I've said it multiple times over the past two weeks, but everybody experiences GenCon differently. In watching my group of friends and followers, it had never been more apparent to me how true this was. My different friends all had different agendas and different goals, and therefore had different experiences. Now, it's impossible for me to tell you what everyone went through, but I have a few ideas that I hope that some people don't mind, as well as my own personal experiences from this year that I'll share.
My wife and I spent most of the time working on blog stuff, either directly or indirectly. She always wanted to do the Cheese Weasel ConQuest, and I saw it as a great excuse to get out there and talk to the dealers and game makers. I thought I did a really great job in speaking with these people and to draw out their passion for gaming, but I did a really bad job at promoting myself and giving out those business cards that I had printed up. I just introduced myself as a con goer who was interested in hearing what they had to say about their games and products, and only a couple times was able to say "Yup, I'm Video of Video, Gaming at 30, and I'm going to post about this on my blog, here's my card." Hopefully, I get better at that.
A friend of mine had never experienced GenCon before and spent the bulk of time gaming in the card hall. His experience was that GenCon is a huge tournament hall where there's always another game to be played. I would see him go to matches at 9pm and come in at 3am, weary from the day of gaming. He missed the experience that my wife and I had about going up to these game makers and demoing their games, but had a great time anyway.
Another friend who was a newcomer to GenCon started off his GenCon experience by being killed by another player in a game of D&D. He then went to the hall, ran into my wife and I, and soon departed off to his next event. He also bailed on our True Dungeon run, leaving us short a player, because he had scheduled another event to take place at the same time. From what I saw, he didn't have a good time at all, and left the con on Saturday afternoon instead of Sunday. I wonder what other problems he ran into, and remember when I was first at GenCon essentially by myself, and remember what a social setting this is, and that you have to give and take with friends to get the most out of it.
I had some personal problems of my own. One night I was very frustrated with trying to get up all the day's updates with a poor internet connection and just couldn't get anything done. I felt that I needed to get everything up and ready and posted before somebody beat me with one of my own stories and that nobody understood how important this all was to me. Once I simmered down and potentially pissed off a couple of friends, I got up what I could and then went out for my favorite dinner of the con, wings and beer at Buffalo Wild Wings.
Speaking of dinners, another friend set out on his quest to get every die from Scotty's Brewhouse and otherwise have great eating the entire con. He played in some games as well, sure, and ran around a bit on the con floor, but I didn't hear about any of that. All I heard about was going to Scotty's, going to the Ram, going to the Weber Grill.. I wonder what else he did there.
A couple of my followers spent the con working and doing interviews and blog reporting. I saw them a few times, but they always looked so busy with what they were doing that I didn't want to interrupt. I did get my free die from @sagesofrpg, since we happened to both be going to the True Dungeon Riddle Reveal on Sunday, but I missed a lot of others. Others were involved in the setup and tear down of the events (specifically True Dungeon), so I wonder what else they were able to do while they were there.
Another friend spent the con looking at it as a money making opportunity. He would go around to the booths that offered free promos and collect as many as he could. He would get upset that his time was wasted in tournaments that he was performing poorly in, which just led to more frustrations and declaration that GenCon was CrapCon. He too bailed out on us at True Dungeon, because he had a PTQ, but for some reason I understood this one. He did pretty bad in the tournament, and overall didn't have all that great of a time. I think he put too much pressure on himself and forgot that games are supposed to be fun.
As for me, I played a lot of different games, got to learn some ones that I had meant to learn how to play, met some new people, and all in all had a pretty good time. Sure, there were some really frustrating moments out there, but there were some really good ones, too. I didn't get to play in any of the Magic events that I wanted to, but I discovered a whole new game in its place. I got some new readership for the site, and took my first steps in writing about something that I love.
GenCon is just a venue. It's a place for gamers of all types to come out and do what they love to do, play games! What makes GenCon is the people, and the interaction that people have with each other. Sure, there's some real ass hats out there, but the overall awesomeness of people overshadows all of it. All of those people had their own experiences, and everybody has some sort of horror story to tell, but their awesome stories will totally overshadow it. Everybody experiences GenCon differently. How was yours?
