[CON] [LONG] GenCon Report

This is a long, I suppose semi-OT-ish post about GenCon 2000 in
Milwaukee last weekend. It is only semi Off Topic as it will cover,
mostly, the GZG events there. Hopefully other participants will jump in
here.

Note that I include some suggestions for tournaments in another message
based on my observations of this year's tournament.

GenCon 2000 - August 10 - 13, Milwaukee, Wisconsin, USA

As some of you may know, GenCon has been rough on miniatures for two
years now. We had been stuck away in the Bruce Hall/Arena complex, which
was two blocks away from the main convention centre. I understand the
reasons for this. Miniatures are minor compared to the other events, and
so if you have to peeve someone you should peeve the fewest people. Even
so, I think it has contributed to a collapse in miniatures events. This
year they tried to make it up to us by putting the miniatures and board
game events together in the same hall, the hall beside the dealer's
hall. This did help a great deal with the visibility of the events, and
for out-and-out convenience. However, I don't know if it contributed to
more participants.

The miniatures were run differently this year. In all other years they
tried to cordon off a specific area for specific games/companies. This
year they played fast and loose. Each day you could be assigned to new
tables. The problem with this, of course, is that miniatures events
usually have so much stuff it's better if you can stay put. It also
meant that some people had a hard time finding certain events, as they
got used to them being in a specific area. Funny enough, the Clan Wars
and Battletech stuff didn't seem to move much. Hmmm…

The miniatures area was a better venue overall. There was a food stand
inside the room (better than last year, albeit over-priced), washrooms,
and good lighting and ventilation. There weren't enough tables, though.
The tables were in 4 columns of rows. The two outside columns had set up
tables, but not the inside columns. The Miniatures HQ seemed to be run
as well as usual, perhaps a bit better. It's a thankless job and I've
never had much problems with the guys there in previous years. I've
always felt they did a good job. Even so, I did notice that they were
telling people that our cancelled events were due to someone missing a
shipment of stuff, NOT due to the fact that Wizards of the Coast screwed
up when I cancelled the events 2 months ago and they didn't bother to
cancel them in the book.

Speaking of WotC's organization…

When we lined up on the Wednesday, the "Early Bird Registration" area
wasn't immediately noticeable. You'd THINK that the area that is listed
as "Pre-Registration" would handle that, but no. Then, while in line, I
heard from a volunteer that I wasn't in the right line if I was a judge.
In the end I received three different sets of instructions on
registering. One guy got me my badge from Early Bird Registration by
walking over there to get it... of course no one TOLD me that there was
an Early Bird registration area when I asked. I was told to line up in
another slow moving line if I was running an event and wanted my event
"kit" (the line was for general convention questions/problems, as it
turned out) but I had now discovered Early Bird Registration and went
there instead. They told me to go to the event purchase area. Instead, I
went to Housing/Volunteer booth, and they told me to go upstairs to the
Tournament Event booth. This turned out to be correct. The actual WotC
"red shirts" knew what was going on (or some of them did; the Early Bird
reg person didn't), but the volunteers were pretty much uninformed. I
later discovered that volunteers running things got 3 hours of training,
tops.

They hadn't cancelled the events that I e-mailed them to cancel. This
was in the same e-mail complaining about hotel screw ups. They promised
me a room at the Ramada, then I got a note about the Hyatt, then I got a
letter from the Ambassador -- the Hyatt is the closest, Ramada cheaper,
the Ambassador is located somewhere near Outer Mongolia! Eventually we
found out we were booked at the Hyatt AND the Ambassador. This wasn't
the only hotel screw up I heard. The Howard Johnson's was only given the
okay to free up their block of rooms on August 4 (less than a week until
the convention). I heard that WotC had booked a lot of people as
arriving on Tuesday (the con starts on Thursday, but a lot of people
arrive Wednesday for the full convention). This happened to us,
actually. WotC staff were to arrive on Tuesday, and the housing guy (who
ran the very screwed up events department last year… Hmmm…) had
volunteers and judges set to arrive on Tuesday too. The problem is, they
weren't told this. Most, in fact, were not due until Wednesday. The
Hyatt and some other hotels cancelled their rooms when they didn't show
on the Tuesday. They then arrived Wednesday to find they didn't have a
room! They weren't happy. Neither were the guests of honour that had
this happen to them, too.

