Gen Con, Day 4

Gettin' all Guillermo at breakfast

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Gen Con. Day the Last. I promise, I'll try really hard to keep this post in non-mammoth territory.

For the first night of the con, we got a decent night's sleep. Which means we slept well past the hall opening, and didn't arrive until the day was half over. Sundays at cons are sad. Numbers are often down, and continue to go down as people leave during the day to fly back to wherever they hail from. The fact that the con is ending is on everyone's mind, the same feeling you get on the last day of your vacation, or pretty much any Sunday when it's back to work in a few hours. What made it worse was that I was just getting used to the con. Which is how it always happens. But it's still depressing.

Sunday's sales were good, just slightly less than Saturday. All in all, over 1,200 Dorkness Rising DVDs sold at Gen Con -- the first four days it was available. On top of that, Margaret Weis Productions sold somewhere between 80 and 100 copies of the Demon Hunters Role Playing Game. We've never had numbers like that a at a convention. Never. And that's not counting pre-orders on Paizo's website, or what Netflix ordered. By the way, if you add Dorkness to your Netflix queue, it will tell you there's a "very long wait" to get the movie. =)
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As the day wound down, I got my promo copies of the DVD to swag for con goodies. The haul wasn't bad -- a coupl'a boxes of D&D minis, a wonderful little board game called "Key Largo" ... and a TON of Legend of the Five Rings cards from John Zinser, president of AEG. L5R is my favorite collectible card game of all time, hands down. The interactive storyline and fan devotion to their particular factions are unmatched in the CCG world. I've been off the stuff for a few years, pretty much since we moved to Cali. But with Nathan moving down in a couple months, I may have to get back into the game. Can't let the Crane prance around the courts of the Empire while the Crab die on the Great Carpenter Wall.
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Wifey poses with Jen Page, who was banished from the con

after someone left a cold iron charm outside her room. BOOM! Elf joke!

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At four, the hall closed, and the convention hall staff started processing the corpse of the convention. The carpets between the booths were rolled up, the banners above them taken down. Quickly, efficiently, the cold concrete bones of the convention center poked through what moments before had been the center of the RPG universe. And will be again next year.
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The trip back to L.A. was blessedly uneventful. We said our goodbyes to the few DGs hanging around an extra day and vamoosed to the airport. Mercifully, Air Tran's computers were working for the return trip. From the L.A. park and ride, Don and Cindy gave us a lift back to our apartment -- our car still being dead -- and dropped us off shortly after midnight. We have yet to completely unpack.

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So ... yay for Gen Con! We can finally get back to regular life. Until next week, when Don and Jeremy and I head up to Seattle for PAX.