Travel

The trip in, other than being exhausted from (a) being up until two freaking out about being prepared for my two Grappling Smackdown games (I still need to make the rules for swimming and climbing, but I’ve got a good model in my head) was substantially uneventful. Got to the airport with a minimum of stress, short direct full flight. Was overbooks, and if the gate attendant weren’t visibly one of the most surly and dour folks I’ve ever seen, was sort of expecting to hear:

“This flight is in an overbooked situation. Consult the Frequent Flier table for your bonus, but otherwise roll for initiative…”

The trip from airport to Downtown Indianapolis was by taxi; I would have rather taken a shuttle, but they seemed to be few, far between, and indifferently labeled.

16,000 Steps

I’m here with the IDGN – the Indie Games Designer Network, as a booth worker. They’ve got Dungeon Grappling on display and on sale, along with a huge amount of nifty other games. Some are more straight-up fare, and others . . . not so much.

But it’s incredibly arduous work to set up a booth with lots of product in it. Those neat even rows of product don’t just arrange themselves.

But setting up these booths is absolutely no joke. Lifting, walking, stress, and “Even More Boxes.”

Look at the Size of that Thing!

GenCon 50 is just huge. My recent convention experiences have all been Minneapolis Wizard World Comic Cons. These have been dwindling in size for several years. I don’t know if GenCon 2016 was full-on as awesome as this year seems to be, but wow. Just wow. So much stuff, so many companies, so much swag. The quality of the graphical presentation of both the booths and the games is impressive as hell.

Old Friends, New Friends

I got to meet Hunter S face-to-face at the Steve Jackson Games booth. And James Loomes from Syrinscape! I saw his (gorgeous!) booth and came up and said hi. He had this look like “I know you,” and I reminded him I interviewed him on the firing squad. We chatted, but of course, everyone was frantic with setup. I saw but didn’t visit Kenzer and Company, so I’ll do that tomorrow.

Can’t wait. Tomorrow morning I’ll go for a hard run first thing, then get over there and wander. I’ll be at the IGDN booth (2437) from 1-5pm. Come say hi.