I had a great first time experience. Running my game went better than I could have expected. I got a great group of players in both sessions who managed some awesome to create some role-playing moments despite working in new system. If I get to run a game again, I plan on keeping an international focus with my scenario; I got to play with more people from different cultures than I have ever had opportunity to meet at any point previously in my life (Germany, New Zealand, Russia, France, etc). My only regret is that I didn't run the game another time. There were some great guys and gals that saw their general tickets wasted by a five-minute late player; it broke my heart every time.
It was awesome to meet with everyone from the forums (Tad, Shallazar, HPLustcraft, etc), and the meet-up game was loads of fun. The games with Greg Stoltze, Shane Ivey, Glancy, Simian, Meg and the rest of the Arc Dream crew were a blast, and I have to thank all of them for allowing "that weird little toady following Ross around" to roll in. It was a pleasure to meet Violet and Ian, finally; I kept wanting to grab those sketchbooks out of their hands just to see what they were working on.
Old School Hack was the bomb. I am so thrilled its creator came out and ran a game for us. I learned a lot about GMing by watching him work, and I plan to use the rules if I ever get a chance to teach game design or collaborative storytelling to my students.
The DG panel got me excited enough to buy the old books. The Eclipse Phase panel was...edifying, to say the least. Aaron seemed to do great job running his game, as did Tom with the WT zombies scenario. I had great roommates and our hotel was the bomb (thanks David).
So overall, it was a super time...except now I'm flat-ass broke. Sadly, that will probably be enough to keep me from coming back in the future, but I hope everyone Google+ or facebook's me. I met a lot of really interesting, fun people there.
