GMing at GenCon 2025

In about 9 hours I leave for GenCon! 

This year, 2025, will be my 3rd trip and I will once again be GMing some games, and of course, playing in others! my schedule is very much RPG heavy this year, only one or two board games, I think.

I am running 3 GURPS games this year at GenCon. I wrote two of the adventures myself and the third one is written by the amazing JC Connors over at 1shotadventures.com Go check those out, they're great! Or better yet, go by and see JC running two GURPS games this year! Sadly I was not able to get tickets for either of his games, I do hope I get a chance to go by and see him!

This year, I also convinced my cousin and long-time gaming partner, Ben, to run a GURPS game as well. He's run it a couple of times here locally and is ready for the big leagues! Wish him luck. 

With hopes of spreading our love of GURPS to even more people this year, we have joined forces with a couple other GURPS GMs and are now a part of the Nick and Nose World Tour! These two guys are great, they are the ones responsible for the GURPS Game Aid for Foundry, and Nose has a whole series of YouTube videos about How to Play GURPS... check that out HERE!

My GenCon GM Schedule looks like this:

Those The Comet Brings (GURPS) Kicking off GenCon Thursday at 9am! Written by JC Connors over at 1shotadventures.com

Cold Shadows Over Valley Forge (GURPS) immediately following Thursday at 1pm

Bitter Song of the Black Mangroves (GURPS) Satruday at 6pm

and at the table right next to mine is Ben running his very first GenCon game

Nightcrawlers (GURPS) Saturday at 6pm

There are EIGHTEEN GURPS games being run at GenCon this year, woohoo! If you're going to GenCon I hope you play a GURPS game (with me or one of the other GMs!)

Our partners Nick and Nose are doing their World Tour again (with US as part of it!) and running quite a few games between them again.

The Wizard King's Challenge - Year 2 - Thursday at 2p and Saturday at 4p

Problems in Xanth - Friday at 10a and Sunday at 10a

Saethor's Bane - Friday at 2p and Sunday at 10a

Toys in the Attic - Friday at 8p

Plus quite a few other GURPS games, even some 3rd Edition games out there:

Honey Tree of Pelion (run by JC himself!) Thursday at 1p

Steampunk Cairo - Thursday at 1p

Steampunk London - Friday at 1p

A Galaxy Far Away 3e Star Wars!!! (I'm playing in this one!) - Saturday at 9a

Gotham '39 (another one run by JC - I'm SO SAD I couldn't get into this one!) - Saturday at 1p

Steampunk Sydney - Saturday 1p

The Alexander Incident (Star Trek - Im playing in this one too!) - Sunday 9a

Wish I could have gotten into some more GURPS games... Lucky Ben got into 7 as a player (one of mine) and of course the one he's GMing himself.

Can't wait to roll those 3d6s and have some FUN at GenCon!

GenCon 2024 Recap

 

(Disclaimer: I don't get jack from any links posted on this site. Just wanted to help people find some stuff I thought was cool!)

Other Note: I found this half finished draft on my blog, guess I never posted it up from last year... we'll just in time for GenCon 2025... I present my GenCon 2024 Wrap Up!

I have successfully leveled up after the completion of my 2nd GenCon! Again, what a fun time. I was part of another record-breaking crowd this year... total attendance was over 71,000! I am also now an official GenCon GM, having run 3 separate RPG events. Two for GURPS, and one for OSE. I also traveled with my cousin, Ben, exposing him to his very first GenCon.

So here is a rundown of my GenCon'24 stats:

• Slept 22.5 hours (tue-sat night) ~ more than last year, but I went a day earlier, so actually I slept LESS this year at the con
• Drove about 9 hours/ 500 miles
• Attended 15 con game events (was signed up for 17 but one cancelled and one we skipped due to exhaustion)
• GMed three 4-hour RPG sessions this year. Two for GURPS and one for Old School Essentials. Both scenarios were written by the wonderful JC Connors of One Shot Adventure
• Played over 43 hours of actual gaming at a table plus the 2 hours in the True Dungeon and another hour in a pickup game in the hallway.
• Played 1 game in the hallway with Ben (River Valley Glassworks)
• Participated in my 2nd LARP - an ancient Roman garden party where I was the goddess Ceres in disguise... and completely betrayed by everyone around me!
• Joined my first True Dungeon party as a Bard. We met up with Don from my home gaming group and 7 others to delve into the Tome of Terrors Redux.
• Bought only 2 games this year, Nut Hunt and River Valley Glassworks (by my favorite... Allplay!)
• Stood in lines less than half an hour (this year I avoided the Will-Call and Merch lines alltogether)
• Walked almost 70,000 steps Wednesday to Sunday! (Less steps despite being there Wednesday as well due to more RPGs which were longer sessions)

I felt like an old pro this year at GenCon, though it did take a minute to get re-acquainted with where everything was. Ben and I went to the convention center Wed afternoon after checking in to our (really shit-hole) hotel so I could show him around a bit. This was quite helpful to him as his first several game slots were without me the next morning. And sadly, I took far less pictures this year. I will try to do better next year snapping some pics.

