The most amazing weekend!!!! So, here's where I start:
A group of us from BitofEarth.net decided that we were going to moot in Indianapolis because Sean Astin would be signing at GenCon. Most of us had not even met before... can I just say that those BoE-ers are some amazing people!!! You'll hear more about them later!
Now, on to this week's events:

Day 1: I arrived in Indy and went straight to GenCon to meet with the half of us that had arrived already. We got our passes and decided to patrol the con. We found a preview for the ROTK game, so I played as Sam! Weeee! He was quite fierce but he moved rather slowly when invisble (he was fighting with Sting). They would only let us play the Courtyard of Minas Tirith level, but it was quite complex! All around the booth they had headshots of all of the animated characters in the game... the armored Merry and Pippin look spectacular! All of the characters, overall, look better than in the TTT game. You can play with Gandalf, Aragorn, Legolas, Gimli, Sam, and Frodo (though I think they may have to be unlocked)
Then, we went over to the Decipher area and found out that someone from Weta workshops was signing there. I got a magazine signed and then we heard that he'd be having a discussion. We got to hear alot about designing Treebeard because that was one of his main projects on the movie. Amazing! He showed us many of the early models and drawings for Treebeard, and what Peter thought of all of them... and he then showed us lots of different designs for Ents, and the seven that they chose. He also showed us a nice design for Quickbeam.
Another thing we learned there is that Decipher will be putting out a sketched set of LOTR gaming cards, and he drew a lot of the pictures. We got to see some of them. Also, Decipher told us that they are releasing sets of LOTR cards of characters that didn't make it into the movie... yes, they will be photographs, not drawings. They said that Tom Bombadil is definitely one of them, but they wouldn't tell us who the others would be (I think they said there were 5 more).
We then went to the hotel to meet the rest of our group after that. We settled in our rooms and went to dinner where I think we scared some of the other restaurant patrons. Our member from Belgium who was going to come but didn't make it called us and we passed her around the table and let her try to guess who she was talking to!
After dinner we went back to the hotel and watched... guess what!? LOTR BLOOPERS! Omigosh! One of the "Loons" (Billy fans) who was with us at dinner had a tape of outtakes... here are some good ones:

~Sean Bean is on the mountain looking serious when a helicopter rises into the shot... so he laughs.
~Elijah Wood is running away from the Uruk-Hai at Amon Hen, and when he tries to duck behind the tree his cloak gets caught and he fails to free it gracefully.
~Gandalf is talking to Saruman at Isenguard... "Orcs?.... and so far from Orcland?"
~Billy and Dom are in their trailer comparing, uh? And well, they notice the camera and pull up their pants, and then Dom proceeds to hide the blowup doll (yes, they were joking! :) ).
~Gandalf throws Sam on the table... "I ain't been droppin' no eaves, sir, honest. I was just trying to get a bit of a close up... I mean, you've had one, Mr. Frodo's had one, and I've only been in group shots..." at this point it becomes muffled because Ian takes over the shot for his close-up and evetually pushed Sean head first off of the table!

We also watched a lot of clips of things that Billy has been in.. quite amusing; but, then it was time for bed because we knew that we had a long day of autographing ahead of us...

Those are just a few... come back for Day 2 & 3 reports!!!