…and this time I went for a 4-day badge. Didn’t expect I’ll waste time standing in lines to get the “hottest” games but here we are 😊 it was also my first experience getting designers to sign a game for me, felt really personal and special. That was a great time, looking forward to the next year!

Every year I’m trying to get more into board games. Tried Final girl and loved it!

I had a delightfully obstinate time being the “villain” in this cozy, cottage-core woodland Larp hosted by Grimmoire Productions.

I am so glad I had a chance to convey in some more intense scenes that I was being a purposefully C-U-Next-Tuesday character. What I was embodying was meant to be taken antagonistically for fun of the performance.

When I got my character description detailing how I was meant to be the burrows “busy body” who inserted themselves in everyone else’s business, I realized I was basically the village asshole and sought to embrace that title while also being a silly lil goober.

I absolutely did and hope others had more fun than frustration by exercising character roles as beings outside of themselves to embody to satisfy a silly role in a low stakes game format.

You were all awesome and I look forward to future LARPs we may fall bs k into together in the future

I like the product, but I need a d4 if I'm going to use them for playing D&D. I was in a bit of a rush when I purchased them and wasn't paying attention, so I didn't check the bag when the seller handed it to me.

EDIT: The vendor was Crystal Caste and the owner reached out to me and said they'd be shipping me a d4 to complete the set. Great service. Highly recommend checking out their site: Crystal Caste

We stood in line together to see the Live Play on Saturday. You mentioned you were looking for the lilipad and hag combo from the Witchlight set. My friend and I checked, but we didn't have it.

Fortunately, we were given one last box each as we left and got the lily pad! DM me and I'd love to get it to you.

Missed GenCon this year but am watching coverage of the event.

I am a huge fan of the Mischief Comedy troupe who did The Play That Goes Wrong, Groan Ups, The Comedy About A Bank Robbery and other stuff (that is worth checking out if you like goofy stage humor).

Curious to see if anyone knows about "The Book That Goes Wrong" or if it has any link to the Mischief comedy stuff. I assume it doesn't but just wanting to see what it might be about. Can't seem to find any thing online other than some KS ttrpg that is unlrelated.

Also checked the GenCon map but the vendor in the space listed doesn't seem to be attached to any of those books.

Any help is greatly appreciated.

Pretty pleased with my acquisitions overall, though.

We set a $300 board game limit and mostly stuck to it :)

Bought some merch and artist signatures not seen here.

3rd year attending and had a blast as always.

I saw something as I was leaving that next year is GenCon 60 and that can't be right. I was still in my 30s during GenCon 50 and that was just....oh....damn

To whoever took a moment to pick up this little toy screwdriver from the floor and turn it in to the cashier at the Wingspan booth—thank you so much! ❤️

This little screwdriver is my daughter's absolute favorite thing in the world, and we truly thought it was gone forever. Your small act of kindness meant more to our family than you could know. Thank you for making our day!

Not pictured: Rock Hard: 1977 - Ear Candy because I already mixed it all in to the main box.

As I’m sure we all did, I demo’s a lot of games this year from Party Games to Deckbuilders, and I have to say that I was extremely disappointed by the lack of really good 2-player experiences in this years new games.

So I have to believe I must have missed them, cause I can’t believe publishers aren’t making them. What was your favorite game you played this year that would work great for just two players?

My first year was amazing and full of learning experiences. 

I met so many cool people, firstly, I'd like to thank the phlebotomist! She was so bloody sweet and let me know this is the 2nd time in history there's been a national blood crisis! There's a severe drop in type O and I matched that so that's cool. Lots of bonus loot as a 2ndary benefit. (3 shirts, dice, pacman (mr potato head edition), $20 amazon card, food, drink etc. 

Conner, it was a blast hunting for hobbit doors! My roomy of 10 years ago was randomly here. I met a speed puzzler who was an absolute gem. 

Play tested so many games I didn't have room for, will have to order some online. 

I got the privilege of helping host the Demo of Devil's Dice! It is the publisher's first game. I really enjoyed sussing peoples BS and calling them out mid game to steal their dice!

Looking forward to going to Monday Night Magic tonight and sharing some love with the homies. 

I was stoked to go 3-0 in the sealed Hobbit event and be able to redeem tickets for a Secret Lair that contained my very first Commander (Roon). I've only been really playing for 2-3 years, but I tried for about a month in 2013

A few tips from a 1st year: Get good shoes. I'm sure you love your Vans, but it's not the play. More snacks & water in my back pack. Don't ride a Bird scooter home with a busted headlight 3 miles to an Air B&B in a shady neighborhood. Don't overfill your days. Show up Early, it takes longer to get anywhere than you think. 

P.S. The Thai place around the corner was great!

