G is for Getting to Gen Con

G

"Meet you by the troll in an hour, OK?"
"Synchronise your mobiles."

First exchange from our dream-fulfilling visit to Gen Con Indy last year.  The plan itself was simple.  We're a family of gamers.  Naturally we would want to make what amounted to a pilgrimage to gamer Mecca - Gen Con Indy.  Typically, it took on the scale and feel of a military operation very quickly. 

Heitlers do not travel well.  Like good wine, we get shook up and all the unpleasant sediment of our personalities rises to the surface.  Heitlers also do not travel light.  Previous excursions abroad have inevitably ended up with us buying an extra suitcase to bring stuff back.  I took all this into account before getting online and hunting for hotels and flights.

For a technophobe, I'm rather good at this.  I can riffle through pages of flight and hotel combinations with great speed and in due course came up with something ideal.  Flights that came and went at sensible hours, a hotel within walking distance and all within budget.  Only one stop - in Philadelphia.

I did not know that Philadelphia airport is a byword for awful.  We found out.  Apart from the long, long queues and incomprehensible announcements that are part of any airport experience, we met possibly the world's least empathic immigration official.  A ten hour flight followed by "Hey, your name is really funny dude, your mom must have been a crazy nazi-lover" did not go well.  Particularly as my husband is Jewish.  Realising that socking this guy on the jaw would achive nothing but a strip search, we kept schtum.  Which I've regretted ever since.

We made it.  We found the hotel.  The hotel was wonderful and the staff made us feel like their long-lost family.  Thank you Crowne Plaza.  Unfortunately, there were some things completely out of their control.  If you recall, last August America had an unrivalled heatwave.  It was hot in Indianapolis.  Hot to the point that our plans to spend a couple of days acclimatising and wandering about were scuppered.  Going outside was like being hit in the face with a huge boiling blanket.  Three days before Gen Con started and we wilted in the heat and wondered if we'd have been better off not coming at all. 

Deprived of wandering, we spent a lot of time in the Boar's Head icecream parlour.  A name that tickled me greatly.  I kept wondering what Falstaff would have made of a hot fudge sundae. 

Ice cream parlour

We also worked out that the convention centre was huge.  As in airport huge.  This wasn't rocket science, but it did get us thinking about how we could stay in touch with each other.  Cheap mobiles was the answer.  Got those and practiced communicating with each other.  "Hi, I'm eating pancakes, want to join me?"

All this background took us to the first morning and our mile long trek down to the main entrance.

Something about the ten foot tall troll, the abundance of ocarina playing elves, the shops of dice and the halls full of people talking about everything game told us we'd arrived.

"Meet you by the troll in an hour, OK?"
"Synchronise your mobiles."

We had the best time.  We'd go back.  Even through Philadelphia.

The halfling and the barmaid

I've complained a goodly amount about technology and the internet, but in a small attempt to redress the balance, here's something I'm deeply grateful for. 

This is a story of an internet friendship. 

When we met four years ago, I was a barmaid with a suit of chainmail under her bed, and he was a halfling druid with a large dog.  It was an online game (what else?).  Some of us felt bold enough to divulge our real names and befriend each other on Facebook.

Halfling druid

Barmaid.  Chainmail under bed and therefore not visible

A conversation started shortly afterwards which has endured ever since.

Pat and I communicate almost every day.  I've watched him turn his life around in more ways than I can sensibly count.  He's watched me clamber through my various artistic traumas and teaching shenanigans.  We've both tended to be there for each other when the going got really rough at some points. 

Our ongoing conversation has taken us through politics, films, philosophy, gaming, more gaming, his work, my work, family, rules minutae, routes out of depression, character building and recipes.

We've met three times in the flesh.  Pat has come to visit the UK twice and has just walked through the door and felt like part of the family.    My son, who doesn't take to new people easily, immediately felt at home with him.  The home gaming group absorbed him instantly as a player.  He sat in our kitchen and broke up chocolate for brownies and peeled potatoes.

Husband, son and I went to Indianapolis for GenCon last year and met up again for a couple of meals.  As always, it felt like he lived next door and had just dropped by.

This good and lovely man met his soulmate last year, and on Tuesday, they eloped.  I'm using this post to say thank you to the internet for our ongoing conversation and to offer him congratulations and the best of good wishes.  Few deserve them more.  And yes, of course I asked his permission before I wrote this.

I am assured the elopement didn't look like this.

Overheard

Sitting downstairs putting the finishing touches to a madman's mask, I was roused from wondering where to put the eyeholes by what sounded like a massacre going on upstairs.

That level of bellowing usually means one or more of the following:
(a) the cat has caught a mouse and somehow managed to drop it.
(b) a major domestic tragedy has occurred - such as lost clothing.
(c) an appliance has broken.
or
(d) the toilet paper fairies have failed in their duties.

