Some trips take months to plan. This one has been over forty years in the making.
Ever since I was a kid in the 1980s, I’ve wanted to go to Gen Con. Back then, I’d pore over the pages of Dragon magazine, dreaming about all the games I wanted to play and lingering over the advertisements in the back of the magazine. There it was: Gen Con, held in Lake Geneva, Wisconsin—the mecca of tabletop gaming. It felt impossibly far away, almost mythical. It was one of those places that existed in my imagination alongside dragons, dungeons, and faraway fantasy worlds.
This year, I finally get to go.
One of the things I’m looking forward to most is simply wandering the exhibition hall. If you’re a tabletop gamer, you know that’s dangerous for your wallet but wonderful for your soul. I’m planning to visit some of my favorite companies, including Chaosium, Steve Jackson Games, Chessex, FanRoll, Arcknight, Archon Games, and Tabletop Gaymers. I’m sure I’ll discover plenty of games and accessories I didn’t know I needed until I see them sitting on a shelf.
Of course, Gen Con isn’t just about shopping—it’s about playing games.
We’ve already signed up for sessions of Shadowrun, Munchkin, Mutant Crawl Classics, and a few others. Half the fun is getting to experience games with people you’ve never met before, all brought together by a shared love of rolling dice and telling stories.
I’m also hoping to stumble across a few pickup games while I’m there. If I can find a table running Trophy Gold, Shadowdark, or Dungeon Crawl Classics, there’s a good chance I’ll be sitting down with a character sheet in hand before they finish explaining the premise. Some of my favorite gaming memories have come from spontaneous sessions with complete strangers who became instant friends over the course of a few hours.
And that’s really what I’m looking forward to most.
Yes, there will be games. Yes, there will be vendors, new releases, and enough dice to fill a dragon’s hoard. But Gen Con has always represented something bigger to me. It’s thousands of people from across the country gathering because they love the same things I do. We may play different systems, read different books, or argue over which edition was the best, but we’re all there because stories matter, imagination matters, and sharing a table with good people is still one of life’s greatest pleasures.
The kid who flipped through Dragon magazine in the 1980s could never have imagined that one day he’d finally make the trip.
I have a feeling he’s going to have an amazing time.
If you’re going to be at Gen Con this year, I’d love to meet you. If you see someone grinning like a kid in a candy store while browsing RPG books or frantically buying “just one more set of dice,” there’s a decent chance it’s me. Don’t hesitate to say hello—I suspect the best souvenirs I’ll bring home won’t be books or games, but the people I meet along the way.