If there's one thing about Gen Con, you're never sure what will attract your attention. To borrow an overused term, you think you do, but you don't.*
And 2024 certainly delivered on that premise.
My wife hadn't attended since 2015, so she was excited to go. We picked up my son and his partner at 7:30 and pointed our car west on I-74. Destination: Indianapolis.
We parked just outside of Lucas Oil Stadium and headed north a block or two to the Indianapolis Convention Center.
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| Yes, the Colts play here. Does it show? |
Along the way, there was evidence that there was going to be a crowd inside.
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| Uh oh. |
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| I apologize for the blurry photo, but I was in a hurry as I was being jostled along. But hey, dice are dice and Chessex was everywhere. |
My son went on ahead into the Exhibit Hall while his partner and my wife grabbed a quick bite to eat. Originally, my wife looked at the food trucks outside, but the prices were far more expensive than the $9 pizza slice she found inside the convention center. After they ate, we met up with my brother-in-law and one of his friends after they cashed out of the auctions held over at the Marriott Hotel. We were rejoined by my son, who decided that wearing a mask was a good idea.
"There was someone in there who smelled like they bathed in piss," he said as put the mask on.
"Oh, you have no idea," my brother-in-law replied. "We were here on Wednesday for the block party BEFORE THE CON and there were people who already smelled really bad."
Ugh. The stereotypical gamer funk reared it's ugly head again. Maybe I ought to call it con funk, because I smelled some pretty rank people when my wife attended the Geological Society of America convention in 1996 out in Denver, and I have no idea what the lack of basic hygiene is supposed to prove. That they're hardcore or something?
"You know," my son's partner mused, "there's more than one entry in the program book about practicing good hygiene, so you'd think that's kind of important."
Well, at least I was forewarned.
We decided to split up and reconnect where we were standing around 12:30 to go grab some lunch, so we bade farewell to my brother-in-law, entered into the Exhibit Hall, and went our separate ways.
***
While I realize that this is kind of the new normal as far as convention centers and sports arenas go, seeing giant digital billboards that provide rolling advertisements and other information still brings out the little kid in me:
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| If you don't find what's on screen interesting, wait about 10 seconds. |
Of course, there's plenty of more traditional advertisements to go around:
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| I never made it to the CGE game room, but boy were they promoting their Little Alchemists boardgame. |
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| Modiphius was promoting the hell out of their Mass Effect boardgame. |
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| This gives a whole new meaning to the term "population migration". |
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| I am having a hard time comprehending that the Talisman boardgame franchise is now in the hands of Avalon Hill. |
One of the things that surprised me when I perused the Exhibit Hall map was that Larian Studios had a booth. And I had really no idea why, given that this was primarily a physical media gaming convention. I guess I shouldn't have been surprised, because there was this on full display:
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| The artwork is more Divinity: Original Sin 2 than Original Sin 1, but it really is pretty. |
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| And yes, the pieces look really nice too. |
And you can't have a Gen Con without ooo-ing and aah-ing over the designs by Dwarven Forge:
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| This is one of those "if I won the lottery" stores. |
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| It's amazing what they can do with LED lighting. Yes, the lava actually glows. |
As lunchtime approached, I wandered out into the hall to discover a huge crowd around the balloon sculpture:
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| Those look like gnomes... |
I got a better look, and yes, those were gnomes. The sculpture promoted the Gnome Hollow boardgame which launched at Gen Con. It was also likely close to when they were going to pop said balloon sculpture, so I kind of hung around the area to watch.
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| I don't see any Gnome Warlocks here. Zarg, where are you? |
After a few minutes, I decided to move to my right to get a better view and discovered the cosplay photo area. If you are wearing cosplay and want people to take photos of you in a formal location, this was the place.
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| One of the Colonial Marines. I haven't seen these soldiers since Aliens. And yeah, one of the Lorcana ads behind him. |
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| One of the many permutations of Spider-man that I saw. |
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| The amount of effort this guy put into his cosplay was impressive. |
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| I'm not exactly sure what this cosplay was; my first thought was FNAF, but it could have been a riff on The Nightmare Before Christmas. |
***
After lunch the crowd had thinned out considerably, and my wife and I explored the Exhibit Hall together.
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| Throughout most of Gen Con, these gaming areas were packed with people. |
She asked me what I thought of when I heard the name Nunatak.
"Nun Attack?"
"No, it's a geological term."
"That's what I get for going to Catholic grade school."
She then proceeded to explain about they are formed, which she then led around to the "I saw a demo of the boardgame Nunatak, and it looks really fun! They were already sold out, though, so I guess we'll have to look for it at YottaQuest."
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| Yeah, a game with a pyramid. |
We spent some time at the Artists' Alley, looking over the various artworks for something to give to our oldest for her birthday, but in the end we decided against giving her something without her input. However, there were some fantastic player mats for sale:
There were also leatherworkers who had a ton of wearable leatherwork as well as various other items. Like this:
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| Looks like a book, right? |
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| Wrong. It's a storage box for cards. |
The leatherworking was fantastic, but I couldn't afford the prices.
There were also t-shirt vendors:
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| Oh, I could have so much fun with this. |
And where would we be without game table vendors? There were no less than three of them there, and all of them made quality products:
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| Game Theory Tables. They also make poker tables, and the padding they use there are also used in these tables. |
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| Carolina Game Tables. No, it is not your imagination, the wood is polished to a mirror sheen. |
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| Sorry about this last one. I was discussing tolerances and the precision in the crafting process and forgot to take a pic of their demo table. But I can confirm that the lever to raise/lower the inner area works smoothly, and the magnetic strip helps to hold the addons in place. |
Needless to say, all three companies' tables would cost a lot of money. So yet another thing to file under "If I won the lottery..."
We saw several game demos, heard several sales pitches, and also heard about people's work getting ready to go up on Kickstarter So despite Asmodee slurping up many of the major boardgame players and then being saddled with a metric ton of debt by an Embracer Group restructuring, the gaming community itself is now more vibrant than ever.
As 4:00 PM neared, we took our leave from the Exhibit Hall, just in time for a few extra snapshots of some musicians...
And some cosplayers...
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| All three could be in a D&D game from my youth. All that's missing is the Paladin. |
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| That staff. Wow. |
After I took my photo, the cosplayer gave me this:
Which I in turn gave to my oldest, who squealed with glee and decided to add it to the collection of stickers on her laptop.
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| From giphy and Ferris Bueller's Day Off. |
*Maybe J. Allen Brack should have worked for Gen Con.
**Technically speaking, my wife's brother-in-law.
EtA: Corrected a sentence or two.
#Blaugust2024
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