Back to the events. I cancelled the two events that were NOT cancelled
but should have been. The two young guys running the booth on Wednesday
didn't know what to do. They ended up writing the event numbers down on
a piece of paper and told me they would get someone to cancel them. I
was NOT surprised to find that this never happened. 

The exhibitors also had screw-ups while registering. My wife was told to
go to the Exhibit Hall (dealer's room) to get her badge (she was working
for Chaosium/Wizard's Attic). Problem is, you can't get in there without
your badge!

At least the computer system is no longer the one written in dBase 5 but
is now in Microsoft Access... This meant that only 10 terminals had
crashed on Wednesday instead of the entire system...

On Thursday, the registration line was way out the door. Someone goofed
and opened the dealer's room 5 minutes early, while merchants were still
setting up. There was virtually no historical miniatures dealers. There
were a few people selling terrain, heavy on 40K and fantasy. Board games
seemed to outnumber miniatures dealers. There were some new people,
though. A company selling Crusader resin was there. I really like their
stuff. Oh, sure, a lot of it is Gothic sci-fi (read WH40K) but it is
good enough for my Call of Cthulhu based miniatures project. Funny
enough… the guy running the booth actually used to play CoC. I ended up
buying enough stuff for my graveyard, complete with more tomb stones and
a mausoleum. I eventually plan to use this scenario with Jon's FMA
skirmish system.

Dream Pod 9 came out with their long awaited Gear Kreig, essentially
mecha in World War 2. They are making a series of miniatures to support
it, and were taking a poll at the convention for the scale people
wanted. I personally think they should have asked if people had already
collected World War II miniatures. 15mm seemed to be the scale of
choice, but a lot of the folks I talked to that wanted this scale hadn't
started to collect World War II. On the other hand, while I have 20mm I
can either kitbash my own stuff out of plastic, or I can use this as an
excuse for getting into 15mm WW2. Either way, it's not a bad choice of
scales, just not my preferred choice.

Mage Knight was a new twist on two old themes: fantasy collectible cards
and miniatures. It's a collectible miniatures game! The figures come
pre-painted, and they have a statistics ring thingie on the bottom. It
looked semi-promising, but I didn't like the look of the figures. They
had the big-breasted female figures, and some Warhammer ripoff figures,
all done in that rushed paint job you find on toys. I couldn't tell if
it was supposed to be a fantasy skirmish game or a sci-fi/fantasy
skirmish game. The booth was popular, though.

Once again, no one was selling "Fantasy Rules!" in the Exhibit Hall... 

At Geo-Hex, the UN ships for Full Thrust were picked over pretty
quickly. As the show went on, I noticed the terrain selling very well.
Geo-Hex was selling the best looking, and most varied, hill sets of
anyone at the convention. In years past there were other competitors,
but this year they seemed to be alone. I even bought some of the
Battleground hill sets myself. I used them in my Stargrunt II games and
they looked great.

I didn't get to play Formula De. They had a tournament, but it wasn't in
the event list (thanks to WotC). It was full when I got there. This was
a common theme with events. All of my events were full, with people
asking to get in if there was room. This happened all OVER the
convention. The RPG events were hit worse, from all accounts. First,
Chaosium's events were in the main hall when they WANTED them in the
Arena for the atmosphere. This screwed up people as they got shuffled
around. Second, there seemed to be fewer events this year. We put on 14
events for Ground Zero Games, while last year we had over 30. Other
games saw the same thing. However, there was a 25% increase in
attendees. You don't peeve your judges, who have to deal with your
bureaucracy the most, because if they don't come back you have a BIG
problem. Apparently a black market in ticket sales opened up. My wife
was offered $20 for a ticket. Another friend got into a Call of Cthulhu
game only because a third friend pounced on a ticket (almost literally)
when someone tried to sell it to anyone in the event ticket line. While
she was putting the ticket away, a D&D player mentioned the same thing
was happening with their events. 

