GenCon 2006
Wednesday
We left Michigan about 9:30am, and got in about 4pm or so. The car ride wasn’t too bad — we took Adamczykon’s car, which has A/C, and that made the ride pretty comfortable. I also managed to doze through a few hours of it, pushing the fast-forward button of life, as it were.
Upon arriving, we were immediately invited down to the pool by the GenCon crew. Adamczykon and MrJames took the crew up on their offer, but Art and I declined, due to my needing to buy a swim suit. Instead, we trekked the huge mall practically next door, looking for a swim suit that didn’t cost an arm and a leg, to no avail. The cheapest one we found was not only ugly, but sixty-five bucks, on sale. Pffft.
We met up with the crew, Tom, the big cop from Chicago, and his sidekicks, Alex and Brian, as well as Tom’s wife, Christy. We had a good catch-up chat with the gang while we got ready for our dinner reservation at the infamous St. Elmo, home of shrimp cocktail appetizer with the — as our waiter put it — “lively” cocktail sauce. We were also meeting Joe, Andy, and Steve, some of the storytellers behind Dark Duality Productions, and the guys running our regular LARP.
St. Elmo was packed, and the wait-times for everything were immense. They were a half-hour late getting our table ready, and we waited at least a half-hour for our appetizers. I’m betting we waited nearly an hour for dinner, and probably twenty minutes for dessert. (Hey, guys, here’s a hint. You need more staff for the week of GenCon. Just sayin’.) However, I must say, the food was well worth the waiting, and our server was great. Dinner turned into a four-hour Roman feast (minus the vomiting), full of laughter and shouting and cheering. We exchanged gaming war stories, caught up with everyone, and had a great time.
Watching MrJames finally enjoy the shrimp cocktails that Art and I had raved about all year was immense fun. He apparently didn’t believe us when we regaled him with the tales of how drastically hot and marvelous the cocktail sauce was. He learned. Heh. We ate at a leisurely pace (not like we had a choice), taking breaks to go outside for cigarettes. Dessert was divine. I had a piece of ten layer chocolate cake, with coffee. Art was full to bursting, and so shared with me and MrJames. MrJames had a whiskey-soaked bread pudding that came with a lovely cream sauce. I tried a bite, and it was just wonderful, despite the whiskey and my not liking alcohol. Lots of wine was polished off by those who drank (Brian bought, like, six bottles of wine, plus what I’m told was a very good port, for dessert). I tried a taste of both wines, but as usual, hated them. I’ve never gotten the knack of wine. It just tastes like rotten grapes, to me. Art says it was very good wine, though. I can tell you that the coffee wasn’t too bad. Nothing special, but not too shabby, either.
Afterwards, we talked about the upcoming LARP a bit. Adam(czykon), Brian, and Tom all have characters already. Andy suggested a particular Nosferatu character to me, and that sounded pretty interesting. I was thinking of playing mage again this year, but I can do a Nos. I haven’t done one of those at a LARP yet. (In fact, I don’t think I’ve ever played a Masquerade Nosferatu. I’ve only played Requiem’s. Huh.) I think we managed to talk MrJames into LARPing, too. He’d been dead set against it, but the storytellers tempted him with a character from his favorite clan, the Giovanni. We finally made it back to the hotel (we’re at the Westin again, right next door to the Convention Center), staggering under the weight of our extremely full bellies.
Thursday
Thursday was the official start of the Con — the Great Hall (home of all the cool gaming shit for sale) opens, events begin, etc. Wednesday night I didn’t sleep worth a damn, and woke up at the ungodly hour of 8am. I did my standard Con procedure, as this sort of sleep pattern (or, I should say, lack of sleep pattern) establishes itself first thing every year. I woke up, showered up, and headed down to the Starbucks downstairs in the Westin, coffee’d up, and got a few cigarettes in at the “Designated Smoking Area” (dingy little corner off to the side entrance of the building). After that, we all hit the Great Hall to scope things out. My first big purchase was at a booth selling card games — their two biggest games were a Cthulu game, and the new Game of Thrones collectible card game, based off the books by George R. R. Martin. MrJames and I both bought the Game of Thrones card game — we both liked the books so well that we wanted to give the card game a go. It looks to be extremely political in nature, of course. I snagged a starter set, another starter deck, and some booster packs, and got a nice deal on them because the guy at the register didn’t know the prices, and gave me ten bucks off by accident.
