I got on a plane to Indianapolis after three days of unrelenting anxiety with nights ranging from one to four hours of sleep. I normally prefer the road trip, but there were Reasons.

Some of the anxiety was about the trip, but most of it was just my stupid life. Somehow I made it through the shoddy cardboard halls of an airport under construction (again) and shambled my way through two flights and a layover without freaking out or completely losing consciousness. I drifted off occasionally and jolted back to reality when I forgot where I was and thought I was falling asleep at the wheel of a car.

Tom couldn’t get away, but one of his friends from work was kind enough to pick me up and deliver me to his apartment. Tom came home later and found me passed out on his couch. He fed me something. I think we watched TV. Then sleep. Real sleep. That was Tuesday.

The next day, we picked up our badges at GM HQ, had a look around, and settled at the Level One bar in the Hyatt, one of my favorites of the Gen Con hotels. They had some special Gen Con drinks, one of which was a black Manhattan. I’ve had plenty of regular Manhattans, but that was my first black one. The difference was a Sicilian cordial instead of vermouth, and it was really, really good. I only had one, though, because they were expensive and I still didn’t feel quite myself after all the stress stuff before.

The "old home" dinner was at High Velocity in the JW Marriott. Mostly familiar faces. John brought Kirsten, his new lady friend. Mark, who I had previously only known through social media, was there, and excited to be at Gen Con promoting all the new material coming out for his cool B/X Gangbusters game (a new printing of the one I ran at BASH Con a few years ago). His energy was infectious.

Tom and I also went to the most depressing (and hot) office supply store ever, and I think I helped him adjust some margins or something so he could print stuff that would fit on index cards. Later that night, a storm came through. We were already home, so it was just pleasant rumbles of thunder and rain. And it left behind the nicest Gen Con weather I’ve ever seen. It was like, on top of all the other things we were taking a vacation from, we got to take a break from summer, too.

We grabbed a parking space in the Oort Cloud lot we had used last year. There was a little bit of friction as we walked to the convention center because I thought Tom’s game was an hour later than it was, so I didn’t understand why he was rushing us and he didn’t understand why I was acting like we had plenty of time. Anyway, we got to his Gotham City police game and I wandered off.

Apparently I’m not the only one who loved the old carpet pattern. In the course of my wanderings, I was asked by a woman sitting in the Marriott skywalk (Marriott Classic, not that upstart JW) if this was my first Gen Con. When I said it wasn’t, she offered me a badge sticker with nothing but the old carpet pattern on it. I was delighted. This year suddenly became the first year I ever cared about making sure my badge was turned frontside-forward all the time.

Also, I visited the exhibit hall and came back to watch Tom’s players take on the menace of the Condiment King.

Tom had a Crawlspace game later with a hilarious crew. It was so much fun to watch that, when someone else in the room offered me a spot in his Apocalypse World game, I turned him down in favor of continuing to watch the show. I probably should have taken the offer. I mean, try new stuff, right? But it really was a great show. He had these ghost hunter media personalities all competing for attention and our friend Brett giving a hilarious performance as the constantly-maligned groundskeeper and I couldn’t look away.

Somebody in this or maybe one of Tom’s other sessions said he had actually run TerrorHog! I knew one or two people bought and liked it, but actually playing the game is a whole other thing.

At some point on Thursday, I got out of the first of the two games I had scheduled. Tom had asked me to run two Qalidar games, so I scheduled two sessions of "The Cave of Crystal Souls," the scenario I had written for the Qalidar Basic book in one of my previous lives. I didn’t really want to run it. Funny, though: I read through the adventure again in case someone did show up and was like, "Damn, this is good! Who wrote this?" But, as expected, nobody signed up and nobody appeared at the last minute.

Saturday, Tom had accidentally signed himself to run a game at the unholy hour of eight in the morning, and, for reasons I will never understand, didn’t correct it when he had the chance. I scheduled an Uber the night before, for 2PM, and slept in while he went off to punish himself for his short-sightedness.

Some of that might have been Friday. I was just enjoying life and doing fun stuff. The best thing about this vacation was that I was only thinking of time in terms of what’s up next, rather than trying to look down the road. There were drinks at bars and delicious big salads and foldable slices of pizza outside in the beautiful weather where everyone was happy. And there were a couple of Crawlspace games where I got to ham it up just like the players I had enjoyed watching on whatever day I was watching them play.

One exchange:

Tom: You can each choose one item that’s always with your character no matter what movie they’re in.

Liam: (I don’t remember what Liam had.)

Me: I’ve got a pet rat, Nibbler. And the whiskey flask from when I leveled up.

Tom: I was hoping you wouldn’t mention the whiskey flask when we’ve got teenagers here.

Teenager2: I’ve got a bag of cocaine.

Me: Good thing we’re not talking about whiskey in front of the teenagers.

Player5: I’ve got one of those short novelty baseball bats.

Tom: Okay, that works.

Player5: It’s full of heroin.

I didn’t come home with much loot. Crystal Caste was selling Gen Con d6’s for two dollars apiece. I felt kind of ripped-off, even at that price, because, in addition to the Gen Con 2025 logo on the six spot, they put their own logo on the spot opposite. I mean, come on! You sell dice, so maybe just sell dice; don’t sell commercials for yourself on the dice you’ve already been paid for. Gen Con used to give us those things for free, and, even when they were free, we didn’t have to get them with extra pimp stamps burned into them. At least I’ve got the carpet-pattern sticker.

We didn’t go the con on Sunday. It felt wrong to miss a day, but, parking and other things considered, it made sense. We went to see the new Fantastic Four movie (which rocked) and continued testing our theory that there is no such thing as a weekend with too much pizza. So far, we have found no evidence that this "too much pizza" thing exists. Research continues.

We chilled in Tom’s apartment and I helped him do some computer stuff. Just took it easy.

Monday, I had to begin my journey back to summer and anxiety and drudgery, but at least I’d have my cats and I was ready to get back to finishing my novel (in between drudgeries, of course). I’m getting really close!

And, in the halls of the Indianapolis airport, people were still gaming.

I’ve been experimenting with Substack, so I posted this over there, too.

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