So, here's the complete list of Con games I played this year:

Thursday 

• 10a-2p GURPS: The Final Voyage of Drængr Thar. This was my very first GenCon GMing experience. I was nervous leading up to it, but once we started we had a LOT of fun. Only 3 of the 6 players signed up actually showed, sadface... but one of them was Jeff W (of Nick and Nose fame). The players all had a blast unraveling the creepy "viking-style" mystery.
• 2-6p OSE: The Final Voyage of Drængr Thar.  And right away, into my 2nd GenCon GM experience. Ran the same adventure but in a different system. This table was FULL. All 6 players showed up and they were ready to game. Had a whole host of characters being brought to life by this crew. Earned my first Con-Kill when the lead-from-behind Young Haldor decided to put his money where his mouth was and charged the wight king.. only to die the very next round! Very dramatic and cool!
• 6-11p GURPS: Leviathan Files: Mother's Milk. GMed by Nick Coffin, PI (Jeff W). A continuation of the 6 Guns and Sorcery game I played in last year. Full action weirdness happening out in the old west and the Cypher Bureau has sent us to figure it out. I played the blind Martial Artist and Ben drew the Gunslinger. Was pretty cool. Investigating disappearances then ending up inside an alien spacecraft!
• 11p-12a We were supposed to play in a social deduction game but after 13 hours of straight RPGing...Ben actually RPed like 15 hours that day... we went back to the hotel and crashed.

Friday

• 9-1p GURPS: Canyon of the Snow Cairns. My 3rd and final GMed game. I ran a group of 5 through this creepy Ice Age horror adventure. The group really got into following all the little clues that were places along the way. Somehow, they managed to keep their sanity (mostly) intact as they faced off against otherworldly foes, traveled through a portal to another realm, saved their missing chieftain, and then made it back home. They gave me a standing ovation at the end of this one. That felt pretty fucking good!
• 1-3p The Sting of Decay. A short 2 hour RPG scenario in the Seeds of Decay campaign setting for 5e. It was a fun little adventure, though some of the other players didn't seem too into it. We did get to meet Daryll T. Jones, the author of the setting, who was running games in the next room.
• 5-6p Deadlands: Dark Ages. A super short, one encounter showing off the soon to be released Deadlands: Dark Ages for Savage Worlds. Took too long to get going and we had to jet out early to get across the con to get to our LARP. I would like to look at this one more, the setting seems dark and cool!
• 6-11p CoC LARP: Nectar of the Gods by Elder Entertainment. A ancient Greek garden party hosted by ME, playing as the Goddess Ceres in disguise, trying to lure everyone to their deaths to keep the souls flowing to the Underworld to keep my in-law, Hades, happy. Wild and crazy time, this was. I think EVERYONE betrayed EVERYONE at least twice in this one! This was run by Randy, a fellow player from an online Pulp Cthulhu game I'm in. 
• 11p-12a Savage: A Game of Survival. Then we rushed back over to the ICC for this cool game. We were tired, but since we skipped the late game the night before, we thought we should follow through on this one. Our team won.

Saturday

• 8a-12p Harry Potter Year 5 - 5e. I loved the idea of this, but playing through this 5e game skinned for Harry Potter just left a bad taste in my mouth. To be fair, I believe it was set up to be played by kids, though there were no kids in our group. Ben and I sat and played this together. Next year I am not playing ANY 5e games!
• 12-2p Pathfinder Revloution by Steve Jackson Games. I really liked this game. A combination board game, resource management, and social deduction set on the backdrop of Korvosa in the Pathfinder RPG setting of Golarion. I would like to own this game myself, though not sure who all would actually play it with me. Played this one with Ben as well. 
• 2-3:30p Through the Desert. Finally got to learn how to play a board-game I had bought off a kickstarter. Played a couple of rounds of this classic game with Ben and a couple con randos who were really nice. Can't wait to play this one again!
• 4-8p Tomorrow's Messenger (Cypher System RPG) This was a wild and crazy powered RPG set in some high tech future world time-traveled to the past with cyborg dinosaurs. The game seemed fine, the setting was wild, but the GM was a total worthless waste of time. He didn't know what he was doing. He literally fell asleep multiple times during the game, sometimes in the middle of him telling us things. There were a couple pre-teens and their dad playing with us and they were having a GREAT time, otherwise Ben and I would have walked away during a break cause it was just so much horrible!
• 8-9:25 Break Time We took a break in the hallway and played River Valley Glassworks that I bought earlier in the Vendor Hall. It killed some time until it was our time to meet up with fellow local gamer Don to enter the.....
• 9:25-11:25 Tome of Terror: True Dungeon Well this was an experience to be sure. Don really likes them. I liked it too, but was a bit unsure of what all I was doing. I did enjoy it. Will I do it again? Maybe sometime, but it carries a pretty heavy price tag!

