Gencon 2008: StupidRanger's Wrap-up

I've been to several Gencon's over the years, but this one will forever be one of the greatest!

First, as promised, pictures! There are pictures from the RPGBloggers Unite! panel, as well as our Out of the Box Roleplaying session. And especially for Dave the Game, there's a set just for the Drunken D&D game sessions!

Speaking of Drunken D&D, it was great to have a chance to play D&D with some of our friends in the blogging community. Being the shy person that I am, I will confess that I was fairly quiet to start. I had forgotten how hard it can be to play with an entirely new group. But I had a great time!

The sales floor was fabulous fun, and I did my share of spending. Topping my list of cool RPG-related items was my Ring of Invisibility from Intimagik, Elven dice from Unusual Dice and a set of platinum Campaign Coins. I also purchased a few prints from various artists. And Gencon wouldn't be complete for me with lots and lots of books. I got free books from signings -- Blackstaff Tower by Steven Schend and Reader's Guide to the Legend of Drizzt by Philip Athans (with R.A. Salvatore). Plus, I picked up a couple of books from McFarland Press, as well as the Brazen Serpent Chronicles. Lots of good reading... I should be busy for awhile.

One of the best things about the con this year was getting to meet all our friends from the blogging community. Thanks to you all helping to make this the most memorable Gencon ever!

GenCon 2008 Wrap-Up!

As promised, here is my quick run-down of GenCon 2008! The StupidRanger crew had a great convention this year, here are the highlights according to me!

The Usual Suspects

Each year, near the end of July I start going slightly crazy. I wake in the middle of the night in a cold sweat, speaking strange languages that consist of names such as Chessex and Intimagik. I have a problem with GenCon shopping, however it is getting better as years go on. This year I purchased a scarce few gaming supplies, settling on some fancy-pants synthetic opal dice from Crystal Caste and a new battle mat from the aforementioned Chessex.

The sales floor this year seemed a bit smaller and less spectacular this year than in years past, but there was one noteable shining star: the Sultan gaming table by Geek Chic. This thing is gorgeous and appears as if actual gamers helped design it (which they did). It is expensive though, tipping the scales at nearly $9700. I won't be getting one any time soon, but I hope if they get enough orders they will produce a slightly less spectacular version for The Rest of Us.

The Main Events

Truly my main event for this year was getting to meet all of our blogging buddies in real life: the guys from Critical Hits, Phil from Musings of the Chatty DM, and Yax from DungeonMastering. We got together for two sessions of drunken D&D (a truly epic sight to behold), the RPG Bloggers Unite! panel, and our Out of the Box roleplaying event.

Speaking of, our event went off quite well. The energy level in the room stayed sky-high for the entire two hours, much zaniness, dancing, prize-giving, and hilarity ensued. Special thanks to all of the aforementioned guys that sat in with us to make that event a success. There are plenty of things that we intend to do differently next year, but one thing will be certain: E.L. Fudge cookies will fuel our engines of insane roleplaying!

My convention experience this year would have been mundane if not for the company we kept this year. Even though I was meeting all of these people for the first time, it felt no different than sitting down with a bunch of my college friends for a great gaming session.

And the rest...

This was my first convention doing a costume, I went as Arthur Dent from Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy as a counterpoint to Stupid Ranger's Trillian costume. It was great, I got my picture taken by a bunch of people and it was fun.

Also fun: meeting Shelly Mazzanoble and Ed Greenwood, talking with Dave Arneson for the second time, and shaking David Faustino's hand. The urge to call him Bud was almost overwhelming.

Last, but not least, I got to see the guy playing Daredevil at the WizKids booth accidentally send a Force FX lightsaber blade sailing 30 feet into the air across the convention center... luckily nobody got hurt, but the look on his face was certainly priceless.

GenCon round-up coming soon, watch this space!

The StupidRanger crew will return to the regularly scheduled craziness on Tuesday, like many of our fellow bloggers we are returning home from GenCon and must recharge our magic blogging crystals with sleep.

In the meantime, be sure to check out RPGBloggers.com and read some of the best roleplaying related material around! We will be back with a GenCon wrap-up on Tuesday (and likely alongside regular content throughout the week!)

Gencon Friday: Best Day Ever!!

Me & Shelly Mazzanoble
Originally uploaded by stupidranger

OMG!!! I had the best Gencon day ever!!

It started out with the very fun Queen of Geeks pageant. I flubbed up the trivia pretty bad, but I totally nailed my talent, and the audience really enjoyed it. I finished in the top three, not Queen this year, but maybe next year!