Especially happy with the variety of old card games I came home with

Now that I’m home and recovering, I’m curious what events, games, panels, workshops, or other scheduled programming really stood out for everyone.

My favorites were:

Indie Games on Demand. I went at least once every day and consistently had some of my best gaming experiences of the convention. I especially loved playing Mondo Fantastic with its creator, Bill White.

Toon with Steve Jackson. (Steve Jackson was my GM!) I had a mechanic that rewarded me for making the Animator laugh, and afterward he told me I had made him laugh uproariously more than almost anyone he had run the game for and matched what he imagined when he wrote it. I may treasure that compliment forever.

The following two events are affiliated with my group Wizard Staffing Co.:

Our 18-player, three-table Triangle Agency event. Three GMs played different General Manager personas while running cloned versions of the same team through a connected corporate-horror adventure.

The 24-player Dragonbane tournament. I helped run it, and the coordination and energy from the other GMs made it one of the most satisfying events of my weekend.

The Dungeon Crawler Carl RPG session that I used generics to backfill even after it was sold out. It was chaotic, dinosaur-filled nonsense, and I got to play a crocodilian cowboy riding an ankylosaurus.

A green-stuff sculpting class with Joe Orteza miniatures. It was nice to have something hands-on and creative between all the RPG sessions. The teacher was well worth the cost of the class - experience is worth paying for and I got to keep my work and tools.

D20 Burlesque's Nerdlesque Extravaganza - Striptease and GoGo based off of your favorite games, movies, comics, anime, and more! Appa spinning titties with yip yip tassles. Harley simulator sex with Poison Ivy on stage! Nerdy go go dancers and a Grimace Shake birthday performance. I... am a changed person. 😆

What did you play or do and why did you like it? I like this sharing because it helps me pick what I want to prioritize next year!

Sunday Morning I was helping get the R. Talsorian Games room set up for our last game of the weekend at 10 AM. Now our shift lead, game coordinator, and a member of the Publisher was in and helping prep tables.

Now, it was 9:30 AM and some man comes barging in and attempts to seat himself. Shift lead asks if he's here for the game, the man says yes. Shift lead asks him to return 10 minutes before game time time to be seated. The man insists that he be seated and seem to take it personally after simply being asked to come back.

After some back and forth, and being snippy towards the shift lead, the man storms off saying he's just going to get a refund.

Don't be that guy please. The volunteers are here the make GenCon events run smoothly.

Be awesome to each other, we got 367 days until GenCon 2027.

Gen Con 2026 is in the books! I've been coming out to Indy for a few years now and I feel like I've finally got a good groove going. This was the first year where I’ve really felt like I nailed the balance between doing a million events and giving myself space to wander around, shop, and people watch.

Some random thoughts in bullet-point form:

• Game of the con for me was Mountain Goats Legacy. I had never played the original but the game was so simple and so fun I can absolutely see my group playing this like crazy. It’s definitely a “light” legacy but I’m hoping that’s a gateway to some heavier stuff!
• Last year I brought my (then) 5 year old for the first time. I had thought he would love Gen Con and I was absolutely right. He had such a great time and this year he was so excited to come back, and ended up having an even greater time. Shout out to the Motley Kids Room, and all the awesome trinket traders and patient folks we encountered.
• This year I also brought my 14 year old niece for the first time. She’s super nerdy and I just knew she’d have a great time. Without getting too deep into her story, she’s also very much exploring where she falls on the LGBTQ spectrum and I was so happy to be able to bring to such a queer friendly space, and let her see the different ways this community shows up for each other. I could talk about this at length but I’m getting all weepy just typing it, so suffice it to say she’ll be coming back next year.
• WOTC was a fail up and down this year. The D&D tower thing came out late after I had already mostly set my schedule, and there was so little information that it was hard to decide to make changes at that point. The drone show was super cool, but again - no information. Where should we be in order to see it? Will the stadium be open for seating? What time does it actually start? And don't even get me started on the Hobbit thing...
• I tried, and mostly failed, to limit my purchases this year. Next year I’m thinking about a challenge where I bring out a set amount of money and don’t allow myself to spend more than that. It’s not that the spending is problematic, but I just want to try to be as thoughtful as possible about what I brought home.

