[CON] [LONG] GenCon Report

This is a long, I suppose semi-OT-ish post about GenCon 2000 in
Milwaukee last weekend. It is only semi Off Topic as it will cover, mostly,
the GZG events there. Hopefully other participants will jump in here.

Note that I include some suggestions for tournaments in another message based
on my observations of this year's tournament.

GenCon 2000 - August 10 - 13, Milwaukee, Wisconsin, USA

As some of you may know, GenCon has been rough on miniatures for two
years now. We had been stuck away in the Bruce Hall/Arena complex, which
was two blocks away from the main convention centre. I understand the reasons
for this. Miniatures are minor compared to the other events, and so if you
have to peeve someone you should peeve the fewest people. Even so, I think it
has contributed to a collapse in miniatures events. This year they tried to
make it up to us by putting the miniatures and board game events together in
the same hall, the hall beside the dealer's hall. This did help a great deal
with the visibility of the events, and
for out-and-out convenience. However, I don't know if it contributed to
more participants.

The miniatures were run differently this year. In all other years they
tried to cordon off a specific area for specific games/companies. This
year they played fast and loose. Each day you could be assigned to new tables.
The problem with this, of course, is that miniatures events usually have so
much stuff it's better if you can stay put. It also meant that some people had
a hard time finding certain events, as they got used to them being in a
specific area. Funny enough, the Clan Wars and Battletech stuff didn't seem to
move much. Hmmm

The miniatures area was a better venue overall. There was a food stand
inside the room (better than last year, albeit over-priced), washrooms,
and good lighting and ventilation. There weren't enough tables, though. The
tables were in 4 columns of rows. The two outside columns had set up tables,
but not the inside columns. The Miniatures HQ seemed to be run as well as
usual, perhaps a bit better. It's a thankless job and I've never had much
problems with the guys there in previous years. I've always felt they did a
good job. Even so, I did notice that they were telling people that our
cancelled events were due to someone missing a shipment of stuff, NOT due to
the fact that Wizards of the Coast screwed up when I cancelled the events 2
months ago and they didn't bother to cancel them in the book.

Speaking of WotC's organization

When we lined up on the Wednesday, the "Early Bird Registration" area wasn't
immediately noticeable. You'd THINK that the area that is listed
as "Pre-Registration" would handle that, but no. Then, while in line, I
heard from a volunteer that I wasn't in the right line if I was a judge. In
the end I received three different sets of instructions on registering. One
guy got me my badge from Early Bird Registration by walking over there to get
it... of course no one TOLD me that there was an Early Bird registration area
when I asked. I was told to line up in another slow moving line if I was
running an event and wanted my event
"kit" (the line was for general convention questions/problems, as it
turned out) but I had now discovered Early Bird Registration and went there
instead. They told me to go to the event purchase area. Instead, I
went to Housing/Volunteer booth, and they told me to go upstairs to the
Tournament Event booth. This turned out to be correct. The actual WotC "red
shirts" knew what was going on (or some of them did; the Early Bird reg person
didn't), but the volunteers were pretty much uninformed. I later discovered
that volunteers running things got 3 hours of training, tops.

They hadn't cancelled the events that I e-mailed them to cancel. This
was in the same e-mail complaining about hotel screw ups. They promised
me a room at the Ramada, then I got a note about the Hyatt, then I got a
letter from the Ambassador -- the Hyatt is the closest, Ramada cheaper,
the Ambassador is located somewhere near Outer Mongolia! Eventually we found
out we were booked at the Hyatt AND the Ambassador. This wasn't the only hotel
screw up I heard. The Howard Johnson's was only given the okay to free up
their block of rooms on August 4 (less than a week until the convention). I
heard that WotC had booked a lot of people as arriving on Tuesday (the con
starts on Thursday, but a lot of people arrive Wednesday for the full
convention). This happened to us, actually. WotC staff were to arrive on
Tuesday, and the housing guy (who ran the very screwed up events department
last year Hmmm) had volunteers and judges set to arrive on Tuesday too. The
problem is, they weren't told this. Most, in fact, were not due until
Wednesday. The Hyatt and some other hotels cancelled their rooms when they
didn't show on the Tuesday. They then arrived Wednesday to find they didn't
have a room! They weren't happy. Neither were the guests of honour that had
this happen to them, too.