I did manage to play a game while I was there. I FINALLY got to try a
Full Thrust vector game. David Barclay, a Full Thrust player I met the
last couple of years there, ran one game twice in a row, roping in a
bunch of us judges. Bryan Miller and I had never played vector and had a
ball with it. I'm hooked! I still like cinematic movement, especially
for new players, but I also liked the added dimension of vector. 

On Friday we managed to fill in Jeff Guillion's event slot with a Full
Thrust game. Jeff ran the events for Geo-Hex for a couple of years, and
attended last year, but he couldn't make it this year. Sean Schoonmaker
ran a game, and Lew Stoneking jumped in and played. It apparently went
reasonably well. FT is a pretty good "pick up" game.

My Plasma Ambush scenario for Stargrunt was a closer finish than I had
expected. The Mercenaries made the typical mercenary mistake: they were
THIS close to winning in the first turn when they decided to "go for
broke" and take out all the vehicles. Wrong answer! This continues to be
a crowd favourite, but anyone who's played the scenario will be able to
figure out how to win with the mercenaries. I'm not sure what to do
about it. Perhaps increase the number of vehicles the mercenaries need
to destroy. Or, perhaps, do as Rick Rutherford suggested and take away
some terrain on one part of the board and increase terrain on another
part. Time to playtest this again, with people who know the scenario.

My Operation: Dust Off scenario was entirely different in play to ANY of
my playtests. It took a lot longer, for one thing. The key to the
scenario, in my estimation, is the ridge that overlooks the primary
Landing Zone. The Japanese put dummy markers on it, but no troops. The
Neu Swabian League didn't bother trying to take it. Instead, they ran a
ground vehicle into the landing zone area and disgorged troops. This was
a very good plan. They also ran the rest of their vehicles forward,
getting most of them destroyed in the open and dropping their troops in
open ground to assault dug in troops. This was a bad plan. In the end,
the Japanese were in a good position, but hadn't been aggressive enough
with their transports. The NSL won the battle. Any game where both sides
are sure they had won and/or lost at different parts of the game is a
close one. I think I may have to give the players hints next time to
help balance the scenario, but everyone seemed to enjoy themselves. I
might have to make this an advanced scenario, not for the rules
introduced but because it takes some tactical planning to win, something
you often don't have a chance to do when you're just learning a game.

The Full Thrust tournament this year took a LOT longer than expected. We
used a double elimination process. Everyone played two initial rounds.
We were late starting, and it just extended from there. Part of the
reason is that players unfamiliar with the game tend to take longer, and
they usually get eliminated in the first round. This year that didn't
happen. We had 15 players. Lew Stoneking graciously offered to show
someone who had never played before how to play the game so that we
could have an even number of players. Lew then stepped in later in order
to keep an even number when one of the first round folk had to leave. 

The scores for making it into the semi-final round were pretty high. The
rules are on my web site (at http://www.vex.net/~agoodall/ft.htm ) if
you are interested. Players received the point value for every enemy
ship and fighter destroyed added to the point total for every ship and
fighter of their own that survived. The fleets were 1500 points maximum.
The scores for the first two rounds were added together. Kevin Walker
and Mike Miserendino both had over 3900 points. Sean Schoonmaker got in
with well over 3800 points. Adam Stein slipped in with 3700 and change,
while another two players with 3700+ and 3600+ points didn't make the
cut.

Kevin played Adam, Mike played Sean, with Kevin and Mike making it into
the final round. They were both given the same fleets for the final
round, with Kevin beating Mike. Special notice has to go to Hobe Rupe.
Hobe had a combined score of just over 1200 points! It wasn't that he
played badly, but that his dice rolling was atrocious. He was rolling 1s
and 2s while his opponents rolled 5s and 6s. He ended up throwing out
his entire collection of green six sided dice – no one had the nerve to
pick them up. Hobe is famous for this.

