DragonCon Day Four

We got back Tuesday. Things have been a bit preoccupied since, so this final day report is a bit late.

Monday morning I thought I'd see if I could get tickets for the last two game sessions. If not, there were other things I could do, instead. As it happened I managed to find gaming registration (many signs giving directions had already been taken down, and one hotel employee told me I was welcome to remove the one I had found leaning against the railing), and there were tickets left to buy. So I played another session of Living Greyhawk.

At the end I was awarded the table prize, which I had to exchange for a DragonCon coin at the gaming registration desk before 2 pm. The coin in turn was supposed to be worth $5 in the dealer room. Who would pass up $5? Not me. I hurried to gaming registration, exchanged the prize for the coin, found there was still enough time to run to the Peachtree Center food court and buy something to eat, and made it back in time for the second session.

I was looking forward to the second session when those of us waiting there were told that the module we had signed up for was only available in APL 6 and higher. However, there was another APL 2 module available, and we were told to go play that one, instead. I had sat down and the game master started reading the module's pre-amble. It sounded familiar to me. Oops. I had already played it.

So back to the fellow in charge to explain my predicament. He told me that there were no other Living Greyhawk modules for that session, but if I was up for playing something different there was a table of Witch Hunter I could join. It sounded like fun to me, so that's what I did for the next four hours. Witch Hunter is set in an alternate history 17th Century, with a gothic horror flavor. The game system was easy enough to learn. I had a good time.

Afterwards I visited the dealer room. It was in the Hilton. It seemed large, but because it was laid out in a kind of horse shoe shape with the stairwell taking up the space in the center I couldn't really say how it compared to other dealer rooms. I was amazed at the variety of product, though. It ranged from tables for comics artists to jewelry. I bought a very pretty jade pendant for Elysa, a CD of Midnight Syndicate's DnD gaming music, a copy of Haibane Renmei, and then I spotted Goro Miyazaki's Tales from Earth Sea.

The movie hasn't been released in the States, yet. (If you go to imdb.com you'll find that it's been released in a lot of places besides the US. According to the woman at that table there are legal disputes. Aren't there always.) It's been dubbed in English, but apparently there are no subtitles on this copy. No matter. I bought it, too. (I've watched it since then. As often happens I'm not happy with the dubbing voice actors, who phoned in their performances, but without subtitles I had to put up with that. Yes, the actors are well known. Their performances still didn't impress me.)

I wandered around the dealer room for a while. Eventually the dealer room closed and I made my way back to the hotel. Elysa had decided to sleep in, so she was rested and we went to my son's one more time to spend the evening there at a front porch barbecue.

The trip home was remarkable only to the extent that I only got lost once on the way to return the car to the rental agency, and our plane was held in Denver for about two hours while they first worked on a mechanical problem, and then waited for the storm in Salt Lake City to calm down enough to allow planes to land again.

DragonCon had a record 56,000 attendees this year. Part of the planned convention space wasn't available because the Marriott was under construction, and the resulting crowding tended to be awesome when it wasn't awful. Next year I would expect similar crowds, but different problems, since the Marriott's construction is supposed to be done, but the Hyatt will be making renovations, instead. However, if you can make it, go. It's loads of fun!