Glad to hear you found a couple spots, Vlad. Also glad to hear GenCon will be what it's supposed to be -- a break from all the irritations and responsibilities of bein' a grown-up, even if just for a few days it's nice to play army men and cops-and-robbers again.

Well crap. Looks like I won't be able to make it this year, fellas. Schedules just aren't working out. T_T

Who else is planning on the Scramble, on Saturday? We wanna coordinate, maybe show up with a whole crew, ready to go (instead of being randomly grouped up)? I've got a Technomancer ready to go, costume's almost all set, etc, etc. He's...ah...interesting, but effective enough.


Sorry to hear it!

I will be at Gen Con as usual. I first attended Gen Con in Milwaukee in 2001, as a last minute substitute for someone else who couldn't go. I started running Shadowrun at Gen Con in 2003, and have run every year since. This year, I will be running an adventure I wrote called Combat Biking Rules! Dropkick's Return to the Arena. I will be playing several Missions, as well as some other game systems I am interested in.

Grendel: my boyfriend and I game at home with Red Jack and LadyJack, and we would like to play in your Wednesday pickup game, if possible. We will arrive by noon on Wednesday. I already have Code Red on the shopping list!

As far as where to game, didn't Gen Con provide some open gaming table space last year?

I arrive on Wednesday at 2350. If the train is on time.

Plenty of time. Should we all meet you at the station? We could hire some Hawai'ian/Polynesian gals to flop leis around your neck and offer you boat drinks with lots of rum and little umbrellas.

I am looking forward to meeting you after all these years of your smart ass comments ... sarcasm witty responses on the forums.

Seriously, if you need transport, I can probably arrange it for you. I am more or less a former Indy native. Born and raised in Kokomo, 45 miles north of Indy and lived there all my life until about 5 years ago. Most of my best friends migrated to Indy years ago. And while I now live in Kansas, I am staying locally with old HS chummers the week of Gencon. (Read: Unabashedly flopping at their doss to sleep and shower for 6 days.) I'll have my own wheels as I am driving up in the Durango.

I pretty much have the Home turf quality... well, at least Knowledge Skill: Indy Locations 2(Runner hangouts +2)

Vlad

Heh, just might be appreciated.

Have a sign up saying, "Smart Assed Bastard Canadian" like Limo Drivers.

But, what is going to single it out for you versus all the other Canucks?
Vlad

"Smart Assed Bastard"

By Canadian standards, I'm a very rude asshole.

EDIT: By ONTARIAN standards, I'm a very rude asshole. I have a 40% survival chance in New York City according to some folks. Damned high for Canadians.

Attaboy. Keep 'em burdened with the stereotype.

Wheeeee! Wuh, wuh WHEEEEEEEEEEE!

*channels his inner Maxwell the Geico pig*

Pure. Adrenaline.

I received the following in my email today:

Your Gen Con Indy packet has been shipped via FedEx Home as requested to the address listed in your Gen Con Registration Account. Any items purchased after the end of Pre-Registration will be available for pick-up onsite at Will Call.

Your tracking number is XXXXXXXXXXXXXXX. You may visit the FedEx website to track your package at any time.

If you have any questions regarding registration, please email us at customerservice@gencon.com.

We look forward to seeing you soon in Indy for "The Best Four Days in Gaming!"
The Gen Con Team


I am sooooo ready for this. It's been too long.

Vlad

All right, for the Wednesday night pick-up game here is what I'm proposing. The Meet & Greet goes down at 2000. We'll start the game at 2100 at some appropriate location adjacent to where the Meet & Greet is happening. This should allow us to at least participate in a little bit of the socialization before we immerse ourselves once more in the Sixth World. The game will be non-missions, SR4A rules, bring your own character with a karma cap of 100. We'll run for four hours or however long it takes me to kill everyone. Right now I've got six in the game: Redjack, Ladyjack, Alicia + boyfriend, 3, and Vellie. I've got room for two more, first come, first served. Let me know here or via PM if you want a seat at the table. Almost time to gear up and get going!

I'm sorry, where is the meet-and-greet hosted? Where's the pick-up game?

See the M&G trhead. We're still working on it, and Gen Con is giving us the run around. The default will be Claddagh once more if we can't get an official meet spot.

