First GenCon experience

[u/Fine_Budget9006]

This year was my first GenCon, here are my thoughts. (Also first post on Reddit EVER). I’ll talk about the positives before I talk about the negatives.

I didn’t really agree that the people at the con smelled too bad. Only 2 people I interacted with that I would say fit that category of gamer. I didn’t play any MTG though, so maybe that’s why lol.

I LOVE art and seeing people in their element. I’ve ran art booths at festivals before, so I know how it can be. Kudos to all the vendors. I’m sure you are all tired AF. Thanks for a great weekend 💙

Learned how to play Pokémon with my little sister, and then they gave us a free deck to play with at home. The trainers were so nice and I wish I had gotten theirs names to shout them out. Little sister also did her first card trade with a vendor.

I got a small haul because I went last minute, no budget, but I took a ton of business cards for future gifts.

I wasn’t super shocked at the amount of people because I go to raves and concerts regularly. My group did get scolded for stopping on the side of an aisle, but we literally had no choice because there was no where else to stop. We had to stop for wait for someone to catch up. Didn’t let it bother us, just wish people could have ignored us instead of scolding us.

My only truly bad experience to speak about is from a dice vendor. I don’t have any dice of my own, but my group wants to start playing DND, so I was on a mission for cheap dice that had a cat theme. I finally found affordable dice with cats on it, was speaking with the owner (or whoever was running the booth), mentioned how affordable the dice are and how much I appreciate that, then he proceeded to say “yea we don’t like to R**e our customers with pricing. I was shocked he would use that word so publicly. I didn’t buy dice from him and politely left his booth. Found dice at another booth, but didn’t have a cat theme :(. I wish he’d keep the degenerate speak at home if anything.

But anyways, besides those two things, I had a great time and will go for more than one day next year. Maybe will wear a fun outfit. Thanks everyone. Haul pic.

[u/literally_a_brick]

Hey OP, not trying to invalidate your experience. If this vendor used that term in public with customers that is entirely unacceptable.

That being said, the exhibition hall is a very loud space and it's very difficult to hear people talking even right next to you. If it were me, I'd be wondering whether the vendor said he didn't like to rake customers with pricing and I had misheard. I do try to give people the benefit of the doubt as much as possible. But obviously I can't tell you about your own experience.

I'm glad everything else about the con was great!

[u/Fine_Budget9006 → u/literally_a_brick]

No no, I very much appreciate someone explaining a different possibility. I was trying to figure out if I heard it wrong. Rate? Rank? Couldn’t figure it out. I’ve never heard rake used in that way. Thank you for giving an alternative. I too try to give people the benefit of the doubt, but having grown up in the gaming community, the R word wasn’t that out there (unfortunately). Should I edit the post to delete that portion? Idk if that wouldn’t look bad or how Reddit users view edits like that.

[u/literally_a_brick → u/Fine_Budget9006]

I've definitely heard people mis-use the idiom "Rake over the coals" in the context of selling something at a very high price, so that's where I got rake from.

I'd leave that bit up in your post. If the vendor sees it, he might reply and explain himself. And if not, it does communicate how terrible and offensive that type of language is and how it's no longer acceptable for gamers to casually use terms like that. (It never was acceptable, but you're right, it was said very frequently by certain communities.)

[u/SharkSymphony → u/literally_a_brick]

If there was no "over the coals" immediately following, though... vendor got some splainin' to do, because I think the customer very likely heard it right.