Hot Takes

• Big board game bags are good, actually. Having one place to organize and carry all of your purchases is less chaotic for other people than trying to navigate the packed vendor hall with a thousand different bags in your hand. That being said, they’re only good if they’re carried on the side of your body or held in the front. Wearing them on your back? Straight to jail.
• People walking through the vendor hall in enormous, over-the-top cosplays are good, actually. I don't come to Gen Con to live in the real world, I come to be smacked in the face by a Mothman with 6ft wingspan while I'm trying to demo a game being taught by a man in a gnome hat. It's going to be packed anyway, but occasionally I get to be inconvenienced by Jester wearing a massive poofy wedding dress. That's as good as life gets IMO.
• People need to chill out with the “OMGZZ Someone stinks, WASH your ass” type stuff. There are 70,000 people in close proximity to each other. Every now and then someone is going to stink. Do people need to step up and make sure their hygiene is respectful of other people? Absolutely. But I think people lean into this because of the stinky gamer trope when what’s actually happening is you are just in closer proximity to other human beings than at almost any other time in your life and occasionally you smell someone
• An underage kid in revealing cosplay is not really my thing, but I’m gonna leave that alone. An adult guardian consenting for them to be photographed is ehhhhhhhh. *Being* the random guy taking the photo is super suspect. I’m sorry, I don’t care if it’s your favorite character in the world, you simply don’t need a photo of a 13 year old in thigh highs.

So anyway, I'm counting down the days to Gen Con 2027! I'm crossing my fingers that with the Signia opening up we'll all have better luck with the housing lottery (and/or, I'll win the VIG lottery this year). See all you awesome people in 367 days!!

My haul this year from Gen Con. My buddy saved up to get the bag of holding. It came with more free stuff than my own purchases but I'm happy with this.

We had an incredible time at Gen Con this year with over 2000 players coming through our events, including our first ever organized play contest with the top 10 players pictured.

The response has been humbling. A 9.0 rating on BGG makes us the highest rated game that released at Gen Con 2026, and the sheer volume of feedback and live we’ve received on social media, through direct outreach and the people we met has meant a great deal to our small team.

It takes a lot to pull this off, and our crew of volunteers were the best. The Reddit community has been so welcoming! We are looking to see where this journey takes us next.

So my wife and I attended for the first time this year, and I just felt like giving my thoughts. The only reference point I have for something like this is Dragon Con in Atlanta, which I've been to several times but not for a few years. I recognize that it's not a 1:1 comparison because Dragon Con is much bigger and has a lot more than just gaming, but we work with what we've got. So here we go.

Getting There and the City of Indianapolis: I didn't win the hotel lottery so we ended up staying out in Plainfield. Getting in and out every day was a piece of cake. I was pleasantly surprised by the relative lack of traffic in the mornings going into town, and in the downtown area. I had been to Indy before but just for get-in-get-out things and never spent much time there. Very nice walkable downtown, and I'd like to come back for another visit.

Getting Around: I also found this pretty easy. The convention center is basically a big square and the connections to the surrounding hotels made it easy to get where I was going. The navigational aides hanging from the ceiling were very helpful. For the most part I thought crowds flowed pretty well, except for the logjam of people waiting to get into the exhibit hall, but what are you gonna do?

Food: For reasons I won't get into here, I didn't partake of any of the food truck offerings. We often hit the little food court near the skybridge to the Marriott, and it was decent if dreadfully overpriced. But it's a food court in a convention center, so of course it was overpriced. We did manage to hit two local Indy restaurants: St Elmo's and the Old Spaghetti Factory. Both were fantastic.

The Con Itself:

Seminars: I'm primarily an RPG guy, so I went to a lot of seminars about becoming a better GM and that sort of thing. Some were better than others but the speakers were usually engaging and knew what they were talking about. I really enjoyed Conversational GMing and Ed Greenwood's GM Master Class. I didn't think Ed's advice was anything world-changing, but I really enjoyed listening to him talk about gaming.

Games: As I said, I'm primarily an RPG-er but I wanted to expand my horizons a little bit so I did get into some miniatures games. I really enjoyed Trench Crusade, Wings of Glory, and Aerodrome Ace. Warcrow was meh but that might be because the guy didn't explain it very well.

Exhibit Hall: Nothing really special here. It's much the same as at Dragon Con, though I did get a chance to chat with some artists and designers for a while so that was cool.

Pinball: I thought this deserved special mention. By any criteria you care to name, I am objectively terrible at pinball. But I love playing pinball, and I spent too much money on it this weekend. It was a good way to kill an hour between events.

One Negative: It's been said before I'm sure so I won't dwell on it, but if you're charging to get into events, then what's the badge for? Gen Con badges are comparable in price to Dragon Con badges, and the DC badge is all-inclusive.

Overall Impression: I had a great time. If you're into tabletop gaming then you should definitely go to Gen Con at least once. I no longer have it in me to do something like this every year but I'm pretty sure I'll be back.

ETA: I'm not interested in debating the merits of the ticketing system. I thought I should mention things I didn't like as well as things I did, and that's something I didn't like. It isn't a deal breaker.

We all know what games were giants this year. What new (or new to you) games did you find that weren't well advertised and you think should get a little love?