Gen Con 2025 was Fine

Wow – It’s been a while since I posted anything here. I’m also working on the actually controversial take of “Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 is Fine” but I want to finish the game before I write it. Spoiler alert: it’s fine.

Anyway, Gen Con! The largest gaming convention in North America was like two weeks ago, and I’m just now sitting down to post my stupid opinions about it. Here’s a brief rundown of the weekend…

Travel

About an hour into the (9-10 hour) trip, the transmission blew up in my friend’s car. UItimately, we rented a car and got moving again, but it cost us a few hours. Thankfully, the rest of the way was uneventful.

Board Games

Naturally, I played board games. Some new ones I played are:

• Vantage: Really enjoyable sort of “choose your own adventure” game where you explore a planet and then stuff happens to you. Played it once during the convention, liked it enough to buy it, and then played it with friends at home and they liked it too. Yay! I don’t want to give too many details away, but if you like games like Tales of the Arabian Nights, you’ll probably also really like this. And there’s SO MUCH CONTENT – 802 different locations and like 900 different items, creatures, and whatnot you can end up encountering.
• Grendel: The Game of Crime and Mayhem: Okay, Baader-Meinhof effect – I saw this game in the Gen Con event catalog and thought it sounded neat, so I got a ticket. Then, the game went up on Kickstarter and I discovered it’s based on an old comic book that I had never heard of. Then, during an RPG session later, the GM’s laptop wallpaper was of the comic. Grendel is having a moment, apparently.
  • To actually talk about the game for a moment, it’s a four player, maneuvering dudes and tokens around a map sort of game with player asymmetry. I found it easier to pick up than Root, which is probably the closest comparison. However, it has two main gimmicks (or if you find calling them “gimmicks” derogatory, then “things that set it apart”).
    • First, each player uses an entirely different set of mechanics to choose their actions on a turn. Grendel draws chits out of a bag, and plays them onto tracks on their player board, getting bonuses for matching colors; Argent plays a deckbuilder, flipping cards until they either choose to stop (and then do all the actions they revealed) or reveals 4 skulls on cards (losing their turn); the police move little police cars around a rondel on their player board; and the mob rolls dice and allocates them to action spaces.
    • The other gimmick is that, throughout the game, players earn “aggression” tokens that they use by dropping into little towers that sit in each of the map’s zones. Tokens have values from 1-3, and notably, are sized inversely to their values. That matters because each tower has a counterweight in it, and when enough weight is in there, the tokens spill back out, and then a “Mayhem phase” takes place, which is mainly where scoring happens.
  • I thought it was fine; I’d play it again, but the session had two major drawbacks (neither of which was really an issue with the game):
    • First, they only allocated an hour to learn and play the game. It’s not a super long game, but you probably want at least two hours.
    • Second, the person demoing it had only just received the copy and didn’t really know the rules all that well. They knew enough to teach the game mechanics, but not really to answer any complicated questions.
• Primacy: Another moving dudes around on a map game, but this one had (initially) symmetric action selection, and different spaces on the board contribute different resources toward scoring. I’d say the closest analog to this one that I’ve played before would by Scythe. (It felt much lighter and more accessible than Scythe, though.) It was fun to play, the person running the demo was the designer, and they were able to coach us through playing the entire game. (Or maybe like 90% of the game. We went into final scoring technically before we were supposed to due to time, but we were close to finishing anyway.) This one is a future Kickstarter that I’ll be watching for, but I’m not sure if I’ll go for it. Probably depends on price or what all is included.
• Enthrone: A two player… not hidden movement, because all the movement is public, but hidden… identity? game. There are 8 pawns on the board, starting on the outside and moving toward the center. You get three cards (out of eight, one for each pawn), and choose one to play with; on it is a particular pawn. You win if you a) get your pawn to the center of the board, b) remove your opponent’s pawn from the board, or c) remove three other pawns from the board that your card identifies. Really nice components, and a really interesting set of mechanics around how to move pieces and when to try to conceal your intentions. Greatly enjoyed playing it, but probably wouldn’t buy it because two player games are in a weird spot – I can’t play them by myself, but at a gaming meetup or something, you really want something that plays about four.
• Sidereal Confluence: Really old trading game – not gonna give it a review, it’s from like 2017, but I’ve had it for a while and never got it to the table, but at Gen Con, you can find a big bunch of people to play your weird game that plays up to nine players. (We only had 6, but still…)

RPGs

• Call of Cthulhu: I always try to get in one session at the con, and if possible, run by You Too Can Cthulhu. This one had the hook that all the player characters were pro wrestlers, so I was in. However, that really was just the hook, and had very little to do with what was really going on. It was still a pretty fun time, though.
• Mork Borg (or maybe it was CY Borg? It was in space.): Just hanging out with friends and screwing around. Someone had a really creative scenario they put together with some weird-ass characters, so I jumped in while they were playing. Didn’t personally get to do much, but that didn’t bother me.