Bull

Just a heads up. the What's up With Shadowrun? Seminar on Friday at Noon will not only feature Jason Hardy, Peter Andrew, and myself talking upcoming books, but we will also have reps for both Harebrained Schemes (For Shadowrun Returns) and Cliffhanger productions (Shadowrun Online). If you have questions or want the lowdown on what's coming, you may want to come check this out

Bull

Damned trains...

Don't know when I'll be hitting Indy now. In time for GenCon at least, but maybe just.

They can't even give you an updated ETA? Just "yeah, we're going slower now, you'll get there eventually" type of thing? Yikes.

Good luck, man. I look forward to runnin' into ya.

2-5 hours. They can't tell any longer until the work crews get to the affected rails.

This is to be expected in extreme weather, and is common in Canada (Although more due to freezing/thawing issues) and I'm not surprised at the lack of a better ETA.

Family and friends worked for the rail lines back home, so I got a good idea what's going down.

On the road, about 300 miles SSW of Bug City... inbound for Gen Con.

All packed up, and ready to go. Bringing startlingly little gaming stuff this year (just trusting my Kindle to do the heavy lifting where game books are concerned), and that feels kind of weird.

See a bunch of ya right around this time tomorrow!

Quick update. We're now scheduled from 4 to 8. Which is weird, and sucks. Apparently, it's no longer open gaming area. So, umm. Yeah. Sucks. So 4 to 8, then from 8 on at Claddagh.

At our hotel in Indy. Tomorrow the wind up begins as gamers take over this town. Nothing cooler than walking downtown (as will happen starting tomorrow) and passing knights, fairies, anime girls, elves, orks, robots, and the rabble that are gamers!

Packed and ready to go. Forecast says hot tomorrow, hotter with the possibility of a severe thunderstorm Thursday, and then mild temps the rest of the con. With a 70% chance of APDS ammo.

I'll be missing the meet & greet since I'm getting in at around 9pm tonight, but I'll see you all at Claddagh.

Yeah, I know it's the 2070's but that is depressing.

Ah, for the days when I used to carry lead figures with me around the con. My favourite, best-painted ones. Then I put them down for a moment in the vendors' area to pay for something. *Sigh* I hope whoever took them still enjoys them.

But still there were books and food and new toys and books and promos and drinks and books ... Oh, well. It may yet come that I return to such halcyon days. Enjoy, boys and girls.

The surprise GM meeting at 5:00 kinda killed the Meet & Greet. Grendel ran a crazy run to Antarctica in the evening though!! I mean, I don't know anything about a run to Antarctica....

Wife and I had an absolute blast today at Scramble and got to say howdy to Bull, Aaron, and Redjack. Lookin to complete the set by possibly meeting Canray and Critias tomorrow, if possible?

This has been a great Gencon - our very first Scramble went amazing. Wife got handed a certificate of stock for ORO corporation while we were scrambling and the GM said it did t have anything to do with the game tho - anyone else have this happen?

Even if the Catalyst guys are being noisy down the hall of our hotel room

Finally got Dumpshock to work on my 900 Mhz portable system.

Good GenCon, pity I didn't get to PLAY ANY SHADOWRUN AGAIN!

I go home in the morniing.

Hey Can, I tried hunting you and Critias down this morning and couldn't find you to say howdy.

Where were you guys staying, out of curiosity?

So remember this moment and next year when I tell you to schedule time to play a game with me... schedule the time!

And now I can't even leave the city...

Holiday Inn Express for awhile. On the streets if they decide to be pricks about not doing my wake-up calls so I could have caught my train.

Calls. Two. I really wanted to be sure I caught my train.

Man, I'm sorry! That sucks duder

We were in the Marriott and think we had some Catalyst guys staying a couple doors down from us. We were wondering if you / Crit were among them

Sorry I didn't get to run into ya, 'muse. I was in the Scramble, too, though, so y'all might have seen me -- monochromatic clothing, and the black-and-white cyberarm sleeve (and black Cobra ballcap). We were all running around so much I'm not surprised lots of us missed each other, but it would'a been nice to be able to say hi to you!

Well, Geoncon has come and gone. I really hope next year they don't stick us in the ICC hall. it was damn annoying to be yelling jsut to be heard during a normal Missions game.

The GM bottles of water really helped me, I know that!

When I do JimCon and KeyCon in the 'Peg, I'll have to remember to buy a case.

