Gen Con – Day Three

Hey all, Dani (and Damian) here.

Whew, we’re almost at the end of the Gen Con experience. It’s always such a great time, but it’s also so jam packed with people and stuff to do, so I look forward to this convention, but then I also look forward to just relaxing once it’s over. As you can tell by the difference in my Gen Con wrap up from the last two years versus these daily wrap ups this year, there’s usually a whole lot of stuff that doesn’t make it into an overall wrap up. This year you guys are almost getting the whole experience with us. I say almost because I haven’t brought you onto the show floor with us. There are so many people there typically…but hey, maybe that will be in the day four wrap up.

After getting back to the hotel around 1:00 am, thanks to Critical Role Live, I can admit that it was a little sad knowing we would have to wake up at 8 in order to get ready, get breakfast, and get on the road. That’s what I get for scheduling a 10 am panel the morning after I know I’ll be having a late night. Oh well. It is a panel that I’m glad I managed to make it to, because it was a topic I feel I need to learn more about.

My first panel was “Sexy Times in Speculative Fiction: The Ins and Outs of Love Scenes.” The panelists for this one were A.E. Greenwood, Melissa F. Olsen, Diana Rowland, and Jerry Gordon. They used vague generalizations to discuss the ins and outs of actually writing sex scenes and intimate scenes, but it was still really entertaining to watch all of these authors interact with each other during their discussion. It kept the topic kind of light and fun.

My second panel of the day was “Blogging 201,” with Lucy A. Snyder, though what was discussed was the thought process before creating a blog, and the basics of setting one up, which makes the title pretty misleading. There were only six of us in the room though, so it made for a more personalized lesson/discussion. I even exchanged a couple of business cards, so that’s nice.

After that I met back up with my boys…Damian and our buddy who also came to Gen Con with us, and we went to our third event of the day: “BomBARDed: An All-Bard D&D Musical.” It was a live stream of a podcast following a literal band of characters. They are musicians learning from a master, and each of the players and the Dungeon Maestro have an instrument that they actually do play in reality. It was not what I was expecting, but it was still an entertaining experience.

Then we went to our final event of the day, which was Dungeon Master Live. This is an improv show, and they invite the fans to fill out a basic character sheet for the chance to be one of 6 people to be pulled on stage and become part of the show. We went to this last year and it was a lot of fun. And like last year the show was opened by The Library Bards playing a few geeky parody songs, including two from their new album: BomBARDed (now do you see why my expectations were not met with that previous event?). But this year Damian got picked to be part of the show…and he was great, even with his voice still cracking in and out.

With our day of events completed and the show floor closed, we headed back to the hotel to relax, enjoy the hot tub, and watch some TV in our room. Oh, and here’s where I should point out that Dewey’s 24 Hour Reverse Summer Readathon ended at 8 pm on Day Three…and I read 0 pages. It’s the only time I’ve truly failed at one of these 24 Hour Readathons, but to be fair, I wasn’t expecting a lot because I knew it was in the middle of the chaos of Gen Con. I mean, the first 4 hours of the readathon I was at Critical Role Live, and then there was like 45 minutes of walking back to the car and driving back to the hotel, then 7 hours of sleeping, and then back on the road to the convention. By the time we got back to our hotel Saturday evening it was 7:30 and I went with Damian to the hot tub. Priorities, guys, lol.

Oh, and here’s my favorite purchase from the day, a gorgeous Critical Role fan art piece. The artist–Moe Balinger AKA @mobalart on Twitter) was sold out of the other two, but by next year I plan to have the whole series, because I love the show, the characters, and this art design so much.

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Damian here. I’m feeling a little bit better, but having my voice come in and out is actually very frustrating while at a convention where all of us geeks like to talk to each other about pretty much everything. Probably the best part of the day was getting called up on stage for Dungeon Master, because I have been wanting to be a part of the show since last year, and I had so many ideas for different characters I could have portrayed, but instead I had to go with a strong silent type fighter because of having no real voice. It’s hard to project as an actor of sorts if your voice is only maybe as loud as a whisper, and not a stage whisper either. Other than that I just walked around the show floor, looked at stuff, and demo’d some of the games. It was a pretty chill day.

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That’s all for now. I honestly don’t know if my regularly scheduled post will go up later today, because we will be on the road home from Gen Con, so I may see you all on here later. If not, I’ll be back tomorrow with the final wrap up post, and my regularly scheduled Calendar Girls August post.