Gencon

[mneme]

Just a quick report, I think.

• Saw people. Not as many people as in previous years, though -- the only new person who stood out was Bryant Durell, who I finally met after knowing him online for -years-. I -didn't- manage to catch Holly Black, despite both of us being at the convention, but I'd guess we just weren't at the same place at the same time, which makes sense -- it was a -big- convention.
  
• Played a fair bit of shadowfist, though again, not as much as in previous years, partially because it was -devilishly- hard to find a pickup game -- especially one that wasn't "Who Wants Some". This may be partially responsible for my abysmal performance in the World Championship, which now that I think on it, may have been the only multiplayer Fist games I played all con, and definately contained the only ones I finished (I won 1 game in 4). OTOH, my dueling preformance was quite good: 10 straight wins (to win all the "good" categories) in the Both Guns Blazing, and 7 straight wins (only to double-loss against Julian in the second round of the final, as a combination of over-paranoia (I played around the brawls he didn't have and the Gambit he did, only to allow a comeback in the second game that squashed my chance at winning) to take second in the Who's The Big Man Now tournament.
  
• Not amazing amounts of roleplaying, and the pick-up game I'd planned to run was canceled due to lack of interest and several of my players being overcommitted, but I did get a couple of fun Everway games in, run by the ever-capable Kat Miller -- one "straight", one using her Everway-supers game. I actually succeeded in -not- playing a spellcaster in the straight game, too, instead playing a dragon with shapeshifting abilities.
  
• Some boardgame play -- I walked into a 6 player game of Settlers, and won handily using the old "build two cities before anyone has more than a second settlement" gambit. I also played a game of Acquire with Andy and Julian which ended a bit inconclusively -- Andy needed a refresher on the rules, and didn't remember that you could buy on the last turn (after you'd played a tile to bring something to 41 shares), so without him having actually -made- those purchases, it's hard to tell whether he'd have figured out what things to buy to erase the 4000+ dollar lead I ended up having over him once we counted everything (specifically, he needed to break up my first+second in a medium-sized chain; that would have been an 8000 swing (me down 4000, him up 4000) right there). But at least in theory, I won, and Acquire is simply fun to -play-. I didn't get to play any Icegames, which was a bit of a shame.
  
• Some shopping, of course -- various merchandise, plus Lisa found the new Tekumel novels I'd been hoping we would (and bought them at my request), plus two new cheap-ass games that I actually had demoed before I played them.
  
• Good all 'round, really, though I wish I'd run into more people I'd been hoping I would, really.