It was also the second year of taking my youngest daughter. And this year that paid of nicely. It was a con trip wherein I got to have fun largely through her experience, and that made it somehow more special. First though, let's hit the less daughter-y highlights.
Not only do I like games, and books, I also really like RPG books. Even if I never ever play the game. I get inspired, and have fun reading about the settings and matching rules to those settings. Eclipse Phase is a wonderful sci-fi RPG setting presented in books of outstanding quality. And their latest expansion book was out, and in my personal GenCon tradition, I snagged a copy of Firewall to drag home and peruse in detail. If you are not familiar with EP, it is incredibly dense with material and options letting entire campaigns or single sessions be horror, mystery, action,... all with the ability to jump bodies, telepathy, robots, nano-swarms... it is pretty crazy and cool.
Then I discovered a new board game I liked and pick up a copy of Lagoon. It has a few features I like - from a randomly building surface area, beautiful art, simple yet clear rules, strategic options, pretty quick play, and a solo mode. But more important it is desceptively dynamic. You may play with a goal in mind and strive towards it successfully enough to feel you have victory in the bag and then in the last round you may find yourself in last place because of the one element you missed. (As I dramatically learned playing with my daughters when I got home and was soundly trounced.)I popped by the Patrick Rothfuss' Tinker's Pack space looking for fun stuff to get and support their charitable efforts. Sadly, the booth was much smaller than I recall from past visits, in particular lacking the books I've enjoyed perusing and had hoped to get. I settled for an attractive set of playing cards, just to get something.
Speaking of books, I browsed the writers' section, but little really jumped out at me. I did end up grabbing an anthology of short stories called "Heroes" after a pleasant conversation with Dylan Birtolo, one of the authors, who signed the book for me. A mix of heroic stories, from the mundane to the cape and cowl and everything in between. Fun, light stuff.
There was more I liked, but that probably sums up my key take aways.
So, then, back to my daughter.
We had arranged to meet a friend of mine at the Con, and we all ate lunch together. Just listening her have a full adult conversation in detail about her TaeKwonDo with him was a heart warming experience for this dad. I could have just eaten and never spoken while listening to them, and I doubt lunch could have been better.
I managed to get her interested in Star Trek, by way of starting with The Next Generation via Netflix. Given her age (12) she latched onto young Wesley Crusher, add my following of Tabletop on YouTube and Titansgrave, and she certainly knows who Wil Wheaton is. She realized he was there at GenCon and was quite interested in see if she could meet him. She asked repeatedly all day where he was, as if I had access to his daily calendar. It was amusing, in the way only parenthood can be (not least because I kept wondering if I could meet Laura Bailey to discuss Lemley (Titansgrave) or Critical Role, and was pleased to see River Tam (Summer Glau) even if from 25 feet away, so I guess I've still got the heart of a 12 year old fan, too).
Regardless, we never did meet Wil. BUT, Wesley is not her favorite character on ST:TNG. Sorry Wil, that honor belongs to Deanna Troi. And my daughter flipping through the con catalog discovered that Marina Sirtis would be signing autographs the afternoon we were there as part of a promotion for the game Five Year Mission (couldn't find an official link) - kind of a cool game, actually. It is a cooperative game, with both ToS and TNG crew options, each person plays a crew member trying to overcome the crisis presented, just like episodes in the shows. She was determined to get a signature and meet her, so her big softy of a father bought the game, but then she was the one who had to wait in line since she wanted the autograph. And she did, and had an extended conversation with those in line near her - some serious Trekkers and also someone there from the Philippines. She held her own just fine.And then she met Marina.
Now, I had become stuck in a line of my own and failed to get back in time, but my daughter related a pleasant and not too short conversation covering things such as my daughter's age (she was notably younger than most of the rest of the line, "Who got you into Star Trek?"), her hair (she recently had it cut and added some blue color "Your mother let you do that to your hair?"), and my daughter did relate that her favorite character was Deanna ("Tell your father he is a good parent," yay me!) Marina signed her character card in the game, and we look forward to playing with it many times. It was a relatively brief interaction that I think was valued highly in my daughter's life, and makes me so pleased as a father for the her she is becoming.
What else? Oh, there was another location in the con with several demo game options going simultaneously. She spent a while there - trying to earn points for a raffle drawing - but one of the tables had a really pleasant group promoting it and we played with them, and my daughter liked the game, so we ended up getting her a copy of Boomtown Bandits. There is a lot to be said for having a product that is just a little different than the usual game (die rolling, but die rolling fast to try to win old west shootouts), but sharing it in a spirit of fun regardless of your age... there's real value there and the crew promoting it deserve kudos from this guy who has done the stand and talk up a product at a con routine. It is not always fun, but they successfully engaged us.
There's the short summary of my one day visit to GenCon 2015. What I did get from the day? Some new game material, and I got to share a day in my daughter's progression to young adulthood. It was a good day.
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