Latest / Tale of The Manticore, a Dark Fantasy Dungeons & Dragons Audiodrama / GENCON Audio Diary (Bonus Episode)

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GENCON Audio Diary (Bonus Episode) · Tale of The Manticore, a Dark Fantasy Dungeons & Dragons Audiodrama

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: Yo yo yo yo yo yo yo yo yo yo
• 0:01
  Speaker 1: yo yo go go go go yo go yo yo yo.
• 0:04
  Speaker 2: This is the Southwest Sofa and you are.
• 0:06
  Speaker 3: Listening to Tale of the Manticle.
• 0:11
  Speaker 4: The following podcast is intended for a mature audience. Listener
• 0:16
  Speaker 4: discretion is advised. Hey, folks, So gen Con just ended
• 0:34
  Speaker 4: a few days ago, and while I was there, I
• 0:37
  Speaker 4: recorded an audio diary so I could share my experiences
• 0:40
  Speaker 4: as a first time attendee with all of you. I
• 0:43
  Speaker 4: hope you enjoy it. Okay, this is my gen Con
• 0:48
  Speaker 4: twenty twenty six audio diary. And it is day one, Wednesday,
• 0:54
  Speaker 4: and I'm at the Toronto Airport really looking forward to this.
• 1:00
  Speaker 4: It is Wednesday, July twenty ninth in the morning and
• 1:05
  Speaker 4: flying out soon. I'm next up Detroit. Well, I made
• 1:10
  Speaker 4: it to Detroit. So far, so good. A couple hours
• 1:15
  Speaker 4: a lay over here and then I'm off to Indiana.
• 1:18
  Speaker 4: Just wanted to mention that I am currently movating. I
• 1:23
  Speaker 4: am I'm a movator, and I am movating. That's all.
• 1:28
  Speaker 5: Please pause for a moment to give you attention to
• 1:30
  Speaker 5: the following safety breathing.
• 1:32
  Speaker 4: Even if you are a frequent flyer, as each aircraft.
• 1:35
  Speaker 5: Type is different.
• 1:38
  Speaker 4: Okay, just landed in Indiana and I am ready for
• 1:41
  Speaker 4: gen Con twenty twenty six, the best four days in gaming.
• 1:45
  Speaker 3: Ready for adventure.
• 1:46
  Speaker 4: Next stop is We'll Call. I'm gonna pick up my badge.
• 1:52
  Speaker 4: I'm here at the ICC and I have found will Call,
• 1:56
  Speaker 4: and the line goes on and on and on. All right,
• 2:04
  Speaker 4: it is kind of the end of day one here
• 2:07
  Speaker 4: and I have made it to the hotel. I've made
• 2:10
  Speaker 4: it through will Call, got my badge. A little excited,
• 2:13
  Speaker 4: a little apprehensive. I'm mostly excited. I had some some
• 2:18
  Speaker 4: peanut butter sandwiches for dinner, so I guess that makes
• 2:21
  Speaker 4: me pretty fancy. Tonight, I might just kind of have
• 2:24
  Speaker 4: a little walk around. I got to connect with my
• 2:26
  Speaker 4: roommates and maybe grab a drink, maybe check out the stink.
• 2:31
  Speaker 3: Hear a lot about the stink.
• 2:33
  Speaker 4: Anyway, I'll let you know. Good night. It is Thursday,
• 2:38
  Speaker 4: July thirtieth, and day two of my gen Con adventure.
• 2:43
  Speaker 4: I'm sitting here in the JW. Marriott in my hotel room,
• 2:47
  Speaker 4: and I'm very lucky to have been invited to room
• 2:50
  Speaker 4: with a couple of great guys, Matt and Chris. You guys,
• 2:53
  Speaker 4: would know Chris because he played Seger on season three
• 2:56
  Speaker 4: of the show, and Chris agreed to be my Shirpe
• 2:58
  Speaker 4: for the con. It is one of the reasons why
• 3:00
  Speaker 4: I decided to do this in the first place. Thank you, Chris. Anyway,
• 3:04
  Speaker 4: today begins at Lucas Oil Stadium with a game of
• 3:09
  Speaker 4: Gamma World. Yep, I'm going to play Gamma World on
• 3:12
  Speaker 4: a football field.
• 3:14
  Speaker 1: That's pretty cool, and I'm Luke Gygax, who can bind
• 3:16
  Speaker 1: me at the guy gags on most social media's. I
• 3:19
  Speaker 1: am founder Barry Conner Mark coming to Garry Counts and Lakey, Wisconsin,
• 3:25
  Speaker 1: which is where Engine and Dragons was created.
