This is the first of the Dexcon 11 posts.  Think of it as sort of an introduction to the con before I start talking about the games I played.  This is the first con I’ve been to since I was in highschool so it’s unlikely that I’ll talk about anything anyone who has been cons regularly doesn’t know.  I did go alone, knowing no one there and without  a meaningful Internet presence to expect people to know who I was.

I woke up god awful early on Thursday morning and left for the con at about 7am.  Which means I was cutting through DC just before rush hour and hitting rush hour full on for Baltimore and Philadelphia.  Despite that it was smooth sailing, taking about 4 hours.  I listened to Elric of Melnibone by Micheal Moorcock on the way up.  Fixing a long standing deficiency in my reading.

I got there plenty of time for my 2pm game of Prime Time Adventures.  I explored, found the con suite and the game sign up sheets.  I’d mapped out what games I wanted to play.  There were a few time slots where the games I wanted to play were full.  One of those ended up with me in a game of Mispent Youth run by Rob Bohl which was a surprise favorite.  Next time I will be sure to sign up in advance as those Friday night and Saturday games fill up.

There were a couple “I expected better” moments involving the hotel.  I was surprised that a modern Hilton did not come with a refrigerator in the rooms.  Econolodges have them, there was a space for it in the furniture, but no actual fridge.  Assuming a Hilton would come with this amenity, I packed makings for sandwiches.  I had to make regular stops at the ice machine to introduce fresh coldness to the cooler.  The ice machine had a note proclaiming that it wasn’t to be used to fill coolers and similar activities.  I filled my cooler anyway.

The other thing was that the Internet wasn’t free.  Again hotels $30 cheaper come with free wireless and free HBO.  Home lost power on Friday so I wouldn’t have been able to check email anyway but it’s the principle of the thing.  Onward…

The ballroom level of the hotel was most of the public con space.  There was the dealers room, wargame room, boardgame room, con suite, some areas where the LARPers met up, a seminar room, 3 rooms dedicated to some sort of computer or console games and a video room.

Of those I found the con suite most useful, they kept me in lemonade.  I brought my own lemonade but somehow managed to not bring a pitcher to mix it.  An ever-flowing supply of lemonade and various other beverages flowed in the con suite.  Thee were also enough cookies that I ate too many of them and they kept resupplying.  There were also infinite chips, but I didn’t touch those.  Given all that, they cranked the sugar level up Friday and Saturday night.  Friday night was a sort of chocolate Fondue night.  There was a large amount of food, usually with a lot of sugar, which you put in a bowl and then it got covered in chocolate.  That was considered too diluted for Saturday night.  Diabetics were murdered on Saturday.  The center table on the Saturday event was pure sugar, there was candy corn and jelly beans but the center piece was a mound of pixy stix 2 feet high and 4 feet wide.  There were enough pixy stix left over on Sunday that people were building structures with them Lincoln Log style… and they could choose to only use blue.  I wish I had a picture of that.

I spent some time in the video suite, but they didn’t seem to be playing anything that really grabbed me which is just as well given that I usually didn’t have more than an hour free at a time.  There was the Cherry Hill Experiment which was playing really bad movies, but I only caught a partial of one of those.  There were a few anime which I caught that seemed good, but I don’t have the name handy.  It seemed most of the time I went, they were playing a childrens cartoon that seemed to be placed in the 1600’s that was about Spanish Conquestadors, and Inca girl and some pre-Incan lost civilization.  Watching the whole thing might of been worthwhile but the snippets I was never seemed that exciting.

I prowled around the dealers room, but didn’t really find anything I had to purchase.  On level C (Concorse?) was the RPG room and the IPR presence.  I picked up Dogs in the Vinyard, Mortal Coil and Arsenal of the Gods.  They had PTA earlier, but I waited too long to make my purchase and they were out by then.

Sunday I signed up for independent publishers round table, but when I actually got there the people and the feel of the room felt more like the IPR round table.  I was feeling worn down and I wasn’t feeling like it was targeted at people like me who mostly just want to bring their free PDFs to the next level.  But I think mostly I was too tired.

It was just as well, the drive home was hellish.  It took me about 4 hours to get up there, I think it took 6 hours to get back.  And I was tired.  For a while I was stopping at every rest stop so I could stand up and move blood and get a fresh injection of sugar.  It’s times like this that I regret not drinking caffeine, specially given that NJ Transit Authority (or whatever) stock a sucky selection of candy bars.  Skittles was the magic elixir that got me going.

Next I’ll talk about the games I actually played.