The Magic that is GenCon

I’m in the lobby of the Omni Severin hotel in Indianapolis as I type this, MacBook across my lap. It’s 4pm and I don’t yet have a Bullet Rye Manhattan in front of me, but it’s only a matter of time.

GenCon — short for “Geneva Convention,” an annual party of sorts that started 50 years ago with roots in the love of table top paper and dice roleplaying games like “Dungeons & Dragons” — is drawing to a close, and I’m taking it all in. A snapshot of what I see at this moment: there is a man with what I hope is a fake longsword across the lobby behind the reservations desk, next to a tall Gandalf, and even though the convention is technically over people checking out and loading up cars are still wearing their convention badges.

This is the 26th GenCon in a row for me. I’ve been coming for longer than the party has been in Indianapolis, and I’ve traveled from points as distant as Kauai or Florence to make this yearly pilgrimage. I do so year after year with an eagerness that’s hard to articulate, the joy of an geeky eighth-grader who’s just discovered polyhedral dice… which was definitely me 35 years ago.

The gaming nerds who gather here annually from all points of the compass are checking out of the Omni and heading for home, walking across Italian marble floors back to lives where they (probably) don’t dress up as cosplay wizards or push cartfuls of tactical war-game miniatures around downtown. It’ll be a few weeks before official numbers are in, but last year 63k of my closest gaming friends joined me in this city for “the best four days in gaming.”

There’s still a lot of GenCon that’s all about the tabletop roleplaying games (RPGs), but in the half-century since the start it also now embraces board games, collectable/tradable card games, strategic war games, cosplay, fantasy/scifi writing and art, anime, game design, the business of game marketing, and just about anything else that’s tangential to RPGs.

Except video games and comics. I forgive you for not knowing this; those are other conventions in other cities, but honestly nothing shows you have no appreciation of the pure joy that is GenCon than asking your nerd friend who made this year’s trip to Indy “So, how was ComicCon?”

Ridiculous. ComicCon is definitely not GenCon.

LARPers, video gamers, and comic collectors are entirely different varieties of nerd, and only civilians who know the names “Frodo” and “Gandalf” from movies alone make such errors. For a long while love of this RPG hobby wasn’t something you bragged about. People who played were part of a kind of underground and not part of the popular social order. To put it in Breakfast Club terms: the athlete and the princess definitely did not play Dungeons & Dragons, and they ridiculed the basket case, the criminal, and the geek for doing so.

But somewhere between the .com boom and the second season of Stranger Things what was acceptable in mainstream society shifted, and now these games and GenCon are cool for everyone from enterprise architects to hipsters to movie stars. When the latest version of the Dungeons & Dragons “Player’s Handbook” was released it shot up to #1 on Amazon. Not in “Role Playing Games” or just “Games,” but for all of Amazon. That’s a lot of books, especially at $50 per copy, and that’s probably a decent way of measuring growing popularity of the hobby, and thus its primary yearly conclave.

But what makes GenCon special? Why do more and more people jump through the insufferable hoops of badge registration and the housing process each year? I have my own reasons, but this year my buddy Dan attended for the first time. His enjoyment of RPGs is fairly recent and not too deep, but he wanted to spend time with me and a few other friends he rarely sees so he took some time off and made the trip to Indy. He’d heard us talk about the glory that is GenCon but really had no idea what to expect before getting here. Instead of me extolling why I love it, I’ll sum up what Dan told me as we sat at the bar yesterday over perfectly fashioned Old Fashions, waiting for our next round of Game of Thrones Risk:

“I came to see you guys, to spend time with friends I hardly ever see since moving. It was also great to take a break, a vacation from my normal life for a few days. But this place, this gathering was so much more than I’d imagined. Everyone — the people attending and the people of Indianapolis — are so freaking friendly and approachable, happy to be at GenCon or that GenCon is here. There are families here, groups of friends traveling a long way. So many people dress up! There is such a diversity here; an open, fun, accepting, welcoming vibe where you can learn new games, talk to total strangers, and lose yourself in good fun for hours. It is definitely not like the conventions I’m used to attending for work.

“I’m definitely coming next year. And I’m definitely bringing my son, who’d love it here.”

The exhibition hall is like a giant, wonderful, frozen circus; too much to see or even comprehend in those four days.There are hundreds of seminars and games covering all aspects of the hobby, and I did not get much sleep this week. You can spend time in classes about “How to write better villains” and war game miniature painting contests. Or cosplay burlesque shows and sushi prep workshops. Beyond such fare there are an almost endless number of free game demos and pickup games going on throughout downtown Indy, from the convention hall to the lobby of the Omni Severin, even Sunday afternoon after the main convention is done until next year.

I love that. It’s a refreshing, positive vibe in the air like walking through a lavender field and this place feels hallowed for me. Every now and then I visit Indianapolis during other parts of the year, and although I know it sounds silly I admit it still has a mystical quality for me. This place is where Gencon happens.

I think I’m going to walk up to this group across the lobby and ask what they’re playing, maybe get in on it. But first maybe I’ll grab a Manhattan. Or an iced coffee.