Gen Con 2024—Lows and Highs, Mostly Highs

 

Greets, Earthlings!

I returned from Gen Con 2024 on Monday and brought home with me a case of COVID. Boo!

But rather than let the last part of a week-long experience define the whole thing, let me take a moment to describe how great the preceding week was.

MCG brings a large staff to Gen Con to set up our dedicated game-room-and-sales-booth just a hallway's width away from the dealer's room. The dedicated room has the benefit of being near a high-traffic area without the downsides of being mid-stream in a high-traffic area. This means customers have more time and mental energy to browse and ask questions. And those playing our games who have a good time can look over their shoulder, see all the goodies, and grab something appealing.

In fact, MCG brought such a large team that my set-up duties were minimal--great job team! Especially to Charles and Tammie Ryan for marshaling and planning the entire thing. So Tuesday night was a breeze, Wednesday's "set-up" even more so, but also included some amazing sales training for those of us assigned booth duty--that was a first, and I learned a lot. Later, I enjoyed the company of other game designers at the Diana Jones Awards. (Maybe that's where I got COVID?)

The rest of the week was a combination of booth time—talking to people who were not feeling the pressure of the constant motion in the dealer's room was awesome—and running games. I ran an adventure I wrote—Ghosts of Iron Saddle (a weird west adventure)—twice, and another adventure—Bake Me Another Body (a Numenera adventure by Sean Reynolds) once.  I love running adventures at conventions—everyone is so happy to be there. (I hope I wasn't a COVID vector for any of them.)

In the way that all things seem to rush by in a twinkling, Gen Con concluded. So we tore down and packed up, and it was time to say our goodbyes to another great tabletop roleplaying game celebration.  

In fact, it's been 5 days since I got back. And today's the day I finally feel "better" (as the CDC's latest guidance uses the term), which means I can return to regular activities (like MCG and my evening Patreon writing), so long as I'm masked in public for the next 5 days. Yay!