Just got back from my first day at GenCon. Long day. As I’m writing this entry, the pool on the second floor of the Westin Hotel in downtown Indianapolis is coming through the ceiling of the first floor — no joke. More on that later.

I started out the day by trying to find stuff to do until the vendor hall opened. I ended up watching some anime in one of the rooms that may or may not be covered in pool water at this very moment. This anime watching session lasted for about five minutes because I quickly grew bored of watching quick clips of anime played over the best pop songs of 1998. “AMVs” as they are called, are supposedly some sort of indie art form. They remind me of mash-up songs a bit, and I imagine that people who have actually seen the cartoons from which they originate would enjoy them more.

There was a room where they were showing fan films across the hall. I saw two quick movies there: Teenage Bikini Vampire (more innocent than it sounds) and Attack of the DMs (probably not the correct title). The former was a cute little story about a young vampire who longs for surf and sun but her family wishes that she would just be a vampire. The latter is sort of an inside joke about “True Dungeon” (read: LARPing in a haunted house) GMs who are played by various Star Wars characters… except for Punisher… and Samuel L. Jackson. Though he might’ve been dressed like Mace Windu, I think Mace a few more lines than “AW HELL NAW!” in the movies. Really clever mix of stop motion and graphic effects on that fan film.

Next stop was the vendor hall. I played this game from Fantasy Flight called “Drakon” that was really cool. They just released a new version of the game and it was too fun to pass up. I was a bit disappointed by the computer game companies’ showings this year. Blizzard had a dozen or so lonely computers set up with Burning Crusade running — which was cool — but they were sort of thrown out there on the floor. It was if they were saying, “here’s your goddamn Warcraft fix, play it and shut the hell up.”

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