Happy to say I finished the event jogging and not crying from the drill instructors.

Second event was BigBadCon and I had a great time. I flew up from San Diego to Oakland which was surprisingly convenient with 8 flights a day and an easy shuttle ride to the hotel. It was also great meeting up with my friends Jonathan and Oscar who had moved away from San Diego.

This con was well run  with registering being no problem and then the big surprise of the con, my schedule was printed on the back of my badge. There was also cloth dividers separating all the tables. While they didn’t cut down on the noise much they gave a sense of privacy that I appreciated and helped enhance the game.

Friday night I played a fairy tale version of “Penny for my Thoughts” which was awesome and we came up with some great, twisted tales. This is my first time playing Penny though I’ve owned the game since its release and now I want to play more.

Saturday morning was BigBadGM with four GMs given random ingredients that they must have the players create characters and run the game while being judged (and harassed by Lenny Balsara). Ingredients in this case were genre:cyberpunk, setting: the moon, antagonist: fairy tale creatures. All four games seemed to be having tons of fun but in the end it was Morgan Ellis who took the crown. Favorite moment in my game was an aspect created called “Happy Ending Virus.”

I later jumped into a Godlike Aerial game with some of the best prep I’ve ever seen. It had 6 or 7 maps, nice framed pictures of all the characters, 8 page characters sheets in dividers and miniatures. I got to play the engineer of an experimental plane among a group of fighter jocks. Lots of fun roleplaying at the beginning though the game bogged down for me once we got to the fighter combat as the only thing I could do was change my aircraft and I was guaranteed success. So, by the fourth round it was getting difficult to find something interesting to do.

Saturday night was Heroquest with plenty of Glorantha goodness as the characters get caught up in tribal politics. Game took a little bit to get going but once the players grasped the system and the GM settled into the adventure things really took off.

Sunday morning was Deleria where all the players were fairy tale creatures. In this case Cinderella, The Big Bad Wolf (how fitting) and I was Wood Building Little Pig. Again it took awhile for the players and GM to get moving but once we did it was a lot of fun as the characters had to battle with the idea and the reality of the real and fae worlds mixing.

Final game was Lacuna Part 1 which was my favorite game of the con. I’m not sure what the GM did but I rarely actually feel the same emotional response that my character would feel. This game did it as I actually become paranoid and freaked out.

A great con and though it was similar to the Strategicons it was also unique and the focus on rpgs really brought out some great player and GMs. I’m looking forward to next year.

It started Wednesday morning with our flight leaving at 7. I got some gin & gingerail courtesy of my friend Andy and his drink tickets making the plane trip relaxing. We landed around 5 and got a taxi to our room at the Hilton Garden Inn in downtown Indianapolis (our usual spot). We went down to the convention center to pick up some badges then met up at Buca di Beppo for dinner where all my friends showed up. After we went to the bar for a whiskey flight and hung out.

On Thursday I spent most of the day walking around the dealers room which is always fun. Grabbed some lunch with friends then played in Airship Pirates, a new steampunk rpg that I had a ton of fun playing. I talked to the GM after the game and he agreed to send me the characters so I could run the adventure at other cons and meetups. After that was dinner and more bar.

On Friday I had a friend pick up Airship Pirates for me (they only had 50 copies available at noon) while I was playing the new Lord of the Rings rpg called One Ring. This game did not impress me and I think would be better named, Random Encounter the RPG because that is what took about about 85% of our time. My friend Sam and I played in that game so afterward we had a beer and  split a burger at the Ram, a popular restaurant during Gencon that we usually avoid because it is packed with people. Since we went around 4pm it wasn’t too bad. The inside and outside were decorated with geek gaming stuff and the beers and menu were changed to reflect Iron Kingdoms/WarMachine world. They also played geek movies (Bladerunner, Aliens, etc) on the TVs instead of sports. It was a fun place and I can see why it got packed. I then went and played Burning Wheel at Game-on-Demand (a place you can play small press games and you don’t have to register like most games) and later… the bar.

Saturday I spent six hours at Games-on-Demand playing DungeonWorld, Do: Pilgrims of the Flying Temple and Bulldogs all with the creator of the games. All these games were great except Do wasn’t really my kind of game. After I met up with Andy and we went to a minor league baseball game that was fun. After the game I went to the bar and later met up with the Games-on-Demand crowd at the Embassy Sweets.

To wrap it up on Sunday was a quick trip through the dealers room, and then Games-on-Demand where someone wanted to play Fiasco. I offered to run and we quickly grew to a five player game. I had ran Fiasco three times before but now playing it with a bunch of people who had played with the developer I realized I was doing some things wrong. It was still the best Fiasco game I had played. Afterwards we head back to the Ram (it was slow again) and got lunch. Finally, we headed home.

Like I said it was a great con. What made last years better was the White Wolf party which was crazy, and gaming with the Fear the Boot crowd who I followed through texting. This year I followed their tweets which were really slow (last year it seemed like I got a tweet for a game every few hours).

I did get on One Cool Thing I Saw at Gencon.

Gam3r-con started Tuesday and I was there at 6:00 and stayed until a little before 12. Not much was going on so I taught some other volunteers Munchkin so that they might be able to teach it later on. I also caught a production of Dr. Horrible which was a lot of fun and well done. Zack Whedon would later see it and loved it (apparently this was the final production of Dr. Horrible because previous production were not done well). The rest of the Whedons were not able to see it but requested a recording so they could watch it later on.

