We wanted to go to Origins this year. We really did. But after crunching the numbers, many of those in my gaming group realized we just couldn't afford it.
This would make the third year in a row that we weren't able to make it to one of the big conventions, which was disappointing on many levels. We wouldn't be able to mingle with thousands of other gamers, nor would we be able to retire to a pub for a night of fine food and drinking. We wouldn't be able to pick up that new set of dice, or check out any of the new releases weeks (or months) before they arrived in stores. But most importantly, we wouldn't be able to hang out together.
That, I think is the thing our gaming group has missed most about not going to GenCon. Our pilgrimages west in '99, '00, and '01 had forged our group into a more cohesive unit -- it was a shared adventure that went beyond the boundaries of the Lehigh Valley. It gave us the chance to hang out, talk, drink beer, and -- of course -- game until we couldn't think straight any more.
We've sworn we'll go to GenCon next year, but this year we've decided to do the next best thing: take off three days and dedicate them to gaming as though we were at one of the big conventions.
NukemCon was born.
Only members of our group and a few friends are invited to NukemCon, which starts Friday at 8 a.m. and runs though Sunday night. It's going to be focused primarily on board, card and strategy games, since we don't get to play those much, and they're easier to run. Among the games we're sure to play are Risk 2210, The Hills Rise Wild, Munchkin, Illuminati, Carcassone: Hunters and Gatherers, HeroClix, Marvel Vs. , Car Wars, and Settlers of Catan.
We're not abandoning RPGs though. We're planning on running a slot of Conan d20, some classic Battletech, and a super-sized Delta Green session in which players are divided into two teams who can only communicate via real-world two-way radios (a cool trick we saw at MepaCon last time around). Rounding out our gaming will be the Xbox; we plan to network two of ours together and have some good old-fashioned Halo and Crimson Skies deathmatches.
In keeping with our GenCon tradition, we're planning on going out to dinner at a restaurant and spending a heck of a lot of money of food and beer (I think our last dinner at Rock Bottom Brewery in Milwaukee cost $450 between 8 people. Not to shabby. In a slightly newer tradition spawned during our weekly games, I'm sure we'll also be sampling all kinds of wretched soda (more on that tomorrow).
Ultimately, our goal, as is the case at GenCon, is to game the sun up and down as many times as we can. We'll sleep when we have to, crashing on the floor at my place in sleeping bags and then getting up the next morning to start all over again.
It's going to be glorious. Simply glorious.