Gen Con 2025 After Action Report

PLANNING 

After missing Gen Con last year due to family matters (previously described), my brother, my wife and I were determined to return this year.  As usual, planning needed to start back in January, with the purchase of the entry badges.  Due to some uncertainty in my brother’s schedule we agreed that we would not attempt to run any games this year, although we did note (when the events list was released) that someone else had stepped up to run some Burrows and Badgers in our place.  My brother drew an excellent time slot in the room lottery in February and we were able to get a room at Downtown Marriot, one of the hotels connected to the convention center by a skywalk, with the caveat being that the hotel wanted a Tuesday through Sunday stay to get the convention rate.  

I got most of what I wanted when events tickets went on sale in May, so after that it was just a matter of settling in to wait until it was time to drive to Indianapolis.  Entry badges were sold out this year, so there were a number of disappointed last-minute would-be attendees noted on the Gen Con online discussions.

As usual, Indianapolis rolled out the proverbial red carpet for the convention.

Many of the roads around the convention center were under construction this year, so I was very happy that we were able to park the car in the hotel’s garage on Tuesday and live as pedestrians until Sunday.

We checked into the hotel and found that they were trying to be Gen Con themed.  The lobby staff were wearing fairy wings, and we were issued with a bag of emergency dice along with our room keys.

WEDNESDAY    

Wednesday is “Trade Day” at Gen Con, with the majority of the events being for industry and education folks.  There are usually some free scheduled games going on, although we didn’t sign up for any this year.  My brother had suggested that we bring the materials necessary to play some pick-up Dragon Rampant, so we set up a game on Wednesday morning, having, in accordance with the rules, asked the area manager at the Union Station gaming space for an open table.  

In order to get two Dragon Rampant warbands into a single 4-Liter Really Useful Box, I chose to use my figures based on 60mm by 40mm bases for Dux Bellorum, so I had pseudo-historical Saxons and Britons. My brother was using some sort of chaos orc army, drawn from his large collection of vintage miniatures. (One of the things I like about Dragon Rampant is that it is very flexible about match ups.) As an aside, my stack of RUBs can be seen at one end of the table; I had a 2.5 liter box of gamemaster materials such as dice, measuring tapes, and tokens; a 4-liter box with the two Arthurian warbands; and a 4-liter box with some scenery.  We had agreed that my brother would have the ground cloth, some trees, and some additional scenery. 

Eventually my Britons sent the orcs and trolls and what not back to wherever it was that they came from.

The Gen Con “Block party” opened up on Wednesday afternoon, so we tried Sun King’s Gen Con brew, an apple containing ale called “Core Strategy”.  I’m sorry to say that it was not at all to my taste, so my only other beer this convention was an IPA. 

THURSDAY

I had two scheduled games on Thursday.  The first was the only roleplaying game I had signed up for, a session of Shadowdark.  Shadowdark, designed by Kelsey Dionne and published by The Arcane Library, is currently making a splash in the RPG community.  It’s fast-playing and calls back to the playstyle of the early D&D games.  I’d only played one online one-shot, and wanted to try it in person.  It was a good start to the official convention, and I was glad that I played.

My second Thursday game was a real throwback to earlier times.  I had the good fortune to get a ticket to a session of the TSR Napoleonic naval game Don’t Give Up the Ship (DGUTS), designed by Dave Arneson, Gary Gygax and  Mike Carr, and being run my Mike Carr himself. Mike is a Gen Con legend, having been around since the very first Gen Con in 1968.  I had played DGUTS as part of my high school gaming activities back in the late 1970s, but hadn’t played since.  

I remembered DGUTS as being fairly complicated, but I guess 50 years of gaming experience since then has altered my perceptions, as it was not particularly hard for my to follow today, except that the boarding actions were all adjudicated by Mike, so I didn’t see the underlying mechanics.  Twelve or thirteen players were in the game, and I was interested to note that several of them were both young (under thirty) and veterans of previous years’ play, so interest in older games is not entirely restricted to grognards such as myself.

I was interested to see that the game was to be played with some rather abstact ships.  These plastic vessels may be recognized by some as the playing pieces for the 1962 Milton Bradley board game Broadside.  It didn’t take me long to get past that and become immersed in the game.  As Donald Featherstone once wrote (Solo-Wargaming, 1973, p.90) “…the imagination can paint nearly as well at the brush!”.  Given my usual propensity for choosing the losing side in any scenario, I was surprised to find that we (the British) won the game, taking two French ships as prizes, one of them by me.  As it happened, between the boarding actions and the need to assign crew to sail off the prize, I ended the game only able to man a few guns and barely sail the ship, but a victory is a victory nonetheless.  It was a delight and a privilege to have gamed with Mike Carr.

We had dinner Wednesday night at Loughmiller’s Pub, a block from the convention center.  They were one of the restaurants that switched over to a Gen Con-themed menu (although they just renamed the dishes), a custom which has seemed to be declining in recent years. 

