Lisa’s Gen Con Overview
Monument Circle, a few blocks from the convention center. Great for orienting yourself in the city!
I went to GenCon, y’all! It was great. The end. No, not really, I guess I’ll write a whole article. Warning there is not a lot of gaming here since those things are getting their own articles. So this is more about going to Indy.
It was not my first time at a large convention, but it was my first one in several years. Also my first vacation in just over two years, and the first vacation that my fiancée and I have taken together since we became an item (Hi, Claire!).
I go to cons for a few reasons. Primarily, I get to see people who I rarely see, trawl the dealer’s room, and play some games. For me, it’s also a vacation, and a time where I have a few days where I only have to do things that I want to do. Ah, glorious vacation. So here are some thoughts on some things.
THE TRIP
I rode out and back in a minivan with four other people. I was tucked in the back seat for most of the trip (about 12 hours each way). We did break up the drive by stopping overnight in Ohio somewhere each way. Where in Ohio? You would have to ask someone who doesn’t suck at geography. I found that it improved the trip immensely. We also had tons of snacks. So many snacks. I am, in fact, still eating snacks that were brought along for the road trip.
Fellow Princesses Ange and Alana were in the car, and we chatted about topics various and sundry along the way. Politics, weddings, gaming, puns, weddings, corn, more puns, more gaming, and even some gaming.
THE FOOD
Because we had a fridge in our room, I ended up not eating at restaurants too much. That was great, since it allowed me to have a slightly higher budget in the dealer’s room. Three places I did go were to The Ram, Rock Bottom, and The Eagle’s Nest.
We usually hit the Ram on Wednesday night before things get too busy and this year was no exception. They have very delicious beer, guys. Very delicious. Highly recommend. It comes in sizes bigger than pints. And in delicious flavors.
Rock Bottom has awesome burgers, great beer, and also this year had a chocolate stout cheesecake cupcake. I cannot even begin to describe it further, except that those are four of my favorite words and they were all used to describe one food item, which I ate and enjoyed.
The Eagle’s Nest is the rotating restaurant on top of the Hyatt. My fiancée and I went to celebrate our engagement, so I picked someplace fancy. It did not disappoint. I was slightly disoriented and had to wear my sunglasses for part of it, since the sun was facing us for a while and the day star it burns, which made me feel significantly less fancy. And the chairs were kind of uncomfortable. But the appetizers were delicious, the halibut very tasty, and the peach cobbler appropriately peachy. And they brought champagne when they found out we were celebrating.
SIDEQUEST
As another part of the vacation-while-at-GenCon experience, we went to a baseball game. There is a minor league team whose field is right next to the convention center. I got tickets online, and we caught the last half. Even though I am not a big baseball fan, it was surprisingly fun. Also good that Claire could explain things I don’t understand because, let’s face it, there is a lot I do not understand about baseball. Also, there were fireworks at the end. And because fireworks are apparently much easier to obtain and deploy in Indiana than in New York, what with there being almost no regulations on them, there were a lot of fireworks. So many fireworks. At once. Boom.
Boom!
CORN
(Thanks to Angela for taking so many wonderful pictures! Both of these are from her collection.)
Lisa's introduction to geekdom was the X-Men animated series as a child. From there, it progressed to raiding the quarter bin at the local comics shop, hunting for Elfquest volumes that she didn't yet own, and being completely confused by THAC0 in Castle Ravenloft and Menzoberranzen on the computer. A brief stint in middle school and high school of being anime-and-Final Fantasy obsessed followed. Slash fiction was read; terrible slash fiction was written. Tabletop gaming did not properly get introduced until college; from her first campaign (Shadowrun, playing a medic adept Medical Doctor who somehow managed to keep the Hippocratic Oath), she has had a fondness for offbeat characters (feel free to ask about the time the party got Gnomed). Nowadays, she enjoys Pathfinder, still replays Final Fantasy games on the regular, and recently spent over a year on Skyrim while still not getting all the trophies. Lisa would describe herself as a casual gamer, an angry feminist, and a lover of small gaming conventions. She is kept by one spoiled dog.
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