Gen Con 2026 - Under Construction

This year's Gen Con began with rain on Saturday.

I'd reserved a car at one of our local rental agencies for Saturday, and I figured that I'd drop my wife off for work in the morning, then when it was time to pick up the rental I'd leave her car at her employer and walk to the rental agency. It's about a 10 minute walk, and I didn't mind getting in some exercise. 

But I hadn't counted on it being a very rainy walk. It absolutely poured (and thundered) for all save for the last minute of my little jaunt, so even though I wore a rain jacket I looked very much like a drowned rat when I got to the rental agency. I waited in line for about 20 minutes, because they were absolutely swamped with people showing up looking for a rental*, and when my turn came they asked me if I was flexible with what rental I got. 

"Sure," I replied. I mean, I wasn't going to be an ass about it; the compact SUV I'd reserved was just cost effective and decent in gas mileage enough that I could work with it.

They ended up giving me an upgrade, a Toyota Camry SE Hybrid.

This is it, parked at Lucas Oil Stadium.

While I've driven a hybrid before (a Toyota Prius as a rental for a work trip last year), I've never driven a car that had over 200 hp under the hood. My '97 Accord gets something around 125 hp, so while it's peppy enough I know it takes a few moments to get going. The moment I mashed the pedal on this car on the drive home, however, it absolutely took off. That took some getting used to.

What also took some getting used to was the mileage, where (in US terms) I got 45 miles per gallon for the entire trip. With the exception of that Prius, the best gas mileage I've ever gotten out of a car on a long distance trip was about 30 MPG in my wife's old 1990 Pontiac 6000 back in the day.**

Anyway, the trip up to Indianapolis was somewhat uneventful, outside of the fact that it started raining the moment I crossed over from Ohio into Indiana, and only let up when we got to the Indianapolis city limits. 

The walk from Lucas Oil Stadium to the Convention Center showed me two things: that Ravensburger was heavily promoting their Disney Lorcana collectible card game...

Yep, Pooh Bear in a wizard's hat.

And that Indy is under a LOT of construction.

Here's a view of some of it from the inside
of the Convention Center.

It was as if Indianapolis looked at all the construction around Columbus and Cincinnati and said "Hold my beer." There was a new hotel going in across the street that was also going to be connected to the Convention Center via a Skywalk; they were reworking the entire walkway (shown above) leading to what used to be the mall; the old mall itself is being rebuilt into a mixed-use open air space called the Traction Yards (first phase to open in 2030); and the street north of the convention center toward the Statehouse is being rebuilt with cobblestones. 

Part of the gravel base. There might have been sewer line
work going on too, but there was so much gravel and brick
around that I couldn't tell for sure.

All this construction didn't deter any Gen Con attendees, as the place was completely sold out.

Inside the Convention Center the place looked blessedly free of construction as the foyer near the Exhibit Hall had the three video screens recycling ads for games...

This was just a brief view of what was up there.
It's amazing just how much space these GIFs take up.

Including one unexpected advertisement...

Yes, that's a realtor.

I can understand why people might be interested in moving to a place with a lower cost of living and a central location to a lot of the Midwest (Chicago, Milwaukee, Cleveland, Cincinnati, Columbus, and St. Louis) and the South (Louisville, Memphis, Nashville), but as my son pointed out, you'd have to live in Indiana. So... 50:50, I suppose.

We met up with my oldest and her partner (who'd come down from Milwaukee) under the video screens, I distributed badges, and we had a good chat with my brother-in-law before heading into the Exhibit Hall. 

I tried getting a nice panorama shot of the hall, but
it didn't work out. There were artifacts I couldn't remove.

So, we split up and wandered the Hall for a while before reconnecting for lunch and then a second round of divide and conquer.

Some of the displays were for games that began as video games but then went "retro" into card and board games:

Yes, a Palword card game.
Somewhere, Nintendo is fuming.

Supposedly the Stellaris board game will be
out this fall. Given that this is about 4+ years
in the making, the crowdfunding backers are
a bit annoyed by now.

