With Love to Gen Con

At our house, it’s Disney World, Christmas and Gen Con, but not necessarily in that order. Assuming you’re familiar with Disney World and Christmas, let me briefly expound on Gen Con. Gen Con is a four-day table-top gaming convention held in Indianapolis since 2003. It originated in Geneva, Wisconsin (hence the name Gen Con – not to be confused with the Geneva Convention held in Switzerland in 1949). It was founded by Gary Gygax, one of the co-creators of Dungeons & Dragons. Dungeons & Dragons is still a huge part of Gen Con, but it has expanded to include gaming of all kinds, performance, cosplaying and community. The Schaefers have been coming to Gen Con since, I think, 2006. We, like many before us and many to come, attended on a Sunday – the family day – where family passes are inexpensive. What a shady trick, Gen Con, because once you’ve been and once you’ve seen it, you’re hooked. There’s no going back. And now, 18 years later, it’s hard to define the feeling of being at Gen Con. You walk in and – you’re home. It’s comfort food; it’s wrapping up in your Snuggie on the couch; it’s stepping into your flip flops after eight hours of office high heels; it’s taking a deep breath and letting it out very, very slowly; it’s bouncing joyfully through the heavens from cloud to cloud. (I’ve never actually done that, but I needed some kind of cozy cloud analogy here and that image seemed to fit.) I SO wish I could remember the first time I saw cosplayers, or…the expanse of tables covered in red, green, yellow, blue, orange and purple tablecloths through an entire room, two rooms, no three, all opened up into one big room; the first time I saw a guy in a Utlikilt. The first time I saw all the GAMES. I wonder what I thought. I wonder how long my mouth hung open. Now, it’s as natural as breathing. (See the above paragraph.) After that Sunday initiation (you can check out any time you like, but you can never leave – but in a good way), we bought four-day passes for the next year. We walked the exhibit hall (ah, the exhibit hall – that deserves a blog post unto itself!) and we admired the cosplay. And one evening, my daughter and I decided to stay late. The exhibit hall had closed; we didn’t have any event tickets; we wandered into one of those open gaming areas. There we met a man and his two grown sons. They were sitting down to begin a game of Settlers of Catan. They invited Charlie and me to join them (because as we all know, a Gen Conner is never happier than when explaining the rules of a game). Catan, that gateway game – it was our first exposure to a game that lasted longer than 45 minutes, a game where each individual turn had multiple parts (a key feature of Gen Con board games). We played and learned it (and bought it). That man was from Chicago; one of his sons lived in Texas and the other in New Jersey, but every year, they met up at Gen Con for four days of family and playing games. I gained a huge takeaway from his example. Over the years, even as I got older, playing games is something I would always be able to do with my children. And even if my kids moved far away, they, like this man’s sons, I knew in my heart they would always come home for Gen Con (like “all hearts come home at Christmas,” but different). I think of that man and his sons every year. Every year. I don’t even remember his name, but I wish I could thank him for what he gave me and my family. Gen Con today. We cosplay. We demo games. We learn a new skill. We participate in tournaments. We peruse the consignment store. We eat at trendy downtown restaurants. We admire Cardhalla and the balloon sculpture. We marvel at the dice. We watch the costume parade. We make trips back and forth to our car with our way-too-many games and purchases. How fortunate we are to live within driving distance of this mecca of nerd-dom, of inclusion, of individualism, of gamer joy. And we laugh; we catch up with each other; we take joy in being together and sharing something we love with people we love. It’s just that simple. On the Monday after Gen Con, if someone were to ask us what we did for four days, answers are vague. “Oh…we, uh, we played games. We walked around. We talked. I dunno.” Because how do you describe Gen Con? You just….had to be there.