It began as a beautiful sunny morning in southeastern Wisconsin. The temperature was far cooler than it had been the majority of the summer. There wasn't that much humidity. A perfect day for many outdoor activities, but my friend Lissy and I weren't planning to be outside that much this day. We were going to Milwaukee to attend the 35th GenCon Game Fair, the last one to be held in Milwaukee before fleeing to Indianapolis.
We were very excited, for we had a lot we were looking forward to. In the two days we planned to spend at the Con, we had quite a few things on our "Must Do" list. Being the Star Wars fans we are, the majority of our plans was centered around elements of that fandom. We knew of two symposiums that Michael A. Stackpole was giving, and we also knew of at least two Star Wars panels that were being given. I wanted to look for Margaret Weis and Tracy Hickman of Dragonlance fame and see if they could sign some more of my books. We also had some other authors we wanted to meet there, but most of all, though, we were anticipating taking Mike Stackpole out for lunch that very day.
Once we arrived and got ourselves situated, the first thing we did was trekked up to the third floor of the Midwest Express Center and hit the Dealer's Room (or for those who read my report last year, the Exhibit Hall). We picked a corner of the room, talked briefly with an online friend of Lissy's who was working at the corner booth, and then just started wandering, taking note of certain booths that we wanted to revisit for various reasons later.
In our wanderings, we stopped by the Wizards of the Coast castle, which took up the entire center of the Hall. In there, we saw Margaret Weis and Tracy Hickman signing. I immediately got into line while Lissy assumed her role as Official Photographer and positioned herself with the cameras.
It was a pleasure to meet them again. Those who read my last year's report should remember me saying how much I've always liked the writings of these two, so it was great to get many of my favorite works signed by them. It was also wonderful to get a couple of works signed that only one of them had signed in the past. I had a book that Tracy had signed way back in 1987 that Margaret finally signed, and a magazine story from 1992 that Margaret had signed but not Tracy. I'm really happy that I now have these two things autographed by both authors.
Of course, I got to chat with them for the couple of minutes it took for them to sign my stuff. Tracy kept thinking he'd seen me at his Killer Breakfast that morning. I had to tell him I hadn't been there. He joins the long list of people who think I look like someone else. I hear that sort of thing a lot, but this was the first time I'd heard it from an author.
We completed our wanderings of the Dealer's Room, then made a trip out to my car to drop off our backpacks. We were supposed to go out for lunch with Mike Stackpole at noon, and so we headed back to the Dealer's Room and located the WizKids booth, our designated meeting spot. Right away I had a bad feeling about this. The activity in this area of the place was insane. Besides the typical booth, there were about 12 tables set up where WizKids was running demo games, and right across from the booth was some sort of "spin the wheel and answer a question" contest going on where one could win a prize if they answered a trivia question correctly. There was a really long line for that, making the entire area jammed with people. I began to wonder if we would be able to find each other in this whole mess.
My fears came true. The time for us to meet came and went. Lissy and I developed a system where one of us would go and walk around the area looking for Mike while the other stayed planted and kept an eye on the main flow of traffic. We kept returning empty-handed. At one point we even discussed sending the Klingons from the Klingon Jail and Bail with a search warrant to find him, but we decided against it. Finally, about an hour later, we gave in to our grumbling stomachs and hit the Food Court at the local mall.
Our hunger assuaged, we made another trip to my car and packed up our backpacks, this time with the books we wanted Mike to sign. We had noticed earlier that he was doing a signing at 3 o'clock in the Waldenbooks booth. Since we had a little bit more time to waste, we did what became our favorite time-wasting activity: wandering around the Dealer's Room. Every time we saw something new. We ended up stopping by the Dork Storm booth and having my Nodwick trade paperbacks signed by Aaron Williams. I was hoping to catch John Kovalic, the creator of the Dork Tower comic strip, but he was not going to be at the booth until 3 o'clock.
Not long after that, we decided to head over to the Waldenbooks booth. We were hoping to catch Mike before his signing so we could compare notes and see what had happened. Again, as with the WizKids booth, there seemed to be a lot of activity in this area, although not quite as much. There were two women and a man talking in front of the Waldens booth, and various others just passing through what happened to be a busy intersection. We stopped across from the booth to get our bearings, and I turned to Lissy. "So, where do you think we should plant ourselves until he gets here?"
"Kelly, he's right in front of you."
In front of me I saw the same three people talking in front of the booth. I looked at the man, who was standing with his back to me. He was wearing a black jersey with the name Williams across the top and a number underneath it. Okay, it's none of these people... "Where?"
"Right in front of you."
The same three people were there. I was growing more confused. "Where?"
Lissy stuck out her hand, gesturing at the man with the Williams jersey. "Right there!"
It is? But isn't his name Williams? It's obvious my brain was not firing on all synapses right then. For some reason, the fact that Lissy had spotted him wandering around earlier in the day wearing an Arizona Diamondbacks jersey and the fact that jerseys usually have the name of the player on the back didn't quite mesh together. Toss that in with my remembering his hair looking somewhat different, and then one wonders why I was confused.
"Well, aren't you going to go over to him and talk to him?" Yeah, once my brain finishes assimilating all these jumbled pieces together. I did walk over after he had finished his conversation, and we figured out what had gone awry. He thought he had told us to meet at the Flying Buffalo booth. Lissy and I had wandered away from the WizKids area looking for him, but we never thought to check over at that booth. Thankfully, Mike was willing to reschedule for the next day after a Star Wars panel. Since we were all planning to attend, we should be able to find each other easily enough.