• 3:29
  Speaker 4: So after Gamma World, I went immediately to the Repertory
• 3:36
  Speaker 4: Theater and just just made it in time for the
• 3:42
  Speaker 4: game run by Luke Gygax, The Curse of Christophus, and
• 3:47
  Speaker 4: at the end I actually got to quickly meet Luke
• 3:49
  Speaker 4: Gygax and got our selfie with him and told him
• 3:52
  Speaker 4: how much his family's game had meant to me. After that,
• 3:56
  Speaker 4: I went straight to my one hour Dagger Heart demo
• 4:00
  Speaker 4: and again I thought I was gonna make it. Distances
• 4:03
  Speaker 4: are really short here, but travel times are longer than
• 4:07
  Speaker 4: you think. Because everything is so crowded and you have
• 4:09
  Speaker 4: to kind of weave your way through crowds that are
• 4:11
  Speaker 4: pretty slow moving. Anyway, I got to the Dagger Heart thing.
• 4:15
  Speaker 4: I played a ridiculously fast one hour game of Dagger Heart.
• 4:19
  Speaker 4: I got a kind of a sense of it, but
• 4:21
  Speaker 4: it was so rushed and so hurried. I really just
• 4:25
  Speaker 4: got a taste. Anyway, from there, since I was already
• 4:28
  Speaker 4: in the exhibit hall, I just had a little bit
• 4:30
  Speaker 4: of a wander and I met James Raggy of Lamentations
• 4:35
  Speaker 4: of the Flame Princess.
• 4:36
  Speaker 3: How cool is that?
• 4:38
  Speaker 4: Anyway, I'm gonna take a little break here and at
• 4:42
  Speaker 4: six o'clock I'm meeting Coop from Myth and Moon, so
• 4:45
  Speaker 4: I'm looking forward to that check in with you later.
• 4:50
  Speaker 3: So now that I'm done kind of a busy day
• 4:52
  Speaker 3: of back to back activities, now I have an idea
• 4:55
  Speaker 3: about like whether that's a good idea, because I really
• 4:58
  Speaker 3: wasn't sure, like should I a lot of stuff or
• 5:01
  Speaker 3: should I keep it wide open and just wander around. Yeah,
• 5:06
  Speaker 3: I would absolutely say it's a good thing to have
• 5:09
  Speaker 3: some things on the docket to do. All of those
• 5:13
  Speaker 3: activities were really, really fun, and I don't regret any
• 5:16
  Speaker 3: of them. So yeah, I would absolutely do that again
• 5:18
  Speaker 3: and would recommend for someone else to do the same thing.
• 5:22
  Speaker 3: Don't ram your schedule full, but yeah, have some things
• 5:26
  Speaker 3: there in place. Yeah, I think it's a good thing.
• 5:29
  Speaker 4: Okay, it is day one of gen Con and it
• 5:31
  Speaker 4: is in the evening and I'm here with Coop. We
• 5:34
  Speaker 4: are getting ready for our game of Werewolf. How did
• 5:39
  Speaker 4: you get ready for that?
• 5:40
  Speaker 5: Well, we've already had a lot of very frank, open
• 5:42
  Speaker 5: and honest conversations. I think we're ready for social deduction.
• 5:45
  Speaker 4: Been transforming into Wolf Forum, transforming back, getting rid of
• 5:48
  Speaker 4: all of the silver. Okay, so I'm just going to
• 5:50
  Speaker 4: ask Coop, what are one or two things that you
• 5:54
  Speaker 4: are looking forward to during the con.
• 5:57
  Speaker 5: For gen Con. I'm excited to pass out and moonstickers
• 6:00
  Speaker 5: to people I can pull off to the side, have
• 6:02
  Speaker 5: a little one on one conversations with the other. Two
• 6:05
  Speaker 5: things I'm looking forward to. There's a fifth edition of
• 6:07
  Speaker 5: Fury of Dracula being released and debuted here at this con.
• 6:10
  Speaker 5: It's supposed to be pretty awesome.
• 6:11
  Speaker 1: They're adding a.
• 6:11
  Speaker 5: New character that you can play with, and in addition
• 6:14
  Speaker 5: to that, I swung by artall story in games, the
• 6:16
  Speaker 5: Cyberpunk ip Makers, and they released a new night City
• 6:19
  Speaker 5: source book. I'm gonna have that signed by Mike Pondsmith
• 6:21
  Speaker 5: on Saturday, so I'm very excited about that.
• 6:23
  Speaker 3: Amazing.
• 6:24
  Speaker 4: Okay, it is the end of day two of my
• 6:27
  Speaker 4: gen Con adventure. Just finished a game of Werewolf and
• 6:32
  Speaker 4: it was a hell of a lot of fun. I
• 6:34
  Speaker 4: was the seer, which is kind of cool, which means
• 6:37
  Speaker 4: I got to ask a question, is this person to Werewolf?
• 6:40
  Speaker 4: Is this person not a werewolf? And no, if they
• 6:42
  Speaker 4: were or were not. And it turns out I was
• 6:44
  Speaker 4: a terrible seer. I got two guesses and I guessed
• 6:48
  Speaker 4: wrong twice and then it was killed and that was it.