On Wednesday I picked up my Comic-con badge and then headed back to Gam3r-con which was busier and had four tables of gaming going on. I ran a game of Fiasco that was a lot of fun and had some kids teach me Yu-Gi-Oh.

Thursday I walked Comic-Con, picked up a few graphic novels and caught panels on Writing for Novels vs Comics (Jim Butcher, Christopher Moore, Amber Benson) and Writing Epics in Graphic Novels (Jeff Smith). I later returned to Gam3r-con which was slow but still got in a little Primetime Adventures and Bang.

Friday I picked up a friend of mine and some swag to hand out at the con. We got downtown around 9:00 and I headed to Comic-con to watch a panel on Locke-n-Key which was showing the Pilot of the TV show even though there would not be further episodes. Headed back to Gam3r-con and the gaming area had been put on the room due to a mix up with a Rooftop party. The rooftop party featured a band but due to noise violations they were too loud to play on the roof. So, they moved the band into the gaming area and the games onto a section of the roof. The non-band part of the party was also on the room creating an interesting mix of gaming of DJ mix party. I left around 5 to catch a panel on the Art of Dungeonmastering (Chris Perkins) and got back to a packed gaming area with everyone having lot of fun.

Saturday I briefly stopped by Comic-con to pick up my badge next year but found out they were limiting the sales of those and as a result I wasn’t able to pick one up. I got to Gam3r-con in time to see my friend Mike in a panel about creating your own game. I then watched my friend, Albert, perform in Gam3rs the Play. Rest of the day was spent in the game area.

When I got home around midnight and there was a loud party at my apartment building and I couldn’t get to sleep until around 4:30. My friend Scott showed up at 8:30 because I promised him my badge for the day and as a result I was exhausted. Sunday was steady with four games going through most of the afternoon. I spent most of the day wondering around and making sure everyone was good. At 7:00 was the Gam3r-con rooftop party with live geek music and meet the cast of Dr Horrible (previous roof parties had different themes) and I had a good time staying there until 1 in the morning.

Monday was spent recovering.

Tuesday I went and say the band, A Perfect Circle with my friend Scott. Opening for them was a crazy all girl, Japanese, punk thrasher band called Red Bacteria Vacuum. A Perfect Circle was amazing.

Another great con but Comic-con has gotten too big. I’ll go if I can but with tickets selling out in a half day and now people lining up early in the morning to buy tickets at the con I can barely take it. I’ve gotten use to the crowds but now avoid the large panels as I’m not willing to wait 2+ hours to get into them. However, I can understand why it has gotten so big as there is something about Comic-con (and Gencon) that becomes addictive. You also have Comic-con everywhere including TV (G4) and magazines such as Wired and Entertainment. I was joking with my friend Scott that we might have to travel to get to a smaller comic book convention because we can’t get into the local one.

Gam3r-con was a great experience. I was a volunteer working 6+ hours a day and I really got the feeling that I helped put something together. It was by no means that size of a strong gaming convention like Strategicon in LA and didn’t have the gaming space and focus of Kingdom-con here in San Diego. However, it was unique and was not a gaming convention in the traditional since but more a celebration of gaming. It did have the largest video game area I have seen at a local con with the three rooms of video games. I was in charge of the Gaming Lounge which had tabletop games. I spent most of my time trying to find people games. We had five tables and a few times we filled up. I’m hoping next year we’ll have more room and people.

Next day we went to the Spanish Steps (lame) and a large park called the Villa Borghese because all the museums are closed on Monday. It was hot but the park was nice. At 5pm we hopped on a train and took a 1 1/2 hour ride to Florence. We then met up with my parents and my aunt and uncle and had a nice dinner then walked around for awhile.

Next day we went on a tour of the medevil town of Sienna. The guide took us all around the town which was amazing but it was over 100 degrees that day so by the time we got back to our bus we were exhausted. They then took us to another medevil town, Gimignano, which had lot of little shops and a torture museum with air conditioning.

Next day my family left for Rome but Stephanie and I checked out the rest of Florence. We went up the top of the Duomo, checked out an art museum that held the original David and the Medici palace gardens.

Back to Rome on Thursday. Once again we had to wait for our room so we walked around and did some shopping. When we came back we found out that the room they had for us had a broken toilet and they would be moving us to their Sister Hotel. The Sister Hotel was a total dump and Stephanie and I couldn’t believe. The room did not have a phone making it difficult to contact my parents. So, we walked to their hotel and ran into them. We bought some computer time and I researched the two hotels. Our original hotel, Hotel Marco Polo was a 3 star hotel for 110 euro, the place they put us was a 1 star hotel for 65. Stephanie called the travel website and I called the hotel. We than left and got some drinks then celebrated my moms b-day.

We had to stay one night in the hotel and got to go back to our original one as they figured things out and I complained a lot. On Friday we visited the Colosseum and a few other places.  Saturday we spent most of our time at the Castel Sant’ Angelo which is a fortress outside the Vatican. It was my favorite location because it had a great view of the city, lots of things to look at and it wasn’t crowded.

Sunday we headed home but found out our flight would be delayed for 5 hours causing us to miss our flight in Charlotte. We didn’t get back home until Monday and were exhausted but had lot of fun.

However, there was not time to recover because the next day Gam3r-con would start.