GenCon 2026

Last weekend was GenCon in Indianapolis, Indiana. Attendance was reported to be around 72,000 folks, and Yours Truly was one of them.

Last year was my first time at this show as a gamer, and I hope to be there every year going forward. I absolutely love the show, and I love the location.

I got in early Wednesday and that evening attended the Diana Jones Award ceremony at the Slippery Noddle.  This is a great time to both hang out with other folks in the industry and to shine a light on deserving people in the field. This year, the award went to Mischief Toy Store of St. Paul, MN. From the award website:

Mischief Toy Store made headlines in 2020 for requiring masking and then distributing free Black Lives Matter lawn signs during the George Floyd riots in the Twin Cities. They got nationwide attention again in 2025 for joining a lawsuit against US tariffs. Then, just hours after criticizing ICE in that national TV interview, they were targeted with a surprise audit but resisted turning over their employee records to DHS. They started printing ICE OUT posters to distribute as fast as they could, and organized a network of 3D printing hobbyists to distribute thousands of ICE alert whistles. Amid the chaos in Minnesota, they had to suspend online ordering, and their website directed folks to support local immigrant rights organizations instead. They’ve worked exceptionally hard to make space at the gaming table for everyone, in the midst of upheaval.

Then it was Thursday and three days of gaming commenced. GenCon is my time to play games I'm curious about and haven't had a chance to yet. This can even include games I own but which I haven't played. This year I played Shadowdark (twice), The Crooked Moon (5.5), Twilight Sword, Pendragon, Tales of the Valiant (which I do play regularly), Invincible, Pirate Borg, and Daggerheart. Of all of them, my best experiences were with Pendragon, Invincible, Pirate Borg, and Daggerheart.

Of everything I played, Pendragon was the surprise winner. This was in large part to a very good, energetic, patient game master, who communicated the particulars of and her love for the setting and rules very well. She had the four of us at the table believing we were in early medieval Londinium and acting and talking like soon-to-be knights of Arthur's round table. The system itself gamifies certain aspects of roleplaying in a way I haven't seen before, and where I was afraid it was going to remove player agency, it actually encouraged us to get into character. I was very excited by it. I already own the Pendragon starter set, core book, and one adventure, and it's moved forward on my long list of things to get to.

I played Invincible in the Huntsville Comic & Pop Culture Expo earlier this year, in a four hour session run by designer Adam Bradford. I loved the game and planned to pick it up at GenCon this year when it was available. "Superhero Season" was a shorter, two hour adventure that was every bit as fun. The Year Zero Engine from Free League is a good fit for Invincible, and superheroes in general, and I'm very excited about running this soon.

Daggerheart was the big surprise for me. I had started reading the rulebook earlier this summer, and I'd actually been disappointed. I was expecting more of a storytelling game, and I thought that I was reading something in a very, very similar space to Dungeons & Dragons which looked nearly as crunchy. I found myself thinking, "If I want to play this type of game, I'll just stick to the one I'm already playing." So I put Daggerheart aside to read Star Trek Adventures and the Alien RPG (both excellent). I'd already signed up for a seminar on designing for Daggerheart by Keith Baker, and I almost skipped it, as not having finished the rules, I thought it wouldn't be of as much value. But I treated it like work (which it is) and forced myself to go, and I found the seminar really valuable and inspiring. Then, as the last game of the con, I played "The Dying Spire", and it was fantastic. The system is far easier to understand when you play it, and it plays much faster than it reads. I'm now very excited to play more and even thinking to myself, "What could I design for Daggerheart that would fit into my world?"

All in all, it was a great convention. I learned a lot, had a lot of fun, saw a lot of friends old and new, and have come back inspired to do my best work in this wonderful field.