Okay, it's not a video game to board game 
transcription, but come on. Were it not for Link
and The Legend of Zelda, they wouldn't be selling
ocarinas at Gen Con. And boy could she play!

I'd mentioned this card game last year,
and boy howdy was there a crowd at the booth
this year. No idea if any VTubers were actually
there, but I'd bet that at least a few were.

Now, another part of going to Gen Con is viewing the art...

Sadly this is one of two booths in my pics that qualifies.
But also, rugs/tapestries!

This is the other one, but I'm not sure if it's for sale or
whether it was to attract people to their booth.

or the authors (who I sadly did not take any pics of), but there were other creators present that caught my eye. Maybe it's because it's about time for the Ohio Renaissance Festival***, but I checked out a lot of clothing and leatherworking booths...

Geek Orthodox had tees and other shirts
that made me chuckle.

And they also had "stained glass" designs
as well. Really impressive.

Is anyone in need of a corset or a puffy shirt (tm)?

And more outfits. The prices were pretty
high, but given the quality involved, 
I think it'd be worth it.

There were even jerseys for the
Catan World Cup. Yes, it's a thing.

Given that yesterday afternoon's weather-related events made some of Saturday's Gen Con a bit of a wash (pun intended) I guess I shouldn't have been surprised at just how crowded the Exhibit Hall was. Even by 2 PM, when there's only 2 hours left and the crowd normally thins out quite a bit, it was still incredibly packed. So, I did what I normally do when things are far more crowded than I like: I escaped into the larger Convention Hall and wandered around.

As I took in the hallways of the Convention Center, I found crowds and all sorts of other interesting things going on...

The game put out by Critical Role and Darrington Press,
Daggerheart, was very much in evidence.

Speaking of Critical Role...

Given that Brandon Sanderson's
Cosmere was everywhere last year,
it'd make sense that there's a Mistborn
game out this year.

Oh yeah, League of Legends has
a Trading Card Game. No, I didn't go
check it out.

And I couldn't resist, given that
I've been keeping up with Aywren
Sojourner's blog and YouTube videos.

After some of these breaks, I went back inside the Exhibit Hall and found more interesting things over the course of the day. My Questing Buddy's son is heavily into Star Wars Legion, the minis game that you could look at as a gateway drug into Warhammer 40k, and I passed along this pic for her to show her son that his favorite game is well represented:

There were a lot of people playtesting Legion and some other Star Wars properties, such as the Trading Card Game and Shatterpoint.

But this is a Legion terrain setting that you can play with:

As for other games, here's some other highlights:

The name alone got me intrigued.

I could get behind a game called Charmed and Dangerous.

Paizo brought out their iconic goblins,
because you can't have a Gen Con without
a goblin or three around.

Pink Hawk Games had stuff that would be right
up my youngest's alley, given the cat themes.

And speaking of cats...

I did stop by the Dwarven Forge booth again this year, but I didn't take any photos of their displays. They are just too good looking (and expensive) for me to justify checking them over, so I decided to not linger. There were at least 3 vendors who specialized in making gaming tables (yes, Wyrmwood was there again), but every time I look at them I think "I can make that myself", or rather "I can try to make that myself", but I don't really have a place to put a gaming table right now.

The end of the day rolled around far too quickly for my taste, but that's what happens. We said our goodbyes and headed back home to Cincinnati. It didn't rain until we crossed over into Ohio, and then we got some downpours. 

I swear...

As for what I snagged at Gen Con, given the size of this post I'm going to bump that for another day. After all, I've got some explainin' to do...

Here, have a video of Mooch in the meantime...

*Which also included people making video calls on their phones while they were talking to the rental people. I mean, why do people do this? Everybody can hear whatever private conversation they're having.

**That was when the 65 MPH speed limits were just starting to appear back in the early 90s, so a completely different era. The 6000 also had a 4-cylinder engine that got maybe 100 hp, and boy did it struggle going up a hill with a full load of people inside. So if you doing purely highway miles and on flat land, it could hit 30 mpg, but otherwise it was in the low 20s.

