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Did anyone else notice the small booth near 2400 claiming to have evidence that all other dice besides theirs are lopsided? was that a troll or uh... what?
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Aug 6, 2018 04:32
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I am so exhausted. This was one of the best Gen Cons of my life though.
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Aug 6, 2018 04:37
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emdash posted:Did anyone else notice the small booth near 2400 claiming to have evidence that all other dice besides theirs are lopsided? was that a troll or uh... what? Was it this guy? https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=qXZbdZNuRIw Legendary Louis zocchi. This video is amazing.
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Aug 6, 2018 04:41
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Aren't the alleged benefits of Gamescience dice ruined by the fact that the molds are usually old and poorly maintained? I know their booth looks like it came out of 1980 and not in a good way.
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Aug 6, 2018 04:48
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ketchup vs catsup posted:Was it this guy? Yes definitely. Thank you
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Aug 6, 2018 04:53
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I have a set of his dice and I do appreciate how short the roll distance is. But I’m mainly a fan of his passion. ‘DMs are killing characters who don’t deserve it!’
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Aug 6, 2018 05:33
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I'm going to be hearing those two out-of-tune measures of the Ghostbusters theme on saxophone for a while. I got some good games and had fun playing them with people. I managed to get the 2nd to last copies of both Nyctophobia and the Root expansion. I haven't gotten to actually play a proper game of Nyctophobia yet, and am mildly dismayed by the crap it is getting here, but I think it might be a fun addition for our group, I guess we'll see. Played part of a game of "Root" with some friends (Edit: Nashona, Dr. Gargunza and others) and everyone loved it, though we didn't have time to finish the game. We played it with some friends who are mostly not into games that are as complicated as Root is, so while it took a while to get the rules, the fact that everyone did get it and had fun is great. The included "just do these things for turn 1 and turn 2" intro instructions aren't really helpful because they don't explain WHY you're doing things (Edit: as Dr. Gargunza mentioned previously), and they also don't explain what cards people should have on turn 3 if you want to move on from there (someone earlier had pointed out that their demo sucked because it was basically those intros with nothing after, and I think maybe they gave the demo people those instructions and nothing else.) Got "My Little Scythe" which, despite the cutesy theme is actually a really fun and great intro to regular Scythe for people of any age. I bought it mostly as another game to get my nieces into, but it was so much fun I think it'll be something I bring out regularly when we don't have 2 hours to put into Scythe.I want to give Dr. Gargunza my minis from it to paint because then they will look amazing, but I also won't be able to play in the meantime. Had an incredibly tense two-player round of "The Mind" where we were playing "Expert level" by playing each card face down. On level 3 I had 63-64-65. We stared at each other for about 50 seconds and she finally put a card down. I put my three down in order and she followed suit. The card she put down before mine was 62. Totally boring in explanation, but it was very intense at the time. Also picked up VAST and all the expansion, Tokaido, and Magic Maze and its expansion. I've played all of those and know they're fun. It was a good con, but I think in future years I might just go for Thursday to get to the vendor hall early, and skip the rest. Section 9 fucked around with this message at 06:11 on Aug 6, 2018 |
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Aug 6, 2018 05:50
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Had a great con this year, came with a group of 6 from Miami. Or group gets bigger each year. We played Cthulhu, pathfinder2e, star trek adventures, vampire 5e and a bunch of D&D. I did a few painting events too. I finished up tonight running a game of Cthulhu for our group in a dark empty room at the omni, nice ambiance there.
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Aug 6, 2018 05:57
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Another great Gen Con, except for the part where both my knees dislocated during Talks Machina, but everything else was cool and good. Goons are the best to hang out with in between and after games. Also I got so many people asking about the bee pin. Gonna try to make it back sooner than three years from now. Gen Con is the best.
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Aug 6, 2018 12:47
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Probably going to head to other Cons in place. The lines are just too insane after dumping so much cash. I had a fun time, but I think I spent nearly 15 hours in lines for either shuttles, tickets, booths, food, etc. The past two years were so easy compared to this year, I don't know what changed. But, I got all my loot I wanted. I played fun games. I ate good food. Made it back home safe. Next year I think we do Origins.