• 6:52
  Speaker 4: So that's the end of my werewolf life. In the
• 6:55
  Speaker 4: end of my evening, and I've headed back to the hotel.
• 6:57
  Speaker 4: Have a new adventure tomorrow and day three. Okay, it
• 7:02
  Speaker 4: is morning on day three or day two of the
• 7:06
  Speaker 4: gen Con adventure, and I've just finished my first seminar
• 7:09
  Speaker 4: and it was really good. It was on how to
• 7:11
  Speaker 4: grow your social media presence, which is something I definitely
• 7:15
  Speaker 4: need a lot of help with. Learned a lot that's
• 7:17
  Speaker 4: some ideas. I'll check in with you later me again
• 7:21
  Speaker 4: back at the hotel for a quick cup coffee and
• 7:23
  Speaker 4: a bite, and then I am out once again to
• 7:26
  Speaker 4: see what I could see. Well, I've just come out
• 7:29
  Speaker 4: from the consignment shop and something happened I didn't think
• 7:33
  Speaker 4: was going to Somebody saw my T shirt and sort
• 7:35
  Speaker 4: of pointed at me, and they knew the show and
• 7:38
  Speaker 4: they were fans of the show. And we had a
• 7:39
  Speaker 4: nice chat. And guys, if you're listening to this, you
• 7:42
  Speaker 4: made my day. Thank you so much. It was a
• 7:44
  Speaker 4: real pleasure to meet you too, and thank you for listening.
• 7:48
  Speaker 4: So I just met and chatted with Professor Dungeon Master. Okay, wow,
• 7:53
  Speaker 4: really nice guy. It gave me some time too. It
• 7:56
  Speaker 4: wasn't just like a quick photo and that's it. We
• 7:59
  Speaker 4: sat down with chat. Great deal. Okay, it is Friday
• 8:03
  Speaker 4: afternoon and I am hanging out here with my roommate,
• 8:07
  Speaker 4: Seger the Dwarf, my good friend and roommate. And let's
• 8:11
  Speaker 4: ask him what is the favorite thing he has seen
• 8:14
  Speaker 4: or done in the con so far?
• 8:16
  Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, yeah, what about the ag Jin Yeah no,
• 8:19
  Speaker 1: I mean it's much too hard to pin any one
• 8:21
  Speaker 1: thing down, but things that are pretty magical, just like
• 8:23
  Speaker 1: they are every year is you know, it's the friends
• 8:26
  Speaker 1: we made along the way. I mean, I mean in
• 8:29
  Speaker 1: all seriousness, because I get to see a lot of
• 8:31
  Speaker 1: people I know that I mainly only see at gen
• 8:34
  Speaker 1: Con or other cons, and it's it's pretty fantastic. I mean,
• 8:37
  Speaker 1: the gaming is great, but really it's the friends find that.
• 8:44
  Speaker 4: I'm trying to figure out what the accent of this
• 8:47
  Speaker 4: elevator is. Well. I just went through the maker's hall,
• 8:52
  Speaker 4: which was really hard to find, I gotta admit, and
• 8:56
  Speaker 4: I found what I was looking for, which was the
• 8:58
  Speaker 4: one page rules, and they were kind enough to give
• 9:01
  Speaker 4: me like a demo game, like a five minute skirmish.
• 9:06
  Speaker 4: I never played a skirmish game before, and I really
• 9:08
  Speaker 4: wanted to try one, and that one seems to be
• 9:10
  Speaker 4: the right one for me. It's kind of simple, like
• 9:13
  Speaker 4: complicated enough to work as a game. Anyway. Yeah, that
• 9:17
  Speaker 4: was super fun, really really enjoyed that. Sorry for all
• 9:21
  Speaker 4: the noise. I'm at the stadium once again. All right,
• 9:25
  Speaker 4: talk later. Heyo. It is dinner time and I am
• 9:31
  Speaker 4: leaving the convention area for the first time period. It's
• 9:34
  Speaker 4: the first time I've left the convention area, and I
• 9:37
  Speaker 4: am in search of something somewhat affordable and healthy to
• 9:42
  Speaker 4: eat for dinner. I don't know if I'll get both
• 9:45
  Speaker 4: of those things. I may have to settle for one
• 9:46
  Speaker 4: of those things. It's given me a chance to see Indianapolis,
• 9:50
  Speaker 4: and this city is kind of cool. It's quite small.
• 9:55
  Speaker 4: It's I think eight hundred thousand people maybe on ads
• 10:00
  Speaker 4: like ten percent of the population for a few days,
• 10:03
  Speaker 4: which is kind of wild. And it's like a sweet
• 10:06
  Speaker 4: little town. It's very clean and comfortable and feels super safe.
