Gencon

[mneme]

Last week, I played:

• 12 hours of Everway, run by the esteemable imogena.
  
• 10 hours of Deleria, where I met and played with the lovely and talented kyrielle (who I enjoyed playing and chatting with enough to add to my lj as soon as I got home and found her handle).
  
• The four hour Buckaroo Banzai LARP.
  
• An hour and a quarter each of OTE and TFOS (Teenagers from Outer Space), while running (and judging, since we needed drcpunk and YT as judges) the Iron Ref competition.
  Played 10 hours of Shadowfist, the CCG.
  
• And, played a -few- sundry boardgames (Pirate's Cove [which is quite good—a simultaneous choice game where the conflict resolution mechanic is a broadside battle! Like Basari with cannons], and the online version of Lord of the Flies, and taught 3 people San Juan (and didn't win, which was surprising—one of them correctly executed a purple race strategy with enough production to keep up, winning despite, or because of, playing his monuments early)).
  

This isn't very many boadgames, given a 5 day convention, but with all the roleplaying, I just didn't have time (as it was, I had one massively short night, since the 6 hour second Deleria game [and arranged off-schedule sequel to the first, with almost the full run of players from the first game] ended at 2 am, just 6 hours before Kat Miller's first Sunday game began, and 10 hours before we had to be out of the hotel; we slept 3 hours that night).
I did, however, have a few meals:

• The St. Elmos steakhouse was easily our best meal at the convention. First class beef, and friendly service. The lamb was way-good too, and, in fact, we finished that and ate the porterhouse throughout the rest of the con. Naturally, however, they had steakhouse prices.
  
• Mikado, which was the most disapointing meal of the con—overpriced, but also mostly bad. Surprisingly, while the rolls were nearly inedible and the steak and lobster tail was passable, the nigiri ranged from passable (the eel, which was cold, but quite toothsome) to very good (the white tuna and one more set of pieces).
  
• The Ram, where I dragged Lisa after the dueling Shadowfist tournament. Really good root beer (was "bear") floats (I had two), but getting the steak was a mistake (I nibbled at the steak and ate the fries). Steak might have been more edible if we hadn't steakhoused the previous evening.
  

We also had a meal in the food court with Lizard (where I avouded the "nothing but burbon chicken" issue I ran into last year by ordering the first edible food I saw—spicy chicken with extra red peppers with chicken with mushrooms).

I did spend a little time in the art show, finding, to my surprise, that Gencon art shows have artists in them (and buying a few sketches).

I also spent -some- time in the dealer's room, though not really enough to canvas the whole room, and on Sunday -finally- cornered John Nephew (of Atlas Games), finding him far more receptive to my ideas for Lunch Money than anticipated, once once we got through the fact that what I want isn't, in fact, the rules printed on the cards, but just enough graphical design to allow you to look at a card and know whether you can play it, and if you've read the rules, probably guess what it does without having all the cards memorized.

Comments

[kyrielle]

Hee! I enjoyed meeting (and gaming with) you as well. That was a scary / cool / fun group.

As far as food, since you list restaurants - you know the bagel shop, right? Did you find the Steak and Shake on the corner there? It's not fancy, it's not Really High Quality Food. But it's affordable, it's good, nothing we had (we ate there twice) made Scott or I want to just walk out, and the milkshakes are incredible (I want to import that restaurant just so I can go and order split shakes - in spite of the fact that I have to take a pill whenever I have the stupid things!). And it's priced like the fast-food joint it is. (Unfortunately, it's also mobbed like you'd expect with that description, so the line was hideous on Friday, when we went in the evening; Sunday evening, of course, it was much easier to get a seat and food.)

[mneme]

Yeah, it was a fun group—in many ways, closer to a good campaign group than to a more typical convention game (even moreso than con Everway games tend to be, I'd guess).

I don't, actually, know the bagel shop (though I can usually get all the bagels I want in NYC. :)

Steak and Shake, we found last year; their shakes are, in fact, quite good (though I'm spoiled by the better NY shake places, and by my own experimentation), but we didn't end up visiting them this year—mostly because we were either availing ourselves of the ability to go to a resturant without a reseveration (on Wednesday evening, which I'd guess was pretty much the only time all convention you -could-, during dinner hours), or woried about them being too crowded. They're nice, though, and pretty good.

