Gen Con 2010 in retrospect

All things considered Gen Con 2010 was a great time. It was the first time I took the wife and kids and everyone had a blast. Here are some of the highlights (and lowlights) of my time.

Best:
- Playing the Red Box D&D4 with my kids. It was awesome and it felt like "old D&D" to me. I know there is a lot of FUDing about this (Fear, Uncertainty, Doubt) about the new Essentials line, but I can tell you this it was fast and fun.
- My Ghosts of Albion games went great! Ran Obsession and I loved seeing how the different groups dealt with the same problems.  Kurt Wiegel of Game Geeks fame played in one of my games and it was great time.  Earlier in the same day Andrew Peregrine of Victoriana fame also played in my games. I always try to get in a game of Victoriana at Gen Con, but couldn't this year.  So it was nice to get Andrew in a Ghosts game instead.  By the way, Andrew got a silver for Best Writing  for Victoriana at the Ennies this year!
Wanted to run some more games, but didn't have the time.  Having the boys with me made the social and gaming dynamic very different.
- Playing our regular D&D 3 game in the hotel lobby with my boys.  I wanted them to have the full Con experience.  We only played for about an hour, but they managed to get pretty far.

If you have that Facebook thing on teh internets at home then you can see my photos.

Looking Forward to:
- Ravenloft board game.  Saw it run at the Con and it looks fun as hell.
- D&D4 Red Box.  I know this send hordes of people that like to read my blog scratching their heads in disbelief, but I played and it was fun.
- Ravenloft campaign setting.  That was totally unexpected!

Sorta Bad: I bought nothing the entire con. I decided to pick up the books I want at my local game store instead.  I am buying Advanced Player's Guide, Smallville, and DC Adventures.  I might also pick up Icons, even though I have all of these on PDF already.  So I'll head to Games Plus and buy my stuff.

What was up with the White Wolf booth anyway?  Were they selling anything at all?

Kinda Bad/But also Good: Son and I tried to get into a D&D4 game but the line was longer than his stamina. We wanted to play but went down and had chili dogs and soda instead.  Again, the full Con experience.  I have to admit I was getting tired too and having a chili dog and a soda with my little guy was a fantastic way to spend the time.

Worse: Some guy fell asleep on I-65 back to Chicago and hit us doing 75 miles an hour. We went across 2 lanes of traffic and landed in a ditch on the side of the road.
Kids and wife are fine, no one was hurt. Had a lot of help from some really nice locals. Really killed the post-con high we had going.   We will be back next year of course. But I might be taking back roads home.

Other News

The Ipad seemed to be to tool of choice this year.  I can easily understand why.  Once they have one big enough to hold all my PDFs then I am there.

Ghosts of Albion did not make it to print for Gen Con this year.  But I understand that we are going to be seeing it in game stores in a couple of months.  Frankly a Halloween release would be awesome.  I'll write a new Halloween themed adventure for it to run when it is out.

Not Gen Con related

Amber Benson has some updated information about Drones on her blog.  I support Amber. Mostly because I know her and I have known about Drones for a while. Long enough to support her claims.
http://amberbensonwrotethis.blogspot.com/2010/08/why-are-these-two-things-different.html

I made the OSR News!  And not for any of my OSR support or my insane liking for the new Tomb of Horrors. ;)  They liked my Dark Druid adventure!  Thanks for the nod guys.  It really made my day today when I saw that.