk) in one place.	Geo-Hex offered some good
discounts
on their products and anyone who played one of our events received a $5
coupon to use towards a Geo-Hex purchase.

I did get a lead on someone with old Superior miniatures.  Aside from
that
the only spacecraft I found included: FT line(finished my Kra'vak and
FSE
fleets), RAFM Traveller ships(which are still in production, but having
difficulty finding the Fang class gunboats) and Silent Death(nice
looking
large ships and affordable - $4.50ea), Starblazers minis(expensive
little
suckers!), Spacefleet(also expensive! :( ), and a couple odds and ends. 
I
was really disappointed by the selection of ship miniatures since this
is
the big event to find cool stuff.

>I had a good time, though I only got one game of FT in. It was a good
game,
>but I felt that it was too long for a novice game (after 3.75 hours of
which
>0.5 of an hour was rules descriptions, the game was still at least an
hour
>from finishing). However, the game was fun and well run. The figures
looked
>great and a couple of new converts to the game went looking for the
rules. I
>watched a couple of other FMA games, and they looked good.

I'm not sure which event you were in (Fire in the Sky?), but we did have
some delays with scenario related rules for Fire in the Sky.  Fire in
the
Sky for those who did not attend, is a scenario about an invasion fleet
trying to break through a planetary defense grid to land armor and
troops.
Fire in the Sky introduced mines and mine defenses, starbases, a wave
gun,
various fighter types(including new fighter bombers), and a planetary
gravity well.

All said and done, it took about twice as long to explain than normal
novice
blast-a-buddy or frag-a-friend games.  I plan to run a similar scenario
at
PentaCon with improvements and intermediate level players(hoping to skip
basic rules and just move to the scenario stuff).

Allan, sorry your game didn't run as long as you would have liked.  We
might
run intermediate games next year to help give players with experience
more
play time.  All GZG games at GenCon this year were free and meant as
introductory games to get more involvement.  Overall, I felt the con
went
great.	Every game had a full load of players with others standing
nearby to
jump in if a slot was open.

>I think next time (i.e. next GenCon) we should see if we can find a
>table somewhere and play a game of FT or SG2!

Sounds good to me.  I would like to meet more list members next year and
hopefully have more time to do something.  Curious, but how many
attended?
How many played GZG games?

Still lacking sleep,

Mike Miserendino