Day one saw a registration line wrapped around the block at noon.

I ran a missions game and had a pretty good time. The rooms had a definite shortage of electrical outlets, and so many tables crammed in noise from adjacent tables made it terribly hard to hear anyone in anything less than their loud voice.

Parking was hard to find. I now have blistered feet.

Achingly slow wireless connections too.

I had fun running Missions, but I'm not sure how much my players enjoyed it.

There's too much to do! No time to sleep.

Yeah, when all the tables were full it was hard to hear. Don't have a good solution for that, other than renting a huge block of hotel rooms to run the games. I've seen this done but it sounds pricey and isn't exactly what the hotels like.

My real issue was finding events. I spent 20 minute looking for one SR event. (wasn't where the ticket OR the book said) and only found it when a convention guy with a laptop was able to look it up. Another set of SR events I never did find, as the entire room shown on the program was empty at 8am Saturday and there was a line of people trying to get answers from the one guy who could answer questions in the hotel. So I hiked over to the Hyatt and couldn't find an open event by that time.

But when I was there on time I did get in with a generic.

I parked at the south lot ($10) and had no problem, but I made a point to get there early (8am). IIRC, last time I was there (with an exhibitor) we didn't have that much trouble getting parking by 9:30am. There are a lot less lots due to the huge stadium they are building.

No idea how it will be next year, probably much worse. Hopefully much better in 2-3 years.

I didn't have any luck tracking down any tabletop Shadowrun games, but the SR LARP I played in was a pretty good time. I didn't have any real problems with parking or anything (other than it costing $24 a night), but I ended up with blistered feet, too. I'm not sure how much of that was travel to and from the convention center, and how much of it was just being on my feet almost all day, playing wargames.

Overall, I had a good time despite Gencon's many screw ups (mailing the wrong badges out, messing up event locations, etc, etc, etc). Me and my buddies actually got some fun out of our swag bag this year (free starter deck for the WoW ccg? Sure!), I managed to actually win a couple games in a Warmachine tournament I was in, and from all accounts Spinespur did really well. I can't complain.

I feel for you all, the rooms thing was a total pain.

In retrospect I should have at least posted here, might have helped. All the tabletop events were run in the Hyatt in one of three rooms on the third floor.

To give you an idea how bad it was, one table had 5 players make it to the game with the pre reg tickets, all 5 tickets had a different wrong room, and the convention printout had the wrong room as well. All part of our plan to test how faithful you players really are to Shadowrun!

I know every single game ticket I had, my wife had, and my two buddies had, had the wrong locations printed on them (not specific to SR stuff, but even seminars and wargaming stuff, etc, etc). They put an awful lot of faith into the idea of everyone receiving and checking their pre-con emails, I think.

Just for curiosity's sake -- did any of you guys ever run across any of those "Generic Ticket Only" booths? I heard about them a few weeks ago, felt a little excited at the prospect, and then never found any. It wasn't a huge deal (since I was able to trade for a few generitickets and everything was fine), but I remember being a little irritated by the promise of special booths, and then a lack of them actually appearing.

I saw in the Hyatt the RPG HQ table had the ability to print generic tickets and posted a sign.

I didn't see that in the Crown Plaza though, and I can't account for the 3 or 4 other hotel locations either.

The Crown Plaza could print generics, too.

I ran two games of "Into the Bloody Darkness" on Saturday. Game 1 was stuck in Union Station, so I'm surprised I was able to get 3 registered players and two that had tickets for SR Scramble. The second game was in the Hyatt, and all five players had generics. It started late, but I felt lucky to fill the game.

Overall I had some excellent players and had a blast. I wish I could have arrived earlier and done a few more sessions. What fun groups though.

Kudos goes to all the gm's who ran games at Gen Con. As usual they were the highlight of the convention for me and my friends. The noise level was definitely a problem and the room juggling was annoying but it was worth the extra effort. Without a doubt, they remain at the top of my list for next year, Great Job!

I missed the tournament unfortunately, was wondering how part II went?

Thanks!

Mortimor Sparks
aka "Sparky"
Faceman

PS - Redjack/Storm send me a link or pm about those missions/campaigns we talked about, if you have room I wouldn't mind joining.