Originally published at TGTMB. Please leave any comments there.

continued from yesterday’s post …

Things I Did at GenCon 08, Part Two (Friday-Sunday afternoon)

1. Friday afternoon: Daniel Perez and I took on the personas of Paul Revere and Thomas Jefferson, joining forces to try to blow up a Tory supply ship in a demo of Sons of Liberty by Josh Roby. I went in thinking it might not be the type of game I’d usually go for, but yeah, it was mondo gonzo fun, and I think I could totally loosen my dramatic sphincter enough to occasionally just roll with this kind of play. I’d have bought it if I hadn’t already blown my games budget for the con (including a copy of one of Josh’s earlier games, Full Light, Full Steam.) As it is, Sons of Liberty will now replace FLFS on my IPR wishlist.
2. Friday night: I played Mythender, a game of badasses killing gods and other mythic stuff, by Ryan Macklin. Ryan will cane me if I call his game an “ashcan”, so instead I’ll say that it’s an unfinished playtest with lots of cool fiddly-bits and a lot of potential for greatness. I’m proud to have been a part of kicking its tires. And it further solidified the notion I mentioned above about having fun with gonzo badassery.
3. Saturday afternoon: I wandered the exhibit hall for awhile, played Julia Ellingboe’s new game Tales of the Fisherman’s Wife at the Ashcan Front booth, and had a cool chat with Julia about her inspirations for the game. More on that Later. Then I wandered over to the Khepera Publishing booth (I was wearing my new Hellas t-shirt) and chatted with Jerry and Renee Grayson, Michael Fiegel, Andy Kitkowski, and a crew of Kheperians who were decked out as Hellas characters. I ended up helping out at the booth for the rest of the afternoon, which gave me a taste of what it’s like to be on the other side of the exhibition equation. I discovered that, next year when the time comes for me to cowboy up and pitch VAM, I think I can do it.
4. Saturday evening: the media meet and greet, where I got to chat and shake hands with a few of the podcasters I didn’t get to see much during other parts of the con. I’ve also got to admit that about half the people in the room – many of whom I’m pretty sure were also rpg podcasters – were people I don’t know and who I’m pretty sure don’t know me. Man, there are lots of new podcasters around, and I feel … well, old.
5. Saturday night: I was supposed to play VAM again with a group of David’s friends and some of the other podcasters, run by the amazing Josh Hoade. But I realized earlier that day that I was so close to being burned out on VAM that if I didn’t get away from it for a bit, I’d be ready to just chuck the whole thing. So, in a move that I imagine some of my friends found rather odd, I decided to accept an invitation from Jerry Grayson to go up to his room and play his new game, Hellas. It was fun – and in addition to playing, we had a nifty talk about the business side of small-press rpg publishing and also recorded a bunch of audio drama bits for Hellas as well. I also got to know Michael Fiegel from Aethereal Forge (and Jerry’s co-creator on Hellas) and several of the Khepera/Aethereal entourage who’d been helping out at the booth earlier in the day.
6. Sunday afternoon: I finished up my GenCon adventure by having lunch with the CanonPuncture Crew at the Ram. We ate good food and had a great discussion about our upcoming gaming plans. Actually, we met with the intention of creating characters for the Burning Sands: Jihad game that we had planned to play over the next several weeks, but via some very helpful discussion about what we really wanted out of the game, we came to realize we didn’t really want to play that game at all, at least not now. We had discussion about lines, veils, expectations, and other cool social contracty stuff, and most of it got recorded and will go out on future episodes of Canon Puncture. More on that when I know about it.
7. Bonus Stuff: after Mythender Friday night, a short and hilarious game of Zombie Cinema, run by Judd Karlman. Pure fun, no muss. I liked it.

tomorrow: things I SAW at GenCon. Maybe with some pics.