This is actually from a couple weeks ago (GenCon is usually the second week of August), and it originated as a Facebook note. However, I've decided to put it here as well so that my loyal readers unfortunate enough not to have Facebooks can enjoy it as well:
Yesterday, I just got back from another four-day trip with my dad to GenCon, a worldwide gaming convention held annually in downtown Indianapolis known as the 'Best Four Days in Gaming'. Every imaginable type of game is represented, from rpg's to board games to card games (which is what I go for). And when they say 'four days', they mean four days: there are different tournaments and stuff going on around the clock, and everyone runs on no sleep and irregular eating times. Trolling around the huge gaming hall in between rounds, it's common to find people with their heads down among suitcases and cards, desperately trying to get just enough shuteye to stay alive through 14 hours of grueling card game tournaments (if you don't think fourteen hours of playing cards is tiring, then you have obviously never done it).
A quick overview of my schedule: woke up on Thursday morning at...well, it was early. We drove for a couple hours into downtown Indianapolis and commenced the card-gamery with a 'crossover' tournament wherein you played a deck made up of either Naruto cards or DBZ cards. Sounds great in theory, since both the games and the series themselves are strikingly similar, but unfortunately the games were just too different to really work together in a balanced way. When we finally checked in at our hotel at 10:00 (both the street we were supposed to take and the hotel had changed names since last year, causing some obvious confusion), we ordered some Papa John's for dinner. Remember what I said about irregular eating schedules during GenCon? It's not GenCon without pizza for every meal.Friday was another day-long tournament, this one comprised solely of DBZ. Nothing really noteworthy happened, other than the fact that (surprise, surprise) we didn't eat pizza for dinner. Instead we had some pretty awesome Angus burgers at eleven o'clock at night. On the way to the restaurant, we were offered a brochure from a group of revolutionary artists from West Virginia that told us to "stop bitching and start revolting". I don't know what the name of this underground movement was, but it was pretty hilarious and I laughed for a couple minutes afterward.Naruto took the spotlight for Saturday's big tournament. As far as the basics go, it was pretty much like the previous two days. However, things were a little shaken up when the fire alarm suddenly went off between the sixth and seventh rounds, forcing everyone to immediately evacuate the convention center. This didn't have as much of an impact on the tournament as everyone thought, since we were given the all-clear and were back in the convention center within half an hour. This obviously caused a slight delay, and we didn't get back to the hotel until after midnight, falling asleep immediately as we were too tired to even order pizza.
Some interesting/miscellaneous things I saw/did:
T-shirts: I usually spend my Christmas gift cards buying T-shirts at GenCon, and this year I used it to get three new Lantern t-shirts (because you can never have enough). I also saw a bunch of guys in Lantern shirts walking around; I think I saw close to five Blue Lanterns in the span of an hour on Saturday. As far as the shirts everybody else was wearing, I spied the usual "Han shot first" and Cthulhu shirts. Awesome graffiti: Most card tournaments are played on white tablecloths. Since they're not changed over the course of the four days that is GenCon, you would assume that people would eventually get bored and start doodling. And you would assume correctly. I must say, the table graffiti this year was above par. From scribbled messages like "the rare hunters are a' rare huntin'" to drawings of Boba Fett in a tuxedo, the graffiti really cracked me up.
Cosplayers: Here it is, after all the waiting...the complete list of every cosplayer I saw at GenCon 2009! Get ready: Sora, Auron, Joker, Rorschach, a Knight who Says Ni, the Witch-king, the ugliest Wonder Woman I've ever seen, Ichigo Kurosaki, more Toshiro Hitsugayas than you could shake a stick at, pretty much every member of Akatsuki, and tons of miscellaneous samurai, fairies, ninjas, and monsters. And although he doesn't exactly qualify as a cosplayer, we did spy one guy with the inscription of the One Ring tatooed on his arm. No freaking joke.That's pretty much all I can think of now. All in all, it was awesome, and if I think of anything else, I'll edit it in.
