Weekend of the Gen Con Mulligans

Last year after Gen Con, I dreamt of the guys from Critical Hits and the Chinese Olympic swim team. This year, my brain waited a few weeks, and then dropped a double-header on me.

Dream The First, In Which I Get Drafted

The dream I had Friday night consisted of me being at Gen Con 2009. Again. Apparently, they decided to hold it again two weeks after the fact, and everybody that was there before was back again. I decided I was going to do a lot more gaming and still hang out with friends and meet all the cool people I did before. Because I had a second chance!

Well, this found me playing board games in Andy Collins’ hotel room. Except he didn’t look, sound, or act in any way like the real guy (aside from being very nice). I don’t remember anything about what we played other than that it was fun. I do remember he has some secret paper covered in this gold paint that flashed when you touched it, because my 1 year old son Sam suddenly appeared (wearing my wireless headphones from work) and started banging on it.

At some point in this process, I became aware of the fact that I’d been drafted to go to war with some unknown enemy. So had every other male at the convention, and it was widely known that we had to report for duty on Sunday so we couldn’t go to any events then. Some of us had been given weapons and battle-suits to wear, and they were all brightly colored like anime stuff but they were too big and appeared to be made of canvas. The weapons were huge white laser rifles, but I never saw anybody fire one.

So we go through the convention, ending up for some reason at an old restaurant that gave me lots of 2-liter bottles of soda from the 1970’s, and then Yax and a bunch of other people helped me take them to a nearby Wal-Mart and sneak them onto the grocery shelves as some big joke. Some of the bottles were full of pink liquid and had jewel-encrusted crucifixes as caps, and were marked with some equation that made me assume they were full of acid or hormones or something, so we didn’t put those out. Mostly because we thought that was too obvious.

At last, the convention came to an end, and I found myself back in front of my grandmother’s old house (where a good 50% of my dreams end up eventually), and I’m marching in this big huge parade of people going to war, and we’re about to find out what the hell is going on. People are hanging out of their windows and lining the streets, cheering. Confetti is everywhere. This is the first time I realize how big this must be, and I’m getting nervous. My grandmother, for some reason, is our platoon leader, and she finds a little bottle with a scroll in it on the ground, which apparently has her orders in it. However, she won’t let me see it. We get into her backyard to a giant briefing, and they’re about to announce who the enemy is when I wake up GOD DAMN IT.

I would also add that anytime I went anywhere, I rolled a die to determine how many spaces I moved.

Dream The Second, In Which I Have Xbox-Themed Swimwear

Saturday night, my subconscious decided I needed a third chance at Gen Con this year – because once again I found myself there, 2 weeks after the real deal just like the last time. However, this time the convention was held at what appeared to be the beach resort from Beverly Hills 90210. I do not really remember a whole lot about the convention other than showing up to places and running around.

What I do remember is that I had orders from some shadowy overlord to find and neutralize a secret agent of Paizo Publishing who was actually a robot made of emeralds who wore little round goggles. And by the end of it, I wasn’t sure what side I was on, because I tracked the Paizo Emerald Robo-Agent into a small locally-owned supermarket, and he gave me a bag full of Super Bubble gum.

I would also add that I had Xbox-themed EVERYTHING on the whole time. Shirt, swim trunks, sandals, sunglasses, the works. And I felt as proud about this outfit as a 3rd grader with new tennis shoes does when he thinks they’ll make him run way faster than the other kids.

Take That, Freud

So, yeah. I have no idea what prompted all this other than a raucous night of boardgame-playing Friday night. I’m moderately certain I dreamt of Gen Con a little last night too, because I remember a lot of hotels (and one of my friends living in one year-round so he didn’t have to work to find one for the ‘con every year).