GenCon 1992

Wednesday

I arrived at Gencon Wednesday afternoon, after a leisurely five-hour drive from Fort Wayne. Since GenCon itself begins bright and early Thursday morning, there is no time to waste travelling the first day of the convention. Besides, arriving early allows me to partake some of the pleasures of the city before the convention begins: once it starts, there’s no time for almost anything else.

This, however, is a far cry from the early days of GenCon at the University of Wisconsin-Parkside, when my friends and I would drive all night Wednesday to arrive, tired and sore from sleeping in the back seat of a small car, just as the convention opened Thursday morning. Those were the days when a bagpiper in full Scottish garb would serenade the waiting line (of hundreds of anxious gamers) at dawn. Now, registration is available at MECCA Wednesday afternoon, with (relatively) very little waiting. But arriving a day early also allows for a number of other pleasures, such as seeing old friends and visiting the Bookstores of Cthulhu.

The Bookstores of Cthulhu is my name for a pair of bookstores in downtown Milwaukee. Both were operated by the same people, they’re just on different blocks of the same street, within easy walking distance of the hotels. I gave them that name because of the massive chaos apparent in the collections, the narrowness and darkness of some of the areas, and the general grunginess of the establishments. Unfortunately one of the bookstores burned down last year, in a fire that leveled part of the block, so now only one of the pair remains, but I discovered a new bookstore that shares many of the same qualities. All have provided a large number of research and reading material to my book collection in the past.

Wednesday was also the beginning of a long series of meetings of old friends and new that GenCon seems to specialize in. This year was much different, however: a large number of the participants of the online GEnie Amber game were attending, as well as the game master. This marked the first time a large number of us, who have up to now been reduced to imagining each other from across a video display, saw each other in person and tried to relate our Amber characters to our real identities. A large number of other GEnie people were also in attendance this weekend from the Science Fiction, Scorpia’s, and TSR Round Tables. A crowd of the established Amber players attended as usual, with Erick Wujcik, the game developer, leading the festivities. Also, a number of my fellow APA members attended, both from the long-established RPG APA Alarums & Excursions and the Champions APA The Clobberin’ Times.

While waiting for in line for registration, I met some members of the A&E contingent: Spike Y. Jones and his new wife Mary Christ, and “Doc” Cross, Toon gamemaster extraordinaire; and Carol Dodd from the GenCon Amber game, with news and photos of the marriage of two of the other players who had met through the game.

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