It’s that time of year again – time for the Gen Con 2019 report!
I’ll admit, I’ve only ever gone to Lucas Oil Stadium to play nerdy games, and not to watch the Colts…
A record breaking year
This year was a pretty good year for Gen Con! The convention had another record-breaking year, with almost 70,000 attendees, 19,600 ticketed events, and 538 exhibitors. Plus, Gen Con and Make-a-Wish helped grant a 13-year-old boy his wish to come to Gen Con and play Dungeons and Dragons! Drake Kiderlen made the first dice roll of the convention, too, for Gen Con’s annual charity dice roll.
Drake ended up rolling two sixes!
Much like last year, I kept up with what was going on at the convention via the Fans of Gen Con Facebook group. The group kept everyone up to date on will-call line wait times, helped reunite people with lost badges, and also helped people collect badge ribbons, among other things. There was also a fair bit of complaining about the usual things – backpacks in the dealers hall, the wait times in the will-call line, how long it took to get food at the food trucks… but others in the group did their best to help keep things positive, which was good.
A quiet Gen Con for the Crafty Nerd, sort of
This Gen Con was actually a little more subdued on my end, due to Ross being sick on and off through the convention. He’s been dealing with mysterious stomach issues, and due to that he didn’t cosplay this year (which you probably noticed already, from my daily Gen Con posts). I ended up keeping a pretty light schedule as a result, just in case Ross needed me. I still had a great time, though, and got to see a lot of great games as well as some fun traditions, like Cardhalla:
Cardhalla 2019, in its early stages.
Until recently, I wasn’t sure what Cardhalla was about. People built card towers, knocked them all down at the end of the con, and somehow it related to charity – that was all I knew. Well, at the end of the convention, people toss coins at the card towers in order to knock them over, and all the coins are collected for charity! I love how Gen Con finds so many ways to give back to the community.
Cardhalla on Saturday morning. I’m bummed that I didn’t get to see it on Sunday!
Overall, Gen Con was pretty good this year. There were more vendors to check out than I could actually visit, and I got to hang out with friends I don’t see often. I got to eat tasty cupcakes from The Flying Cupcake (like the butterbeer flavored Wizards Unite!), and enjoyed tasty food at downtown Indy restaurants. I got to dress up as Jadzia Dax! And, I got to help run a LARP too!
The Crafty Nerd’s Gen Con 2019 posts
To make things easy to find, I’ll link to detailed coverage of different aspects of my Gen Con experience here. (These links will become active as I write the posts!)
- The haul
- The cosplay
- The Trials of the Rose (or, the LARP)
Stay tuned for the next post in my Gen Con 2019 coverage, focusing on all the goodies I got at the con!