After a celebratory lunch, we headed to the sales floor, where Dante and I wandered around, finally making our way to the Wizards booth. I was talking to one of ladies working at the booth, asking if Shelly Mazzanoble would be signing anywhere (as I had other events during events I knew she was scheduled to attend). The very nice lady pointed out to me that Shelly was standing right next to us!

I introduced myself to Shelly and mentioned that we had emailed a few times in the past and that I was from stupidranger.com, and she knew exactly who I was! It was one of the greatest moments of my life!

Having loaned out my copy of Confessions, I quickly purchased a shiny new copy, and Shelly signed it for me with a very nice note. She then stood there and chatted with Dante and me for about 10 minutes. This will forever be one of the greatest events in my life!!

Shortly after that, Ed Greenwood was signing at the Wizards booth, and I got a chance to meet him as he signed my copy of The Annotated Elminster. Very funny man, and very nice too, he posed with me for a picture. Also, Steven Schend was signing with him for his new book, Blackstaff Tower (which isn't out in stores yet.... we got free copies!!) and signed a copy for me. As promised, Mr Schend, I will read and post a review of your book, but based on the first couple of pages, I'm very excited about this book!!

I can happily say that even if the rest of the convention is a bust, I will always remember it as one of the best, simply based on today. It was this ranger's dream come true!!

Liveblog 2: D&D + Libations == Awesome

Tonight marked the first of a new (hopefully) annual event: The D&D Drinking Game. Our good buddy Phil, The Chatty DM hosted several of the RPG Bloggers all-stars: Yax from DungeonMastering, the guys from Critical Hits, and the trifecta of awesome that comprises our site.

Phil was so kind to create us pre-generated, crazy, irreverent characters complete with roleplaying quirks that we had to act out. He also supplied us with a fair amount of drinking rules that ran adjacent to the 4th edition rule set. The result: concentrated awesome! I'm sure photos will also be forthcoming, but I failed far too many saves to have the dexterity remaining to post them tonight!

Five hours went by in a flash, and we only made it through one of four battle scenes. Many hilarious quotes were documented and will likely make their way into the blogosphere in coming nights, but we had so much fun that we're going to have a continuance on Saturday night.

It was really great to get to meet these guys, and the sense of community that we had before was amplified by getting together in person. This is what GenCon is all about!

Tomorrow: StupidRanger herself competes to become the Queen of the Geeks!!

Liveblog 1: Arrived in Indianapolis!

The SR crew made it to Indianapolis! I have heard that internet access at the convention center is possible, but expensive... that means unless people buy shirts RIGHT NOW I'll be doing a liveblog as I arrive at free wireless access points.

It will certainly occur each night as we arrive back at our hotel, so check back frequently!

Onward to the convention center!!

Preparing for Gencon: The Liveblog...

Thanks to everyone that extended birthday wishes to us yesterday! Tonight all of us at StupidRanger Central are getting ready for GenCon this weekend!

Thanks to my new ultramobile Eee PC 1000 laptop (DM's best friend!), I fully intend to have periodic updates from the convention floor. We're planning to take part in many gaming events and SR and I plan to exercise our capitalist freedoms very near to the Chessex booth, but the real highlight of the convention this year is going to be our first real-life meetups with several of our RPG Blogger friends.

Like SR said on Monday, she will be competing in the Queen of Geeks pageant. Naturally, I will be in her cheering section and I hope that some of our devoted readership will show up to cheer her on to her coronation!

For those of you at the convention: we'll see you there! Don't be shy, we don't bite. Come to the RPG Bloggers Unite! panel! See SR's mortal embarassment, see Vanir eat a medically dangerous amount of sugar! Marvel at my inability to be articulate in person! All this and more in Indianapolis!!

Happy Birthday To Us!!!!

I can scarcely believe it (and almost forgot to post it), but today marks our one year anniversary!

I can remember what I was doing this time last year like it was only yesterday -- Dante, the Stupid Ranger, and I were all scrambling to get ready for Gen Con. We'd been working like mad for about 2 weeks trying to get our D&D Crib Shirts in order, I was drawing comics as fast as I could, and our site's namesake introduced us to the world.

One year later, what have we learned?

• About T-shirts: the ones you make through Cafepress come out beautifully. And cost so much that nobody wants to buy them. Even if you don't charge anything over cost. Special thanks to those lucky 8 individuals who bought something. And of course, extra special thanks to Yax, our best customer, who was responsible for about half our total sales. You rule, Yax!
  
  One thing certainly didn't help our sales: making crib shirts for a lame-duck edition of D&D results in no sales. Matter of fact, I'm relatively certain the three of us are the only ones who bought them. However, I used the hell out of my Bard crib shirt while playing Bat Loaf, so it wasn't a total waste of time!
  
  Chalk this one up to understanding what our readership wants, and drawing up reasonable business expectations for one's blog!