CCGs

• Magic! I played one game of commander with an online friend and one of their friends. It was fun. Didn’t do any drafts or anything. Magic was all over in the stadium, so it was hard to just go jam an event in between other things, and also there wasn’t really anything “can’t-miss”. I’ve done the Unknown event at a Magic Con and a Gen Con now, and they’re usually more trouble than they’re worth. (Also pretty expensive.)
• Riftbound: It’s the new one from Riot Games based on League of Legends. I dunno; I guess it’s ok. The trial decks are neat (although all the cards are watermarked SAMPLE and are (hopefully) not printed on the actual cardstock the trading cards use) and it’s got some interesting mechanics. I’ll see if a scene for it pops up around me.
• I also saw people playing the Gundam TCG and the Godzilla TCG. I’m not interested in either, but people seemed to be having a good time.

Miscellaneous Other Things

• Glitter Guild Burlesque Show: Saw this for the first time last year and went back for more. A good mix of sexy and weird. Every convention can be improved with titties. (Although the seating arrangement this time made it rather difficult to see said titties. Still a good time, though.)
• Stage Combat Class: Took a stage knife fighting class last year and went back for a different one. This was advertised as a “mass battle” but only 5 people attended, so we instead did a small little melee around a table. Very fun. Would recommend checking out Counterfeit Combat if they do a session at an event you’re at. Will check out their offerings at future Gen Cons.
• The Exhibit Hall! To some, the main attraction. To others, the smelly pit full of jerks that’s in the way between you and new board games. I was able to get to all the booths I had on my list, although some were incredibly cramped, or were swamped with people buying some hit release that I couldn’t see anything else. No wagons/strollers/carts was a nice change, though. There was just some sort of… funk? Calling it a “miasma” would be overstating it harshly, but moving from either the corridors or the gaming hall into the exhibit hall did feel like there was a sudden atmospheric change, like it was hotter and stuffier. There’s enough other stuff to do that you could potentially skip it entirely, but I couldn’t let myself not look at anything in there.
• The Block Party: In terms of arrangement, it was pretty nice. A lot of space to move around, and an ok selection of stuff. Lots of long lines (72,000 attendees will do that), but if I wanted something, it was attainable. Didn’t get a lot here, though. A very mediocre burger one day, and a pretty darn good one the next day. Ate most other food at the other bars/restaurants around the convention center.
• Pinball Alley: Surprisingly accessible, but like $2 per play. (Granted, pinball at most arcade bars or whatever is usually at least a dollar, but still.) They had some nice machines and I had a little fun. It was fine.
• NOBODY WANTED TO PLAY BLOOD ON THE CLOCKTOWER but it’s fine. I have my local group I play with like once a month, and if I really wanted, I could have jumped into games with randos in the hallway, but… ugh.
• I didn’t get COVID like last year!

Summary

I don’t know; some years, I leave the con feeling really hype, like I had a blast and can’t wait for the next one. Nothing went particularly wrong this year (save the thing in the “Travel” section), and all the games I played were pretty fun. I met my friends (and some new ones) and hung out, played, caught up. It was a good time.

Except it wasn’t? Like, on at least one occasion while walking somewhere, I distinctly had a thought like “this is miserable” and it wasn’t at all (maybe the walk was, or my bag was heavy or something).

Except it was – I did everything I set out to do and all of those things met or exceeded my expectations.

So I guess… the vibes were off? Weirdly, several other people had similar thoughts – that they had fun, but also were unhappy, or… something? Interestingly, most of the people saying that were people who had been many times before. First timers seemed to genuinely be ecstatic and were already talking about next year. Maybe some of us are just over it.

It’s enough to make me say “maybe I’ll skip next year”, but I’ll still enter the VIG lottery in the fall, and I’ll still probably grab a badge in January “just in case” so I can get a housing time. Then I’ll book a hotel room if I have a good time “just in case”. Then I’ll have event tickets, and probably help GM something, and then I’ll get all amped up again. (Maybe I just expect too much?)

It’s fine.