• 10:14
  Speaker 4: Maybe I'm naive, but yeah, everything about it just feels
• 10:18
  Speaker 4: kind of nice and easy. I like it, Okay, feeling
• 10:25
  Speaker 4: pretty proud of myself because I walked right by Pizza
• 10:28
  Speaker 4: by the Slice and did not go in. Instead, I
• 10:32
  Speaker 4: went a little further and I found a supermarket. Huh,
• 10:37
  Speaker 4: so I just walked right by Ginny d. She must
• 10:40
  Speaker 4: be staying at this hotel or maybe your friends. Anyway,
• 10:43
  Speaker 4: I would have maybe stopped and said hello, but she
• 10:45
  Speaker 4: was talking with a bunch of people. It would have
• 10:47
  Speaker 4: been rude, so yeah, I didn't, but pretty cool. Good
• 10:52
  Speaker 4: morning everybody. It is Saturday, Day three of the con,
• 10:58
  Speaker 4: Day four of my gen Conic venture, and I am
• 11:01
  Speaker 4: headed over to hopefully meet up with coop, hang out
• 11:05
  Speaker 4: for probably just an hour, and then I've got some
• 11:08
  Speaker 4: kind of horror live show thing I signed up for.
• 11:11
  Speaker 4: I don't know what that is, but sounds cool.
• 11:14
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 11:16
  Speaker 4: Okay, Saturday afternoon, and I have just finished playing One
• 11:19
  Speaker 4: of Us Will Die Tonight. John from the Future Here,
• 11:23
  Speaker 4: I'm interrupting to say that the game's title is actually
• 11:26
  Speaker 4: not one of Us Will Die Tonight. It's one of
• 11:29
  Speaker 4: Us Dies Tonight. You can't take me anywhere, Okay, that's all.
• 11:34
  Speaker 4: And I had a lot of fun, and I'm sitting
• 11:36
  Speaker 4: here with the creator of the game, Ricky. Ricky, can
• 11:38
  Speaker 4: you give us like a very very brief idea of
• 11:41
  Speaker 4: what this game.
• 11:42
  Speaker 2: Is like sort thing. This is a prepless dmless horror
• 11:45
  Speaker 2: game inspired by horror scenes and horror movies from generations.
• 11:49
  Speaker 2: It's all about tension and the way that tension rises
• 11:52
  Speaker 2: and falls. And at the end of the day, it's
• 11:54
  Speaker 2: a fun short game to play, and we know that
• 11:56
  Speaker 2: at the end of it all, one of Us will
• 11:58
  Speaker 2: Die Tonight.
• 11:58
  Speaker 4: And it's available for free on your website, which is
• 12:00
  Speaker 4: where so.
• 12:01
  Speaker 2: You can search one of Us Dies Tonight, but you
• 12:03
  Speaker 2: can also search the designated DM It's on my hio page.
• 12:07
  Speaker 2: If you go to Designated DM you will find it there.
• 12:10
  Speaker 4: I just played it and actually it's a blast, so
• 12:12
  Speaker 4: highly recommended. Thank you, Ricky, Thank you. Well. I just
• 12:16
  Speaker 4: met Skidmar from the Glass Cannon podcast. Of course he's
• 12:20
  Speaker 4: such a nice guy. He said he would listen to
• 12:22
  Speaker 4: the show. Maybe he will. Hey, Skidmar, if you're listening, Hey,
• 12:27
  Speaker 4: thanks for taking a selfie with me.
• 12:30
  Speaker 5: Today we are going to be playing the unbelievable sci
• 12:34
  Speaker 5: fi horror game mother Ship. Has anybody never.
• 12:40
  Speaker 2: Played Apartment a lot of other.
• 12:50
  Speaker 4: Thank you.
• 12:53
  Speaker 3: Everybody.
• 12:56
  Speaker 4: I've just come out of the glass and in Mothership
• 13:01
  Speaker 4: actual play live session, and I gotta say it's almost
• 13:05
  Speaker 4: depressing as a content creator, how good they are to
• 13:08
  Speaker 4: watch that and go, oh my god, is the bar
• 13:11
  Speaker 4: that high blown away? In an absolute highlight of this
• 13:17
  Speaker 4: Gen Con adventure. I couldn't be happier. Thanks Chris Saegers
• 13:22
  Speaker 4: for taking me to that show. Well, it is a
• 13:27
  Speaker 4: little before dinner time, and I had actually organized a
• 13:31
  Speaker 4: pickup game for the Queen that I was going to
• 13:33
  Speaker 4: run and found a couple of people from Discord Gen
• 13:37
  Speaker 4: Con that we're interested, but they both know showed so
• 13:43
  Speaker 4: that's disappointing.
• 13:48
  Speaker 2: All right.
• 13:49
  Speaker 4: It is Sunday in the morning. I got to sleep
• 13:53
  Speaker 4: in that was nice, and I have a very sort
• 13:56
  Speaker 4: of open schedule today, just a couple of things planned.
• 14:00
  Speaker 4: Board games today. I'm gonna try Root and then in
• 14:03
  Speaker 4: the evening there might be like a Cuthully game, or
• 14:07
  Speaker 4: actually somebody mentioned a DCC game that would be good.