• Webcomics are fun to read, and very time-consuming to draw. So time-consuming that Evensbrook *cough* hasn't seen the light of day since about Halloween last year.
  
  Despite this massive obstacle, it is still fun to do and we still consistently get about 20 hits a day looking for comics. I'm going to try and dedouble my efforts this year and see if we can get one out every couple weeks. I even have the next strip written and drawn! Dante's seen it! I swear!!!!


• We love writing about D&D, especially when we've been playing a lot. But we really have no idea what everybody likes. The most seemingly innocuous "oh my god nobody posted last night quick come up with something" posts seem to get tons of comments or Stumbled, and the ones we slaved over for hours perfecting every word get no comments at all. (However, you will never know which was which. Mwahahaha!!!!!)
  
  We did learn, though, that the very best way to get people to talk about your article is to include them in on the discussion, and to jump in yourself. It is also, unsurprisingly, the most fun for us as authors -- so expect more of this!
  


• R-E-S-U-R-R-E-C-T-I-O-N.


• We'd like to think the three of us are different enough from each other in style that people can instantly tell our articles apart, but we're actually pretty sure everybody thinks Dante writes everything. That's OK, when we get our first Internet stalker, it'll be him they come for. I'll be safe in the Vanircave.


• There are a seriously large amount of cool people out there. Some of them run blogs, and help you out in your first steps along the way. Big huge thanks to Martin Ralya, formerly of Treasure Tables but now of Gnome Stew, Jonathan Drain from d20 Source for giving us our first big surges of traffic. More thanks go to our good buddy Yax from Dungeon Mastering for allowing us to shack up in his banner ad space for awhile, which got us a bunch more traffic too. And thanks to everybody out there who responded to my copious emails asking for a link exchange.
  
  Of course, I would be remiss without giving extra special thanks (and administering a heaping helping of mad props to) Yax, Phil the Chatty DM, the crew from Critical Hits and a lot of the other D&D blogs we've come to know over the last year for being with us the whole year and forming one of the best damn RPG communities we've ever seen on the Intertrons. We're proud and thrilled to be counted among the numbers of these guys, and we can't wait to meet them in person this week.

It's been a great year for us, and we're excited to see what the next year brings. It's pretty neat having Gen Con be your site's unofficial birthday every year. Please come out and help us celebrate at our Out of the Box Roleplaying event on Sunday from 9AM-11AM. It won't cost you a dime, and rumor has it there will be COOKIES. (Disclaimer: you may have to fight me for them, and I am tenacious.)

As a side note about that cake -- Efreak and I made it for Stupid Ranger's birthday about five years ago when we first started playing together during the Evensbrook campaign. She thought it only fitting that we use it for her namesake. Oddly, if memory serves, the campaign was at right about the place the comic is currently stalled. Weird!

Once again, thanks to everyone -- and especially thanks to all of you for reading. We've really enjoyed our first year!

Preparing for Gencon: Just a few more days...

It's just a few more days until Gencon.... some of the longest days of the year, waiting for the convention to begin. The blog-o-sphere has been abuzz with thoughts, events, and tips. And since I'm too excited to think clearly about anything else, I'm going to share some of my thoughts too.

Packing is essential.

I already shared some of my thoughts on what to pack, but I'm going to mention again, make sure you are prepared... you don't want to forget anything!

Consider planning your events.

Depending on your level of planning-nerd, you may have already done this. If you haven't, I recommend reviewing the events listings to make sure you don't miss something. There is so much to see and do, and it's easy to miss something because it's so easy to be distracted. You can take a look at the event list on the website, or grab the Event Guide as soon as you get to the convention center. Either way, check the errata monitors to make sure your events haven't been canceled.

I have to say, in the past, I haven't always planned well enough, because one of the things I have regretted was missing meeting a favorite author. Wizards has a author signing schedule posted on their site. If you want to meet some of your favorites, you might make a note of when they are signing.

Also, I encourage you to take a few moments to participate in some of the Gygax memorial events. Zachary Houghton from RPG Blog II has a great write-up on events.

And if you still need something to do:

Out of the Box Roleplaying - You think we're crazy online... wait til you meet us in person! The StupidRanger crew be unleashing all of our zaniest on the mostly-suspecting guest players in our own little campaign. And we have some fun stuff planned for the audience, so you should plan to join us!
SEM00075 - Sunday 9am - 11am

RPG Bloggers Unite! - Join many of the RPG Bloggers in our own little meet & greet!
SEM00192 - Saturday 1pm - 2pm

Queen of Geeks Pageant - I'll be participating the pageant, and I could definitely use a cheering section!
ZED00001 - Friday 10am - 1pm