I will be attending GenCon later this summer. This is GenCon 48, meaning this would be my 38th GenCon and my 37th consecutive GenCon. (I have written of my earlier GenCon adventures and posted them here.) My first GenCon was the (only) one at the Lake Geneva Playboy Club in 1977, then I skipped a year going off to college, attended GenCon at the University of Wisconsin — Parkside in 1979 and attended every one since, following it to Milwaukee and now Indianapolis. As always, I do as much as I can in these four days (Wednesday afternoon through Sunday afternoon) because this is my big annual “vacation” convention and has been for over thirty years.
General Schedule
My planned schedule is to arrive Wednesday and stay that evening with a friend, check into the Hyatt Thursday morning for the rest of the weekend, and then leave Sunday afternoon. I live only about two hours from Indianapolis so travel costs are minimal.
Wednesday is my day for prep work and meeting people. I plan to arrive in the afternoon in time to enter items into the GenCon Auction, then chill for the rest of the afternoon exploring downtown. Although it is still being worked out, I expect to have dinner with the SFWA Table staff and the other table volunteers in the evening.
Thursday is my day for checking out what’s new in the exhibition hall, a feat I have down to a science, and meeting old friends there. That evening is the first of the two events I will be running this year.
Friday is my day for seminars and classes, depending on the schedule. It may also be the day I volunteer to staff the SFWA table. (SFWA: Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America, the professional writers organization in the US and North America, plus elsewhere, for writers of science fiction and fantasy fiction.) GenCon has been emphasizing authors now for several years, featuring a number of prominent authors with gaming-related fiction, and this year SFWA is scheduled to have a table in the Writer’s Symposium area. As a member of SFWA, I decided to volunteer my time to help staff the table this year, which is the first time SFWA will be doing this, and Friday is looking like my best opportunity. That evening is the second event I will be running this year.
Saturday is my day for two things: the GenCon / Indianapolis Ingress First Saturday meetup and Ingress play, and the Cosplay Parade and Costume Competition. The former is something I will be doing for the first time this year, having only starting playing Ingress late last year with the purchase of my Android tablet, so we will see what all is involved. (BTW: my Ingress handle is HoosierDragon, and I am a proud member of the Enlightenment!) The latter is something I have been doing since 2003, photographing members of the parade and then watching the competition and photographing people afterward. (Photographs of previous GenCons can be found here.) For this, I carry around my regular camera, my Olympus E‑810 with flash attachment. That evening is usually when I decompress from the past few days and relax in the hot tub at the hotel, but I may find an event that evening instead this year.
Sunday is my day for picking up whatever money I get from the auction and whatever didn’t sell, then swinging through the exhibition hall and picking up whatever caught my eye the previous days. Also, saying good bye to some old friends that I only see once a year at GenCon. This year I should also check about publishing opportunities and writing for them.
And, as always, I will be carrying around my “other” camera (Sony DSC-WX150) for cosplay photographs and other events as I see them.
Game Schedule
After a break of several years, I will be running two events this year. With one or two exceptions, I haven’t done any events for several years, even longer for two events, and never with two events from two different systems. I got the notion for running events last year on Sunday when I was talking with a couple of my friends who are heavily involved with running Champions events (Champions, Fantasy Hero, Horror Hero, Justice, Inc, etc.) at GenCon: I played in a number of their events in the past, and ran my own Champions events at GenCon even before they were running them. (In fact, I ran the very first official Champions events at GenCon in 1982.) They told me they were asked about me running again, apparently because there were a lot of former players who really enjoyed my events, and I decided to consider it. Over the succeeding months, not only did I consider it, but came up with the characters and the scenarios to use.
Both events will be in the JW Marriott (the new Marriott hotel down across from the far end of the convention center) on the third floor.
“The Legend of Korra: Team Avatar Rides Again!”
I will be running this event (RPG1569246) Thursday evening starting at 7:00 pm.
I am a huge Avatar and Legend of Korra fan. Therefore, it was only natural that I run something based on the latter series, and I am taking the opportunity to explore some elements from the series and questions I started asking about it. I won’t go into too many details (wait for the post-convention writeup for that) but I will say that this event will start with a video of the opening title sequence and the following title card:
Book Five Chapter One |
Since there is no official Avatar or LoK roleplaying game, I wanted to use an easy system to understand and play, so I will be using the FUDGE system with some slight modifications. This is not the first time I have done this: several years ago, I ran a Harry Potter event at the local gaming convention where the characters were new American students at Hogwarts, the year before Harry enrolled. Since there were few mechanics involved, the game was mostly roleplaying and players having fun playing in the Potterverse: I have the same hopes that this event will turn into largely roleplaying as well.
And, yes, this event is designed for six players and there are six characters involved. Four are obvious: Korra, Asami, Mako and Bolin. The fifth is probably obvious, too: Opal. That covers all four bending types, with Korra representing her native Water Tribe water bending. The identity of the final character is a secret, one that I hope will surprise and perplex the players. I will be posting copies of the character descriptions online after GenCon.
“Just a ‘Little’ Favor to Cash In”
I will be running this event (RPG1569247) Friday evening starting at 7:00 pm.
This event will be using the “Lords of Gossamer and Shadow” rules from Rite Publishing that are based on the Amber Diceless Roleplaying system created by Erick Wujcik: I was one of Erick’s playtesters with the GenCon Amber campaign and I am a big supporter of the whole diceless roleplaying experience.
The scenario is a simple one: do a little favor for Drake, one of the high ranked “sovereigns” of the various Lords of the Grand Stair. Of course, the execution of the scenario is the hard part. Since all of the characters owe him several favors (or, in at least one case, expect him to pay well for their services) they all agree, especially since getting on his bad side is not something anyone really wants to happen. This favor involves going to the barred world of Finisterrae and retrieving something, all without anyone else finding out about it. I will be using the characters I created when I was exploring the rules soon after I returned from GenCon last year with a copy of the original sourcebook: those characters can be found here. Note that the characters described were only my first drafts of the characters and they have evolved somewhat since then.