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Aug 6, 2018 14:10
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What, were you trying to recreate the PAX experience? Dude, get your event tickets and badge mailed to you. The only thing I waited in line for was delicious channa masala at Dhaba Indy. I didn't have to shuttle in or out, but GenCon is remarkably well suited to having to wait for nothing.
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Aug 6, 2018 14:19
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Philthy posted:Probably going to head to other Cons in place. The lines are just too insane after dumping so much cash. I had a fun time, but I think I spent nearly 15 hours in lines for either shuttles, tickets, booths, food, etc. The past two years were so easy compared to this year, I don't know what changed. There are tricks to skip most of the line waiting: get your badge and tickets mailed to you, go to the food trucks outside Lucas oil or walk to a nearby restaurant for lunch (or skip breakfast and eat lunch at 1030-11 when the food trick lines and practically non existent) and don't stand in a long line for a demo/booth, swing by every so often and get into a shorter line or immediate demo. Oh, and just don't go to fantasy flight because that line is always too long. The only lines I stood in were for will call because I'm a dummy and a ~5 min line for beer.
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Aug 6, 2018 14:22
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I'm old and fat and my back went out on me Saturday afternoon so I had to skip a Night's Black Agents game that I was stoked to try (and was in agony for the flight home) but otherwise it was a great GenCon. I picked up Root and got to play it a couple times, including one game with some goons; really liked its cute theme laid on top of a pretty meaty area control game with asynchronous player mechanics. I agree though that the first two rounds sheet could've done a better job explaining WHY you were making those moves and where to go from turn 3 on. There were also a few things in the rules that weren't entirely clear, hopefully they'll release an updated rules PDF or someone on BGG will write some better player/teaching aids. Also picked up Arboretum which was great as an in-between game, and Detective, which I haven't tried yet but appears to be Sherlock Holmes Consulting Detective set in modern day with some of the clues hidden behind web searches. Also demoed Istanbul: The Dice Game which wasn't quite as good as Istanbul but setup and played a lot quicker. A friend bought Senshi, from the Onitama makers, and it was a fun 5 minute in-between game. On the RPG front I bought copies of Kids on Bikes (which seems great, like Stranger Things: The RPG) and Scum and Villainy (Blades in the Dark INNNN SPAAAAACE). Also got in a couple games of Fiasco with friends and it's still my favorite RPG to play at conventions over drinks, can't wait for the 2nd Edition to drop. I also ended up in a ticketed event that my friends picked out for a game called Beasties & Bygones: The Raunchy Humor RPG. The pitch seemed to basically be "DungeonWorld with dick jokes". I didn't know what I was getting into until I got there and got real nervous that it was going to be a train wreck of awkward nerds being super cringey but it ended up ok, 2 of the random players were funny and great roleplayers. The third rando was a 50s year old dude who was real insistent on hitting people "in the vagina" at every opportunity but didn't take it to the weird child rape place that I assumed was inevitable. While not a game I care about ever playing again, I was happy to not have to walk out in disgust. I'd hoped to get in some games of heavy stuff I never get to play at home -- Food Chain Magnate or Star Wars: Rebellion or Terra Mystica -- but wasn't able to make it happen. Also never made it to the auction which is a shame, I always enjoy spending some time there. As always, too much to do and not enough time. I did spend a good chunk of time in the board game library and really enjoyed it, the lighting didn't bother me at all. Overall, I had a great time, back pain notwithstanding. Already looking forward to next year. As always, props to the GroupMe goons for being helpful and hilarious.
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Aug 6, 2018 14:40
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I had Rebellion, FCM, and Gaia Project in the car but then Root happened and just never stopped 
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Aug 6, 2018 14:54
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Bottom Liner posted:I had Rebellion, FCM, and Gaia Project in the car but then Root happened and just never stopped BTW, big ups to Bottom Liner for both teaching my goon-adjacent group root, but for actually subbing in for me when my pregnant wife called me in a panic. Stand up guy.