As he was last year, Mike was very generous when it came to signing items. This year I brought four of his fantasy novels and my X-wing comic collection (separate issues, not trade paperbacks) for him to sign, and Lissy had a few books and her trade paperbacks of the X-wing series. He was only going to be signing for 45 minutes, but he was able to get both of us finished without neglecting a single person. After we were finished, we scurried to my car, put our books into the suitcase in my trunk, grabbed a soda out of the cooler, and ran back inside to catch Mike's "War Against Gaming" symposium.
This seminar was something I was looking forward to very much. Although I was not a gamer, I had been exposed to the attack against it back in the '80's by well-meaning people, including a few family members, who believed what they heard on the news about "Dungeons and Dragons" being evil. They were concerned that some of the books I liked to read, especially the Dragonlance series, were bad, and hinted that maybe I shouldn't be reading them. Luckily my parents never saw a problem with my reading choices and continued to buy the books for me. While playing around on the internet one night about a year ago, I stumbled across Mike Stackpole's The Pulling Report and was fascinated with the rational take on the history of the gaming backlash. When I read he was to be doing a symposium on it, I was ecstatic because I'd always thought that it would be cool to hear him speak on this subject.
I was not disappointed. He was very informative and interesting to listen to, and appeared to be a big hit with the packed room full of gamers in attendance. A lot of his talk was drawn from The Pulling Report. He discussed the history of the backlash against "Dungeons and Dragons" and other roleplaying games and the three major players in the crusade against gaming. I enjoyed watching the room's reactions to various portions of it, such as Pat Pulling's questionnaire she had written up for the police to "help" them determine if a gamer was guilty of a crime. Mike questioned the crowd using the questionnaire, and determined that over half of them were guilty and lying to protect their gamemaster. There was a lot of laughter over this. I also found it interesting to hear Mike's comments about various things mentioned in The Pulling Report, like his views on Sean Sellers and things that has happened since his writing the report, such as the deaths of Pulling and Sellers.
We ducked out of the symposium a couple of minutes early so we could be on time for the "Question and Answer With Your Favorite Star Wars Authors" panel, which was taking place in the place farthest from our current location. The symposium had been in the Hilton, connected to the Midwest Express Center by a skywalk on one end, and the panel was in the Hyatt, way at the other end of the Center by another skywalk. I had learned of this panel from Aaron Allston's web page, and therefore knew it would be in Ballroom B.
We made it over ther in record time, only to discover that Ballroom B was empty. We did come across a sign saying it had been changed to Ballroom D. We walked over to Ballroom D, where we were told by two guys coming out of the room that the room we wanted was on the first floor of the Midwest Express Center. We hightailed it out of there and headed back the way from which we had just come.
While walking back through the skywalk to the MEC, we came across Mike walking the other direction. We both said hi and kept walking. We know now we should have just followed him, since he was going to that very panel. However, since we're not Force-sensitive, we weren't able to pick up on that.
We located Ballroom D in the MEC, and there was a panel going on, but it sure wasn't Star Wars, and there was not one familiar face on the stage. We sought the assistance of Customer Service, who were completely clueless. "It's not on the schedule. It's not on the computer. What panel was this again?" I half expected them to ask, "What's Star Wars?" After walking away from the Con No-Information Booth, Lissy said, " "Let's just go back to the Hilton and check again. There was a ballroom across the atrium." We went back, and sure enough, it's in the one room we did not look in, the main ballroom, which was split into four rooms, A, B, C, and D.
The panel was worth the time and effort we put into finding it. When we walked in, there was a moderator, Troy Denning, Aaron Allston, Bob Salvatore, Mike Stackpole, and Elaine Cunningham on stage. The panel lasted for two hours and would have most likely gone on longer, but the room was booked at 8 o'clock for another event. There were only about 30 people in attendance, so it was a nice, intimate session. Here's some tidbits from that panel.
The moderator attempted to end the panel at seven o'clock, but he could see that both the audience and the authors weren't ready to stop yet, so he let it continue even though he had to leave. Denning took over moderating duty. We had a great time. After the panel concluded, we went up to speak to Aaron Allston. Before the Con, we had tried to set up a lunch with him as well, but schedules just weren't coinciding, so we had agreed to try to meet up during the Con and see if something could be worked out. Lissy also took this time to present him with his very own pilot bear, similar to the one she had me give Mike Stackpole last year. Aaron was delighted, to say the least. Mike saw Aaron with the bear and exclaimed, "Oh, you got one, too!" Many others had to compliment Lissy on her bear. Somewhere in the midst of all of this, we explained to Mike and Aaron why we had come in late, which helped Mike piece together why he saw us going the other way and why we were late.
Aaron, Lissy, and I moved out into the hallway to talk further. We talked for maybe five minutes about various things. The three of us would have talked even longer, but he had a dinner engagement to get to, so we decided to try to meet up again the next day. He said he was going to be doing two signings in the afternoon, but we weren't sure if we would be able to make them because we were going to be at lunch with Mike during the first one and at Mike's other seminar during the second one. Aaron suggested we leave a message for him at his hotel if it appeared things weren't going to work out. Lissy and I thought this sounded like a good idea. We said our farewells and let him get to his dinner.
Dinner sounded good to us, too, as it was after 8 o'clock and we'd last eaten around 2 o'clock. Happily, we strolled out of the Hyatt and headed to the parking garage to retrieve my car. Again, our stomachs controlled our actions, forcing us to pull into a McDonalds and tend to them before they would allow us to go home. Once home, we unloaded our items, reloaded our backpacks with Aaron Allston's books, put away my no-longer-needed suitcase, and planned for the next promising day of GenCon.
Copyright August 21, 2002 by Kelly M. Grosskreutz, with assistance from Lissy B.
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