We grabbed some lunch at Champps, getting a free dessert by virtue of being gamers. (Our server was a gamer who was stuck working all weekend, and couldn’t make the Con. In her home city. That must be a special kind of hell.) After lunch, I went back to the hotel room with Art, and crashed for a nap. I slept so hard I was practically dead. Apparently MrJames and Adamczykon came and went, talked, etc and so on, and I never so much as twitched.
I woke up in time to go with Art to the location of our LARP, the Embassy Suites hotel. We had hoped to pick up characters early, so we could run back to the hotel and get ready. Alas, we got cycled into the Seminar, which was lame. (Pre-game Seminar, for new players, of which there were precisely none. And yet, the storyteller went through all the rules, from the ground up, as though no one in the room had ever LARPed before. She was the Changeling storyteller, and so also spent much of her time up front bad-mouthing the vampire players. Cow. And so professional, too.) Fortunately, we were rescued by the arrival of Tom’s bunch, who pulled us out of the seminar to pick out characters.
the night before, I had mentioned to the storytellers who met us for dinner that I was feeling “scary and violent” this year, as far as LARPing went. So one of the storytellers, a very cool and fun guy named Andy, pointed me towards a Nosferatu named Xavier.
Xavier’s concept was “silent assassin”, with a Monster nature and a Rogue demeanor — which, translated from the Geek for you non-gamers, basically means that this character acted like a loner, and generally commits atrocities in the name of the ends justifying the means. Xavier was a fucking tank, probably the most powerful and most scary (vampire) character I’ve ever played at a LARP. Xavier could easily clear nearly any room, quite quickly (providing that the rock-paper-scissors tests — called “chops” — went my way).
Art was playing Justin Marceau, a Toreador power broker, who was, of course, all about the social traits, and, unusual for a Toreador, all about the money and power. That’s usually more of a Ventrue thing. Art and I were in the same coterie along with a bunch of Millners, who are Giovanni.
MrJames got another Giovanni, a Dunsirn (Millners and Dunsirns are kind of bastard off-shoots of the true Giovanni family). Meanwhile, Adamczykon is playing the Prince, Jason Millner, Brian’s playing the Camarilla Archon, Tom’s playing the head of the Irish Mob, and Alex is playing another Giovanni, attached to the Prince.
We’re playing in the Giovanni-controlled city of Boston. Boston is full of separate factions. There’s a couple of Sabbat packs, and faction of Camarilla, a faction of Giovanni (real Giovanni, of the family name as well as the clan) and us bastard Giovanni, who are, theoretically, in control of the city.
My main plot is tracking down a rogue necromancer committing heinous atrocities and rituals, murdering people in the streets. My first night, I spent a great deal of time trapping storytellers in the corner and utilizing my information networks and influences. Meanwhile, in the city at large, a rumor was passed around that we Millners were “doing disgusting things with dead bodies — rituals, and . . . other things”. Eeew, and no. This rumor, however, neatly cut us all off from our contacts on night two. Also, the old, deposed Prince seemed to be making a power play. Unfortunately, the old Prince was a nutjob Malkavian who believed he was King Arthur. This plot thread has the Cam faction tracking down a rickety old wooden table (the “Round Table”), a butter knife (”Excalibur”), and either a book or a stone. I haven’t heard what that’s supposed to be, yet. The Sabbat are here tracking down a Harbinger of Skulls (Ack! No! Harbingers Bad!), who turned out to be a sleeping elder Capadocian under the city. (ACK! MORE BAD!)
