Beholders? In my Indianapolis Convention Center? It's more likely than you think

I had a blast at this years Gen Con. For those of you not familiar, Gen Con is a gaming convention held in Indianapolis every year where gamers, publishers, artists, and cosplayers show up to celebrate all things gaming related. Its a great way to find a new pen and paper RPG, talk with vendors about new and upcoming games, and meet fellow gamers who might just like the same games as you.

The costumes were great this year as always. I ran into Ghost from Modern Warfare 2, an actual 7 foot tall viking, the cast of Robin Hood Men in Tights, some dude with headcrabs, and many well endowed women with costumes that accentuated those features.

What made this year better than last for me was actually a couple of things.

1. Meeting Margaret Weis and Tracy Hickman, two of my favorite authors and extremely nice people. Tracy was more than happy to talk to you for a while and very approachable.
2. Seeing Felicia Day in person, DAMN!

This year I had the opportunity to try out tons of new games and I’d like to share them with you.

First, my favorite game of Gen-Con so far is Ergo by Catalyst Games Labs, the same people who also have the Shadowrun and Battletech franchises. This is a card game where up to 4 players are represent a variable A-D and try to prove themselves while disproving their friends using operators such as and, or, then, and not. It is a lot of fun and a unique game that can be quick or long, depending on how much your friends will argue with you on the premises of the proofs.

We spend one night getting acquainted with Shadows Over Camelot, a game designed to really just beat the piss out of you until it ends. Each player chooses a knight of the round table and draws a card determining whether they will side with evil or good (this is not revealed). Each turn a player has to advance evil by one of 3 ways and then quests to fight back the evil. While the game is a lot of fun, it can be frustrating as sometimes fighting evil is about as easy as trying juggle chainsaws on a unicycle during an earthquake.

I sat down for a quick game of Bump In the Night, a horror board game where the idea was to play your ghosts in a chess like manner to get points by scaring random placed kids out of the house or terrorizing them to death. Both of which are hard to do as you can’t move into a room with kids and they can’t move into a room with ghosts. The game forces you to herd kids into the path of ghosts.

I also picked up a dice game from Steve Jackson games, Cthulu Dice. Simple quick game where you have sanity tokens and you attack other players with the roll of the dice trying to steal their sanity while maintaining yours.

A friend of mine also bought a katana from Dragonsong Forge. He threw in a carrying case, tatami mat, and 60 days repair warranty. We had the opportunity to test the sword when we got home and here is the result.

That thing is sharp, you can feel when it cuts through something how smooth it is. He’s very happy with the purchase and we’ll be chopping things up for quite a while with this sword.

Gen Con is a great experience if you’re a gamer and if you’re near the Indianapolis area I highly recommend a 4 day badge even if you only go for 2, you’ll get your moneys worth and you’ll have a great time.