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Last year's DragonCon was by far the best convention I had ever attended, so naturally I'd been looking forward to this year's for some time. Despite not being able to fly there, and thus suffering through a 12-hour road trip, I managed to arrive at the Hyatt Regency in Atlanta late on Thursday night, the night before the con was to start.

Registration was fairly fast and painless, despite the fact that I hadn't pre-registered. Oddly enough, the line to pick up pre-reg badges was significantly longer than the line to pay at the door. Despite this, I would advise anyone planning to go to next year's DragonCon to pre-reg; Not only is it cheaper, but you get a larger, much cooler-looking clip-on badge, as opposed to the flimsy pin-on one you get at the door.

Next I headed down to the gaming room, to register for all the games I had looked over on the website. Unfortunately, many of the better games, including almost all of the RPGA Living Greyhawk events, were already sold out. I managed to get into a few interesting games, including a couple of 3ed D&D adventures, a GURPS Supers X-men game, and a Paranoia one-shot. I was also sad to see that there was no demo of Exalted being run. However, there was no shortage of D&D games, and there were 6 or 7 planned Magic tournaments of varying formats. In addition, they were running sealed deck and booster drafts literally anytime 8 people wanted one.

On Saturday and Sunday nights, there was a World of Darkness LARP. Vampire larping is a favorite of mine, and I run a LARP myself, so naturally I signed up. The event was run by the Camarilla, White Wolf's official fan club and LARP association. The price was a little steep, running me 25 bucks for the LARP and a one-year membership to the Camarilla, but White Wolf is my favorite gaming company, so I don't really mind giving them my money.

The LARP turned out to be the first large scale experiment of Laws of Ascension, White Wolf's new Mind's Eye Theater rules for Mage: The Ascension. I've been a little skeptical about Mage LARP rules for a while, since I play Mage and couldn't really see how its free-form magic system could be translated to live-action play. However, Jess Heinig, head designer for Mage, was on hand helping out, so I gave it a shot. I somehow stifled my fan-boy instincts and thus did not follow Mr. Heinig around

I have to admit I was a bit disappointed. The plot was solid, and the head storyteller was good, but Mage loses a lot in the translation from tabletop to live-action. It just doesn't have the fluid, unrestricted feel of the tabletop game. I actually ended up skipping the second night of the LARP and doing other things.

But DragonCon is chock full of interesting things to do, so the lack of non-stop gaming didn't worry me too much. Simply standing around the hotel lobby and watching people is a great time-killing activity, as a huge percentage of the con's estimated 20,000 attendees were in costume. Sunday night's costume contest, a huge draw, saw some of the best costumes I've ever seen. My personal favorites were Trigun's Vash the Stampede, and the beloved Baroness, who was walking around the con with Cobra Commander and Destro.

The DragonCon populace is a bit different from that at many cons. There's a huge goth contingent, large enough to warrant the presence of 3 goth (or at least sort of goth) bands, The Cruxshadows, Bella Morte, and Godhead. I managed to see the Godhead show, and it was awesome. In addition to the large goth contingent, the general party atmosphere at DragonCon is also huge. The bars in the hotel were almost perpetually filled with Klingons, goths and Stormtroopers, and signs for room parties were everywhere. During the late evenings, the lobbies were so crowded that walking through them was truly a Herculean task. Somehow, this all tended to add to the atmosphere, whereas normally it would be irritating.

Another big draw at DragonCon is the dealer's area. This place is huge. I honestly cannot imagine ever having enough money to get all the things I wanted to buy. Between the gaming books, dice and other paraphernalia at the various companies' booths, the t-shirts, buttons, stickers and other cool swag, and the phenomenal fantasy art, all of my money quickly disappeared.

All in all, DragonCon remains my favorite con to attend, and is definitely worth a huge road trip and the disappearance of all of my money. Next year I'll definitely be pre-registering, both for the con itself and for any games that seem interesting. And I'm definitely going to fly.