Unfortunatley, our find of -last- year—Bombay Garden (or something like that; Thai place) was closed and moving this year, or we probably would have gone there at least once (OTOH, if we had, we probably wouldn't have had a meal at St. Elmos, which would have been a shame. Unless we went to St.E instead of Mikado for my birthday dinner on Saturday, which might have been nice).

[kyrielle]

*grins* I hear you on that. The bagel shop is across the street diagonally from the Steak and Shake, and a couple storefronts up, with a big yellow circle in front; I've forgotten the place's name again. I like it because they have good bagels, 75 cents per if you don't get anything put on them, and they stay soft all day. They make good snacks. How well they compare to really good bagel shops, I have no idea, mind; I am not a big bagel person normally, they're just really handy at the con.

[mneme]

Gotcha. I don't like bagels all that much, but having grown up on H&H bagels in the city, am something of a snob about them (and to be fair, I -do- like a good NYC bagel; just not enough to go out of my way for one more than, say, once a year; especially since H&H stopped smearing garlic mush on their garlic bagels and started using flakes of garlic instead).

For emergency food, we actually brought a fair amount of stuff (this was mostly drcpunk's fault, of course): brie, as well as 3-4 cans of stuffed grape leaves, plus some pate (which may still be in my backpack), and maybe some other stuff I don't remember as well. So I tended to stop for breakfast when I could (in the resturant in my hotel, as oppossed to the hotel resturant, though I found to my displeasure that it doesn't open before 8), snack on things we'd brought with us during the day, and get a real dinner in the break between games.

[(Anonymous)]

As for going to restaurants without a reservation on nights other than Wednesday, we tried to make a reservation on Saturday night at the Old Spaghetti Factory (useful place when you have an 8-year-old or two), but were told that they didn't take reservations on busy nights. Well that's exactly when we most need them!

We ended up going across the street to Smokey Bones (201 S. Meridian), and got in with no waiting (the Spaghetti Factory was predicting 45 minutes), had exemplary service, and got good food in good-sized portions. We liked it enough that we took some of their cards to hand out to friends.

Spike Y Jones

[drcpunk.livejournal.com]

It was the Mikado that disappointed us. There is no Midori -- well, there is, but she's an author, not a restaurant (afaik).

You didn't drag me to the RAM. I begged for an escort, which you provided.

I'm glad I could drag you to the Banzai larp. I hope it fills next year.

[mneme]

Edited Midori to Mikado, thanks. Also fixed a few other blips while I was there.

Well, I went to the RAM, and told you you were going there after I'd arrived. And then gave you an escort there, of course.

Yeah, I hope the Banzai LARP fills next year too; it was fun, but is wierd as a 12 person LARP (OTOH, I couldn't have managed my -very- GM-centric play if the game had been larger, and I think my character, at least, was written a bit light; it played well almost despite the writing (but because of the running and the players).

More Lunch Money grousing

[avram]

Having the different types of cards actually be different colors might help, too.

In the back of my head I've been turning over the idea of a Lunch Money parody, in which one class of card is colored blue, another cerulean, another azure....

[filkerdave.livejournal.com]

How many scoops of bear go in a root bear float?

[mneme]

None -- a root bear has very good tasting blood, so you just use that with ice cream.
[edited]

[leiacat.livejournal.com]

What was the bourbon chicken issue?

[mneme]

The food court in Indy has about a dozen concessions -- chinese, japanese, cajun, fast food, etc.

Nearly all of them serve burbon chicken. The same burbon chicken. Very few serve a meat that is not chicken.

Mikado

[(Anonymous)]

We enjoyed the food at Mikado, but the price and even more so the service convinced us that we'll never return if we decide to do another GenCon Indy.

Spike Y Jones

Re: Mikado

[mneme]

As said -- we found the food at Mikado to be an amazing -mix- of good and mediocre, but did find it to be a very bad deal.