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Aug 6, 2018 15:12
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So did she have the baby!?
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Aug 6, 2018 15:22
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Bee Coffee had a shop set up in a building maybe 20 feet from the food trucks that was air conditioned and seemed only to ever form a line behind me when I went inside and people realized they were more than just "Java the Hutt" set up outside. Their coffee is delicious and they sell coffee shop staple foods such as breakfast and bagels, but they also have reasonably priced sandwiches from a local butcher shop, The Smoking Goose. Comparatively, I waited in line for 10 minutes at the Chinese truck for a what turned out to be a quarter portion of General Tso's with no rice for twice what any of the cheapo Chinese restaurants in the area charge for the whole meal, and my girlfriend got a latte from the coffee shop inside the convention center that was 90% milk and smelled/tasted like nacho cheese. And what was going on with the NY Slice truck? They used to sell decent pizza, but they were only offering stromboli, philly cheesesteaks, and cannolis. Stromboli sounded good but I wasn't about to roll the dice on that one, probably serve my rear end a premade and reheated greasy dinner roll with a pepperoni and cheese stick inside. Definitely look for Bee Coffee next year if you're on foot for the convention and need decent breakfast, snacks, or coffee.
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Aug 6, 2018 15:40
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The food situation is def. one of the biggest disappointments this year. With the death of Old Pointe and Haveli I felt lost and alone in an uncaring world.
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Aug 6, 2018 15:45
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My best event this year was the brew bus tour. The entire bus was out of control by the end, we had a blast. Tour dropped us off at bar #4 and we made it to a fifth place for dinner. Needless to say I missed an 8am session the following day.
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Aug 6, 2018 15:49
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not a mid-day solution but you all have to try The Eagle, it's .8 miles from the venue and has amazing fried chicken and a good beer selection
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Aug 6, 2018 15:53
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Nemesis Of Moles posted:The food situation is def. one of the biggest disappointments this year. With the death of Old Pointe and Haveli I felt lost and alone in an uncaring world. There are still lots of great places to grab food in the downtown area. Cheap lunch crowd places are scattered everywhere, with Monument Circle being a pretty popular focal point as well as a mix of fast and cheap or nicer places on Massachusetts or Virginia Ave. (Fountain Square). I don't know wtf was going on with the food trucks this year though, seems like only the worst and most expensive ones showed up. emdash posted:not a mid-day solution but you all have to try The Eagle, it's .8 miles from the venue and has amazing fried chicken and a good beer selection And also their mac and cheese, mashed potatoes, try the spicy honey on the chicken and the fries are incredible and I'm gonna have to go there for lunch this week now. Reynold fucked around with this message at 15:59 on Aug 6, 2018 |
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Aug 6, 2018 15:56
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Nemesis Of Moles posted:The food situation is def. one of the biggest disappointments this year. With the death of Old Pointe and Haveli I felt lost and alone in an uncaring world. Primanti Bros was my only source of happiness close by this year. Reynold posted:Bee Coffee had a shop set up in a building maybe 20 feet from the food trucks that was air conditioned and seemed only to ever form a line behind me when \ I'm mad that Barry and I only found this on Saturday evening. It will definite be my go to spot in the future. They have great coffee and food.
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Aug 6, 2018 15:58
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Bottom Liner posted:Primanti Bros was my only source of happiness close by this year. My group went to Primanti Bros. one night, right before closing, and our experience was a bit mixed. There was some disorganization on the orders, mostly due to tired overworked staff, and a couple of our people thought the food was a bit meh. However, the waitstaff made up for exhaustion with goofy good humor, and their tater tots were sort of life-affirming. And goddammit, I wish someone had told me about Bee Coffee! I love local coffee shops.
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Aug 6, 2018 16:20
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I waited too long and missed out on Root and I am incredibly bitter about it. I picked up some 1-2 year old games for a steal, and got the new L5R RPG which I got to play and really enjoyed. Best food of the weekend goes to Burger Study and Sugar Fire BBQ, both within two blocks. Sad to always miss goon get togethers. Next year I want to get an downtown hotel because driving in and out is horrible.