Back to the events. I cancelled the two events that were NOT cancelled but
should have been. The two young guys running the booth on Wednesday didn't
know what to do. They ended up writing the event numbers down on a piece of
paper and told me they would get someone to cancel them. I was NOT surprised
to find that this never happened.

The exhibitors also had screw-ups while registering. My wife was told to
go to the Exhibit Hall (dealer's room) to get her badge (she was working
for Chaosium/Wizard's Attic). Problem is, you can't get in there without
your badge!

At least the computer system is no longer the one written in dBase 5 but is
now in Microsoft Access... This meant that only 10 terminals had crashed on
Wednesday instead of the entire system...

On Thursday, the registration line was way out the door. Someone goofed and
opened the dealer's room 5 minutes early, while merchants were still setting
up. There was virtually no historical miniatures dealers. There were a few
people selling terrain, heavy on 40K and fantasy. Board games seemed to
outnumber miniatures dealers. There were some new people, though. A company
selling Crusader resin was there. I really like their
stuff. Oh, sure, a lot of it is Gothic sci-fi (read WH40K) but it is
good enough for my Call of Cthulhu based miniatures project. Funny enough the
guy running the booth actually used to play CoC. I ended up buying enough
stuff for my graveyard, complete with more tomb stones and a mausoleum. I
eventually plan to use this scenario with Jon's FMA skirmish system.

Dream Pod 9 came out with their long awaited Gear Kreig, essentially mecha in
World War 2. They are making a series of miniatures to support it, and were
taking a poll at the convention for the scale people wanted. I personally
think they should have asked if people had already collected World War II
miniatures. 15mm seemed to be the scale of choice, but a lot of the folks I
talked to that wanted this scale hadn't started to collect World War II. On
the other hand, while I have 20mm I can either kitbash my own stuff out of
plastic, or I can use this as an excuse for getting into 15mm WW2. Either way,
it's not a bad choice of scales, just not my preferred choice.

Mage Knight was a new twist on two old themes: fantasy collectible cards and
miniatures. It's a collectible miniatures game! The figures come
pre-painted, and they have a statistics ring thingie on the bottom. It
looked semi-promising, but I didn't like the look of the figures. They
had the big-breasted female figures, and some Warhammer ripoff figures,
all done in that rushed paint job you find on toys. I couldn't tell if
it was supposed to be a fantasy skirmish game or a sci-fi/fantasy
skirmish game. The booth was popular, though.

Once again, no one was selling "Fantasy Rules!" in the Exhibit Hall...

At Geo-Hex, the UN ships for Full Thrust were picked over pretty
quickly. As the show went on, I noticed the terrain selling very well.
Geo-Hex was selling the best looking, and most varied, hill sets of
anyone at the convention. In years past there were other competitors, but this
year they seemed to be alone. I even bought some of the Battleground hill sets
myself. I used them in my Stargrunt II games and they looked great.

I didn't get to play Formula De. They had a tournament, but it wasn't in the
event list (thanks to WotC). It was full when I got there. This was a common
theme with events. All of my events were full, with people asking to get in if
there was room. This happened all OVER the convention. The RPG events were hit
worse, from all accounts. First, Chaosium's events were in the main hall when
they WANTED them in the Arena for the atmosphere. This screwed up people as
they got shuffled around. Second, there seemed to be fewer events this year.
We put on 14 events for Ground Zero Games, while last year we had over 30.
Other games saw the same thing. However, there was a 25% increase in
attendees. You don't peeve your judges, who have to deal with your bureaucracy
the most, because if they don't come back you have a BIG problem. Apparently a
black market in ticket sales opened up. My wife was offered $20 for a ticket.
Another friend got into a Call of Cthulhu game only because a third friend
pounced on a ticket (almost literally) when someone tried to sell it to anyone
in the event ticket line. While she was putting the ticket away, a D&D player
mentioned the same thing was happening with their events.

