Dragon Con 2012

For me, I had to do a slightly truncated DragonCon as opposed to previous years due to my new job and no vacation time. So I arrived late morning in Atlanta on Friday and made my way to registration. For those who have gone before but didn't make it this year, pre-reg was fast as shit! And this is a huge and welcome change. I use to purposely not pre-register because the line to get your stuff would literally wrap out of and around the hotel and the wait would sometimes be hours. This year, I think I got my badge in under ten minutes from the time I walked into the per-registration room.

Friday was spent getting organized like tickets for gaming and finding my hotel. I ended the night playing D&D. The gaming part of the con brackets five hour 'slots' in order to finish. While this is welcome from the previous 4 hours which sometimes wasn't enough, playing 3 games of Pathfinder (D&D) racked up 15 hours of time from one day.

I opted for a semi-early bed time of a little after 1am. I needed to take the local rail transport to my hotel each day and the schedule said they stopped running at 1am. I came pretty close to missing my train on Saturday night due to a late running game.

Saturday was mostly checking out panels, the lunch with board members and then another 5 hour slot of D&D from 7pm to 12:30am which I had to walk out of before finishing to make my train. I tried to do some makeshift bare bones marketing. I carried my self-published comic book, The Necropolis Chronicles around making sure the cover was easily viewable. While waiting in the subway a person came up to me and asked about it. I gave my spiel but unfortunately didn't think to have any business cards or extra copies - I traveled to DragonCon with just a backpack and a small piece of luggage smaller than a large purse. Later, I found out the person that asked about my comic was Aaron who sat with us for the luncheon. Small world. 

Saturday started with the parade. It was fun but boy did my feet, knees and back hurt at the end. Guess I'm getting old if just standing on a sidewalk gives me pain. The sidewalk was 3 to 5 people deep the whole route of the parade. This asshole woman around the middle of the parade just outright shoved her way through to the front and then sat in the street along with all the young kids that were already there. Because this person came up from behind I never saw her and I was just barely able to keep my balance which was a good thing because I almost toppled into the baby carriage occupied by an infant. If I had fallen on to that baby and hurt her because of that woman I would've been sorely pressed not to belt her right across the fucking face. I was PISSED! There was a woman beside me and she had been shoved by this same woman as well and we just shook our heads at this asshole after we recovered.

There was only 8 of us this year for the lunch which was a bit of a downer because previous years the group numbered well into the double digits. It was me, Don C, Charles RB, andmore known from CBR: The Watcher, Perry Holley and his wife, Greg, a fellow in a wheelchair who's name I forgot and Aaron who's CBR name I'm forgetting. The place we chose was so jammed up with people the only way they could fit us was to slip us into two tables and then those tables were far apart so we couldn't even interact with the other table. But I really enjoyed sitting with Don C, Greg and the wheelchair fellow. I didn't see Aaron before he left otherwise I would've given him the copies of my comic.

The luncheon ended kind of in the middle of no man's land as far as DragonCon scheduling went. I hit a rather crappy panel that I walked out on and did my tour of the art show and dealer's room. There are two levels of dealer's room. The upper one I could move around in but the lower one was so packed I was taking steps in two or three inches and even then I was getting hit with backpacks or other people rubbing up against me. Not the way I want to look at stuff. I didn't buy anything which in part was due to my limited carrying capacity.

I caught some of the Ghosthunters show (SyFy) panel and learned that Steve Gonsalves, one of the main investigators, is from the next town over from my hometown and still lives in my area - like the next town over. Kinda cool.

The Walking Dead show panel was fun. It had from the show: Glen, Sophia, Carl, Jim, and Hershel's blonde daughter who on the show almost committed suicide. Glen did most of the talking and he seemed like a pretty funny guy. Carl was pretty quite and didn't really say much. Sophia was pretty quiet until a question was asked of her. Jim made a few funny comments here and there. And the blond girl talked a lot when she had to answer a question. The questions were kind of out there with some generic stuff like which scene was the actor's favorite. Better questions were what would they cos-play at the con if they had time. And then there was a whole what store would you raid first between Sophia (Costco) and Carl (Wal-mart). Costco was chosen as the winner. That panel had a couple of hundred attendees because I had to walk past all the early arrivals and got stuck in the last quarter of the fans.

Sunday ended up being Pathfinder (Dungeons & Dragons) the whole day. And I loved it. Every table was fun from experienced players to newbies. 

Monday I only made one panel due to my flight leaving. But that panel was fun if not all over the place. It was Hackers 301. Run in part by a computer professor from Georgia Tech, a well respected university, the professor got down to how easy it is to steal a user's credentials like log in name and password. He mentioned that Linkedin.com is one of the worst/weakest security sites on the internet and even a half-assed hacker can steal people's credentials. The professor was no fan of Facebook but the conversation changed before details were stated.

Also during this panel I was taught what 'Bronies' were. They are men in their 30s that watch the new My Little Pony cartoon. That then branched into that there was an actual bronies con. Worst, the bronies got mad because women attended the con! This led into sexual harassment of women at cons for about 20 minutes before getting back to computer stuff. But then I had to leave the panel and the con to make my flight home.

So the con had some up's and down's but overall was a great experience and I am very thankful that I was bale to attend and have a lot of fun. Money well spent for me.

That's the overview of my experience. Here's some other random stuff or further notes on stuff above.

