I went to Gen Con again this year with comrades Rob, Karen, Art, Lou, and Terry for Gen Con’s 50th anniversary. By coincidence, the eclipse this year was the day after the conference, and visible from Rob and Karen’s hometown, and I went home with them to see it.
Here’s the vendors' exhibit hall. My picture doesn’t show how busy it was - it was a crush most of the time.
My favorite costumes this year were “Not Stan Lee” and this creepy Joker.
We got up at the crack of dawn every morning to play D&D at 8:00 a.m. Here we’re fighting swashbucklers in a warehouse that we accidentally set on fire. :O
There were retrospective panels for the 50th anniversary. Here’s one with the D&D 5th edition authors Mike Mearls and Jeremy Crawford, in the middle. They graciously signed my Player’s Handbook.
The D&D 3rd edition authors also did a panel. My picture shows (from right to left) Jonathan Tweet, Skip Williams, Monte Cook, and Rich Baker. The moderator was Peter Adkison, on the far left. Adkison was Wizards of the Coast CEO when D&D 3.0 and Magic: The Gathering were created, and now owns Gen Con. The authors also signed my 3.0 Player’s Handbook from the day.
It was a good year for schwag. By continually pestering some Dungeon Masters, with Rob’s Twitter skills, and with some running, we were able to get some rare promo copies of the new “Lost Tales of Myth Drannor” book. We also found some nice fezzes - here we are playing in our new fezzes with our favorite DM John.
The conference and the hotels sold out early. Here’s (I guess) a gamer without a room sleeping outside the conference center around 7:00 a.m.
We spied the St. Louis arch driving to Rob and Karen's.
Here are Rob and Karen watching the eclipse - the second picture shows the darkness during totality. During totality, the sun just appeared as a bluish flame-like corona around the black disk of the moon, which was astounding.
