My buddies and I are running a Game of Thrones event and I was wondering if anyone else on here is making their pilgrimage to GenCon?

Darn, I miss GenCon.  Fluffy??  As in Rick Reid's dog of many adventures?

I am excited to see Cyberpunk Red, Shadowrun 6th edition and Pathfinder 2e coming out...

I'll be there!  I'm running a Predation game (Cypher System) Friday morning for anyone interested!

My friends and I are running a saturday night Game of Thrones larp!

That sounds like a lot of fun, but alas my Saturday night dance card is full.  Win or die, praguepride!

I'm running the Iron Bank. I will always come out on top.

I'm here, and was actually wondering the same thing.

Any of you go annually?

Well that was fun. Exhausting but fun. We arrived at around 2am and swung by the will call to pick up packets. Usually at 2am it’s only a 10 minute wait but this time it was nuts. 2 hours! Didn’t get to bed until 5am and that really screwed up the whole con for me. Had to cancel a bunch of morning evens, slept in till noon and was on huge amounts of coffee all day so I didn’t get to bed until late.

Also I’m completely disenfranchised with the exhibit hall. I remember when you could get amazing deals  or stuff that hasn’t hit the main market yet. This time however either everything was a complete ripoff (the things I was planning to buy I could get stuff for up to 1/2 off on amazon OR it isn’t available. I bough t a board game online prior to the Con and my friends really enjoyed it so looked around for it but it wasn’t available. Not sold out, just not sold. Some kind of distribution license meant they couldn’t sell directly to customers.

The other things I was looking for that were supposed to be released by now weren’t available. They were pushed back to Xmas.

Now the hall is fun to browse and demo games but for buying? Pass. I’m completely done with actually buying stuff at the hall.

Next time pay to have your badge and tickets mailed to you. How much is your time worth!?

I agree about the Exhibit hall. But, everything else is trouble as well.

I'll likely stop attending, after 40+ years now. :(

I didnt order my stuff early enough to be mailed. Next time. For me it is a chance to see people I dont get to otherwise so I think next year it is going to focus on doing events with friends.

Yeah, husband and I had our badges and two of our event tickets mailed, but due to trying to coordinate a game with some people who were working in the dealer's hall, we didn't pick the rest of our events until much later, which necessitated a trip to Will Call on Wednesday afternoon.  They kept things moving briskly, which wasn't bad, but we must be much more diligent next year about picking stuff early so we don't have to deal with that insanity.

I have only been to about 5 GenCons (the last in Milwaukee, the first two in Indy, and the last two years) so I don't remember much about the deals.  What I did like doing was being able to catch game/accessory designers or artist/authors at their booths and being able to talk to them/tell them what their stuff means to me.  Yes, you can do that online, but it's special being able to talk to them face-to-face.

We weren't really expecting or shopping for deals, so I wasn't disappointed in that respect.  Mostly we were looking for things that were cool, and if we didn't get it there, we are going to order it from our FLGS at home.

The game I went to (Thur at 8) and the game I ran (Fri at 9) both went swimmingly, so I had a grand time!