I did manage to play a game while I was there. I FINALLY got to try a Full
Thrust vector game. David Barclay, a Full Thrust player I met the last couple
of years there, ran one game twice in a row, roping in a bunch of us judges.
Bryan Miller and I had never played vector and had a ball with it. I'm hooked!
I still like cinematic movement, especially for new players, but I also liked
the added dimension of vector.

On Friday we managed to fill in Jeff Guillion's event slot with a Full
Thrust game. Jeff ran the events for Geo-Hex for a couple of years, and
attended last year, but he couldn't make it this year. Sean Schoonmaker ran a
game, and Lew Stoneking jumped in and played. It apparently went reasonably
well. FT is a pretty good "pick up" game.

My Plasma Ambush scenario for Stargrunt was a closer finish than I had
expected. The Mercenaries made the typical mercenary mistake: they were THIS
close to winning in the first turn when they decided to "go for broke" and
take out all the vehicles. Wrong answer! This continues to be a crowd
favourite, but anyone who's played the scenario will be able to figure out how
to win with the mercenaries. I'm not sure what to do about it. Perhaps
increase the number of vehicles the mercenaries need to destroy. Or, perhaps,
do as Rick Rutherford suggested and take away some terrain on one part of the
board and increase terrain on another part. Time to playtest this again, with
people who know the scenario.

My Operation: Dust Off scenario was entirely different in play to ANY of my
playtests. It took a lot longer, for one thing. The key to the scenario, in my
estimation, is the ridge that overlooks the primary Landing Zone. The Japanese
put dummy markers on it, but no troops. The Neu Swabian League didn't bother
trying to take it. Instead, they ran a ground vehicle into the landing zone
area and disgorged troops. This was a very good plan. They also ran the rest
of their vehicles forward, getting most of them destroyed in the open and
dropping their troops in open ground to assault dug in troops. This was a bad
plan. In the end, the Japanese were in a good position, but hadn't been
aggressive enough with their transports. The NSL won the battle. Any game
where both sides
are sure they had won and/or lost at different parts of the game is a
close one. I think I may have to give the players hints next time to help
balance the scenario, but everyone seemed to enjoy themselves. I might have to
make this an advanced scenario, not for the rules introduced but because it
takes some tactical planning to win, something you often don't have a chance
to do when you're just learning a game.

The Full Thrust tournament this year took a LOT longer than expected. We used
a double elimination process. Everyone played two initial rounds. We were late
starting, and it just extended from there. Part of the reason is that players
unfamiliar with the game tend to take longer, and they usually get eliminated
in the first round. This year that didn't happen. We had 15 players. Lew
Stoneking graciously offered to show someone who had never played before how
to play the game so that we could have an even number of players. Lew then
stepped in later in order to keep an even number when one of the first round
folk had to leave.

The scores for making it into the semi-final round were pretty high. The
rules are on my web site (at http://www.vex.net/~agoodall/ft.htm ) if
you are interested. Players received the point value for every enemy ship and
fighter destroyed added to the point total for every ship and fighter of their
own that survived. The fleets were 1500 points maximum. The scores for the
first two rounds were added together. Kevin Walker and Mike Miserendino both
had over 3900 points. Sean Schoonmaker got in with well over 3800 points. Adam
Stein slipped in with 3700 and change,
while another two players with 3700+ and 3600+ points didn't make the
cut.

Kevin played Adam, Mike played Sean, with Kevin and Mike making it into the
final round. They were both given the same fleets for the final round, with
Kevin beating Mike. Special notice has to go to Hobe Rupe. Hobe had a combined
score of just over 1200 points! It wasn't that he played badly, but that his
dice rolling was atrocious. He was rolling 1s and 2s while his opponents
rolled 5s and 6s. He ended up throwing out his entire collection of green six
sided dice – no one had the nerve to pick them up. Hobe is famous for this.