• 14:10
  Speaker 4: We'll see. I wanted to mention that yesterday there was
• 14:16
  Speaker 4: a tornado. Suddenly we looked over and it was raining
• 14:20
  Speaker 4: inside the exhibition hall in a straight line. One of
• 14:23
  Speaker 4: the pipes that ran sort of laterally across the hall
• 14:27
  Speaker 4: had burst, and it was raining all over a lot
• 14:31
  Speaker 4: of vendors, which must have been an absolute catastrophe, and
• 14:34
  Speaker 4: my heart goes out for them. I think it caused
• 14:37
  Speaker 4: a heck of a lot of damage, and I feel
• 14:39
  Speaker 4: bad for all the food vendors who probably rely on
• 14:42
  Speaker 4: this time of year. Actually it's been kind of rainy
• 14:45
  Speaker 4: generally right now. It's raining but lightly. But boy, that tornado,
• 14:49
  Speaker 4: I think I think that caused a lot of problems.
• 14:54
  Speaker 4: So I don't think I made a recording about this.
• 14:56
  Speaker 4: But last night I was invited to play Blood on
• 14:59
  Speaker 4: the clock Tower, which is a kind of Werewolf on steroids.
• 15:04
  Speaker 4: It's like one of these murder games and deception games.
• 15:11
  Speaker 4: Super fun, and it was a private game that I
• 15:14
  Speaker 4: was invited to through Chris Seger's and boy, what a
• 15:18
  Speaker 4: blast we had. Drag a bunch of whiskey, played the
• 15:22
  Speaker 4: game twice, met a bunch of great folks, had a blast,
• 15:24
  Speaker 4: really really fun. Well check this out. The fun never stops.
• 15:30
  Speaker 4: At gen Con, I was just walking around kind of
• 15:32
  Speaker 4: killing time, and I walked by the dagger Heart booth
• 15:36
  Speaker 4: and somebody was out there saying rolocrit and win the game.
• 15:40
  Speaker 4: And I went in and I won, and now I
• 15:44
  Speaker 4: have a big heavy copy of Dagger Heart, Hope and
• 15:46
  Speaker 4: Fear in my hands. You know, there was one person
• 15:50
  Speaker 4: that I wanted to run into that I didn't and
• 15:53
  Speaker 4: I just did, and that was Trevor Devall. I was
• 15:55
  Speaker 4: just hoping I might see him around because I don't
• 15:58
  Speaker 4: think he had an official booth or anything. And I
• 16:00
  Speaker 4: was just walking around and there he was sitting with
• 16:02
  Speaker 4: Professor Dungeon Master, and I came around and said, hey,
• 16:05
  Speaker 4: I got my selfie of course, and very nice to
• 16:08
  Speaker 4: finally meet him in person. Of course, everybody knows I'm
• 16:11
  Speaker 4: a big me myself and die fan. Now my journey
• 16:15
  Speaker 4: is complete. I'm almost ready to go home, but one
• 16:17
  Speaker 4: more game before I do that. It is Sunday at
• 16:22
  Speaker 4: three twenty and things are really winding down. You can
• 16:26
  Speaker 4: feel it. Overall. I had a great time, So glad
• 16:31
  Speaker 4: I came, So glad I did this. So it's almost
• 16:35
  Speaker 4: five pm on Sunday, the con is definitely over and
• 16:40
  Speaker 4: you can see people wheeling luggage around and everybody looks
• 16:44
  Speaker 4: tired and happy. Earlier, when I was sitting down to
• 16:47
  Speaker 4: play Root, one of the guys I was playing with
• 16:49
  Speaker 4: asked me what games I had played at the conso far,
• 16:53
  Speaker 4: and I kind of blanked for a minute because it's
• 16:55
  Speaker 4: been such a whirlwind. So I thought, hey, I should
• 16:59
  Speaker 4: sort of those into my little audio diary, and so
• 17:03
  Speaker 4: here they are. Here's what I played in order Gamma World,
• 17:07
  Speaker 4: and then I saw a performance Luke Geygax dming Curse
• 17:10
  Speaker 4: of Christophus. Then I tried out Dagger Heart, but just
• 17:14
  Speaker 4: for an hour. It was almost too brief to get
• 17:17
  Speaker 4: a sense. That night, I played Are You a Werewolf?
• 17:20
  Speaker 4: With Coop the GM from Myth and Moon. That was
• 17:22
  Speaker 4: really fun. He lasted longer than I did by quite
• 17:25
  Speaker 4: a lot, let's see. Then I did a seminar the
• 17:28
  Speaker 4: next day on social media and another seminar on writing
• 17:33
  Speaker 4: the beginnings to stories. After that, I went and painted
• 17:37
  Speaker 4: my first ever Warhammer figurine. The next day I attended
• 17:42
  Speaker 4: One of Us Dies Tonight, which is the horror thing
• 17:44
  Speaker 4: where I ended up on stage. And then I got
• 17:47
  Speaker 4: to see Mothership live with the Glass Canon Network thanks
• 17:51
  Speaker 4: to Chris Segers. Thank you, Chris. That was an absolute highlight.
