Gamicon Omega Day 0: Welcome To Arctic-Con!

Greetings folks! Your Friendly Neighborhood Sniderman is posting live from downtown Iowa City for Gamicon Omega! (Literally, I'm in downtown Iowa City.) With Gamicon Omega, I will have traveled to six states and attended nine different gaming conventions since re-entering the gaming fold six years ago. Not bad, not bad.

I've been looking forward to Gamicon, as I'm here with Dan Proctor to help run the Goblinoid Games booth as well as to run several Pacesetter games. I'm excited for the event, and hope you'll be tuning in daily to check out my "You Are There" reports from the convention. Of course, I'm here a day early and the con doesn't start until tomorrow, so today's "Day Zero" report entails the trip out and my arrival here at the convention site:

• The trip from Mansfield, Ohio, (my hometown) to Iowa City was an 8-hour drive across the northern borders of Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois before arriving in Iowa. When I left this morning at 6 a.m., the temperature was -7 degrees. (Yes, there's a minus sign there.) On the trip here, I encountered blowing snow, wildly bitter wind chills, whiteouts, and stretches of flat, featureless tundra. I hereby decree that this adventure will henceforth be known as "My Trip to Arctic-con."
• But one nice thing about the deep freeze is that it gave me a great idea for the setting of one of my games this weekend. I figured, if the players can handle it, so can their characters. (And you'll see the result posted here. Spoilers!)
• On 80 West in Iowa, I passed by D&D Auto Sales. I think that's an appropriate portent to the weekend's activities!
• The Sheraton where the con is being held is very nice, but nearly impossible to figure out how to access without instructions. I could see the building, but it was off the road with a public square between me and it. Only a call to the front desk cleared up that you had to drive around back where the "real" entrance was located.
• Hooked up with Dan Proctor and we went to dinner at a nice Irish pub. Over burgers and beer, Dan and I discussed life, houses, kids, jobs, and -- yes -- Goblinoid Games and Pacesetter-related stuff. It was good to just have a moment to relax before tomorrow's gaming chaos begins.
• When we got back, we toured the gaming area and ran into a few organizers who were frantically getting everything in place. They expect record numbers to turn out this year.

Those are the highlights. I'm gonna put a cap on this entry, finish my Guinness, and hit the sack. Tomorrow I'll be running Timemaster and Cryptworld back-to-back, so I'll discuss time travel and survival horror with you then. And here are a few quick shots I snapped to share:

 Dan was not only kind enough to give me a couple of Pacesetter/GG shirts, he also gave me brand new copies of Timemaster and Sandman. How do I know they're brand new? They both are still shrinkedwrapped!

Swag bag ahoy! Lots of goodies to paw through tonight (as well as figure out where I'll be running my games for the next few days...)

I brought my copy of Cash and Guns. I hope I can get a pick-up game going of this madcap Tarantino-esque game!