The Wonders of Gen Con

When my son was in middle school, he had an assignment to write about a significant event in his life. He wrote about the first time he walked into the exhibit hall at Gen Con. What did a 9 year-old boy who loved games see when he walked into a space larger than a football field full of displays set up by companies trying to sell him games? I can only imagine. Or try to find that paper.

My own first Gen Con in 1979 was less impressive. The exhibit hall was the dining area at the student commons at UW Parkside. There were a few small board game publishers and, of course, TSR, the company that had created Dungeons and Dragons and started Gen Con a few years earlier. Still, I had never seen so many fellow gamers gathered in one place, and I immediately knew I’d be back. I’ve been back 31 times.

Our boys' first Gen Con - 1997

Gen Con has gone through some transitions in venue and ownership. It now finds itself the sole responsibility of Gen Con LLC, a sort of spin-off side effect of Hasbro’s purchase of Wizards of the Coast in 1999, which had earlier purchased TSR – getting D&D and Gen Con in the deal. The con is now bigger and better and in a city that truly welcomes its attendees and recognizes its commercial potential. I live in Milwaukee, so the move from the Milwaukee convention center to Indianapolis in 2003 was a shock, but I got over it as soon as I got down there. Milwaukee always seemed ashamed of Gen Con or afraid it would grow too large. Indy hangs welcome banners along all the streets, the restaurants print special menus and close off sections of tables just for gamers, and a local microbrewery makes a special beer just for Gen Con. Indianapolis enlarged their exhibit hall to accommodate the growing Gen Con crowds and encouraged Mariott to build a new hotel to relieve some of the housing pressure.

Gen Con is also a very NICE place to be. I remember the first year in Indy, when they didn’t know what to expect from 30 or 40 thousand gamers, the city had security guards everywhere. But the only problems occurred when the Colts fans came in for the pre-season game on Saturday. I haven’t seen any security guards since, and in ten years I’ve never seen a police car respond to any problems at the convention center. Gamers are nice people. The very first year in Indy, when my youngest son was 13, his wallet dropped out of his pocket the first day while he was playing a game. It had $108 in it that he had saved up all summer. We went to lost and found a few hours later, and they had his wallet, with $108 still in it.

Me and the boys, Gen Con 2012

It may seem like a trivial thing, but my sons and I are geeks at heart. When we gather with geek friends for four dedicated days of playing games, trying new games and buying games, there’s nothing better. And the exhibit hall – now three football fields of booths selling games, dice, weapons, t-shirts, and videos – is one of our favorite places on earth. My sons are grown now and live in other cities, but we all still go to Gen Con together - so do their friends that started going with us back before high school, and some of their parents, and next year maybe a couple of my cousins and their kids. I wouldn’t be surprised if at least 20 of our friends join me and nearly 50 thousand other gamers next year for my 33^rd Gen Con.

Zombies May Save your Life

This evening I will leave the safety of my home and run through the familiar streets of my neighborhood, collecting supplies we need to survive in this post zombie apocalypse world. Our radio operator, Sam Yao, will guide me through my headset and warn me when a pack of zoms catches the scent of my living flesh, at which point I will sprint as if my life depended on it. Jack and Eugene will break in when Sam doesn't need my attention and broadcast music to distract me as I run. I am Runner 5, one of a small group of runners who supply the survivors of Abel Township in a world where human motive power is all that’s left.

I haven’t really run for years, but I started earlier this summer, months before the zombies came. I remember a conversation with my wife when I said I wished someone would develop an app for the iPhone that had zombies chase you around, something that would give your running a purpose.  Well, about two weeks ago I found one. It’s called “Zombies, run!,” and it’s far more immersive than I imagined. It’s mostly audio – a sequence of well voice-acted story segments (all in the form of radio communications from the base) interspersed with songs from your playlist. At any point during the music you might pick up some useful bit of salvage or be chased by zombies, at which point you have to speed up considerably for about a minute or get caught. Freeky.

[Minor Spoilers] On my latest mission, the gates to Abel Township got stuck open, so Runner 8 and I had to go out with noisemakers to draw zombies away. It was in the morning, when the packs of sleepy, droop-shouldered high school kids standing at the street corners waiting for the bus could easily be mistaken for the undead. I worried about Runner 8 because she had a nasty cough. As I wondered if she was going to be able to stay ahead of the zombies, my playlist kicked off with “If  One of Us Should Fall,” by The Slip. In the next segment of the story, it seemed like Runner 8 was losing it, whipping out a pistol and almost daring the zombies to chase us. My playlist continued with “Killer Queen."

Now I run as often as my aching legs and knees will allow. I feel guilty when I don’t run, not because I’m not getting exercise, but because the people of Abel need me. Right now there’s a little girl lost outside the compound, waiting for me to rescue her. What am I doing mowing the lawn, blogging and watching TV!

Zombies, Run! Is available on iPhone, Android and iPod Touch.

After the run: Allocating the items I salvaged to the different areas of Abel Township.

My Scary Novel

On Tuesday I typed THE END on the draft of my first novel. It felt strange, like I had been cut loose in space to float. Writing a novel was a lot of work and took longer than I would have imagined. It was frustrating at times and a joy at others. Twice I went back and replotted the whole thing. But the draft was never really scary. What issues my critique group or I uncovered could be fixed or just marked for attention in the second draft. No pressure.
    But now there's pressure. What comes out of my next round of editing will hopefully be read by agents or editors. This novel will most likely transform from a creative passion to a source of rejection. I'll be lucky if agents even read it, and if they do read it, I'll be lucky if they bother to explain why they don't like it. I'll polish it as well as I can. I'll take to heart the wisdom of my target agent, Donald Maass. And I'll try to write a query that could survive nearly a full round on Query Shark. But first I just need to do one little thing…
    Write the first draft of my second novel.

X-Com Returns!

In the Fall of 1994, when the internet was something people used for email, and Compuserve and archie servers were the closest thing we had to a World Wide Web, I read about an interesting game on the very precisely named usenet group comp.sys.ibm.pc.games.strategic. The game was called X-Com, and it had something to do with protecting the Earth from UFOs.

Based in the enthusiasm on the forum, I picked it up, and to this day (with some strong competition from Medieval II Total War) it is my favorite computer game of all time. My son found it recently on Steam, and I still enjoy it as much as I did then.

Why should you care about a game with twenty-year-old graphics that won’t run on your computer without special software? Because it provided the most interesting gameplay and most compelling story of any game I know, and because it’s being resurrected into the modern gaming world under the name XCOM: Enemy Unknown by none other than Sid Meier (Civilization) and his Firaxis crew! Do I need to repeat that? I’ve had dreams about this very thing. Honestly.

At the time this game came out, nothing else combined strategic planning and tactical missions and mysterious victory conditions into such a rich experience. Mr. Meier's Civilization had the grand strategy, but not the tactics. A few games provided interesting tactical options but weak overall planning and strategy. And nothing else did so much to actually scare the crap out of me on a 320x200 display.

I loved this game so much that I wrote a series of short stories based on it. I posted them on usenet and they made their way to some early web pages – some of the first fan fiction on the web. The stories are still out there today in a couple places. Be warned that they are full of spoilers for the old game, which may still give away too much of the new version.

Don’t expect any blog entries here in the Fall of 2012. I’ll be busy defending the Earth from aliens, and I encourage you to do the same.

Alas, these brave troopers will likely have short lifespans

Links: archive of comp.sys.ibm.pc.games.strategic