Gencon

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.