It always seems as if the years when I head to Gen Con thinking I have a nice light schedule turn out to be the ones where I’m completely slammed. Yesterday felt like two days already. I have convention voice and Friday hasn't even started yet. The best way to evoke my current mental state would be to write an entire post as one big long run-on unpunctuated paragraph. But I can’t quite bring myself to do that to you. Somewhat telegraphic sentences are as far as I’m prepared to go.

Giant crush of folks in the exhibit hall Thursday morning. The first couple of hours are always heavy but the aisles seemed unnavigable, like it was Saturday already. And that folks were there for everything, not just the few anchor companies with coveted limited edition stuff.

It ain’t Gen Con if you’re sure your big release is going to make it to the show. Upon arrival Mutant City Blues wasn’t there. It arrived before the first hour was up, though, so we got the delightful frisson of danger without the deep spiritual pain that comes when the empty spot on the table remains appallingly unoccupied for days. The 60 copy limited Gen Con preview edition has been shifting nicely, as has Trail Of Cthulhu in both its standard and pricey signed leatherbound versions.

It’s a fun time to be hanging out at the Pelgrane booth. This seems to be the year when they’ve reached a critical mass of awareness and depth of product line necessary to have a steady stream of folks by the booth who are there on purpose and know what they’re looking at. I got to hang around and see this happen for the James Wallis iteration of Hogshead Publishing, and it’s a satisfying feeling to see it repeated for his erstwhile office-mates.

During the evening conversation phase I was shocked to discover that there was a piece of weird Chicago lore that Ken Hite was unprepared to spontaneously discourse upon. Last week while researching mob lore for an upcoming Trail book I ran across a reference to a legendary figure known as Shotgun Man. I figured if I just waited till I saw him I could ask Ken to regale the room on the subject. But no, the great one’s intimidating store of historical knowledge was shown to prop itself up on feet of clay.

In non-Gen Con news, artist John Hodgson has posted the cover illustration from the upcoming new generic edition of HeroQuest over in a thread at RPG.NET. It is made of awesome.

Tags: gen con, heroquest, mutant city blues, trail of cthulhu

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