Day Three
Day three had a different rhythm than the first two, quieter in a way I didn't realize I needed until I was already in it. I spent a good chunk of the morning in the exhibit hall again, but mostly in Artist Alley this time, moving slower than usual and actually looking at things instead of hunting for anything specific. There's a different kind of energy in that corner of the hall, less about the next big release and more about the person standing right there next to their own work, which changes how you look at everything on the table.
From there I went and put in some time helping in the Hot Games room, and part of that meant tracking down a batch of games that had been promised to the room and somehow not made it there in the shuffle. Found them, got them where they needed to be, and then spent a stretch of the afternoon doing the strangely satisfying work of punching components. There's something almost meditative about pressing out a hundred tiny cardboard tokens, that particular pop as each one lets go of the sheet. I could do that for longer than is probably reasonable.
We'd decided to walk back to the room for a bit of rest before dinner and games, and that's when things got genuinely strange for a few minutes. A tornado warning went out for downtown Indianapolis, and we ended up having to shelter in place inside Lucas Oil Stadium along with a lot of other people, waiting to understand what was going on and to be told it was fine to keep moving. It resolved without incident and we were back on our way soon enough, but it's the kind of thing that puts a small bracket around an otherwise ordinary afternoon, a reminder that even in the middle of a week built entirely around games, the world outside doesn't fully step aside.
The evening more than made up for it. Julie, Jon, Lainie, and I settled in and just played for hours, one game rolling easily into the next the way it does when everyone's in the right mood for it. Excalibur closed out the night, and it turned out to be the perfect game to end on, the kind that keeps building until the last decision actually matters.
Back at the room after, we decompressed the way we have most nights this trip, except tonight the laughing got a little out of hand, the kind of laughing where you're not even entirely sure anymore what started it. Good way to end a day that started slow and turned into one of the better ones.
