GenCon 2017 - Part I

Welcome to the 50th Anniversary of GenCon

This will serve as the introduction to GenCon 2017 rambling.

Yes, it's been over two weeks since GenCon wrapped up, and that's like ancient history now, but:

1. I wanted to get this in the blog, and; 
2. I had a horrible bout of the "GenCon Plague" (aka double sinus infection) that kept my motivation low.

So, this is the intro post; the intent here is to lay out a few things up front.  This is not intended as a "How to GenCon" (although next year that might be a reasonable thing to post), and assumes you know something of the event.  It's meant more of a view through our eyes for the 2017 event.

4th Time's the Charm:  First, this was our 4th GenCon overall.  In years past, we've had fantastic times but each year has been different, with different events, different game titles, and different challenges in scheduling.  Every year we walk away with new ambitions and talk about how we'll tackle the next year; things that we'd change or things we wouldn't do again.

But overall there's not a lot to complain about.  We have a group of old friends from college that converge upon Indy every year that we meet up with.  We've met my favorite author (Jim Butcher).  We've had our picture taken with Summer Glau and bright green Cthulhu monsters (that's an inside joke).  And we've expanded our knowledge and understanding of the Tabletop Industry each and every year.

Planning:  I spent far more time preparing and strategizing our shopping  plans this year than any previous year.  Normally we wander down to the vendor hall after the initial crush of nerd bodies and then work our way through fairly randomly.

This year, both Mrs. Zoxe and I had multiple booths and multiple vendors to try to obtain exclusives and pre-releases.  This meant paying attention to show-open times, picking an out-of-the-way entrance (crowd avoidance), and studying the vendor hall map to min/max our route to loot.

(Yes, I live in a house where topics like pre-GenCon planning is debated over the dinner table.  Life is good. :)  )

Nerd angst:  Kingdom Death topped my Thursday morning plans, but this gave me much angst. As I mentioned previously, I backed the 1.5 Kickstarter very heavily, and have MUCH content inbound.  However, the KDM universe is full of similarly named figures, some of which are included in the Kickstarter and some of which are not.  There's a lot of existing content that I've already paid for that I consistently get very confused.  The thought of passing up something I didn't have and then not seeing it restocked for months/years makes me unhappy.  Without knowing exactly what Poots would bring to GenCon, before the event I spent several hours making a cheat sheet for my phone so that I could avoid repeat buys and buy with confidence (more on this later).

Event tickets:  GenCon uses a lottery system for reserving events.  You can login in advance and peruse the catalog and create a wish list.  Both Mrs. Zoxe and I spent the time to pick our preferred events, and min/maxing our 4 days of games.  We were both online the day of the event sales, punched the button to join the queue the moment it went live ... and then unhappily watched all of our selected events fill up one after another.  We scrambled back through the catalog, and managed to fill in some alternate game time on Saturday and Sunday.  This actually worked better, as it left Thursday and Friday for shopping.

Food:  Part of our planning involved a strong desire NOT to eat at the convention center snack bars for the entire weekend.  Not only is the food expensive, it's also sub-par, and my guts will only handle so many greasy fries and nacho-cheese that's closer to bathroom tile caulk than a dairy product.  Last year the food trucks looked enticing, but crowded - this year we vowed to make decent food a priority.

And so, as the months, weeks, and days counted down, we eagerly awaited our trip to downtown Indy for the best 4 days of gaming.