GenCon 2009 -- What I Can Remember

So in light of the GenCon report cards I have been posting, I thought it might be fun to try and remember what happened the years that I went and didn't do a report afterwards. First up is 2009.

In 2009, we decided to go just a little bit on the late side. As in, all the hotel rooms are already booked kind of late. We also made plans with a friend of mine from my army days and her boyfriend to meet us there. We would share the cost of a room which made the burden easier. I had also stayed outside of the city in previous years and decided that we definitely wanted to stay in the Con hotel blocks, so looking at the VIG package was very tempting. In the end, we decided to do it, and upgrade the other 3 in the group to VIG companions, and share the overall cost among the group. With that done, we got a room in the Hyatt, which was quite nice, if a little cramped with 2 couples sharing it. We must have beaten the hot water heaters to death with the volume of showering done. (I shudder to think about rooms with more than 4 people in them)

So on to the events that I can remember

GenCon 2011 Report Card

Hi all. What follows is my very candid and honest review of my experiences at GenCon. There may be things said that aren’t entirely flattering, and for that I am not sorry. I apologize if anyone is greatly bothered, but I will go ahead and speak my piece anyways. It is all said out of love for gaming, in the hopes that anyone who receives a harsh critique will take it to heart and be able to improve for next time. I welcome and encourage anyone playing in my games to please do the same. If you think I did a bad job, please tell me so I can do better next time. I will not, however, mention any names unless I have good things to say. I don’t want to embarrass anyone publicly by name.

GenCon 2010 Report Card

In starting up this Blog, which if I am realistic, I'll probably not post to very frequently, I thought I would dig through my old GenCon reviews. So heres the report card from 2010.

Event: Eclipse Phase - EP1
Type:RPG
Grade: A
Comments: Had a great time. Good bunch of RP'ers at the table, especially the guy playing the uplifted Octopus. He had a great take on "what would a sentient octopus think about humans". The scenario was fun, and I think we were the only ones in the room, so nice and quiet for us. Yay for 8am games on Thursday. We also lucked out and ended up with a big fat whiteboard mounted on the wall in the conf room we played in. Somebody made a good luck
roll for that one. All in all had a great time. I cant recommend enough that you all check out this game. They have really put their money where there mouth is, and licened all of their product under CC: NC, SA, Attrib. You can have a look at the pdf's completely legally at the lead developer's website: http://robboyle.wordpress.com/eclipse-phase-pdfs/ If you like it, send em some cash. Its so refreshing to see something like this happening in our industry.
http://www.eclipsephase.com

GenCon 2012 Report Card

I have to say that for the most part, this was the best GenCon I have ever attended. I attribute that to my own level of involvement with things, and gamers just being awesome this year. As usual, I like to do a blow by blow review of each event in which I participated. So without further delay, here goes...