We had an amazing long weekend at Gen Con 2024. We ran games, played games and attended seminars and workshops. Trekking the halls and the dealer hall we walked for miles every day. We are exhausted but excited with how the weekend went.

For those who aren’t familiar with Gen Con, it is a massive convention where you can find just about every kind of card, board and role-playing game that is out there. There are 70,000+ attendees. There are movies, panels, and costumes. It’s busy, fun and sometimes a bit overwhelming. You can sign up to play games, try out games in the dealer hall or other demo areas, or go to dances. There is an amazing auction group where you can find incredible older games. A first print of the original D&D game sold at the collectables part of the auction this year for $16,000!

Last year, Walt ran games at Gen Con and Origins as part of our year of saying yes. This year, I decided to join him and we both ran games at Gen Con! The same gaming group he worked with last year, Quantum Black Games (website Here), agreed to be our event organizers. This means that they handled the sign-up process. They were willing to let me run whatever I wanted, so I picked a Call of Cthulhu game and a 3.5 edition Dungeons and Dragons game. Walt ran a couple of sessions of Quantum Black. These are all role-playing games. We have a couple of posts about running games not at home here and here.

Charity

The Gen Con community is amazing. They donate thousands of dollars each year to local charities in the Indianapolis area. The auction mentioned above has a charity section. There are other ways to contribute too. One favorite event for raising money is the balloon sculpture. People create these amazing creations and people bid to be the first to start popping the balloons. This year, they did a themed on for the Gnome Hollow Game. The gnomes were hollow and they walked them around the halls.

Another popular charity event is Cardhalla. People use a vast assortment of cards from games to build card structures and at the end of Saturday, throw coins at the sculptures to knock them down. The first picture was taken on Friday in the morning. The second was taken on Saturday afternoon from a balcony above the area. There were some amazing sculptures. Gencon also sponsors a blood drive.

Playing games

We have a great time playing games at Gen Con. We don’t have many pictures of that, but were fortunate to have a couple from our friends at Evil Fleet. They run some amazing games every year including our favorite, never miss game, Can of Whupass. It’s a Hero System game, with celebrity mash up characters and and amazing way to crown the winner. Our friend Dave is part of this group.

Indianapolis does a great job of getting into the spirit, with many places have special displays or menus for Gen Con. We found this fun display at the Westin Hotel downtown when we stopped for a snack.