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Here we are, on the eve of another GenCon. I leave by train tomorrow and I can’t honestly imagine it could be a worse trip than last year, but nevertheless, I thought long and hard about cancelling yesterday. I didn’t! I’m still going. But I also just re-read my account of my odyssey home on the bus and am wondering if I made the right decision. But I am traveling by train! Surely nothing can go wrong! I’m going to spend 22 lazy hours reading and looking at the window in comfort, there and back. Right? RIGHT?! I guess we’ll see.
Where to Find Me at GenCon
For the most part, when not shopping (god help me), I will be lurking around the MIT Press booth (#269) or in Wizard Van Wayne’s orbit (I am assuming the van itself will be on the stadium floor, as usual).
On Thursday afternoon (4pm, to be exact) I am supposed to be on the Gen Con Celebrates 50 Years of Glorantha – The Early Years panel, though my name isn’t on the page, which makes me a little uncertain. I was asked, though, and I will show up to the room on time. If they don’t put me on stage, that’s fine, I’ll go have a nap; I get off the train at 5am that morning, so I am sure to be bushed. Anyway, tickets are available! I am sure it will be a rollicking, edifying time whether I am yapping away there or not.
No, I am not nervous about it at all. Why do you ask? [stares at bottle of beta-blockers]
Games People Play
A couple weeks back, we did a fill-in show while Sara was stuck in St. Louis for a convention dedicated to her MUD, Gemstone IV. In a delightful twist of fate, Station Manager Ken asked us to fill in this Friday, while I am in Indianapolis. I really like the symmetry at play here. We’ll be on from 6pm to 7pm, either on 91.1FM or streaming on WFMU.org. I guess we’ll talk about GenCon. Also, probably, trains. Maybe some Horror on the Orient Express?
Becoming the Forest
If you recall, I wrote an essay about dungeons and true darkness for the art/metal/myth publication Becoming the Forest, issue V. Excitingly, it is at the printer now and up for pre-order:
“For this issue we delve into the depths of the subterranean, covering topics from old Norwegian stone customs to the underground topographies of Dungeons & Dragons.”
148 excellent pages.
Seriously one of the coolest projects I’ve participated in. I shared some sketches of Andrew Walter’s illustrations for the piece and the finished work is just astonishing. Co-editor Úna Hamilton Helle coordinated everything and it came together wonderfully. There’s so much art! Well worth the pounds, if you can swing it.
Monstrous Descents
Oh, hey, I finished that monster book I was working on. Well, except for the appendices, but that’s a different sort of thing. It came in at 136,000 words (first draft of MAHG was ~185,000). The thing I am most looking forward to on this trip, actually, is reading the manuscript on the train. Gonna start cooking up a list of historical artwork, too, so I can figure out the list of monsters Kyle Patterson is gonna illustrate. Because you know I am gonna lock Kyle in a garret room for this project. You hear that, Exalted Funeral? He was mine first!
A Long Journey Home: The Lost Chapter
Having just re-read my account of GenCon travels again, I was surprised that I left one of the funnier bits out (funnier in the exasperating and kind of sad way that might go well in a Jim Jarmusch movie, honestly). So here you go.
There was a couple sitting behind me, they were rough. Pretty sure they were lightly drunk when they got on, and they were part of the crew that blazed at every stop. The woman complained of some unspecific chronic pain and the guy vacillated between being attentive and being somewhere in the next universe. He would be real sweet and she’d be real sweet back, but then he’d fail to read her mind, or something out of his control would happen, and she’d just spit acid on him. Dude was legit trying, despite it all, and I felt bad for him. They were both hayseeds who talked slow but damn, when she got mean, it was like a whip crack that was all the more violent for her drawl. “What’s wrong with you?” “What are you, fucking stupid?” “Why can’t you do anything right?” Over and over, for hours. I can still hear her.
I thought they were going to be a nightmare to sit in front of, but honestly, they were nice enough when I interacted with them directly and they weren’t loud; I was just, you know, directly in front of them. At one point early on, the guy saw me reading my new copy of The Grey Knight for the Pendragon RPG and asked me about it, and that prompted a surprising conversation between us and a couple other passengers about genre fiction. There’s a baseline of miserableness in long distance bus travel that I think inspires a certain amount of quiet solidarity among the passengers, but the fiction conversation was a nice reinforcement of the feeling that “we’re all in this together.”
When we got to Pittsburgh, though, everything exploded. There was a real urgent conference between the guy and the previous bus driver, who kind of walked away in surrender. The woman was like a viper, doing this whisper shout thing, impressing upon the guy that he was a fucking idiot. The new driver wasn’t quiet about it when he got involved. And that’s why I know what happened. They were supposed to transfer in Dayton, to switch to a different bus down to Cincinnati. Somehow, they went 4+ hours and 250 miles out of their way and they never realized it (Dayton to Cincinnati is like an hour, probably less than 60 miles). And now they were stuck in Pittsburgh. It was a mess, and although they finally got comped tickets back, I couldn’t help sympathizing with the woman now. He was, in fact, fucking stupid. She didn’t need to be quite so mean about it though.
Here’s hoping we don’t meet again on Saturday.