Mark Siefert's Babylon 5 game seemed to be well attended. Mike Miserendino ran
a couple of Battlestar Galactica games, and was asked to run it another time
Saturday night. I believe all our games were well
received. I didn't see this year's sci-fi crossover, but I did hear a
lot about Dean's Super Star Destroyer from Star Wars making quite an impact
(especially as it was easily three or four times the size of most other
figures on the table!).

On the final day, organization once again came to the fore. It took 45 minutes
to get my refund. I had to go to the Event Tournament people to get my time
card signed. Then I was sent downstairs to another line in the Onsite
Registration area for the refund. Only one person was giving it out, and he
walked away for 10 minutes. Near the end of the wait, they added a second
person. Volunteers that didn't have an event sheet had their information (such
as their badge number and address) written down on a piece of paper. Meanwhile
the computer system was very slow. Thirty minutes later the system was altered
and the Event Tournament people were giving the refunds immediately. I met
Dean Gundberg and Mike Miserendino in line; they waited only 10 minutes. While
the initial procedure was far too cumbersome, I must commend the staff for
quickly fixing that particular bottleneck.

Here are some general impressions of the con and the miniatures events:

There were lots of Clan War, Battletech, and some other "usual suspects"
events being run. I DID finally get to see Fantasy Rules! and bought a copy
from the person running the demo. I'm still not sure why there were no dealers
selling it in the Exhibit Hall. The only historical games I saw were Fields of
Honor, Johnny Reb, a Napoleonic game, and Baker Company (RAFM's upcoming WW2
skirmish game). The Baker Company terrain was a lovely set up for Omaha Beach.
Very impressive. Once again, though, historical miniatures seems to be
declining rapidly. I found Battleground: World War 2 at GenCon a couple of
years ago, but I was sorry to see they weren't there.

Those who like to proclaim the imminent death of collectible card games had
some more ammunition. There were next to NO card players playing in the halls
on the floor this year. This was noticed by several people I know. Perhaps
they had a better location this year and they were able to stay in their own
hall, or perhaps the games have shaken themselves out and some have dropped by
the wayside, but there were noticeably fewer new card games, and fewer people
selling individual cards. On the other hand, collectible disk games became a
minor rage. The Diskwars people were selling reasonably well, and WotC was
selling out of their Star Trek spaceship combat disk game.

In the Exhibit Hall I saw one company selling 15mm sci-fi vehicles.
These were available painted and unpainted. They seemed to be popular, in
spite of them being disappointing with little in the way of detail.
GZG and Geo-Hex could easily do much better. The Noble Armada figures
looked good if expensive. I liked the B5 Wars Fleet Action figures, but they
are too small for what I wanted. They WERE, however, well priced. I agree with
Dean in that I wish the fleet action figures were somewhere between their full
sized figures and these in scale.

I didn't get a chance to play the sci-fi board game that Geo-Hex was
displaying as a good campaign system for Full Thrust (anyone help me with the
name of the game and the publisher?) but I did get to watch the Starfarers of
Catan game. If you haven't played Settlers of Catan (and I haven't), this
might not make much sense to you. Settlers of Catan is a very popular German
board game that is supposed to be quite excellent.
There are a couple of variants, including a non-collectible card game
and a variant for more people. This is their space game. It looks awesome. It
plays quickly and easily, from what I saw. It's also fairly deep tactically.
The pieces are gorgeous but they should be as the game was selling for US$70!
OUCH! I'll wait to see if, a) a North American version comes out (this is
German with English rules, though I didn't see any writing on the board or
cards), or b) I can get it cheaper from an online store.

There were a number of games I really wanted, but for some reason they were
not available in time for the convention. The new Cosmic Encounter looked
great (and is apparently back to the old Eon ruleset) but it wasn't ready in
time. It comes out next month. The Pacific version of Rise of the Luftwaffe
also failed to make it in time for the con. It will be another couple of
months. Some of the roleplayers and other gamers were complaining about the
same thing.

