Gamers 2 is good; probably better than the first, although it is a bit different. Aside from the humor and better production values, it deals with above-game questions like, “How do I get my players invested in my game?” and “Why is the GM such a controlling bastard?”

The BSG game doesn’t officially come out until October, so I imagine those 200 units went pretty quick. It looks like a good game, and FFG has a great track record overall.

I’m really curious to see if Gamers 2 lives up to the mind bogglingly long time it’s taken them to put it together. The first one was awesome.

As for the custom dice tray, well, what can I say: I live to convince you to buy things that will make your wife look at you funny.

Good times were had by all. I helped Patrick with the “How to ruin your next session” seminar, and gave one of my own on Leadership and the GM. I played in quite a few games, bought more dice, fell further into lust with Savage Worlds, and incurred a sleep debt of many hours, despite cranking the caffeine IV to the maximum setting.

I hope to post a bit more, but there really wasn’t any Big News like last year. (Which I think is actually a good thing.) There are some rumors and such, but it is the gaming industry, after all.

Apparently Living Forgotten Realms is a big hit; the RPGA room was pretty full most of the time. The second Gamers movie (Dorkness Rising) is on DVD, courtesy of Paizo. Fantasy Flight Games released a Battlestar Galactica boardgame, if you can call 200 units a release.

I was pleasantly surprised to see Ryan Sohmer of Least I Could Do at GenCon. I hit his booth on Thursday, and asked if he’d ever been to Gen Con. No, he replied, but he was looking forward to it, despite the somewhat different fan base. I dropped by again on Sunday to see how it went, and his reaction was priceless. “This is the smelliest day I’ve ever had” may not be the direct quote, but it’s close.

I may regret the decision, but I played an NPC for a few hours in True Dungeon this year, and liked it so much that I volunteered to help out in future events. If you played the puzzle version of TD on Friday night, you probably saw me in a monk’s robe. (And you probably killed me, as well, you sadistic bastards.)

Sadly, I only garnered three quotes for my “overheard at Gen Con” collection. Either I’m going deaf or y’all are starting to recognize me…

Oh, and I ordered a custom dice tray. Damn your reviews, Martin!

“They’re short, sweet and out of control — and their swimsuits are barely there!”

Based on the highly scientific metric of our RSS and email subscribers (today’s count: 555, yesterday’s count: 956), about half of Gnome Stew’s regular readers seem to be at GenCon.