Mask in hand, I pounded up the stairs to see what was going on.

"You could just be a bit sympathetic - I have NO MANA."
"But you have a ton of dudes."
"But I can't buff them."
"So, I have mana and no monsters."
"OK, let's try again."

Suddenly I remembered.  Husband and son have been playing an ongoing Magic the Gathering duel online for days.  Dwelling in the depths with the sewing machine, I'd missed most of this.

The sweet irony is that although they're playing online, they are one room apart and yell at each other through the walls.  Hence the kerfuffle.

The post I'm not writing

Someone extremely dear to me was the recipient of a very unwelcome online message this evening.  This person doesn't want sympathy or, for that matter anything much other than to be allowed to get on with life. 

I, on the other hand, want blood. 

That would not be constructive or helpful to anyone, but I am so howlingly angry that I had to say something.  Or nothing, as in this case.

The internet is a truly wonderful tool, but it has some serious downsides.  This is one of the times when the downside is upside.  Civility costs nothing at all.  It is the basic oil of human relationships.  I will remember this and not do anything more stupid than I already have by writing this.

Internet collapse and gentle 4e discussion.

I been suffering from a brief interruption to internet access in the last couple of days.  According to Dave in Mumbai, this was the fault of BT rather than our ancient home network hub - a relief to me, but possibly less to him.

That enforced absence might have been quite a good thing.  For a start I didn't torment myself by deliberately going and looking at all the forums* indulging in slash and burn criticism of 4e.  Informed comment and discussion, I like and can take part in.  The wholesale "It sucks because it isn't what I like, and I know this because I have read it on the internet/played for an hour with the intention of hating it/heard it's garbage from a friend of a friend" is painful.  It applies all ways of course.  I am just as annoyed with ill-informed smackdown of other systems too.  The thing is, I know the 4e ruleset pretty well, so it grates more.

4e is not a perfect system, but it is an extremely robust one and for the most part elegantly designed.  Some points in favour below:

1. It is virtually impossible to create a useless character.  There are no negative attributes for races or classes, only positives.  Naysayers claim that this is a form of nanny-state "Everyone gets a prize" thinking.  What they're not quite seeing, I think, is that although there are no active negatives for picking a certain race or class, the positives are different for each of them and it still behoves the player to think about whether that sneaky Goliath Rogue wouldn't be better off as a Halfling Rogue or a Goliath Barbarian.  That said, if you do go for a Goliath Rogue, you'll still have something you can play an actual game with and be a viable party member.  Not to be sneezed at.
2. It rewards team synergy and group play.  Can I just stress how much I like this notion?  It's always been true, but 4e is the first system I've seen that actively promotes this.  Builds and powers are designed to interlink with each other.  Even better, it does not do so in a cookie cutter way.  There are a myriad ways to build a viable party.  When I first started playing it wasn't obvious how subtle the interactions could be, but three years down the line I'm still finding things out.  Easy to learn but subtle in application.  A good combination.
3. The GM's job is infinitely easier.  This is a bonus point that very few deny.  Preparing a game is a pain in the neck.  Even with great pre-written material there will be tweaks and changes.  If I can do those in 10 minutes and know it will work, I'm a happy camper.  And I can.  So can anyone.  The base mechanics work well enough that a few quick pencil changes to a pre-existing monster of too low or high a level means you can throw just about anything you fancy at any given party.  No more spending the first five levels fighting kobolds.

BUT ...

I have a problem with Wizards of the Coast.  WoTC seem to have a curious attitude to their baby.  On the one hand, they continue to publish material for it and update their online suite of tools.  On the other, those updates are patchy and pushy in a way that I really dislike.  The bells and whistles all seem very nice, but a Character Builder that only lets me store 20 PCs when I run many games and want to access all of them is a pain in the neck.  A set of online tools that I can't download to my desktop is a pain in the neck.

WoTC don't seem to know what to do with 4e.  For example, the bizarre non-presence of published material at GenCon -
"Hi, I'd like to buy the Shadowfell supplement" - 
"Sorry, we don't have it."  - 
"Whuh?!?!, you've got the biggest audience you'll get all year for your product and you're not selling the material?" - 
"That's correct, we have partner publishers who do that, they will be around somewhere."  -  
"Thank you." 
Flabberghasted retreat.

I do wonder how much of their seeming indifference to selling the product is down to some serious backpeddling and an attempt to retrieve some of the old market.  If so, that's a pity as what they have is genuinely good, but it needs support.  If the parent company doesn't do that it sends a horrible message and is just depressing for those who do enjoy it and use it to bring new geeks into the joy of RPGs.

*fora? - sure it should technically be fora with the Latin root and all, but I don't know