Gencon 2013 Noob tips?

[Marik]

Hi everyone,

Its official I have booked my ticket and hotel to Gencon. Not only will this be my first Gencon, it will be my first large scale convention ever.

I was wondering if anyone has any good tips for a first timer?

Thanks,
Marik

[QuickreleasePersonalitY]

be open and willing to try out new experiences, especially ones out of your comfort zone/what you are used to; there are gamers from all over coming together for a short time -- make the most of it :3

[Tim]

I am also going to GenCon for the first time. Been thinking about it for a while but decided this was my year. The wife also decided she wanted to go so that is going to be interesting. Apparently they have a number of uninterested SO events.

[Tadanori Oyama]

1) Try to arrive Wednesday afternoon. Hotels have check-ins around 3pm so earlier than that isn't very useful. Use this time to pick up your badge and tickets if you went for will call because the line, as long as it might be, will be considerably longer on Thursday morning. The main hall opens at 10am; get to the doors around 9:30~9:45am to be able to see/hear the opening die roll.

2) Plan with room in your budget. Cons are full of amazing things: be prepared to have something irresistable pop-up on you. I recommend fifty to seventy dollars of wiggle room, minimum.

3) Plan around food and water. DO NOT TRY TO GO ALL DAY WITHOUT A MEAL! Your experience will suffer if you jump from large meal to large meal. Try to eat two meals a day and snack when possible. Do not eat the food in the conventional hall itself. The stuff isn't very good and you'll be eating in a massive crowd with, likely, few places to sit or focus on your food. To this end...

4) Go to the CVS. If you go north from the northeast corner of the convention center it's about five or six blocks to a CVS were you can buy reasonably priced water, soda, and basic food items. Buy something portable (granola bars; fruit; gummy snacks; etc.) and keep some on your person. Also, while there...

5) Buy handsanitizer. Humans are disgusting creatures and if you go into the convention hall anything you can touch will have been touched by hundreds or thousands of other people. I recommend cleansing your hands whenever you leave the main hall and wash with soap and water before eating food.

6) Don't buy too fast. Books are heavy, as are dice and other small items if you start piling them on. Consider spacial concerns before making purchases. Some stands have new items arrive over the course of the con, usually on Saturday when the big day visitor crowds are likely to be so new stuff can come in.

7) Look up. Look up to see the massive numbered banners, which allow you to naviagte the huge dealer room.

Look down. Carpets aren't always even and a fair number of children can be found at GenCon. Be careful of where you are going.

9) DO NOT STOP IN THE MIDDLE OF A LANE! The passages between the booths are quite broad but can be quickly narrowed by people stopping. Likewise, don't stand in the center of crossroads. Whenever possible step into a demo area or use exposed cement spaces at the corners of crossroads to step off of the road and allow traffic to continue on. If you stop at a display, try to present as thin a profile as you can. Stand as far to the edge of the road as you can and turn sideways against the "current". If you have a backpack, remove it and set it beside you to present it protruding into the lane.

10) If you are lost or confused, look for individuals with staff badges. They will do their best to help you.

11) Have a contact who's been there before. I am perfectly happy to give information and assistance to other GenCon-ers, especially RPPR listeners. Provided it doesn't disrupt the RPPR Meet-Up or the games I'm running I will be happy to go out of my way to provide assistance.

[Wooberman]

I love you Tad

[Flawless P]

It's official for my first Gen con (likely the 2014 event) Tad is my person to meet. Tom and Ross are old and busted. Tad is the new poster dragon(assuming you are in fact a dragon in real life) for RPPR... even if you are only known on the forums.

Also this was posted while i was typing

I love you Tad

So yeah, apparently you have a following.

[clockworkjoe]

http://critical-hits.com/2012/07/31/rules-for-optimum-gen-connery-2012-edition/

[Tim]

I am largely trying to not buy physical books anymore if I can get away with it but I expect I will end up biting on some cool to me art or random thing. I assume that most people will have some form of messenger bag/backpack or is that frowned upon?

I took some advice and ended up being very on top of registration and hotel registration and that was actually very easy. Do the events book up as fast and should I plan to lurk like a vulture May 19th to get into the events I want? I worry that if I lock too much of my time in events I will not be able to do anything spontaneous that might emerge which I understand is core fun that can be had at the con. Basically any advice on how much of my time I should schedule vs how much of my time I should keep open is appreciated.

Will have to look into getting in the night before. Sounds like there is no mass transit option from the airport to downtown so should I expect to taxi it and/or find a shared shuttle? Given the crush of gencon folks should I assume getting a taxi is going to be difficult or does Indy do enough of these big events they have capacity?

My wife and I had also talked about flying into Louisville and doing some bourbon touring (wife and I are also booze nerds) early in the week then driving up but is their any need to have a car once we are in Indy? I expect not but maybe some long time con folks have other ideas.

[Tadanori Oyama]

Bags are totally fine. Messanger bags are pretty common, as are shopping style bags.

Events book fast, yes, be ready for registration. However, often fully booked events will have space at the time of the event so purchase a few generics to carry. Games and events tend to poke mark a schedule, snipping a chunk out of the middle or end of the day so I suggest not doing more than three events, assuming each event is 3-4 hours. However, register for more than that since you often won't get everything that you want and it's normally easier to drop things than add new ones.

Mass transit isn't really the right word. The service between airport and hotels is called the Green Line. It's a transit busline that makes the run in about twenty minute cycles from mid-morning until evening. It's not hard to get a cab; Indianpolis is a huge convention city and they know when the crowds come. The greenline is 6 bucks a rider, a cab is about 20 dollars. If you have three people, the cab is less hassel for about equal money. The problem with the Green Line is that it's a little underorganized. Fifty people will be waiting for a twenty-five seater bus and there's no "line" to speak of, it's more of a mob standing by the curb.

No reason to have a car in Indy unless one of you isn't going to the convention or you end up staying at an off-site hotel.

[Marik]

I'm arriving fairly late on Wednesday evening.

Unfortunately I'm staying in the airport area and not to close to the convention. Mainly because I can stay for free at the Radisson there. I travel frequently for work and earn a fair number of Radisson award points (Club Carlsson).

There's at least one guy from my gamers group traveling with me and we'll split the cabs to and from the convention I guess.

I was going to fork over the few extra bucks to get my badges mailed to me but unfortunately they won't ship to Canada. So I think I'm going to call a few of my state side friends and see if I can have the badges shipped to them and then they can fedex them back to me. I really want to avoid the long badge line after some of the stories I have heard.


As for event registration in May, is this kind of like getting tickets to a big rock concert? In other words have a couple of PC's going and trying to get registered for whatever you want to do the second event registration goes live?

Thanks for the advice thus far .
Marik

[Tadanori Oyama]

Staying off-site isn't too big a deal, it just means you have to schedule a little more.

When you stay at a connected hotel, you can largely make your own schedule since you can freely wander to and from your room to resupply or drop things off. If you stay at a more distant hotel you don't have that option, which is why I encourage people to make their purchases closer to their return time.

Now, many of the off-site hotels offer free shuttle services to and from the event center, meaning that cabs are only needed if you need to come especially early or stay especially late. Cabs are pretty easy to get along the main road out front and if that fails, just duck into one of the hotels and ask about cab service, they should be able to help you summon one. Depending on the specific hotel, you'll probably be looking at 15 ~ 20 dollars for a cab ride (remember, that's one way so it's 30 ~ 40 round trip).

If they use the same system that have before, the event schedule will open first, allowing you to build a wishlist of events to register for. Once the actual registeration opens, you submit your wishlist and it is run through the system, prioritizing the first things on the list.