GenCon Indianapolis review

Having taken some time to think about it and ponder things, I figured I would share some of my thoughts after the wife and I trekked out to GenCon Indy this year.

First off, I have to say that I am very glad we decided to make a trip of it and take some extra time to sightsee along the way.

We stopped and spent most of a day at the Airforce Musuem:
http://www.nationalmuseum.af.mil/
and then another few hours at a private collection my uncle recommended: http://www.militaryhistorycenter.org/

Both were well worth the stop and look around, as a bonus the travelling weather out there was gorgeous.

As for GenCon itself, I really do have to start on a mixed note and stay there. Parking and signpostage were atrocious; there was very little indication of where to park, how to get there or even where to enter the sprawling mass that is GenCon Indy. Parking lot prices and location varied widely in both price, distance and useful access with little apparent reason. What signs there were tended to be misleading and several were apparently deliberately re-aligned to point in useless directions. The apparent lack of any kind of coordination with local traffic enforcement was striking, no crossing guards or traffic cops anywheres to regulate the massed chaos. (In sharp contrast to the final Sunday, when there was a massive police presence directing traffic for a Colts fan event!) Likewise there was no apparent con staff or volunteer presence to control or direct any of this. As relatively late registrants, we were in a secondary hotel about 10miles from the con. In my past experiences, back in the day in Milwaukee, the convention provided for shuttle buses from such distant hotels, that service was totally lacking here and would have helped immensely.

I can only describe the gaming at GenCon as chaos incarnate. The site was huge, encompassing most of four hotels and the convention center. Even for games where you had registered, the ticket only gave you a room assignment. The rooms were HUGE with unnumbered tables and no set organization pattern. If you have never tried to find a SPECIFIC board game in a room with over 100 games starting/in progess, you have never known frustration! If you were lucky, the GM/sponsoring club had a big board or sign up, otherwise you had no garauntee of even finding your game. (heh and for historical minis, you wandered into a huge ballroom that was almost completely empty and desperately hoped the one or two games set up might be yours!)
In theory, there were supposed to be "hall wardens" in each hall, assigning and directing, in practice they were absentee, overwhelmed and or clueless. They frequently had no idea where or even if your game was running.

If finding your registered games was a pain, finding random open games to drop into was a nightmare. You basically had to guess where a game was being run after you saw it on the schedule and pray you could find it and then pray they had an open slot. Their historical miniatures section was nearly non-existant and made worse by a number of no-shows. As an example, I spent ALL of friday unable to get into a game. Due to the screwy parking and long walks we missed the start of what I had signed up for by 20min, losing my place to a generic...I spent the next 6 hours+ on waiting lists for various games / trying and failing to get into anything with a generic. (Nor was I alone, at one point I believe I was the 12th alternate for a game!)

This chaose made it really hard to *find* any game at all; you could cruise the con and miss tons of interesting things, I know I did. Bad layout, bad planning and just con chaos made it impossible to just cruise and find a game, such as you would do at Historicon.

Along with these problems, the "new" policies on tickets and event registration seemed deliberately designed to frustrate and annoy attendees. Generic tickets, which for the reasons above ended up being largely useless, yet they could not be refunded! The best you could do after foolishly buying a generic was to get it returned for "system credit" after paying a service fee! Other issues were equally baffling, when I attempted to return two tickets for events that hadn't run due to the GM not showing up, I went to the Customer Service booth...which was the right booth, but which for some baffling reason of bureaucracy couldn't help me until I had gone through no less than 3 other booths up and down the concourse, hundreds of yards apart spread over two floors and spoken with about 10 people; spending 45min or so of aggravation to get an $8 refund was not amusing.

So, enough negativity! The good points: Indianapolis is awesome, parking woes aside, I have NEVER encountered nicer, more profession, helpful convention site staff in my gaming career. All the staff from the desk clerks, doormen, restaurant service people right down to the maintenance guys were all very professional and seemed to handle the massive influx of total whackos just fine The downtown was great with lots of nice places within walking distance (even for me!).

The gaming highlight of the con was a whole lot of time spent on the NSDM game, which can best be summed up here: http://www.nsdmg.org/
(I don't know if we can get these guys to run something at council, but we should try!)
I also had a blast playing Aerodrome: http://aerodrome1online.com/board/index.php?sid=02664766af8e50cead6d7783...
(another one we should try and recruit if possible)

The dealers area was a totally different experience from what it was 10 years ago. Computer games have clearly arrived and taken over the scene. The various computer gaming firms there really dominated in terms of presence, buzz and activity. Not even the former "giants" in pen and paper/boardgames really seemed to be there...unless they were marketing something tied into a computer game

So there you go, some light reading for what it is worth...
Eric