Unless Dragon objects, I'll post my experience of the con in this thread as well...
My con experience this year started on Thursday. Jason had been invited to be in the artists' section and the first round of setup was Thursday afternoon. I took that opportunity to get my pre-registration badge then as well. That was about a 2 hour wait in line, but fortunately it was indoors. The rest of Thursday evening was spent pouring casts of those magnets we ended up not using, but oh well...
Friday morning, Jason and I loaded up the remainder of the artwork into the truck an headed down. After we got him set up, I went to explore the con. As I was checking out the gaming area I got to meet Valerie Putman, who was one of the developers of Dominion.
Then I went to the dealers' rooms. I noticed that Chess-ex was absent this year. They usually have an entire row of tables all to themselves, but there was not even a hint of them anywhere this year. The back wall of one of the rooms was taken up as usual with boardgames, and I bought a copy of a game called Zombie Dice. I also got the three Smallworld expansions: Grand Dames, Cursed! & the new Tales & Legends event deck that acts similarly to the High Noon expansion in Bang!
I also got to see a panel for "
The Guild." This year they had Jeff Lewis and Sandeep Parikh, which if you know what the guild is, is very cool...
Friday night I left the con early so I could make sure things were ready for Dragon's arrival. He showed up a little after 1am, and even though we tried to keep the catching up to a minimum, ended up getting to sleep around 2. He used my air matress, and I relived memories of sleeping at Wylder's house by sleeping on the floor, since I have pretty much zero furniture yet.
Saturday morning we began Dragon's Dragon*Con experience by standing in the regular registration line. By 8:30am this line was wrapped half-way around the Sheraton hotel, and took us a good hour and a half to get inside. As Dragon pointed out, cash was a faster choice once inside the building.
As he was filling out his registration, Dragon asked me what he should put as his badge name. I showed him that mine was TylerChuit, and he admitted that putting "Dragon" as his badge name for Dragon*Con might seem a bit arrogant. I suggested "King of DragonCon", but he settled on DracoRex which just means King of the Dragons, or some such.
After all the badge nonsense was done with, we headed back to the Hilton so I could show Dragon the gaming room, which essentially takes up the entire basement level of the hotel, contains over 400 gaming tables and this year had its own program guide. As it was before noon, it was still fairly empty, so we headed back upstairs. We went past the Walk of Fame area, and Dragon Noticed Lou Ferrigno sitting at his table inside the room. "You want to go in?" i asked. Meeting celebrities is part of the Dragon*Con experience, and I definately wanted Dragon to get a taste of that.
There were a bunch of Star Trek cast members there from all the series. Almost every Sci-Fi show from the past decade was represented by one celebrity or another. Even the three main cast of "I Dream of Jeannie" were there this year... and of course, Lou Ferrigno. By the time we got back around to him, Dragon asked me who Avery Brooks was.
"I believe that's the guy from Deep Space 9." I said.
"Why does he have a line and Lou Ferrigno doesn't have anybody waiting to see him?"
Um, because time is cruel... "Well, why don't you go up and say hello?"
I hung back and watched the exchange. I couldn't hear what Dragon said, but in fairness, Lou Ferrigno probably couldn't either. I figured he probably understood Dragon puting his right hand out to hip level palm face down to mean, "I've watched you since I was this tall." They shook hands and Dragon came back over.
Afterwards, we headed back towards the Hyatt where the artists tables were and as we crossed Piedmont Ave. we ended up catching the last 10 minutes or so of the parade. They put all the Star Wars characters in the back as a sort of finale, so as to impress you with the sheer number of stormtroopers and Boba Fetts there are. That's why when you see the pictures I have, all of the parade photos are that.
I finally got to introduce Dragon to Jason, which was cool, and a bit surreal. And after we went to a few more panels and such, we ended up heading back to Jason's house. There, Dragon got to experience another part of my life here in Atlanta: helping Jason make art. He cut and sanded a lot of the wood panels we ended up making into backgrounds for Jason's artwork. I got to airbrush those backgrounds and add funky textures until about 4am.
Sunday morning, thoroughly sleep deprived, we headed back out for Dragon's last day at the con. We got in a couple of games, and saw some more panels. We spent a few minutes staring directly in to the sun. I won that Doninion game, as Dragon said.
We also gave blood, which I was scared to do, but Dragon talked me into it, making playful jabs at my masculinity for being scared of needles even though I had been a Marine... wait, I may be mixing up who teased who...
Anyway, we both got cool t-shirts, and in the end, that's what's important.
Then, we headed to the Masquerade, Dragon*Con's big costume contest. I had been expecting a huge line for that. The line for the costume contest has notoriusly been the largest line at the convention, considering it usually fills 5 ballrooms and is spread across 2 hotels. This year, however, they seem to have finally figured it out, and they just didn't have anything scheduled in those rooms for the 3 hours beforehand, so people could come in and find seats at their liesure. We arived just one hour early and got pretty decent seats.
The masquerade is always sort of a blur for me, and I tend to zone out somewhere between the 12th and 30th costume presentation. The kid's portion is always fun though, and there were some really cute costumes this year. I'll let Dragon tell you more about what impressed him if he wants.
After the costume contest, we got in line for a concert that Dragon wanted to see. It was the band opening for the Cruxshadows. I forget the name, but the lights from the stage were super bright, and I was really glad I kept those solar shades we got from staring into the sun earlier that day. I actually dozed off a few times in spite of how loud it was.
Finally we wanted to round out Dragon's con experience with at least one game of "Are you a Werewolf?" We eventually found a group down in one corner of the game hall back at the Hilton.
I want to make it clear that the Masquerade started at 8:30pm, and the concert was scheduled for midnight, but started a little late. Anyway, by the time Dragon was ready to leave it was almost 6am. I think he enjoyed the game. I know I had fun.
Our first game, I got to be a werewolf that infects two others. Of course, the first round I picked Dragon, and we very nearly decimated the whole village, but I got killed by the last 3 villagers. For our last game, I got to be the seer, but I didn't play it very well, and ended up being eaten in the night by Dragon, who was again a werewolf. One thing I thought was especially cool was that no one there knew his nickname, but just for the fact that he had a dragon on his t-shirt, people just started calling him "Dragon".
We slept well that night/morning. Dragon wanted to be on the road by 11am and he made that deadline. I ended up going back to sleep for another few hours.
Here are the photos that we took. Some of the ones you took came out blurry, Dragon, sorry.
P.S. Jason called me Monday evening and told me that he had done really well over the four days and was able to pay me what he owed me. We both ended up buying beds that evening, since neither of us had them. We got good deals since it was Labor Day. So no more floor for me the next time I have company.