Friday
Friday turned out to be a “meander around by ourselves” kind of day. MrJames had signed up for other events, and we lost track of Adam for awhile. Art and I hit the Great Hall, searching for gifts for our friends, and neat things for ourselves. We found a ton of great presents for everyone. We bought t-shirts for all of our gaming group, and a t-shirt for a friend of Art’s, as well as a necklace for another of Art’s friends (they’re married). On Thursday, we had picked up a hand-carved wooden broad sword for Lil’ Art. Friday, we found a life-sized, metal, exact replica of the Buster Sword, Cloud’s weapon from Final Fantasy VII, one of Lil’ Art’s favorite video games and characters. This replica is easily almost as long as I am tall, a little over five feet is my guess, and must weigh half a ton. It’s gorgeous, and came with a stand/wall-mount set up, so we can put it up in Lil’ Art’s room for him. He’s going to positively wet himself with glee when he sees it! It wasn’t a bad price for such a thing, either — $100.00. We slapped it on the Visa, because frankly, there was no way we could have found that thing and not have brought it home for Lil’ Art. It was just too perfect. (Yes, I know. We spoil the kid rotten sometimes.) We also picked him up a neat dice bag, all yellow and orange flames, and his first set of dice.
We met up with the gang, minus MrJames who was at a seminar, for lunch at the Ram. The Ram was swamped — it’s extremely popular with the GenCon crowd, because it decorates for the gaming crowd. They put up huge banners for various games, rename many things on their menu with gaming-related names, and play gamer-favorite movies on their huge TVs all weekend. The GenConners love it. Also, it’s good food.
We found out later that MrJames had reveled in a gamer-glory moment in his “So You Want to Write for White Wolf” seminar. Unfortunately, due to room changes and whatnot, only about four people showed up for the seminar, so it turned into a group chat thing with four of the writers from White Wolf. MrJames quizzed them on what they wanted to see in a city source book, as he was working on one. They asked what setting he was working on, and he replied, Los Angeles.
”First thing, you want to change your city.” He was told. “LA’s already being done.”
”What?” He asked. “By who?”
”Some guy at OrdoDracul.com is writing up a huge source book for LA. Good stuff.”
”That’s me!” He exclaimed. “That’s my stuff!” (1, 2, 3, & 4) The White Wolf guys were apparently quite impressed with his work. MrJames was thrilled.
I also caved and dropped $200.00 on a leather corset/riding dress type of thing from the leather goods booth. It’s gorgeous. It looks like it should be padded armor or something. Although the guy who sold it to me and showed me how to wear it and lace it up — a little weaselly-looking guy about my size — just about got his ass beat by making perverted comments to Art about me in the leather corset. That guy was probably about one more word away from a hospital visit.
Night two at the LARP is traditionally a working night. If you’ve laid your groundwork well on the first night, the second night is easy. If not, you end up like me, running all over hell and back chasing down leads. Also, the Prince of the city, played by Adamczykon, appointed me Scourge, which is a city job, kind of like border patrol, and generally in charge of doing the Prince’s dirty work, and dealing with undesirables trying to get into the city. Between that and the things my coterie needed me to do, I was one busy little Nosferatu. I got in a great scene with the storyteller, Andy, and another coterie member, Gabriel, the Sheriff of the city — we’d tracked Dmitri, the guy we thought was responsible for the ritual murders, down to his well-fortified mansion, and attacked the thing. By the end of the scene, I had a kill-count of about twenty, ghouls and vampires. It was a great scene, and allowed me to show up afterwards to the Toreador party (where I was to be officially declared Scourge), dripping in blood and gore. (All in our imaginations, of course.) Yay!
Meanwhile, the Prince kept trying to send me to check out this Sabbat-owned club, and I blew him off about four times on the second night. The Sabbat club was being run by a storyteller named Steve, who is an utter cheating fucktard bastard of a “storyteller”, and whom I wanted nothing to do with. I had successfully avoided storyteller Steve for all of the first and second nights, and I wasn’t about to change that, Prince’s orders or no.