Sunday

• 10a-12p Car Wars 6e Got Ben to the table to play his first game of 6e Car Wars. He beat me (of course he did!) but it was fun! Fiery wrecks are the way to go!
• 12-1p Break Time One last walk-through of the Vendor Hall before our last game at GenCon 2024.
• 1-4p A Grimm Outlook on the Outpost: Vast Grimm Played this cool and stylish grim-dark scifi game of space pirates, brainworms, and lots and lots of chaos! Run by one of the dudes that made the game. Very cool. We escaped the space station, stole a sweet new ride, and made it out alive.. until next time, that is!

All around, another great year at GenCon. Was glad to have Ben there with me, he enjoyed it so much he plans to return next year and even GM a GURPS game or two as well! Cannot wait!

(Disclaimer: I don't get jack from any links posted on this site. Just wanted to help people find some stuff I thought was cool!)

GURPSing at GenCon 2024

I am getting excited for August and GenCon! This year will be my 2nd trip and this time around I plan to GM some games as well as play as many as I can.

I am running 3 games this year at GenCon, two of them GURPS games and all three of them written by the amazing JC Connors over at 1shotadventures.com Go check them out, though not the ones I'm planning on running if you're gonna play!

My GenCon GM Schedule looks like this:

FINAL VOYAGE OF DRÆNGR THAR (GURPS) Kicking off GenCon Thursday at 10am!

FINAL VOYAGE OF DRÆNGR THAR (OSE:AF) immediately following Thursday at 2pm

CANYON OF THE SNOW CAIRNS (GURPS) Friday morning at 9am

There are a NUMBER of other GURPS games being run as well. If you're going to GenCon this summer, come play a GURPS game (with me or one of the other GMs!)

Nick and Nose are doing their World Tour and running quite a few games between them again (you may know them from their amazing work on the GURPS Foundry Module)

The Leviathan Files: Mother's Milk - Thursday at 6p

You Are Not Alone - Friday at 10a and Sunday at 10a

The Lost Temple of Tyr - Friday at 2p

The Wizard King's Challenge - Saturday at 10a

The Leviathan Files: Gallows Humor - Saturday at 6p

Plus quite a few other GURPS games, even some 3rd Edition games out there:

Bug Zappers, 3E - Thursday at 1p

The Watery Depths - Thursday at 3p, Friday at 10a, and Friday at 3p

A Very Normal GenCon Gaming Session - Friday at 11a (this one looks intriguing!)

Island Invasion, 3E - Friday at 1p

Nazi Hunters, 3E - Saturday at 1p

GenCon 2023 Recap

I have arrived at the promised land!

(Disclaimer: I don't get jack from any links posted on this site. Just wanted to help people find some stuff I thought was cool!)

I survived Gencon, not sure how, really. It was just SO MUCH! After waiting well over half of my life (and I'm nearly 50 these days) I can say it was worth it! I had SO MUCH FUN and played SO MANY GAMES during the Best Four Days in Gaming! Was so excited to be one of the over 70,000 attendees at this record breaking event and look forward to returning year after year!

So here is a rundown of my GenCon23 stats:

• Slept 17 hours (wed-sat night)
• Drove about 9 hours
• Attended 15 con game events (was signed up for 16 but one host did not show!)
• Played over 40 hours of actual gaming at a table
• Played 3 more games at the hotel
• Participated in my first LARP - a 1930s Call of Cthulhu game
• I met one of the players from a game I play in for the first time in real life (He was running the LARP above.. Hey Randy!)
• I met one of my PbP players for the first time in real life. (Hey Rudolf! Thanks for the Con tips!)
• I actually WON one game at the Con (Redwood!)
• Scored three free games, all from playing in the Catalyst Games room
• Stood in lines less than 1 hour (food, will call, bathroom, merch, etc)
• Walked almost 80,000 steps Thursday to Sunday! (I'm quite impressed by this stat!)
• Lost one driver-side windshield wiper when it FLEW off my car while driving through a rainstorm in the middle of IL before sunrise. Had to limp along to 3 different exits until I found a gas station that had some Rain-X! Sheesh!

