Third (and probably final, but we’ll see) post about this year’s Gen Con. First is here. Second is here.
In addition to the travel and the various “sanctioned” events, there’s also just other stuff that goes on at Gen Con. This year, though, I didn’t really get up to much of that.
There’s the exhibit hall, where most of the vendors are. I did buy a couple of games: I bought Hell of a Deal by Smirk and Dagger. (Haven’t played it yet.) I bought Jibber Jabble by AllPlay. (It was $9. I had played it the previous evening with some folks and it was a riot. It’s a tremendously stupid game that you should try.) I picked up my pre-ordered expansion for Lunar Rush (a game that debuted at Gen Con 2024 that I didn’t bother with, then I bought used at the consignment store in 2025).
I also sold a Riftbound card. I don’t really play Riftbound, but I still would like to, and I opened a valuable card earlier this year at a pre-rift event. I got a good amount of cash for it that I’ll probably just gamble with. It’s fine.
Otherwise, I didn’t do a ton in the hall. I walked around a little, but nothing jumped out at me as exciting or anything. I did see a demo of a game that had some neat mechanics and really cool looking components, but then they said it was a future kickstarter (not like on kickstarter now and they’re demoing to get backers – something they’re going to put on kickstarter eventually). Whatever. Then I turned around and realized I was right by the booth that had the Laundry Files RPG books. I didn’t buy them, but it was neat to just sort of stumble on them like that. I almost bought them. The Deluxe Edition of The Gang sold out every day.
I didn’t go into the consignment store at all. I was pretty booked with events during store hours most days, and it’s pretty out of the way. Oh well.
I did go to the auction briefly. Well, I meant to go briefly. I wanted to get food on Saturday and it was raining very hard outside, so instead I took a skywalk to the auction. It was TOVA, after all, when all the weird shit goes up for sale. Then, while I was there, Indianapolis got a Tornado Warning. (Yeah, a Warning, meaning OH SHIT TORNADO.)
This warning didn’t exactly mean “THERE IS A TORNADO COMING NOW” but there were very ominous signs on radar bearing down right on center city Indianapolis, so taking some shelter was still probably a good idea. There were parts of the convention center where it rained inside, and some hotels, restaurants, and parking garages started flooding. (That’s why my garage being aboveground was fortuitous.)
The ballroom hosting the auction, while not downstairs, was away from windows and could be sealed off from the corridors and stuff, and so due to the volume of people, it was deemed the safest place to be. So not only did the auction proceed, but people in the hallways and other nearby rooms were brought in. MANDATORY AUCTION TIME. I joked that now TOVA means Tornado Outside? Visit Auction!
Anyway, it was fine. And not just because of the bit, but it actually was fine. There was little to no actual tornado (I believe an EF0 was confirmed elsewhere in the city) and as far as I know, no convention casualties occurred. (I’m sure there are people dealing with car insurance due to flooded garages and stuff, but that stuff happens.)
Another Gen Con in the books – different from the 12 others I’ve attended but also kinda the same. New stuff but also nothing new. The most excitement probably occurred for me during an evening game of Hot Streak. Just a bunch of nerds around a table screaming for a hot dog and a bear racing each other. (Oh, and every time I got to spring something weird on the Call of Cthulhu players. Looking forward to doing that again.)
The games were fine. The events were fine. The tornado was fine. Buc-ee’s was fine. Gen Con was fine. Next year will be number 60. Wanna guess how that’ll be?
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