Let’s have a word about Steve, who, by the end of the LARP, was lovingly dubbed Cocksucker Steve by our gang. (Many other players picked up the moniker, too.) Steve’s been working for Dark Duality for several years, for largely one reason: he’s exceptionally good at keeping the poor players and the trouble children who show up year after year, in line, and showing them a good time. Mainly, he does this by slapping down the “Storyteller Said So” quite heavily, and providing them many opportunities to get into fights. He doesn’t really bother to learn the rules of the game, as he has no intentions of following them at any point. Steve is the storyteller who got my mage character killed last year by not knowing the Mage LARP rules, and by not allowing me to call in the Mage storyteller to help run the scene. I asked for the Mage storyteller, Tim, at least three times, and was told, “We don’t need him.” I didn’t bitch about it at the time, because even though I lost a fight that I should have won hands down, I managed to do so in such a fashion that I achieved a Glorious Death, got a standing ovation from the players who were watching, and won a prize from my storyteller for good role playing. Hard to have a hissy about that.
So, since I wouldn’t come within ten feet of Cocksucker Steve, the Prince sent MrJames’ character in to deal with the Sabbat club. I warned MrJames about Steve, but neither of us realized the depths that Steve would sink to. He tried to lay the “Storyteller Said So” down on MrJames’ character, to stop him from accomplishing his goals at the Sabbat club — not because of any legit reason, but because Cocksucker Steve can’t stand to have “his turf” messed with. Steve is the kind of fucktard that has to cheat to have everything his own way, and has a temper tantrum if you get by his bullshit. MrJames got by his bullshit, got his goals accomplished, and in return, Cocksucker Steve neatly destroyed everything MrJames had been working on. Deliberately blew his spies’ covers, ruined his plot lines, screwed up all his careful plans, and did it all by abusing his power and authority as a storyteller. MrJames was livid. So mad, as a matter of fact, that he went to Joe, the lead storyteller, and bitched up a fit. Not that it did him any good.
Saturday
Saturday was another long, meandering day for Art and I. We picked up a few more presents — notably, a t-shirt for the two-year-old son of Art’s friends, which had a picture of Baby Cthulu on it, and a stuffed Cthulu doll for my little niece, Annie Grace. (I dunno how she’ll take to that, but you know, when you’re trying to build little gamers, you have to start early.) We had lunch together at the Ram, again, and puttered around until we met up with the guys. Many of them were so disgusted with the LARP at that point (mostly because of Cocksucker Steve and general poor storytelling) that they weren’t going to go — and several of them were playing “trusted PCs”, special powerful characters that the storytellers gave to them to use to advance plot. I was still having a good time, so I was going, and Adamczykon was playing the Prince, so he had to go. MrJames finally decided to go just to be polite, since he’d been given a good character on our say-so. Brian, playing the Camarilla Archon, blew off the game, as did Alex. Tom almost did, but showed up about midway through, for no reason, since his character was supposed to die and never did.
I spent the first half of the LARP relentlessly tracking down Dmitri, and ran into a stop because my trail led to Tom’s character, and he wasn’t there yet. I ran a couple of errands for the Prince to kill time until Tom showed, and about 10:30, got sucked into a combat scene run by none other than Cocksucker Steve.
Goddammit.
MrJames got pulled in, too. Several of the players were going after one of the main bad guys in the story, and they put out the call for all the heaviest-hitting players in the city to join in, which included MrJames and I. Problem was, they didn’t have everything they needed to take on the big bad guy. The other problem was, they were up against Cocksucker Steve.
I found out after the fact that at the end of night two, Steve’s character (and this is an extreme faux pax, storytellers do not get characters — they sometimes run an NPC for a scene, but they do not play an actual character) had gotten killed by his own players. Steve usually plays his character (he only has the one, despite name and clan changes) with his group of thirty mouth-breathing Sabbat and Brujah crap players. Well, those guys didn’t show this year. Instead, actually good role-players showed up to play Sabbat. By the end of night two, they were so sick of Steve’s bullshit, that they ambushed and dog piled his elder Lasombre character, and killed him. Steve was so pissed that he completely fucked over the Sabbat players, ruined all their storylines and hard work, and just generally pissed all over them. He then set out to kill as many player characters as he could lay hands on.