Lots of sexy costumes there on lovely ladies. But, I'm pretty sure I could tell which women wore high heels often and which did it more for their costumes/cosplay only. Since the con is spread over 5 hotels there is lots of walking and two of the hotels are blocks away from the main three. I was walking along and this young couple, high schoolers I presume, were walking really slow. They were driving me nuts because I tend to walk fast. Then I noticed they were holding hands. I think it was to keep the girl upright in her high heels. She had on three inch stilettos and just watching her walk was painful. When she took a step it looked as if her ankle would bend almost 70 degrees outwards both ankles every step. It looked like she was some sort of contortionist. I felt bad for her but at the same time I was cringing. I saw another girl girl doing a cosplay from Battlestar Galatica the more recent series. She was the cylon who is known for her red dress and pumps. The cosplayed was quite attractive. But I noticed band-aids sticking up out of her pumps so she must've had blisters. Atlanta also had a long escalator from the subway to the surface. I'm talking like a 30 second ride , one hundred or more steps if you used the stairs long. Then you round a corner and have another escalator about a third of the length of the previous one. I see a cosplay of Poison Ivy in front of me. Posion Ivy is a DC comics Batman villain and is quite common at cons because girls sexy up the costume often with heels. So this Poison Ivy starts up the stairs foregoing the escalator which is fairly jammed up with people. Well if she can do that while wearing heels, I tell myself, I can use the stairs as well. We get most of the way up and she trips nearly face-planting on to the concrete stairs. On occasion while walking from hotel  to hotel I would see cos-players suffering from their heels. 4 or 5 inch heels are fairly common at this con and you can easy see some of the women hobbling around in obvious pain from their shoes. But they do look terrific so I appreciate the suffering for fashion made by these women.

I must have some sort of aura that I radiate. Where I go, random strangers ask me questions, most often for help in locating something. This DragonCon, I think 4 if not 5 random strangers engaged me in conversion most with a question. The last was a middle-aged/border line elderly couple that stopped me in teh subway to ask for directions. I helped everyone out including this couple as well. Since they caught me as I was heading to the airport, I gave them my map that I had printed out of the downtown area including several labelled hotels. Not really generous of me since I had no further use of it but hopefully it helped them out. The elderly man had also stopped another young guy as well and that guy offered to help show them the way. I hope the couple made it okay to their destination.

I played a shit load of D&D/Pathfinder at the con. I was extremely happy to get my character from 2nd level all the way up to fourth by the end of the con. That took 5 separate scenarios each broken into a 5 hour gaming slot. So that chewed up a lot of my time. But I really enjoyed it and got to add some role-playing dimension to my sexy librarian gnome wizard. The group of newbie players at the last slot may have been the most fun because they were mostly concerned with just having fun. They were pretty young, pretty sure they were all high schooler's and maybe just juniors at that. They made me feel old though because I mentioned that when I started D&D came in a blue boxed set and red boxed set. Then one of them pointed out that they had also learned from those sets as it was in their dad's stuff. Oy!

But with gaming, and a table of gamers tends to be five or six people, there can be a fucktard on occasion. The first game I played was fun but we had a fucktard at the table. This was a guy that would constantly interrupt the DM, then not pay attention when it wasn't his turn and then act like when someting bad happened he had no idea what was going on. Well, I guess the kid really didn't because he wasn't paying attention. Further, this kid made it sound like everything he did we were all experiencing for the first time and like it was some sort of game changer he had come up with. But it didn't stop there. He would then shake his dice for literally 5 to 10 seconds before rolling. It got to the point towards the end of the game where us other players started saying 'just roll!'. And when he did roll, it had to be on the battle map and right into the middle of where all the figures where set up thus risking knocking everything over. God I hate players like that. To each their own towards what people like but I just don't like the 'fuzzies'. The fuzzies are people that go to cons and dress in part like fuzzy 'cute' versions of animals or human/animal hybrids.For me, I just hate that shit. And this guy had on little white bear ears and a poofy all white skunk tail attached around his waist. But then he was in all black including cheap ass, thick, fake leather wristbands. So I just didn't like this guy through and through. Thankfully, that was the only game I had deal with him although I did see him hear and there other days.

The final game with the newbies was fun but the DM did and on a couple of occasions, what I consider a cardinal sin in gaming. The DM, or Dungeon Master, is the story teller and guides the players through the adventure. They are the narrator and the equivalent of a voice over in a movie that tells the watcher/viewer what's going on. But in my opinion, no DM should ever, EVER tell a player character what that player character is doing. I've had DMs place big nasty creatures teleport right next to my character and tell me my character 'shit's themselves'. Uh, fuck no. And while I had a lot of fun with the newbie table, the DM one more than one occasion told the players how my character reacted while pretty much ignoring me. I like to give my characters faults and I also like to give out bits of role-playing that will purposely make my character look bad in order to have some fun at the table. My gnome wizard Mythica, for example, is afraid of water. Pretty much, she's terrified of it and while climb up on to the back of the tallest party member to avoid it. So as a group where came across some water and I started playing this up. I don't recall the details but I failed at a skill check or something and seeing how I had played my character the DM then proceeded to tell the other players 'this is what she (Mythica) does' and the DM starts role-playing my character and doing stuff I wouldn't really have my character do. It was nothing serious, nothing overly bad happened to my character, but again, it really pisses me off when someone starts telling me how my characters reacts to something.

So this is getting or feels to be getting pretty long. I had a fantastic time at DragonCon and I'm already planning to go next year which will be maybe my 6th time going.