Photos from Gencon 2008

I forgot my actual camera, but it turns out that my new Sony Ericsson camera phone takes halfway decent photos. Here are a handful of scenes from Gencon 2008.














This was nifty -- Mayfair and Days of Wonder (and a few other companies I may have missed?) had set up a board game room where you could "check out" a game and play it on a nearby table, then return it and try a new one.














Here's the game room itself. Through the doors on the far wall was a much larger room, about the size of a gymnasium, with lots of game space.














Every table in this room was a different D&D game.














Scanthan and Ben on Saturday night playing Cuylas. A few minutes later we wrapped up our game and these two gents embarked on a night of hijinx in Indianapolis. They dropped in on the steampunk-themed Gencon dance and tried (unsuccessfully) to crash the uber-pretentious White Wolf party.














Tower of Gygax! The DM handed out two copies of each character, then proceeded to run a rotating cast of characters through a super old-school dungeon named for the iconic father of D&D. We used the first edition rules, and it was a blast. My gnome illusionist died after he looted the wrong body and a cascade of molten gold washed over him.

How diverse is your gaming group?

Mr. noisms over at Monsters & Manuals wrote up an interesting response to an ongoing discussion about race in D&D, and how the industry as a whole tends to default to the well-muscled white male human fighter -- despite the fact that we're playing a game that lets us pretend to be all kinds of much-more-interesting stuff: elves, Norse gods, well-intentioned aliens...heck, even grammar-school kids!

It got me thinking about the various gaming groups I've been a part of since 2000, when I started college and my gaming career began in earnest. I first fell in with a group of very creative and successful game publishers, who had recently collaborated on several acclaimed gaming projects. They were all about 7 or 8 years older than me, and they really helped give me a boost into the hobby. Looking back, they were -- quite literally -- the "Old Boys Club" of that small college town. That's the phrase my friend (himself a member of the club) used when reflecting on these inspiring fellows.

Fast-forward to Chicago. As I mentioned over at Monsters & Manuals, my most recent Mutants & Masterminds group was composed of one white dude, one white Jewish dude, one white chick, two Puerto Rican dudes and one black dude. Pretty much nothing was off-limits, and the mirth around the gaming table could get pretty raunchy at times. It was a slice of pure Americana, I think.

How about you guys? Can you top my group in terms of sheer diversity? Surely there's someone out there who's had Russians, Inuits and Sumo wrestlers rolling dice around the same table...