• 17:56
  Speaker 4: After that was done, I played Warcrow, which is a
• 17:59
  Speaker 4: skirmy and it was a bit too complicated for me
• 18:02
  Speaker 4: to feel like there was any strategy in there, but
• 18:04
  Speaker 4: I got a sense of it. Later that night I
• 18:06
  Speaker 4: got to play Blood on the clock Tower with Chris
• 18:09
  Speaker 4: Seger's friends and thank you for inviting me. And today
• 18:13
  Speaker 4: I played Route. I did also play a ten minute
• 18:17
  Speaker 4: game of a little card game called Are You a Human,
• 18:20
  Speaker 4: which actually was really fun and it was a decent
• 18:22
  Speaker 4: party game. Took ten minutes anyway, fun game.
• 18:25
  Speaker 3: Tonight.
• 18:26
  Speaker 4: I've got the last game Postcon game DCC. I don't
• 18:30
  Speaker 4: know anything about it, how long it's going to go,
• 18:32
  Speaker 4: but I think it's the same guys, from Blood on
• 18:34
  Speaker 4: the clock Tower and then tomorrow I have a very
• 18:37
  Speaker 4: very very long travel day. Anyway, that's probably at four tonight.
• 18:43
  Speaker 4: Talk to you later. It is Monday. Gen Con is over.
• 18:49
  Speaker 4: Today is a travel day, and it's gonna be a
• 18:53
  Speaker 4: long one. Right now, it's nine to twenty in the
• 18:57
  Speaker 4: morning and I'm just sitting around having coffee in the
• 18:58
  Speaker 4: hotel room. I check out at eleven. My flight is
• 19:02
  Speaker 4: at around five. Because of layovers, I'm not going to
• 19:06
  Speaker 4: get home until about eleven o'clock at night, and that's
• 19:10
  Speaker 4: to the airport. Probably get home home at around twelve ish. Yeah,
• 19:15
  Speaker 4: it's going to be a long one.
• 19:19
  Speaker 3: Okay.
• 19:19
  Speaker 4: So it's twelve twenty and I'm at the airport and
• 19:23
  Speaker 4: I really thought that the gen Con adventure was all
• 19:26
  Speaker 4: but over. Really just waiting to get home at this point.
• 19:29
  Speaker 4: But I'm walking through the airport and do I see
• 19:33
  Speaker 4: sitting there. It's Skidmar from the Glass Cannon. We'd actually
• 19:37
  Speaker 4: met a little earlier on when I visited their booth,
• 19:41
  Speaker 4: and he's a totally wonderful nice guy. But I had
• 19:44
  Speaker 4: to say hello again and you know, give him a
• 19:46
  Speaker 4: handful of stickers and stuff, and once again he did
• 19:50
  Speaker 4: He even said he subscribed to the show. What better
• 19:53
  Speaker 4: way to end gen Con than to find out a
• 19:56
  Speaker 4: member of the Glass Cannon has subscribed to the show.
• 20:00
  Speaker 4: That feels pretty good. The moving walkway is coming to
• 20:04
  Speaker 4: an end.
• 20:05
  Speaker 5: Please watch your step.
• 20:11
  Speaker 4: I just read a gen Con after report on Reddit
• 20:15
  Speaker 4: and I thought, yeah, I should make my own. Well,
• 20:17
  Speaker 4: maybe I'll just follow the same headings that this person used,
• 20:19
  Speaker 4: but give my own commentary. So the first one is
• 20:22
  Speaker 4: like getting there, Getting to Indianapolis. So I flew in
• 20:26
  Speaker 4: from Toronto, and I have to admit it was horribly
• 20:30
  Speaker 4: expensive to do that. I mean, I guess it is
• 20:33
  Speaker 4: what it is. Getting from the airport into the convention area, however,
• 20:39
  Speaker 4: was really easy and I used the public bus to
• 20:41
  Speaker 4: do that. Yeah, no issues there, Very good.
• 20:46
  Speaker 3: Okay.
• 20:46
  Speaker 4: The next heading is getting around while you're there. I
• 20:50
  Speaker 4: did not end up doing any kind of ubering or
• 20:54
  Speaker 4: driving around in town really because everything is very localized,
• 21:00
  Speaker 4: everything's close together, everything is a quick walk from A
• 21:03
  Speaker 4: to B, and the entire gen Con experience is kind
• 21:06
  Speaker 4: of confined to one big square that you can kind
• 21:09
  Speaker 4: of walk around, which is fantastic. I have to say
• 21:12
  Speaker 4: a plus for making it easy. If you're lucky enough
• 21:16
  Speaker 4: to stay in a hotel in that downtown area. You've
• 21:19
  Speaker 4: got it made because you could just walk everywhere, all right.
