Whooo! First time at GenCon Indy, my friends! August is a big event month for me, and this was just the start.
My favorite event we did was a bank heist escape room. We “got caught in the act” by not making it out in time. I always end up a handful of minutes away from escaping, but we get bogged down in the final room thinking we found all the hidden clues and only need to open one more box when there are about seven things left to locate. Despite that, I love escape rooms. I think they rank right behind ziplining for me.
Ebony Bay is one of two True Dungeon events we participated in. This is the only one we survived. Despite a valiant effort in the other, we failed to defeat the boss.
My husband enjoyed the True Dungeon the most. These are half role-playing games, half escape room stories you do with a group. There were seven rooms in each of the two dungeons we were able to sign up for with shuffleboard combats and creative puzzles to solve. The item pucks do matter, so I appreciated that the experienced TDers did not push for hardcore mode with all of us noobs tagging along with only a handful of pucks on our cards.
We also tried out the Artemis Bridge Simulator. This is a game where each person plays a role on a starship bridge on a separate computer screen. We only did the training version, so it was mostly us flying around, engaging poorly in battle, and running into docking stations. There were also two D&D games in which we participated. One was more role-play-focused, where you tried to play to your backstory. The other was a first edition game in which we did not do too poorly, avoiding horrific deaths at the hands of monsters and dangerous items.
The dangerous Tower of Gaxx! My fighter/magic-user came away with a magic shield, while my husband’s paladin found an Ioun Stone! Not bad for first time AD&D players.
Early this year, my husband and I decided to volunteer as GMs for a company running some D&D games at GenCon. I think the games went pretty well. We each ran four separate 4.5-hour one-shots, deciding to do one a day and pack in other fun around them.
If I had to pick a couple of favorite parts from the games I ran, they would be:
- My groups usually barred the doors the second time the ceremony was interrupted, thereby trapping themselves and the parishioners inside with the next monster to emerge.
- One of my groups made an elaborate plan to distract the monsters while one party member snuck forward to rescue the high priest. The approach was very clever and unique, as most of my groups ignored him lying on the ground.
Would I volunteer again? Maybe, but probably not for four games. We had little time to attend the convention center and had to scramble to get from one event to another. We volunteered to ensure we would not have large chunks of time without anything to do, but that would not have been a problem. There would also need to be some changes to the coordination up front for me to feel comfortable volunteering again. I had too much to carry around with me all day because of how much I needed to bring. I enjoyed running the games, and I hope my players had fun.
For anyone concerned: Gen Con had fairly strict COVID restrictions (I fully support). My husband and I also double-masked the entire time and brought our hand sanitizer with us for liberal use throughout. We will monitor for symptoms and test before we head to the Renaissance Faire this coming weekend for more crowds of awesome nerds.
Stay safe, stay cool, and stay awesome everyone!
Tiffany Shearn 