Mark Siefert's Babylon 5 game seemed to be well attended. Mike
Miserendino ran a couple of Battlestar Galactica games, and was asked to
run it another time Saturday night. I believe all our games were well
received. I didn't see this year's sci-fi crossover, but I did hear a
lot about Dean's Super Star Destroyer from Star Wars making quite an
impact (especially as it was easily three or four times the size of most
other figures on the table!).

On the final day, organization once again came to the fore. It took 45
minutes to get my refund. I had to go to the Event Tournament people to
get my time card signed. Then I was sent downstairs to another line in
the Onsite Registration area for the refund. Only one person was giving
it out, and he walked away for 10 minutes. Near the end of the wait,
they added a second person. Volunteers that didn't have an event sheet
had their information (such as their badge number and address) written
down on a piece of paper. Meanwhile the computer system was very slow.
Thirty minutes later the system was altered and the Event Tournament
people were giving the refunds immediately. I met Dean Gundberg and Mike
Miserendino in line; they waited only 10 minutes. While the initial
procedure was far too cumbersome, I must commend the staff for quickly
fixing that particular bottleneck.

Here are some general impressions of the con and the miniatures events:

There were lots of Clan War, Battletech, and some other "usual suspects"
events being run. I DID finally get to see Fantasy Rules! and bought a
copy from the person running the demo. I'm still not sure why there were
no dealers selling it in the Exhibit Hall. The only historical games I
saw were Fields of Honor, Johnny Reb, a Napoleonic game, and Baker
Company (RAFM's upcoming WW2 skirmish game). The Baker Company terrain
was a lovely set up for Omaha Beach. Very impressive. Once again,
though, historical miniatures seems to be declining rapidly. I found
Battleground: World War 2 at GenCon a couple of years ago, but I was
sorry to see they weren't there.

Those who like to proclaim the imminent death of collectible card games
had some more ammunition. There were next to NO card players playing in
the halls on the floor this year. This was noticed by several people I
know. Perhaps they had a better location this year and they were able to
stay in their own hall, or perhaps the games have shaken themselves out
and some have dropped by the wayside, but there were noticeably fewer
new card games, and fewer people selling individual cards. On the other
hand, collectible disk games became a minor rage. The Diskwars people
were selling reasonably well, and WotC was selling out of their Star
Trek spaceship combat disk game.

In the Exhibit Hall I saw one company selling 15mm sci-fi vehicles.
These were available painted and unpainted. They seemed to be popular,
in spite of them being disappointing with little in the way of detail.
GZG and Geo-Hex could easily do much better. The Noble Armada figures
looked good if expensive. I liked the B5 Wars Fleet Action figures, but
they are too small for what I wanted. They WERE, however, well priced. I
agree with Dean in that I wish the fleet action figures were somewhere
between their full sized figures and these in scale. 

I didn't get a chance to play the sci-fi board game that Geo-Hex was
displaying as a good campaign system for Full Thrust (anyone help me
with the name of the game and the publisher?) but I did get to watch the
Starfarers of Catan game. If you haven't played Settlers of Catan (and I
haven't), this might not make much sense to you. Settlers of Catan is a
very popular German board game that is supposed to be quite excellent.
There are a couple of variants, including a non-collectible card game
and a variant for more people. This is their space game. It looks
awesome. It plays quickly and easily, from what I saw. It's also fairly
deep tactically. The pieces are gorgeous… but they should be as the game
was selling for US$70! OUCH! I'll wait to see if, a) a North American
version comes out (this is German with English rules, though I didn't
see any writing on the board or cards), or b) I can get it cheaper from
an online store.

There were a number of games I really wanted, but for some reason they
were not available in time for the convention. The new Cosmic Encounter
looked great (and is apparently back to the old Eon ruleset) but it
wasn't ready in time. It comes out next month. The Pacific version of
Rise of the Luftwaffe also failed to make it in time for the con. It
will be another couple of months. Some of the roleplayers and other
gamers were complaining about the same thing. 

The painting contest was available only for Ral Partha and FASA figures.
This wasn't made clear before the convention. Mark Siefert and others
had painted figures by other manufacturers, only to be turned away. I
don't have a problem with a company sponsoring an event and requiring
their own figures to be used, but this should be entirely clear before
hand. In the end, the miniature contest display case looked pretty bare.

