Day Three

Today was good.

I started at 10:00 this morning with a Norse Sword, Shield & Spear Tactical Combat panel.

It was a lot of fun.

It was immediately followed by a similar panel with a Roman theme.

Both panels had many of the same panelists, who were knowledgeable and fun to listen to.

I followed that with a "Kickstarter and Games" panel.  Had I not already been far too familiar with Kickstarter, I probably would have gotten more out of it.  As it is, it was pretty much a waste of my time. But I figured it would be going in. The panelists were experienced and knowledgeable, and the panel itself - again - would have been useful were I a newbie to the concept and execution of crowdfunding projects.

After that, I went to "Your Anti-Procrastination First Aid Kit," where I got two pages of notes. A very good panel. A very useful panel.  I followed it up with my "Jack-in-the-Box" panel where I waited twelve minutes for a burger and two crappy tacos. And I managed to spill my soda three times.

That was followed by "Geek Geek - Don't Tell Me," a popular trivia panel here. I was originally planning to skip this panel. And, in retrospect, I probably should have. Trivia panels are either crazy-easy or crazy-difficult. Or both in equal measure.  I tend to be good at trivia games (my family won't play them with me these days ... ).

That was followed by "Society & Military," which was supposed to be about how a culture impacts the makeup and organization of its military. It was more about how the US treats its veterans & active-duty troops. It wasn't an uninteresting panel, it just veered wildly off-topic as soon as they started taking questions from the audience. I got a couple of good notes from it, though.

Then I had a break, and want to a panel on writing dialogue, which was a ton of fun and I got about two pages of notes out of it.

Simon R. Green is an absolute riot. If he's ever at a convention you're attending, make time to go to one of his panels.

Panels like this are what I miss at GenCon. Do they have them? Yes. Absolutely. But when I'm at GenCon, I'm there on someone else's nickel, and that someone else gets to decide how I spend my time. So I don't go to panels and I don't play games that aren't in the booth (until after-hours, but even then we usually play games that are in the booth so that I can teach them more effectively).

Tomorrow is the last day of the con, and then we head home. A whopping ... 20 minutes from here.

Considering how the parking has improved (there is now a massive parking garage across the street), we are considering not staying in the hotel next year (but still attending the con). Steph and I have consistently had problems here (although - to be fair - not for the last few years).

We'll see.

Either way, I'll have a post up sometime tomorrow (probably in the evening), and then I'm taking this Wednesday off so I can take a closer look at some of the super-hero games I own to see if I can figure a few things out.