***I don't think we're going to the Ohio Ren Fest this year; maybe next year.

EtA: Updated links.

#Blaugust2026

Gen Con 2026 - A Brief Appetizer

I'm working on a full Gen Con report, and that'll come tomorrow. (I think.)

Still, I did want to mention something that happened this year at Gen Con that was something now.

Tornadoes.

Yes, that wonderful scourge of the Midwest and the Plains decided to pay Indianapolis a visit on Saturday. There were thunderstorms, yes, but we've seen t-storms at Gen Con before. I mean, it's Summer out here, and t-storms are pretty much what you get in a Midwestern Summer.

But tornadoes actually happening on Gen Con weekend? Well, that's new.

As you can see, people weren't exactly that concerned, but the Block Party scheduled to happen when storms rolled in was cancelled. And for good reason.

From WTHR on 8/1/2026.

Oh, and in a massive case of irony, the rain was invited into the Indianapolis Convention Center.

From WISH-TV.

According to Convention officials, the thunderstorms damaged the pipes that drain the roof, and, well, this was the result.

Where it was raining was where people play card games such as Magic: the Gathering and Pokemon. My brother-in-law was laughing about it later, because while a lot of people scattered, some people just stayed around, playing their games.

The rain inside the Convention Center spawned jokes in social media, such as the Gen Con "Body Odor" detectors went off due to people not showering and, uh, they got a shower after all.

Since this was Saturday, I wasn't affected, and neither was my brother-in-law. The place he was in at the time was central to the building and not close to any outside doors or windows, and when he looked at the radar track of the tornado he saw it was southeast of the Convention Center and was tracking away from Downtown Indy, so he figured they were going to be fine.

The storm --and its aftermath-- is what likely lead to a heavier than usual Sunday crowd in the Exhibit Hall. I'll mention that more tomorrow.

#Blaugust2026

Meme Monday: Gen Con 2026 Memes

I'm not going to miss a Meme Monday, as I'm too tired to put together a full report until later in the week, so here's some Gen Con memes for this year's Gen Con.

I feel for ya, buddy.
From Instagram.

Ah, Jake and Elwood Blues. The Blues Brothers.
From Instagram.

If you're hip to it, yeah. From Imgflip.

Yeah, been there. I've seen this live.
From Facebook.

You can't not have Gen Con without some
Murder Hobos around. From Tumblr.
(Wait, is Tumblr still a thing?)

Surrrre. Whatever you say.
From @lukemckay via Facebook.

#Blaugust2026

On The Road Again, 2026 Version

By the time you read this, I'll already be on the road up to Indianapolis for Gen Con 2026.

This year, I didn't quite trust my almost 30 year old Honda Accord to make the trip* so I decided to get a rental this time around.

Why a rental? Because my wife is working today, and she kind of needs her car for work. (She doesn't like driving my old Accord, so why make it hard on her?) At least I got a "free upgrade" to a Camry hybrid, so gas won't be much of a factor for the trip.

Still, I'll be here for the day:

From the Indianapolis Star's coverage of Gen Con.

I'll likely provide a report on Tuesday or Wednesday, although work might get in the way of that.

Happy gaming!

*The car has reached the point where I think I'm no longer going to do any major repairs and just keep it running as long as it can before it dies. I could be talked out of that, given how expensive even used cars are right now, but that's my current state. I've also been told numerous times by people that if I were selling the car it would go really quickly as it's in overall great shape for a Fifth Gen Accord, and even for a 4-cylinder car it is really peppy and fun to drive. 

#Blaugust2026

What If We're Wrong?

The Classic Plus hype train is going bonkers right about now. 

WillE is but one of the creators that's really on board with Classic Plus, but I keep wondering if we're misreading the tea leaves.

Here's the biggest clue that we might get Classic Plus, which was leaked back in 2025 and got a lot more scrutiny once more in 2026:

From Reddit and Icy Veins and all over.