The painting contest was available only for Ral Partha and FASA figures. This
wasn't made clear before the convention. Mark Siefert and others had painted
figures by other manufacturers, only to be turned away. I don't have a problem
with a company sponsoring an event and requiring their own figures to be used,
but this should be entirely clear before hand. In the end, the miniature
contest display case looked pretty bare.

I'm glad to see that John Kovalic, our list's resident professional
cartoonist, seemed to be doing well! Thanks for signing my Dork Tower issues 9
and 10, John! John also did the Al Gore and George Bush button men
charicatures that you could get made into buttons (wish I had), as well as the
Cthulhu for President Button Man.

As an interesting aside, I saw a lot of digital cameras. Some of you may know
that I used to work for Kodak. In the mid 90s I heard from someone in Kodak
Canada's marketing department that they figured they had a good 20 years
before digital cameras made a severe impact on film sales. I thought it was
more likely to be 10 years. If GenCon is anything to go by, my prediction is
on track. With new "minilabs" (the machines that process prints) able to
handle jpeg images from disks and CDs, as well as digital camera memory cards,
I'd be thinking about dumping Kodak stock sometime soon if I had any

In spite of the organizational hassles, I had a lot of fun. It should be
interesting to see what happens next year, though I'm currently not
planning to attend. The hassles with the pre-reg book this year turned
me off. Few Canadians seemed to get their books. WotC blamed Canada Post and
our Customs people, yet they were able to send the replacement within 5 days
which is cool, especially since they also sent them to my
friends who went last year and didn’t pre-register to go this year. I
suspect the mistake had more to do with WotC and/or their system than it
did with Canada Post. Even so, it's so hard to get events on site that I
have no intention of going if their pre-registration system is so messed
up.

I hope that the mistakes of this year will be fixed. They do seem earnest
about it, as they ran several focus groups at the convention. My fear is that
with 25% more people (the total is listed as 25,000 but remember that I was
there 4 days and would therefore count as 4 people;
if this seems bogus, bear in mind it's done for EVERY multi-day event,
including this year's Molson Indy race here in Toronto) they have less
incentive to fix the problems. On the other hand, they are moving to
Indianapolis in 2003 and such a move will result in a drop in attendance if
only because of the upset. Maybe that is the incentive they need. They DO need
to fix the problems for judges. They can have all the attendees they want, but
if there are no events none of them will be back next year.

Finally, a couple of remarks about the move from Milwaukee. I heard from
K.R. at Geo-Hex that at least one of the restaurants is sad to see
GenCon go. It's not a fast food place, it's more upscale. Even still, they
said that gamers love to eat and tip better than most other people visiting
the city. I hope someone tells this to the restaurants in Indy, because in the
first year they are going to be SO surprised. Of course, each year I meet
restaurant people in Milwaukee who are also surprised. Milwaukee, for it's
part, hasn't helped itself. 10 PM on Saturday, and it was all we could do to
find a place to eat! The local Subway sandwich shop shut tight before 10, and
ran out of buns at 9 the night before. You'd THINK they would make some
allowances for GenCon; it certainly would have been worthwhile.

I'm going to miss Milwaukee. It's a nice, clean city with great art deco
architecture. I will NOT miss the 12 hour drive, but perhaps I will be back
for the final bash in 2002 (I'll even take the plunge and fly).
Next year I plan to go to the GZG-East Coast Convention, and at least
Historicon. But this could be my last Milwaukee GenCon, and as such it's a bit
of a sad thing. I wonder if other participants will miss the city as much as
me, or if the city will miss the con as much as I will miss the city.

Many thanks to: Dean Gundberg, Mike Miserendino, Mark Siefert, Sean
Schoonmaker, Lew Stoneking, and David Barclay (and, of course, Sherry
Moore, my friend who was adopted as our groupie/girl friday). It was
great to meet Kevin Walker, Bryan Miller, Rick Rutherford, Chris Pratt, Hobe
Rupe, Doug Evans, Mike Stoneking, and a host of other guys I'm sure I'm
forgetting for making the convention fun. Also many thanks to KR and
the gang at Geo-Hex for their support, and Jon Tuffley for his support
(and the games that make it all possible).