Another Gencon Survived

Well folks, Gencon is over. It's back to the daily grind. I can't say I have much to report from the World of Greyhawk at the event, what with the news of Wizards resurrecting the long neglected Forgotten Realms setting (snark). It wasn't all bad, my time was productive if not memorable.

Canonfire at the RAM Brewery: According to my friends I spent half the convention here. Maybe so. I did Thursday and Saturday night meet-ups here with Greyhawk contributors Baronzemo, Robbastard, Sir Xaris and the TPK Games crew and of course my cohort Valkaun Dain. Food was ate, beer was drank and Greyhawk was discussed. I even managed to talk to a few total strangers who were in town for a different convention and teach them about Gencon. Good times.

Soliciting Interviews: I got a good influx of authors to agree to answering my email interview for the Ring of Five Questions. I had been looking forward to this all year. Stay tuned for these in the hopefully near future.

My Haul: I snagged a copy of Mark Morrison's (aka baronzemo) new module, Stonepick Crossing from the OSR booth. Here I met Tim Kask and narrowly missed seeing Frank Mentzer. Going through various WotC locations I got 4/6 special drow themed dice available. My friends were troopers and got them all. I of course spent an inordinate amount of time around the GamesWorkshop/ Forgeworld booth because basically they are never at Gencon. I improved my weak Skaven army and upgraded my Warhammer 40k army with a badass Biker Boss. Watch out! I also visited the fine folks at Paizo and bought a copy of their new Pathfinder comic book, and a couple supplements from their Skull & Shackles AP for use in my own Greyhawk high seas campaign. It was great catching up with old chat friends Liz Courts and Adam Daigle who both went from lowly Paizo fans to full time henchmen. Lastly I bought the first novel in a new series by Margaret Weis and Tracy Hickman titled Bones of the Dragon. I'm hoping it's as good as their previous work, which coincidentally I had the Dragonlance trilogy on me so I had Weis sign that too.

D&DNext: I played in a quick playtest with two of my friends. I played a rogue thug with 5 h.p. and by all means was a screw up. We didn't play long enough to get a true feel of the system, but on the bright side it was not dependent on a grid to judge the action which is a good sign. Character creation felt like a hybrid of 3.5 and 4e. The jury is still out on this edition since there is 2 more years of playtesting to come. Sheesh!

Podcasting: Last but not least our gaming podcast, Gamerstable was out in force this year (well the guys were moreso than me). They were doing podcast recordings, mingling with industry folk, handing out cards and also Gamerstable shirts like this one...

Yeah, next year is going to be hard to top!