I enjoy playing tabletop games like many people, but Indianapolis’ Gen Con upped the ante of my enthusiasm. A multi-day convention devoted to tabletop role-playing games only three hours away from Evansville? Sign me up.
Founded in 1967 by Dungeons & Dragons co-creator Gary Gygax, Gen Con hopped between different venues before landing in Indianapolis in 2003. Now the largest and longest-running such convention in North America, Gen Con is considered the No. 1 gathering for fans of tabletop role-playing games (TTRPGs), board games, strategy games, card and miniature collecting, and more.
I got my first taste of Gen Con in 2024 and was both amazed and intimidated by the sheer scale. I’m no stranger to conventions, and Gen Con was one of the largest I had ever attended. Previously, my experience with tabletop games was limited to family games such as Trouble or Monopoly, but Gen Con showed me just how many different forms a board game could take. Gen Con also emphasizes inclusivity for all attendees through services like scooter rentals, accessibility lines, and American Sign Language interpreters.
This year, two friends and I were among the more than 70,000 TTRPG fans who attended Gen Con, held July 30-Aug. 2 at the Indiana Convention Center and Lucas Oil Stadium in Downtown Indianapolis. Maddie and Christi Wolfe became my friends when, while attending the University of Cincinnati, we all bonded by playing Dungeons & Dragons. So, gaming, especially TTRPGs, has become a staple in our friendship, and we were excited to go to the convention and get a good look at new games we could play together.
Guests were greeted by a banner proclaiming “Welcome to Gen Con” on an Indiana Convention Center sky bridge. There were multiple banners hung from street lamps and on sandwich boards, some of which proudly declared that all days of the convention were sold out. Gen Con offered a variety of events, including card and game tournaments and extended demonstrations, but many required prior sign-ups for limited spots and quickly were booked.
Inside Gen Con, ticket holders browsed more than 500 booths promoting tabletop and role-playing games.
This dice display is by Chessex, one of the most well-known dice manufacturing companies. Dice were available at Gen Con in all shapes and sizes and could be made out of wood, resin, metal, and more materials.
Convention-goers were invited to donate to and help assemble card towers into a display called “Cardhalla.” The display was destroyed by a coin toss called the All Toss on the last day.
Just like TTRPGs, Gen Con is very interactive: On Aug. 2, my friends and I participated in a “Kill It, Keep It” activity in which attendees band together to fight a monster; the person to land a final blow gets to keep a figurine of its likeness.
The convention floor included plenty of opportunities for cool photos, like with this life-size display of Titus, a Space Marine figure from the game Warhammer 40,000. A live band in the main hall outside the vendor room played pop culture themes from movies, video games, and TV shows. While cosplay is less common at Gen Con than anime or comic conventions, there still were cosplay competitions and events.
Paizo, the company behind role-playing games Pathfinder and Starfinder, offered walk-up games every hour at Gen Con. It’s a good introduction to TTRPGs for the uninitiated, as the company provides dice, pre-made character sheets, and an experienced game master (GM) to guide players through the session.
Another interactive session centered on Rush of Ikorr, a trading card game.
My friends Maddie and Christi Wolfe live near Seattle, Washington, now, and traveled to Indianapolis just to attend Gen Con with me.
On July 31, Maddie Wolfe and I attended a Nexus Infernum walk-up session.
One of the best parts of attending Gen Con was seeing demonstrations of new games like Nexus Infernum, a resource collection and management game from Archon Games. Players act as necromancers, moving pieces, attacking other players, collecting tokens, and summoning demons to earn “blasphemy” tokens. Most booths offered free demos of their games, though it was quite crowded and occasionally hard to hear.
Incredible artwork, such as this intricately decorated miniature terrain from Dwarven Forge, also was on display at Gen Con. Dwarven Forge specializes in hand-sculpted and hand-painted modular gaming terrain.
We got a sneak peek at an upcoming role-playing game releasing in November based on the widely popular book series Dungeon Crawler Carl by Matt Dinniman, who appeared at the convention for a book signing and a Q&A panel. The Dungeon Crawler Carl display included game tokens, dice, figures, and also a life-size statue of the main characters. In addition to games, Gen Con includes an Artist and Author Alley featuring artists and self-published authors. A number of the artists present had drawn for notable TTRPGs and card games like Dungeons & Dragons, Pathfinder, and Magic: The Gathering.
Vendors also were selling individual game pieces at Gen Con. (One can imagine Monopoly-loving players being over the moon upon discovering buckets of pewter figures for sale.)
I picked up a player’s manual for Fabula Ultima, a TTRPG inspired by Japanese role-playing games (JRPGs). These pages show details of character creation for the Guardian class, including characters’ abilities and benefits.
I also purchased The Deck of Legendary Inspiration, an expansion by Metis Creative for the fifth edition of Historica Arcanum: Echoes of Renaissance. These cards allow Dungeon Masters (DMs) to add interesting decisions for players when rewarding them with inspiration for superior role-playing.
At Gen Con 2026, it wasn’t all fun and games. (See what I did there?) Around 5 p.m. Aug. 1, the National Weather Service issued a tornado warning for Indianapolis, and attendees were asked to stay in the interior of the convention center and away from the exterior walls and windows. Around that time, a pipe burst in the game hall, which, I’m told, flooded much of the convention center into the next day. The tornado warning was lifted about an hour later and was announced to convention-goers by Jeff Hays, the audiobook reader of the Dungeon Crawler Carl series. In addition to narrating a tabletop session event panel, Hays joined Dungeon Crawler Carl author Matt Dinniman for an autograph session.
