I posted this message earlier on Kickstarter, as an update to the Children of the Elder Sign project, but it’s too good a story to not share here.
Hey, gang!
Gen Con was great, but exhausting. Friends dragged me into four different Call of Cthulhu adventures—from 1920s, to cyberpunk, to the depths of space—and introduced me to several new board games. (I highly recommend For Sale.) And I picked up a few treasures in the Dealers Hall, ran into some old colleagues there, and introduced someone to the Bookmark No HP RPG in a spontaneous session while sheltering in a side room during a tornado warning. (Western setting involving cattle rustlers holed up in a farmer’s cabin during a thunderstorm.)
Saturday evening, just after the tornado warning was lifted, a friend asked me to snap a picture of them in front of a Chaosium demo room just off a main hallway. I set my bags and hoodie down at my feet in the middle of the hall to get the picture, waiting for a gap in the passing crowds, and when we were finished and I gathered my stuff, I forgot the little brown paper bag of dice sets I’d gotten at the Black Oak Workshop booth.
When I realized it a few minutes later, we were nearly at the exit, and I figured the bag was long gone. My friend convinced me to retrace our steps, but no dice. (Pun intended.) They suggested checking Lost & Found, but it was late, the halls were crowded, and I thought it was a lost cause.
The next morning, as my old college buddy and GDW compatriot Tim Ryan were on the way to an event, we stopped at Lost & Found on the off chance they’d been returned. And lo and behold, there they were. Someone in that crowd of 74,000 people had seen the unattended little bag, picked it up, and took the time to turn it in instead of taking it home with them.
The person at the counter said, “I work a lot of events, with a lot of crowds, and I have to say, gamers are by far the nicest, kindest of them all.” It’s a sentiment shared by restaurant owners and shop keepers in Indianapolis news stories every year. Gamers are the nicest, most polite of all the convention crowds they see.
I gotta admit, I was a little misty eyed to hear that said about our hobby. I’m a little misty eyed again just telling you. The dice would have been no great loss, but instead they gave me a memory to treasure.
Gamers are the best.
As I write this, my spouse is in the hospital. (Nothing currently life-threatening, just severe systemic pain from a common localized infection.) She’s been there pretty much the whole time since three days ago. It seems likely she may get out tomorrow.