F@%& Gencon Planning

Gencon Survial Guide part 1: have a plan

So in about a month, Mike will probably start his email campaign reminding everyone about Gencon and banding together for rooms, so in honor of that, my survival guide.

Gencon is good entertainment value.  Our typical costs are around $150-250 for badge, events, gas money and hotel.  We Priceline and double up in rooms so a lodging bill downtown is sure to be higher.   It is a lot of our groups one vacation a year so some tips are in order.

The most important thing is to have a plan.  In fact that is probably 8 of  the 10 most important things.  If you arrive to the show on Wednesday, you have 12-16 hours to fill for Thursday, Friday and Saturday and 0-6 hours on Sunday.  That is 36-54 hours total, and I for one, don't drive from St. Louis to Indy to people watch or browse the dealers room.  There are ample opportunities to do something fun, but they will get steam rolled if you do not have a plan.

In the past, I entered the NASCRAG tourney annually.  This books up 4 hours on Thursday or Friday and my entire Saturday since my teams usually overcame the extreme handicap of playing with me to make the 3rd round.  This formed the basis of my plan, I knew Saturday was off limits so schedule events to conform.

Also in the past, the NF group played in every Living Forgotten Realms module offered with Thog, Ukla and Grok the Puzzled forming the core of a really really silly role playing experience.

Last year, I believe the JC's (that's Jeremy and Josh) went heavy into Magic: the Gathering tournaments.  Bob played in nearly every Legend of the Five Rings living game that's offered.  Jason played a lot of ticket to ride variants, while I split my team between RPG events and the Rio Grande room test driving new games.  

That's a lot of varied nerdy interests laid out there, and the point is that as long as everyone had fun, everyone did it right!   The Gencon's that were miserable to me were the ones that I showed up without a plan and expected the fun to begin.  So give some thought to how you will spend your convention time.

Next time, some thought on how to figure out what to do with that time.