I'm glad to see that John Kovalic, our list's resident professional
cartoonist, seemed to be doing well! Thanks for signing my Dork Tower
issues 9 and 10, John! John also did the Al Gore and George Bush button
men charicatures that you could get made into buttons (wish I had), as
well as the Cthulhu for President Button Man.

As an interesting aside, I saw a lot of digital cameras. Some of you may
know that I used to work for Kodak. In the mid 90s I heard from someone
in Kodak Canada's marketing department that they figured they had a good
20 years before digital cameras made a severe impact on film sales. I
thought it was more likely to be 10 years. If GenCon is anything to go
by, my prediction is on track. With new "minilabs" (the machines that
process prints) able to handle jpeg images from disks and CDs, as well
as digital camera memory cards, I'd be thinking about dumping Kodak
stock sometime soon if I had any…

In spite of the organizational hassles, I had a lot of fun. It should be
interesting to see what happens next year, though I'm currently not
planning to attend. The hassles with the pre-reg book this year turned
me off. Few Canadians seemed to get their books. WotC blamed Canada Post
and our Customs people, yet they were able to send the replacement
within 5 days… which is cool, especially since they also sent them to my
friends who went last year and didn’t pre-register to go this year. I
suspect the mistake had more to do with WotC and/or their system than it
did with Canada Post. Even so, it's so hard to get events on site that I
have no intention of going if their pre-registration system is so messed
up. 

I hope that the mistakes of this year will be fixed. They do seem
earnest about it, as they ran several focus groups at the convention. My
fear is that with 25% more people (the total is listed as 25,000 but
remember that I was there 4 days and would therefore count as 4 people;
if this seems bogus, bear in mind it's done for EVERY multi-day event,
including this year's Molson Indy race here in Toronto) they have less
incentive to fix the problems. On the other hand, they are moving to
Indianapolis in 2003 and such a move will result in a drop in attendance
if only because of the upset. Maybe that is the incentive they need.
They DO need to fix the problems for judges. They can have all the
attendees they want, but if there are no events none of them will be
back next year.

Finally, a couple of remarks about the move from Milwaukee. I heard from
K.R. at Geo-Hex that at least one of the restaurants is sad to see
GenCon go. It's not a fast food place, it's more upscale. Even still,
they said that gamers love to eat and tip better than most other people
visiting the city. I hope someone tells this to the restaurants in Indy,
because in the first year they are going to be SO surprised. Of course,
each year I meet restaurant people in Milwaukee who are also surprised.
Milwaukee, for it's part, hasn't helped itself. 10 PM on Saturday, and
it was all we could do to find a place to eat! The local Subway sandwich
shop shut tight before 10, and ran out of buns at 9 the night before.
You'd THINK they would make some allowances for GenCon; it certainly
would have been worthwhile.

I'm going to miss Milwaukee. It's a nice, clean city with great art deco
architecture. I will NOT miss the 12 hour drive, but perhaps I will be
back for the final bash in 2002 (I'll even take the plunge and fly…).
Next year I plan to go to the GZG-East Coast Convention, and at least
Historicon. But this could be my last Milwaukee GenCon, and as such it's
a bit of a sad thing. I wonder if other participants will miss the city
as much as me, or if the city will miss the con as much as I will miss
the city.

Many thanks to: Dean Gundberg, Mike Miserendino, Mark Siefert, Sean
Schoonmaker, Lew Stoneking, and David Barclay (and, of course, Sherry
Moore, my friend who was adopted as our groupie/girl friday). It was
great to meet Kevin Walker, Bryan Miller, Rick Rutherford, Chris Pratt,
Hobe Rupe, Doug Evans, Mike Stoneking, and a host of other guys I'm sure
I'm forgetting for making the convention fun. Also many thanks to KR and
the gang at Geo-Hex for their support, and Jon Tuffley for his support
(and the games that make it all possible).

Allan Goodall - agoodall@canada.com
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