The sun rises over GenCon 2023

Overall, GenCon is just HUGE. Initially overwhelming, but quickly I got the hang of it. I brought food and mostly just ate my own stuff, though I did partake in the refillable GenCon rCup. That got me 1$ refills from anywhere in the facility. I had planned to NOT even go into the Vendor Hall, but apparently that isn't really possible. I bought a couple of games and a GenCon23 shirt. I bought Habitats and Kubuto Sumo (both by AllPlay) and I bought Bigfoot: Roll and Smash. I played Habitats and Bigfoot during the con and liked them both so much that I had to get them. Kubuto Sumo I head some folks talking about at the AllPlay area and I looked it over and had to snag it (we've already played it twice since I've been home. 

My first look into the Exhibition Hall. That's a LOT of games, you can only see about 25% of the room here!

So, here's the complete list of Con games I played:

Thursday 

• 

  Genotype

  10a-12p Genotype - A Mendelian Genetics Game. Was invited to this by a player in one of my PbP games. Thanks, Rudolf! In this one, you are trying to grow new variations of plants by genetically modifying them by crossbreeding. Historical, strategic, and fun!
• 1-5p GURPS: Six  Guns & Sorcery hosted by Nick and Nose. A Deadlands style GURPS session. I took the role of Aric the Sorcerer and the group went out looking to solve some supernatural issues in the Old West. Nick and Nose were awesome GMs!
• 6-10p Zombie World: Blood in the Streets. Narrative card-based RPG. The premise was cool, surviors in an abandoned prison trying to stay away from zombies. Got to sit with my guy Don (from my home game group) and play. The GM was a bit over the top and the style of play was not my prefered, but it was entertaining.
• 10p-12a Betrayal at Baldur's Gate. A cool re-skin of one of my favorites.. Betrayal at the House on the Hill. Played with a really fun couple, they were really nice and the game was cool. I was NOT the traitor and me and the husband got to gang up on his wife when she turned into the Queen of Goblins and tried to take us out! We were victorious. 

  

  GURPS: Six Guns and Sorcery

Friday

• 8-10a Shadow Run: First Taste. A quick Shadowrun scenario to get into the game. I've always loved the idea of the setting, just never actually PLAYED the game. Now I have!
• 10-11a Sail. A cool little 2-player cooperative game by AllPlay (which I realize is one of my favorite game companies, since I own 10 of their games and 2 game bags! Formerly BoardGameTables.com) Ive got Sail (and some others) coming from a recent Kickstarter so I thought I'd have a shot at playing first!
• 11a-12p Habitats. Awesome AllPlay game. This was convenient, I just moved over a table from the Sail game! I went to the Vendor Hall and bought this one after playing.
• 1-3p more Shadowrun fun! Just working on building my own character. Quite a complicated system, didn't even get done with the character in 2 hours!

• 

  The Thing

  6-11p CoC LARP: Now Happy Days Are Here Again by Elder Entertainment. This one was something. A 5 hour LARP. I've never played anything like this before. There were close to 30 people in this event. I was a reporter attending an even where the Governor said he could turn lead into gold in 19302 Louisiana. It was a lot of fun, though I am not sure I did a very good job. Quite a few people died, I "smoked" a lot of candy cigarettes and ate invisible hors d'oeuvres. A portal opened to the dreamlands, there were sacrifices just wild! But a lot of fun! This one was run by a fellow player from an online Pulp Cthulhu game I'm in. Was great to put a face with a voice.
• 11p-12a The Thing: Infection at Outpost 31. Super cool. I've played the newer version of the game (once) but this one was just as cool. Less stuff going on, more social deduction and paranoia! We won, though no thanks to me, I thought the OTHER GUY was the infected one. Good thing I was out-voted before we flame-thrower-ed him!

Saturday

4-way collision in Car Wars

• 8a-12p even MORE Shadowrun: Friendships Never Grow Rust. Played in a full-on Shadowrun mission. Super cool. We were successful. I caught on to the game pretty well and fit in fine with some veteran SR players.
• 12-2p Car Wars 6e. Finally got to sit down and play this new Car Wars game. I've been a fan since junior high and have had this new huge set for several years since the Kickstarter, but have yet to play it. Check that off the list! It was fast and fun. One player was hell bent on just pushing the limits and crashing into everyone as fast as he could! At one point, all 4 cars were touching in one big collision in the center of the arena. It was way cool, nothing like the old Deluxe Edition game from way back, but it's the right game for right now, I think. Sadly, I think there are too many other cool car combat games out there (looking at you Thunder Road: Vendetta) for this to really go anywhere.