Here's the thing. This looks interesting on the face of it, but until the collaboration between WotC and Blizzard was announced (it was leaked last week), nobody had a clue that D&D and WoW were going to join forces in the first of a series of crossovers. 

Here's what the alternate cover looks like, complete
with a book sleeve. (Alliance is on the back cover.)
From Reddit.

And oh look, that D&D World of Warcraft splatbook is coming out on November 17, 2026, which closely aligns with that Project Camelot release date up there as well.

So.

Was this what Project Camelot was all along? 

Hell if I know, but it wouldn't shock me if we were all wrong and it wasn't Classic Plus but a tabletop version of WoW that we got instead. I mean, it wouldn't be so bad from my perspective as a tabletop gamer, but I'm sure that it wouldn't go over well with others in the online community.

I guess we'll find out.

And for the record, I think I like the "regular" splatbook's look over the fancy version:

From ENWorld.

From ENWorld.

Why is it called ENWorld, you might ask?
When D&D 3.0 was getting ready to be released,
a guy named Eric Noah created a website to keep track
of all of the info of the upcoming version. Hence "EN"
refers to Eric Noah and World is, well, you get the idea.

#Blaugust2026

I Didn't Have THIS on my Bingo Card for This Fall

For everybody in the MMO community who is thinking there's a Classic Plus coming soon, I bet the announcement yesterday was a bit of a letdown...

Yes, it was a Gen Con release that World of Warcraft is coming to D&D 5.5 (aka D&D 2024), along with other classic settings: Greyhawk and Dark Sun. Greyhawk is the OG AD&D setting before Forgotten Realms kind of muscled in and took over.* Dark Sun is, well, "Grimdark D&D" in a nutshell.

I'd put the Dark Sun trailer here too, but it's definitely a bit on the gory side. And it's age restricted. So instead, I'll just put the link here to the entire D&D Vision Keynote:

One more thing (tm)... There's also this little announcement at the end of the Keynote...

From Instagram, but really all over and likely
originally from Wizards of the Coast.

Yeah, I think that Gen Con 2026 started off with a bang.

*One could be forgiven if the Dragonlance fans are standing around, saying "Hey, what about us?"

When You're Not Sure If It's Real or Not

You know, the saying about how the hero lives long enough to become the villain is pretty accurate in its own way, but I wonder about a corollary that if you live long enough you see movies about the creation of the original movie.

Or in this case, about Sylvester Stallone getting the original Rocky movie made.

It feels somewhat surreal seeing this trailer, because I've seen "remakes" and "resets" that were basically comedies masquerading as a movie or television show reboot but were there to poke fun at the original piece. 21 Jump Street comes to mind, where the original television show was on FOX back in the 80s as one of the few shows that actually survived a few seasons and was anything but a buddy cop comedy, which the 2012 "remake" was. Starsky and Hutch is another, where the 2004 film made fun of the (admittedly not that great) 1970s television cop show. 

So when I saw the trailer for "I Play Rocky" in my YouTube feed in between amateur radio and gamer videos, I figured someone was going to spend the entire movie mocking Sylvester Stallone. After all, he is the guy whose acting prowess was once described by Dennis Miller as "having the range of a Daisy Air Rifle". 

I was quite shocked that this was a serious take on the story behind the original Rocky movie.

I'm not here to throw shade on the attempt, but I'd bet money that Sly was behind this film, and I have to wonder whether anything --ANYTHING-- was mentioned about his acting career prior to Rocky coming out. There's Death Race 2000 and Capone, for two examples, as well as bit parts in other films. Yes, that includes at least one adult film. You can even check Snopes, which confirmed the accuracy of the oft-repeated story about Stallone acting in a film they can't show clips of on regular television.

Still, who knows? There's a lot of other celebrities who got the biopic treatment, so I guess it was Sly's time. And it's not like Stallone will have been the first celebrity to have their biopic conveniently ignore certain parts of their lives.

Hmm... I wonder if they got Bill Conti to write the soundtrack for this movie too, or whether they'd only refer to the iconic bars of Gonna Fly Now in the same way that John Williams' themes are used in later movies (such as Superman).