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Aug 6, 2018 16:31
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emdash posted:not a mid-day solution but you all have to try The Eagle, it's .8 miles from the venue and has amazing fried chicken and a good beer selection Logging this so I can look like a cool wizard next year when I lead my pack of dinguses to the promised land of Fried Chicken
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Aug 6, 2018 16:34
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Nemesis Of Moles posted:Logging this so I can look like a cool wizard next year when I lead my pack of dinguses to the promised land of Fried Chicken You’ll have my pen!
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Aug 6, 2018 17:03
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Bottom Liner posted:but then Root happened and just never stopped 
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Aug 6, 2018 17:03
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Bottom Liner posted:So did she have the baby!? Hanging out at hospital right now getting induced!
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Aug 6, 2018 17:13
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Ilor posted:What, were you trying to recreate the PAX experience? Dude, get your event tickets and badge mailed to you. The only thing I waited in line for was delicious channa masala at Dhaba Indy. I didn't have to shuttle in or out, but GenCon is remarkably well suited to having to wait for nothing. Will call took us 30 minutes. We just went and got dinner and saw a movie to chew off some time. It wasn't too bad. This was our first year using Gate 10 Parking for $65 for the four days. Previous years we found parking under the mall for about $20 a day, or $80 for all 4 days. It was a pain to find parking spots, so we wanted to get rid of that pain. In place of that pain, we got waiting for shuttles in the heat and packed in like sardines with no AC. Both parking options are pretty miserable to be honest. The answer is to somehow get downtown housing with VIG or lotto and just paying Gate 10 to store your vehicle for four days. It's just too busy for us. Maybe we're getting too old for it, I dunno. Trying to demo games we wanted to buy was surprisingly difficult as well. Guild Ball, we wanted to check it out, and pick up the game and two guilds. But they ran a demo at noon for a general audience and that was it, so we passed. Renegade looked really cool, but they only did demos at 4pm, which didn't line up with our schedule. I just simply asked if I could buy one of the sealed boxes that they have about 8 sitting there and they said that was demo-only. They didn't know where we could go buy it. I never found out, either. I don't care anymore because we were planning to play them at night with some pickup groups, but we ended up with Firefly Adventures which was cool. They let us buy that after demoing it. It's just... too much going on for everyone involved I think. Critical Role Live was absolutely loving fantasticly awesome and was the highlight for sure. Even though they miffed a few rules, they were still loving hilarious and they got revenge for the death of a member. The entire sold out theater was cheering SO LOUD. It was 4.5 hours long and I loved every single minute of it. Philthy fucked around with this message at 19:19 on Aug 6, 2018 |
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Aug 6, 2018 17:16
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First Gencon was great! I played Trogdor with the Homestar Runner guys, played 13th Age three times, once with Rob Heinsoo, and got to try out Yellow King. Also saw bee game which was good. Highlight was probably Trogdor, lowlight was Artemis Training Bridge cause half of us, myself included, were new, and I had a boring role I guess? Also played Blood On the Clocktower, which was a well put-together social deduction with a cool schtick where there's no player elimination on death, and there's almost always plausible deniability on roles. Don't know if it's balanced, only played once, but I had a great time.
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Aug 6, 2018 17:41
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RocknRollaAyatollah posted:Aren't the alleged benefits of Gamescience dice ruined by the fact that the molds are usually old and poorly maintained? I know their booth looks like it came out of 1980 and not in a good way. There is likely a benefit, but it's variable - i.e. Gamescience dice will be more consistent overall than Chessex from what I can tell, but you could end up with an individual Chessex die that's more "fair" than a Gamescience die just due to luck in the molding process. Secondly, there were quality issues when the Gamescience dice were being produced by Gamestation, which is why Zocchi fought to regain control. Gamescience dice are more likely to have sprue issues (which can be sanded off, but it's an issue with not being tumbled). Lastly, to see any difference you probably have to roll around a thousand times, as the deviations tend to be under 1% unless you've got some really bad dice. From looking at all the tests that have been done, there are benefits, but they're minuscule and "dicey", so it's up to you whether or not that's worth worrying about.