• 21:23
  Speaker 4: The next heading is food. I can't comment on that.
• 21:26
  Speaker 4: I didn't get anything at the block party and I
• 21:29
  Speaker 4: didn't buy anything at the ICC. Yeah, no, thanks, can't comment.
• 21:35
  Speaker 4: From what I've heard, it's all pizza and tacos and
• 21:39
  Speaker 4: not much in the way of healthy eating. You could
• 21:42
  Speaker 4: probably find it if you look hard enough. Anyway, let's
• 21:45
  Speaker 4: move on, because I don't know anything about that. The
• 21:47
  Speaker 4: next one would be seminars. Yeah, I did a few
• 21:51
  Speaker 4: of these. One of them was really good. One of
• 21:53
  Speaker 4: them I'm not sure what I took away from it,
• 21:57
  Speaker 4: so I think I think it's going to be hit
• 21:59
  Speaker 4: and miss. I saw a couple of actual plays. Both
• 22:02
  Speaker 4: of these were like surprisingly underattended. The audiences were small,
• 22:08
  Speaker 4: the spaces were not filled. Both of them were really good.
• 22:12
  Speaker 4: That was the Luke Gaigax One and the one of
• 22:15
  Speaker 4: Us Will Die Tonight. I think the performers all did
• 22:18
  Speaker 4: a great job in both of those cases. The exception
• 22:21
  Speaker 4: would be the Glass Cannon Mothership, which was very well
• 22:24
  Speaker 4: attended and it was phenomenally good. I have to say
• 22:28
  Speaker 4: that was the highlight of the con for me. Actual
• 22:33
  Speaker 4: games like role playing games. I played Gamma World and
• 22:36
  Speaker 4: I played a non listed event game of DCC. Both
• 22:40
  Speaker 4: of them were fun. Both of them were, you know,
• 22:42
  Speaker 4: sort of the beer and pretzels variety of game where
• 22:45
  Speaker 4: really it's just about joking around, and you know, it's
• 22:48
  Speaker 4: the pun Olympics style of play, which you know, I
• 22:53
  Speaker 4: enjoy it for a kind of a once every now
• 22:55
  Speaker 4: and then kind of thing. And both of those were
• 22:57
  Speaker 4: really good, and the people that I met were lovely,
• 23:01
  Speaker 4: really enjoyed meeting them. The next up would be game demos.
• 23:06
  Speaker 4: I played a few of these. I played one called
• 23:08
  Speaker 4: Totally Human, I did another one which was the Daggerhart
• 23:12
  Speaker 4: sable Wood, and I did Warcrow. All three of those
• 23:18
  Speaker 4: felt pretty rushed, and I got to say that the
• 23:21
  Speaker 4: people that ran them looked tired, and they looked like
• 23:25
  Speaker 4: they'd run those games a thousand times and probably had.
• 23:30
  Speaker 4: In the case of dagger Heart, it was so brief
• 23:34
  Speaker 4: he barely got a taste of the game. It wasn't
• 23:36
  Speaker 4: a whole lot of fun, to be honest, but I
• 23:38
  Speaker 4: was sympathetic with the presenter. They didn't really have much
• 23:41
  Speaker 4: of a window to get the idea across, and in
• 23:44
  Speaker 4: terms of actually having a fun game happen, basically impossible.
• 23:50
  Speaker 4: The same goes for the warcrow thing. As a newbie
• 23:52
  Speaker 4: to skirmish games, just understanding the rules was really more
• 23:57
  Speaker 4: than could be accomplished in the time A lot. What
• 24:01
  Speaker 4: else the totally Human one that actually was probably the
• 24:03
  Speaker 4: best of them, only because the game took fifteen minutes
• 24:06
  Speaker 4: to play and is extremely simple, and it's a party game,
• 24:09
  Speaker 4: and so yeah, we had a good laugh doing that.
• 24:11
  Speaker 4: Let's see. Up next would be the vendor hall. The
• 24:15
  Speaker 4: vendor hall was extremely slow moving, a little frustrating if
• 24:19
  Speaker 4: you were trying to get from A to B and
• 24:22
  Speaker 4: not just sort of you know, meandering and taking things
• 24:25
  Speaker 4: in which you know to be fair is kind of
• 24:28
  Speaker 4: the point. But if you are trying to get through
• 24:30
  Speaker 4: that place in a hurry, that's not happening, and it
• 24:33
  Speaker 4: is a bit frustrating. I saw a lot of dice kiosks,
• 24:39
  Speaker 4: like so so many of those. I mean, I guess
• 24:42
  Speaker 4: that's fine, but it did seem like there wasn't a
• 24:46
  Speaker 4: ton of variety of the stuff, and the prices were
• 24:51
  Speaker 4: not good. They were like local game store prices at least,
• 24:57
  Speaker 4: I don't think that's a shock. I think that you know,
• 25:00
  Speaker 4: you don't go to gen Con to find good deals
• 25:02
  Speaker 4: on things. You go for the big experience, and in
• 25:05
  Speaker 4: that regard, it delivered because the vendor hall was really
• 25:09
  Speaker 4: sense overload, like in a good way, and it was
• 25:12
  Speaker 4: fun just to kind of go in, get lost for
• 25:15
  Speaker 4: a while, and then when you get tired leave. It
• 25:18
  Speaker 4: was good for about fifteen minutes. That a go for me,
• 25:21
  Speaker 4: and I went multiple times. Overall positives. People were really
• 25:25
  Speaker 4: really polite in Indiana. The place, like the city itself,
• 25:30
  Speaker 4: was like very clean and charming and friendly and welcoming.
