What is Gen Con?
Gen Con Indianapolis link: http://www.gencon.com/
In short: “The Best 4 Days of Gaming!” and that is no exaggeration. I once wrote:
“Imagine everything you love in one place. A place that almost seems to defy reality. You stand in line to order food next to your favorite TV show characters. You take the bus with your favorite book characters. You even get to high five your favorite character from your favorite game. This is Gen Con to me. A place where all the things I love come together and take over 5 blocks of Indianapolis. I ate lunch next to wolverine, was almost murdered by zombies, hugged a Dalek, traveled with an ensemble of goblins, and watched a satyr dance to the cupid shuffle; they’re not as bad as one may think. Everything I knew was suddenly thrown out the window for 4 days and replaced with stuff made of dreams and sweaty geeks.”
So far this is been my best attempt to describe the sheer awesomeness of Gen Con. When it comes to Gen Con I’m speechless there are not words in the English language that can be combined to recount the glory of Gen Con. However I will try to explain it. It is the Disney world for Geeks and Nerds. It is a place where fantasy and reality meet.
Gen Con Indianapolis link: http://www.gencon.com/
In short: “The Best 4 Days of Gaming!” and that is no exaggeration. I once wrote:
“Imagine everything you love in one place. A place that almost seems to defy reality. You stand in line to order food next to your favorite TV show characters. You take the bus with your favorite book characters. You even get to high five your favorite character from your favorite game. This is Gen Con to me. A place where all the things I love come together and take over 5 blocks of Indianapolis. I ate lunch next to wolverine, was almost murdered by zombies, hugged a Dalek, traveled with an ensemble of goblins, and watched a satyr dance to the cupid shuffle; they’re not as bad as one may think. Everything I knew was suddenly thrown out the window for 4 days and replaced with stuff made of dreams and sweaty geeks.”
So far this is been my best attempt to describe the sheer awesomeness of Gen Con. When it comes to Gen Con I’m speechless there are not words in the English language that can be combined to recount the glory of Gen Con. However I will try to explain it. It is the Disney world for Geeks and Nerds. It is a place where fantasy and reality meet.
You may think you know of Gen Con but unless you’ve witnessed it yourself you know nothing. Now this may seem a bit extreme but it is 100% true. Have you ever seen that SpongeBob episode where Sandy goes to fight an Alaskan Bull Worm. Yes? No? Let me summarize it for you. SpongeBob’s town is attacked by a giant worm. Sandy is confident she can stop this worm because she is an expert worm wrangler however SpongeBob keeps telling her no she can’t and that she doesn’t understand because it’s an Alaskan Bull Worm. Sandy eventually fights the worm and defeats it in a cave. However the thing she just fought was not the worm but the worm’s tongue and the cave is the whole worm.
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When the Laws of Reality are away Gen Con will play! |
In this story I was Sandy, my father was SpongeBob, and the Alaskan Bull Worm was Gen Con. My father told me we were going to Gen Con and it is REALLY big. So I did some research on it and watched some videos, read some articles, and looked at some pictures. “I’ve got this!” I thought. So my dad continues telling more about the beauty of Gen Con to the point where I get sick of him trying to “prepare” me for this convention. I became very angry and annoyed with him. “I’VE GOT THIS!” I shouted at him but I was dead wrong. I was prepared for the tongue of the convention- not the whole thing. When we got there, I realized that this was beyond me...way, way beyond me.
The convention takes up about 2 city blocks in all directions with a huge 2 story convention center in the middle. The vendor hall has over 400 vendors (it took us 4 days to get through it and we still didn’t see everything). There are rooms that are bigger than football fields of people playing games. Nothing I can say will prepare you for Gen Con. However any table top gamer young, old, new, experienced HAS TO ATTEND GEN CON! For once you see its beauty you will fall upon your knees with tears of joy running down your face (I can speak from experience).
--President and Founder of the U-High Table Top Game Club
Katana Colledge
--President and Founder of the U-High Table Top Game Club
Katana Colledge