It's the first issue post-GenCon, and as the editor of a gaming magazine I am therefore legally obligated to hang this editorial on a GenCon theme. Sorry - that's the law.

AEG, publishing leviathan that it is, brought all nine employees and partners to GenCon; since it was a convention, we ended up four to a hotel room. I had dibs on the floor, but ended up having to share it with a fifth person. Don't tell the hotel - they get antsy about more than four to a room, as if it could be avoided at a gaming convention.

Booth setup was also a classic con story, since the box containing our booth was driven up to the Canadian border before anybody at the delivery company noticed that Milwaukee was, in fact, at the southern end of Wisconsin. Several of us, then, had an impromptu day off instead of setting up the misplaced booth, and got to watch the NASA "Possible Ancient Life On Mars" press conference instead.

The nicest surprise was the sudden arrival, midway through the con, of a gorgeous plaque from the RPGA awarding SHADIS their "Favorite Game Magazine" Gamers' Choice Award. All of us at the magazine were pleasantly amazed, and I got to have my picture taken with the plaque when the dealer floor opened Saturday. (Don't worry, folks, I always look like that before noon.) On behalf of the whole magazine staff - thanks, RPGA.

As usual, the con was too big to cover completely. The Edge has news and photos from the dealer floor--August is the traditional time to release new products -- but we don't have anything on the gaming itself, which is the best reason to go. If you were there, you know what you played; if you weren't, make hotel reservations now.

The part of the con which most impressed me: FASA running Shadowrun election--having set this up since the spring. Evidently, there's some US-Canadian tension in the Shadowrun timeline, and they spent half a year tracking the makeup election in real-time, with election day and the inauguration right after one another at the beginning of the con. A couple of adventure supplements gave characters some inside dirt on the elections, and postcards inside the supplements let the players "absentee vote." One of the personalities running for president was a dragon, Dunkelzahn. Now, if you've got gamers voting for office, and a dragon is in the running, of course he's going to win, so FASA was going to be able to set up GenCon as a victory lap for the wyrm, right?

Well, they suckered us. Yes, the dragon won in a walk; everybody was pretty sure of the results when the back issue of last month's SHADIS had a Shadowrun ad for "Portfolio of a Dragon: Dunkelzahn's Secrets."

What we didn't know was the format. You see, persons unknown assassinated the victorious dragon on Inauguration Night, and the sourcebook contains his will (among other things). On Thursday night, the first night of the con, FASA posted notices of the assassination everywhere, and their employees whipped out their T-shirts: "Due to unforeseen circumstances, Wyrm Talk [Dunkelzahn's TV show] will be canceled for the 2058 season." Even people who don't play Shadowrun (like myself) were intrigued, and had to have the product - the definition of a brilliant marketing shtick.

This was SHADIS's fourth consecutive GenCon, and to celebrate, we gave out several thousand free copies of Issue #28 (as that issue's "Dirk" mentioned). Even though we've been around for four years now, there were still lots of people who had never heard of us. Help us out, OK - force this copy on your gaming buddies when you're done with it, would you? Spread the word.

The best part of GenCon, though, was getting to meet face to face with people I've only known through the mail. I got to meet for the first time some of the writers I've been corresponding with for years - and with some people who are likely to send us new cartoons. Watch the back of the magazine carefully: you never know what might pop up.