FRIDAY

 

Gen Con is an overwhelming experience.  This year, there were over 25,000 scheduled events.  Nobody is going to be able to see everything, and the best way to avoid FOMO, in my opinion, is to build your schedule beforehand and stick to it.  My two scheduled events on Friday were both dance sessions with my wife.  These (basically) English Country Dance events have been run for almost ten years by a group currently entitled “The Revel Alliance”. Irene and I do ballroom dance at home, and look forward to these events as a pleasant break from our usual dance fare.  (We woud recommend these events to anyone attending Gen Con and looking for something to break up the gaming a bit.)

However, the main thing I scheduled for Friday was the Gen Con auction.  An enormous amount of material changes hands at the Gen Con auction and the related consignment shop each year.  A general schedule is posted just before the convention opens with the time blocks laid out (e.g. “board games”, “RPGs”, “miniatures” etc.), but there is some predictability from one year to the next.  Friday afternoon is for miniatures, and Friday night is the collectables auction, ending with the auction of whatever super-rare items have been consigned that year, things like D&D first printings and the like.  

I had a vintage board wargame agenda this year, and I was pleased to be able to pick up a copy of Avalon Hill’s Machiavelli and Wooden Ships and Iron Men as well as a copy of the Battleline edition of Trireme. I didn’t buy anything personally during the miniatures sessions, but my brother bought me a box of nearly a hundred Ral Partha 25mm Renaissance figures for less than $50, so I have a future project whose parameters remain in flux.  The collectable session went quite late.  I was a little startled to see a copy of the 2014 40th anniversary reprint of original Dungeons & Dragons go for $2000, while a reasonable looking copy of a 4th printing original with all the supplements including Chainmail and Swords and Spells went for a mere $1000. There’s no accounting for collectors…

I’ll add here, a little out of order, that I also came home with a set of the recently reproduced Partha Paints, two years’ worth of The Courier magazine (covering the Franco-Prussian War and French and Indian War theme years, from the consignment shop), and GMT Games Britain Stands Alone (The Battle of Britain and Operation Sealion) and the original Source of the Nile (both from Games Plus, the last vintage game shop doing business in the Gen Con Exhibition Hall). I spent most of the ‘90s painting with Partha Paints, and I thought it might be fun to revisit my roots and do a little retro painting. (More about that in a later post, I hope…)

SATURDAY

I had, oddly enough for Gen Con, a second historical miniatures game to start off on Saturday morning.  I was signed up for a session of “The Lonely Outpost” run by GM Patrick Connaughton and using 25mm 19th century British and Afghans and the Fistful of Lead Bigger Battles rules by Wiley Games. 

I chose to play Afghans, so our goal was to drive off the British, who had taken refuge in an abandoned fort.  We played this on a 5x6 table, probably with about 200 figures all told.  I’ve got Fistful of Lead on my list of rules to try at home now. (In fact, I’ve got a French and Indian War game scheduled for this coming Monday…)

As with the DGUTS game, I was pleased to see some younger people among the players.

I had Saturday afternoon earmarked for the Exhibition Hall, according to my pre-con notes.  At the risk of being a grumpy old man, I had a hard time with the noise and the crowds in the Exhibition Hall this year, so I cut my stay short, and collected up my wife for a nice quiet early dinner at Harry and Izzy’s.  I apologize to all the exhibitors who might have been able to sell me something under other circumstances.

On Saturday night I ventured into the main gaming hall for a session of the new (3rd) edition of the classic 1970s War of the Roses board wargame Kingmaker.  As you can see, the players for this one were definitely fellow grognards.  In the new edition, there are rules for declaring a winner short of having the last royal heir standing, and using them allowed us to play to a conclusion in three hours.  To my surprise, I came out on top in the prestige ratings (and thus won).  

SUNDAY

We packed up the car, checked out of the room, and did a little more shopping on Sunday (results shown above).  After that, we finished up the convention with two more sessions of dancing with the Revel Alliance team, and then drove on to Michigan to visit with my father for a few days before finally getting back home.

CONCLUSION  

I was glad that we were able to go this year, and having a downtown connected hotel makes a big difference in the quality of one’s convention experience, especially for a more, uh, veteran gamer such as myself.  I didn’t do enough actually walking in preparation this year, something that I’ll have to address before the next time we go.  Gen Con may have sold out, but the cap of about 75,000 people they have placed on the event is still a pretty massive crowd in the space that’s available.  As I noted above, the Exhibition Hall was almost too much for me this year.  

Everyone’s Gen Con is different, as they pick from the vast menu of possibilities.  This year, I had a very retro experience, with my vintage game shopping, my historical miniatures games, and the Kingmaker game.   

For anyone considering going, I’d still recommend it.  It’s an experience like no other in this hobby.  It does repay some careful planning, so don’t wait until the last minute, lest you find that it has already sold out.