Gencon 2013 — Day 1

I am sitting back at the house, relaxing after the first day of Gencon. I started by getting up at the crack of dawn so that I could get my stuff together and get over to the ICC for the early admission. Since I’m officially working the con under an exhibitor’s badge, this gave me a chance to do a quick visit to a couple of the booths before I had to head over to run my games for the day.

I scored the one thing I wanted to grab at the convention — a copy of Shadowrun, Fifth Edition. I did not drop the extra cash to get the special ($100) or deluxe ($200) editions. I’m a fan of the game, but can’t justify spending that kind of money on a game that isn’t going to do more than sit on my shelf.

Then it was over to the RPG room in the ICC where I had two sessions to run. First up was Into the Deeps, where I had 5 players, a couple of which had never played Earthdawn before. I think it was a successful session, though I think it is a little exposition heavy at one point. If I had done a bit more prep, I would probably look at having handouts or something a bit more tangible.

The other session was Two Houses, Alike  In Dignity. Only two registered players showed up (despite the game being sold out). My wife happened to stop by very early on, and sat in to provide a third. I think the game was successful, though it ran short (it was scheduled until 6, and we wrapped up around 4).

I think I will do a bit more in-depth after-action report of the different scenarios after the con is over. This will give me a chance to see if tweaks I make for the second time I run the game makes a difference, and give a little bit of analysis on what makes a good con game (at least from my point of view and experience).