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Aug 6, 2018 17:53
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General advice on dice buying: - For good dice with better randomness, go with Q-Workshop. - For ridiculous shaped dice, Gamescience. - To buy dice by the cubic meter, Chessex.
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Aug 6, 2018 18:02
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Dr. Gargunza posted:General advice on dice buying: Have people done statistical analysis of different manufacturers dice to find the most random?
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Aug 6, 2018 18:06
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Slimy Hog posted:Have people done statistical analysis of different manufacturers dice to find the most random? I'm sure they have, but I was just going by personal experience. I've noticed a decent variety of numbers rolled from Q-Workshop dice, in the games where I've been paying attention. I've also had a set of Chessex where the d20 rolled 17's with staggering consistency. I've been in a long-running D&D5e game with a fellow goon whose infamous red Chessex d20 seems to roll only 1's or 20's. His skill checks and attack rolls are moments of extreme stress for the party. Basically, ymmv and it's ultimately up to personal taste. Chessex has an amazing variety of colors and finishes, with rounder corners. Q-Workshop has nice sets of "themed" dice (runes, elvish, Cthulhu, etc.) with slightly sharper edges and corners. Gamescience has...those weird Zocchi dice? Also the corners on their polyhedral dice look slightly injurious.
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Aug 6, 2018 18:23
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Dice carved from semi-precious gems are guaranteed to not have air bubbles and will be the most random 
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Aug 6, 2018 18:32
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Dr. Gargunza posted:I'm sure they have, but I was just going by personal experience. I've noticed a decent variety of numbers rolled from Q-Workshop dice, in the games where I've been paying attention. I've also had a set of Chessex where the d20 rolled 17's with staggering consistency. I've been in a long-running D&D5e game with a fellow goon whose infamous red Chessex d20 seems to roll only 1's or 20's. His skill checks and attack rolls are moments of extreme stress for the party. Couple of links I found if anyone was interested: https://www.awesomedice.com/blog/353/d20-dice-randomness-test-chessex-vs-gamescience https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2016/08/how-fair-is-your-d20/
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Aug 6, 2018 18:32
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I was amazed at the number of purveyors of "luxury dice" at the con this year. Some gorgeous stuff, but most of it looked like it was either moderately fragile or so heavy/solid as to be able to dent my loving table. There was one dude there hawking dice made from all sorts of metals and semi-precious stones, including mossy obsidian and "al-yoo-minium." I was like, "wait, did you just say, 'al-yoo-minium?'" He replied that they were an Australian company and therefore allowed to use the Queen's English. I stopped him there and walked away.
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Aug 6, 2018 18:34
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Bottom Liner posted:I'm mad that Barry and I only found this on Saturday evening. It will definite be my go to spot in the future. They have great coffee and food. Yup. That will be my first stop every morning from now on. That Calzone was pretty good, btw.
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Aug 6, 2018 18:41
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Gen Con was fun, although I'll say this was probably the worst time I've had of all the times I went. It had nothing to do with the convention itself though. More that we had to take a red-eye flight in (we used to drive in, but moved far away), so we ended up too tired to do some of the events we had tickets for; and then had to get a backup hotel that forced us to pack up all our stuff to change rooms partway through (and then they gave us our same room back after all that). Still, I got some cool stuff that I mailed back to myself (maybe next year I'll just take a second suitcase so I can do it myself) and I got to play Super Robo Rally twice. It's now to the point where the SRR organizers know us by name.
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Aug 6, 2018 18:42
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Carteret posted:Yup. That will be my first stop every morning from now on. That Calzone was pretty good, btw. I would have needed at least 3 to satiate me. P. Bros and beer was the only cure for my sickness.
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Aug 6, 2018 18:44
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