• 25:34
  Speaker 4: The locals seemed to want you there, which you know,
• 25:38
  Speaker 4: not a given. Maybe they wouldn't like it, but they
• 25:41
  Speaker 4: certainly seemed to appreciate the rush of nerds that come
• 25:44
  Speaker 4: in once a year. The congoers I thought were friendly
• 25:48
  Speaker 4: and approachable and helpful and you know, would welcome you
• 25:51
  Speaker 4: into a game or whatever, So that was all good.
• 25:55
  Speaker 4: A lot of sort of D and D famous people
• 25:57
  Speaker 4: could be seen just hanging out here and there, which
• 26:01
  Speaker 4: made it feel like Hollywood, you know, D and D Hollywood,
• 26:06
  Speaker 4: You've kind of star spotting, which I admit I was
• 26:10
  Speaker 4: absolutely into and really was very fun for me. Let's
• 26:16
  Speaker 4: see any negatives. I mean, the price of the con
• 26:19
  Speaker 4: is very high, and so it's got to be called
• 26:23
  Speaker 4: a luxury experience, so that's sort of unfortunate, but it
• 26:27
  Speaker 4: is what it is. Any other negatives, I don't really
• 26:32
  Speaker 4: have any other things to mention in that category. I
• 26:36
  Speaker 4: had a great time. I'm not sure if I could
• 26:38
  Speaker 4: afford it, but I would love to go again. Who knows,
• 26:42
  Speaker 4: maybe next year I'm right back here again. Well, anyway,
• 26:48
  Speaker 4: I think that's a wrap. That's it for this gen
• 26:51
  Speaker 4: Con experience. That's it for this gen Con adventure. And
• 26:55
  Speaker 4: you know, even though I had such a good time,
• 26:58
  Speaker 4: I am definitely looking forward to getting home. Well look,
• 27:03
  Speaker 4: just when you think that there's nothing else that could
• 27:06
  Speaker 4: possibly happen to make this experience better, I was walking
• 27:10
  Speaker 4: around just kind of killing time at the airport since
• 27:12
  Speaker 4: I have this long, long wait before my flight, and
• 27:16
  Speaker 4: a listener spotted me and recognized me by my face,
• 27:20
  Speaker 4: which is a kind of a small miracle given you
• 27:23
  Speaker 4: know podcasts. So Alex, it was a real pleasure meeting you,
• 27:27
  Speaker 4: and thank you for listening. That just about made my day.
• 27:31
  Speaker 4: Got a second local time.
• 27:34
  Speaker 1: Is eleven twenty one.
• 27:35
  Speaker 4: Stay see a bo your seabell fastinating the captains with
• 27:39
  Speaker 4: the captain the seatbelt sign.
• 27:41
  Speaker 1: Here's what opening overhead, there's wals.
• 27:45
  Speaker 4: And that concludes my gen Con twenty twenty six audiodiary.
• 27:50
  Speaker 4: Hope you liked it. A big gen Con shout out
• 27:52
  Speaker 4: to Matt and Nathan of the AARPG podcast, along with
• 27:56
  Speaker 4: Craig Robinson and Buddy the Burster Coop, the GM of
• 27:59
  Speaker 4: Myth and Moon, Ricky the Designated DM, the whole crew
• 28:03
  Speaker 4: that Winter is for Dragons, Chris Sagers and Matt Tittelow
• 28:06
  Speaker 4: for being so generous and welcoming, and all the RPG
• 28:09
  Speaker 4: cellabs that gave me a few moments of their time
• 28:11
  Speaker 4: while I did the fanboy thing, especially Skidmar of the
• 28:14
  Speaker 4: Glass Cannon, who I ran into twice and who graciously
• 28:17
  Speaker 4: put up with me both times. But most of all,
• 28:20
  Speaker 4: thanks to you all for listening and giving me your time.
• 28:23
  Speaker 4: I hope you had fun listening in. I'll post photos
• 28:26
  Speaker 4: on the website as soon as I am able. See
• 28:28
  Speaker 4: you in a few days when we'll meet again for
• 28:30
  Speaker 4: the finale of season three.
• 28:33
  Speaker 3: See you then,