I remember my first trip to Gen Con. Then again, I'm sure most of us who've been there do. I always liked to refer to it as my trip to the Holy Land. There were just three of us: Shayne, Andy, and I. We would have been a party of four, but one (I don't want to mention any names, lest I hurt Scott's feelings) dropped out at the last instant. We should have learned our lesson then, as he would continue to drop out at the last instant for the next few years.

His departure almost killed the first trip. Here were these four poor gamers, who had split the cost four ways. Now each of the remaining three had to shell out extra. It wasn't easy, but we persevered.

We had the trip all planned out. Remember that we were poor, so in order to save money, we decided to camp out -- yes, in a campgound and everything. We packed up the tent and sleeping bags and set out.

We had no idea what we were getting into.

Oh sure, on the way down all was well, and we grew more and more excited the closer we came. Several times we were passed by fellow gamers, sporting signs in their car windows. Signs like "666th layer of the Abyss or bust," and "Make Mine Mordenkainen." We knew who these people were and where they were going.

We eventually reached our campsite and set up... camp. The tent was pitched, and we buzzed around like sugared-up school kids, trying to figure out what to do next. Eventually we settled down to try and play some Shadowrun in the tent.

Then the rain started.

And we discovered the tent had a few leaks.

The next morning, it was up at 5:00 am, hit the showers (that were several hundred feet away), and head toward Milwaukee, a thirty mile trip. Then we got lost in the continuing rain. We finally found some "breakfast", and somehow we made it to the MECCA by 8:00 am to begin our first Big Day of Gaming.

The next sixteen hours were a blur as we played in our separate events, stood in awe of the Exhibitor's Hall (these were the pre-"Fortress TSR" days), and floundered about with thousands of other gamers at this most holy of gatherings.

At midnight we dragged our tired butts back to the car for another night of pleasant dreams on the cold, damp, hard, unforgiving, and bumpy ground. We finally lost consciousness at around 1:00 am. Four hours later, it was up for another round of the same thing.

Over the next few days, we began to slowly discover all the wonders and horrors of a large scale convention:

• Meeting the staff of our favorite companies. Collecting free stuff, and other cool items.
• The neat Europa map.
• Chain Mail Bikinis.
• Pre-teen and teen gamers.
• Rules lawyers and the events that they run.
• Convention food.

By Sunday, we walked around like zombies, dodging clerics and priests, just in case. We went to our events and sat numb at our corner of the table, and did our best to roll dice, and keep ourselves from engaging in rampant violence against those who might irritate us. Sometimes we even succeeded -- I'd like to take this moment to apologize for Shayne and myself to the poor kid who thought he could shoot all his Battlemech's weapons twice in one round, and only suffer a +1 second target modifier (for those who don't play Battletech, you CANNOT shoot a weapon twice in one round). I'm sure he's through therapy by now.

Somehow, we made it through the whole ringer known as GenCon. Sunday afternoon, we staggered into the car (hunched over and penniless) and drove home. We stopped only for an hour to enjoy a real meal at a restaurant.

Of course when he got back home with our Saturday night regulars, we were heroes. We related all of our stories, and how the convention was no problem at all. We handled it like pros. We told them that camping really was a viable option, but that we'd try the hotels next time, just to see what they were like. The three of us laughed at all the inside jokes we'd created, never telling the uninitiated.

Even though we never camped again, deciding that the hotels had a few advantages over the campsite, my trips to Gen Con still seemed to lack that special something from then on.

Thank God.