  

  Let the Car Wars begin!

• 3-4:30p Bigfoot: Roll and Smash. Why would you not sit at try this game out. The dice were actually little rubber tires that you roll. Create a drive path and then go out and smash some cars, skid through the mud, and fly off some ramps. I ran out and bought this immediately after playing as well.
• 5-9p Touch of Evil, The Supernatural Game Sadly, the GM didn't show, and after over half an hour, they brought the game over with someone who had never played it and started reading the rule book. The other gathered players all seemed a bit apathetic and uninterested, so I excused myself and caught up with the group I was staying with for dinner and some games back at the hotel. Had more fun doing that!

  

  Tire Dice for Bigfoot

Gaming in Lucas Oil Stadium

The view from our balcony

Sunday

• 8a-12p Knights of the Dragon #6 Lair of the Liche A DnD3.5e game in a Living Campaign. This game COULD have been good, but wasn't. There was a good group of players but the GM sucked. He was very rude and off-putting. Often he was straight up adversarial. The adventure was short (4 hour slot, ended after an hour and a half. Nearly a TPK on multiple occasions. There were lots of puzzles but no clues on how to solve them. I was really hoping this one was gonna be good. Alas.
• 12-2p Tortuga 1667 Great game by Facade Games. I own this one but had never played it. Glad I did. I was a really neat little game that you can play with a few or a lot of people. 
• 2-3:30p Redwood So this one was the sleeper. I picked it because I just didn't want to leave the Con yet. I had seen a few advertisements around and just went with it. This one was my absolute favorite of the Con. Fantastic game play (very unique to me) beautiful artwork, and really interesting game premise. I can't wait to get this game on my shelf. The rules were super simple though the gameplay and scoring will take some figuring out in order to correctly strategize.

Redwood

impromptu lightsaber battle

Redwood

The of course, there was all the other amazing stuff to look at. Food was everywhere, though I mostly ate my own food to save a couple bucks. The many cosplay costumes were super interesting. There were thematic musicians and bands on every corridor-corner. I walked past numerous live-recording podcasts, youtube shows, game shows, etc. The card city being constructed was super amazing (they knocked it down for charity Saturday night by having people thrown change at it... sadly I missed seeing that) They were building a really sweet looking moon lander out of balloons. It was very large! While I was eating lunch one day, a lightsaber battle broke out right in front of me, I was almost sliced right in half!

The guys I stayed with were great, though I didn't see them TOO much. Still had a good time hanging out Saturday afternoon/ evening drinking, eating, and playing some games. I hope I didn't snore too loud, BVH!

Well, I think that's it. I can't wait to get back to Indy next year for GenCon 2024! I hope to make this a yearly thing, though going forward, I will probably take a (slightly) more relaxed approach, but hell, this was my FIRST TIME and I wanted to get my money's worth!

My GenCon Haul. Several were freebies, the rest I bought.

Some sort of Robot-Rally

Musicians

Ursula cosplay

Balloon Lander

Main corridor and Balloon Lander

(Disclaimer: I don't get jack from any links posted on this site. Just wanted to help people find some stuff I thought was cool!)

GMjasoN! goes to GenCon

In a very rare moment, I make a non-session report blogpost to celebrate my eminent departure for Indianapolis, Indiana. For the first time in my life, I will be attending GenCon! I have wanted to go to this event since I was about 10 years old and learned about it from an ad in Dragon Magazine. Every year, my cousin and I talked about it and dreamed of going when we were older. Then we got older and it just seemed that so many excuses and reasons appeared to NOT go. I drifted out of gaming for many years, being busy with life, music, work, and building a family. Finally, I got back into gaming and the GenCon dream was reignited. Still, year after year, excused and reasons for not going popped up. Eventually, I said no more excuses and bought myself a ticket, booked a place to stay, and got really excited.... then Covid happened. GenCon was cancelled and when it came back, I wasn't ready to attend for a couple more years. But THIS YEAR, I AM GOING! I have a packed schedule, staying with a good group of guys (boardgamers, not RPGers, sadly) I have 1 GURPS game on my schedule, get to do a couple of games with some of my never before met in real life online gamer friends, and participating in a Cthulhu LARP game. I am so excited! I hope you're going to GenCon, too, maybe I'll see ya there!