There were two storytellers in on this combat scene, and Steve completely marginalized and cut out the second storyteller. He took over the combat and proceeded to cheat maniacally to, on purpose, kill as many player characters as possible. In fact, the cheating and bullshit got so out of hand, that the second storyteller had to pull out a huge, powerful NPC to slap down Steve’s bad guy and end the combat, before Steve killed any more people.
I didn’t see that for myself, as I had stormed out of the scene, disgusted and pissed off. A third storyteller had popped in to check on things, and I had asked him the time. He’d replied 12:15, which meant that not only had I been cheated of almost two hours of role playing time, but that Cocksucker Steve had been completely ignoring my turn in combat for over 45 minutes. I cussed a blue streak and stormed out, with five levels of aggravated damage on me, which meant that I couldn’t even participate in any other scenes, as there’s no use for a bad ass that’s too fucked up to fight or anything. Also, it was so close to the end of the night, that I couldn’t wrap up any of my plots. Meanwhile, MrJames’ character got killed, due to Steve purposely reversing what the second storyteller ruled on a power effect, so that Steve could continue to win the combat scene and kill more characters.
I was fucking livid. I threw a shitfit at the lead storyteller, Joe, and I was so mad I was shaking and probably mostly incoherent. I know Art penned Joe (lead storyteller) up for about two or three hours (over the course of the night), talking to him about the problems with Steve.
With any luck, Steve got himself fired with Saturday’s bullshit, but even that doesn’t matter. I can name ten players who probably won’t be back, MrJames among them, because of Steve’s bullshit, and the fact that the other storytellers have let him get away with it for so long.
Sunday
Sunday was the last day of Gencon. We did a final run through the Great Hall, snapping pictures and getting deals. I got a bunch more Game of Thrones cards, dropping, in all, about $100 on the game. We met up with the whole crew for a farewell lunch at the Rock Bottom, and after a leisurely walk back to our cars, with lots of hugs and good-byes, we bid a fond farewell to GenCon, and headed for home.
We got home at about a quarter to midnight, to a house-full of pets who were thrilled to see us. We even got home in time to catch a new episode of Venture Brothers. Squatch showed up to pick up his stuff, and we visited with him for a few hours, before we finally all turned in.
All in all, despite the issues with the LARP, we had a great time at GenCon. I even had a fun time most of the way through the LARP, until it got pooched at the end. We, as usual, spent too much, and ate too much, and were deliriously tired most of the time, but that’s all part of the fun.
Good-by, GenCon. See you next year!
The Westin, our home for the next five days.
Here’s the magnificent view we had out the window of our hotel room. Oooo, pretty.
Art, in his costume for the first night. The picture came out too dark — that’s a royal purple courderoy shirt he’s wearing.
My costume on the first night, black on black.
My costume on the last night — here you can see the leather corset I was talking about.
MrJames, in his costume as Patrick Dunsirn, Giovanni.
MrJames and Adamczykon having a smoke outside our hotel.
Art crashed out pre-LARP. The pre-LARP nap can be very important.
Adamzcykon, in his shiny white suit, one of his Prince’s costumes. His character always wore white, so Adam had to get three different white suits.
I’m not sure what these guys were supposed to be dressed up as, but their costumes were cool.
Here’s a guy in chainmail. I think he was dressed up for the gamer’s olympics.
On the first day, these guys were singing in the convention center. They were doing a cappela, and also songs where they played instruments. They were good.
This guy (?) was dressed up as a Predator for the costume contest on Saturday.
Statues for one of the thousands of games in the Great Hall.
Here are a few shots of the scenery in Indy. This is the capitol building, at night and during the day.
This theatre was right next to our LARPing site.
On Friday night, a water main at the Westin broke. Water deluged the first and second floors. There was a rumor that it was the pool on the third floor that had sprung a leak, but that turned out to be false. Still, the Westin had it fixed before noon the next day, and repairs nearly done by Saturday night. Quick work!
And here’s all of us, saying good-bye for another year. See you next year, guys!