As Recovery Monday draws to a close, and another Gencon goes in the books, I've been reflective.

On the whole, I had a great time. To anyone who's even considered it, volunteer to judge a round or two along with playing. It gave me a nice contrast with playing, and the staff were great to us. As always, I had a blast with the Scramble, though I might or might not have been making my own fun for a portion of it. My Missions character got to hang up his M-23 and his aviator sunglasses in a way that was just right. Big thanks to all the volunteers to who made the Scramble (and really all of Missions) happen.

As always, it was great to catch up with a bunch of folks, along with meeting new ones and putting names and faces with forum names.

On the other hand, the decision to put all of the Catalyst products together in one room was an atrocious one. Putting Missions back in the JW with the other RPGs and the Scramble back in Union Station with the other LARPs would do the campaign (and the convention) a great service. It was far too loud to comfortably play, which is insane given what Gencon is charging per slot. Also, the hard floors meant every dropped die bounced half way to Green Bay. Being in the main ICC also meant no courtesy outlets for the large numbers of people travelling with netbooks and tablets.

Barring something weird, I'll still see all y'all next summer.

While, personally, I liked being able to peek over at all the shadowrunners having fun (while I played a little BattleTech), it was really damned loud in there. I understand it made life easier on GenCon to lump all the CGL stuff together, but...yeah. It made for an awful lot of background noise for the RPGers to deal with. There's an awful lot more talking involved in an RPG session than a wargame, after all.

Hopefully the GenCon organizers will hear our desperate pleas.

It was great seeing those of you I caught up with! Even if meeting Bull was just briefly passing in the vendor's area. I'm still struggling with this 'occupy only a single point at a single moment in time' rule. Somehow four days just isn't enough!

It's the great GenCon Oxymoron. Four days just isn't enough time to do what you want, but more than four days would probably kill every last one of us (judging from how exhausted we all are at the end of it).

Aw man, Nezumi was there too? People I missed...

Critias, I was the quiet guy with the notebook all day. I saw you walk by at the CGL booth during the rally and thought to say something. Oh well, next year

I saw CGL was charging three times the normal rate to play in Battletech games. Was it the same for SR?

ORO certificates was something penguin cooked up unrelated to any Catalyst events, but still interesting. You can find a web site online using the pattern printed on the back of the certificate.

As for noisy Catalyst guys, if it was Wednesday night on 14th floor of Marriot, Thursday or Friday night on the 9th floor, or Saturday night on the 8th floor, I KNOW NOTHING ABOUT IT! Shadowrunners are always welcome to stop in and introduce themselves.

Where exactly did you see that? Because I know for a fact that they didn't do so for every Battletech game. I know they do charge extra for their "Trial of Bloodright" events, but that's because you end up leaving it with either some painted miniatures (if you win) or some CGL booth gift certificates (if you don't). It's a special "keep what you kill" event, and I think charging extra is perfectly fair.

But as for their Grinder, Boot Camp, and Campaign Scenario sessions? They weren't charging any extra, in any of them that I signed up for.

Very cool! I did scan the QR code. it looks like if you get four of them together you can scan another QR code. Curious where that would lead to...

And the 14th floor was loud all week

Finally, at long last, I'm home...

I have to admit, I'm not sure if the snippets I've read of your grand travel adventure make me want to take the train to Indy next year, or make me never want to go near a train again. Glad your fiasco came to an end.

I'm still trying to figure out The Best Way To Get To GenCon ™, myself. I drove last year, and while it wasn't terrible, I didn't really have a fuel-efficient enough vehicle to make it really practical. I flew this year, and just the knowledge that my luggage space was so limited really killed a lot of the fun for me. I didn't buy hardly anything in the vendor's hall, what I did buy was really compact and easy to pack (no boardgames or anything)...maybe it was me blowing the whole thing out of proportion, but constantly thinking "Okay, I have to want this bad enough to pay for it AND to pay for shipping for it" just sucked lots of the fun out of the trip for me. Not to mention the last-minute itinerary changes that gave me a layover in Denver, taking my own trip schedule out of my hands.

Blech.

All I want is cheap, readily available, schedule-customizable, transportation with unlimited capacity, able to get me from Texas to Indianapolis without travel time cutting into my GenCon plans too much. IS THAT SO MUCH TO ASK?

Oh, you haven't even heard about my trip home...