Picking up where I left off in my Dragoncon story, Friday we got up REALLY early, to get in the line to see William Shatner and Leonard Nimoy. I think we were in line by 7:45am. Chris and Janene were the only brave souls to join us that early. I figured we were going to have to stand aroud outside forever but since it was the first panel of the day they went ahead and let us sit down about 8am. Then of course we had 2 hours to wait till it started, but we had great seats! Nimoy and Shatner were great. They pretty much talked to each other for about the first half hour. I think they only got around to taking about 3 questions. It took the con almost an hour to clear the room afterwords, so all told, it took nearly 4 hours for the panel, but it was worth it. We met up with about half our con crew for lunch and then headed to the dealers room. It was packed though, so we didn't stay too long. Friday night we had our groups yearly room party and inducted new stonecutters. After that we attempted to get into the Steampunk event but it was way too crowded.
Saturday morning, Nikki and I were the only ones to get up early enough to see the parade, but it was very cool. Nikki got some great pictures of the costumes. We hit the dealers room for a little while and then got in another really long line to see Patrick Stewart. I saw lot of people give up when they saw the huge line but really they shouldn't. The rooms they have the panels in are HUGE. Nikki and I were way back in the line and we ended up sitting in the middle of the room. I don't think the room was even full after everyone in line got in. After that, Nikki headed back to the room to rest and I had planned on going to the Farscape panel but I met with everyone at the Marriott bar and didn't make it much further than that.
Sunday, Tiffany decided to join Nikki and I on our Con wanderings. I'm not sure she was ready for the whirlwind of keeping up with me at a con but she hung in there. We hit all 3 dealers rooms for our last big shopping trip, the Art Show, the Walk of Fame, the Stargate megapanel, and the Battlestar Galactica panel. We even tried to see one of Felicia Day's panels but I got the hotel wrong so we missed that one. We didn't have any planned events for that night so we just wandered around and looked at all the cool costumes.
Nikki put our photos up on Facebook, but I'm not sure that are publicly accessible.
Chris put his pics up on his server though so if you aren't on Facebook you can check those out.
Dre' s pics are up on his site as well.
Apart from the panels, shopping in the dealers room is about my favorite thing to do. Even though it seems like the dealers room is less cool every year I always manage to find stuff to buy. I bought 2 new RPGS: Wild Talents and Fading Suns. Fading Suns seems very cool. It’s a Sci-Fi RPG that fits somewhere in-between the somewhat bright future of Travellar and the grim darkness of Warhammer 40k. I don’t know if I will ever run it, but I bought it from the Author himself so it was hard to resist. Wild Talents is a super-hero game written by a bunch of RPG authors I really like, but whoah is that thing complicated. I realize it s a niche game, in a niche-genre, of a niche hobby, but dang you'd really have to love this one to want to play it.
I bought some new steampunk gear (bracers and goggles), some comics, a really cool print by Elmore Leonard (who even signed it!), and a map a the Serenity Verse! I need to get both of those framed.
Well that was the con for this year. We've already made our reservation for next year though!
