Gen Con 2025 Wrap-Up

Hey all, Sam here.

So, I wanted to have this post up last week, but the first two days we were home from the convention, I had to work, and then on my days off, I couldn’t get the cats off my lap (because they wanted me to make up for several days of missing out on cuddles). That’s always the hazard of going away for a couple days; the cats demand extra attention when we get back. Besides the cats, I was also just exhausted and having trouble regulating my sleep schedule back to normal.

Anyway, Gen Con 2025 is over, and wow, was it a fun time overall. We got to do a lot, including trying some new games (and buying a few of them), and of course attending some fun panels and such.

Before we went, I posted my 2025 Gen Con Schedule, so you can check out what I had planned to do if you want, and now I’m going to talk about what I actually did do…because oftentimes I end up skipping a panel or two depending on how I’m feeling. All right, let’s get into this wrap-up.

Day One

First up, the day started with breakfast at the hotel, or it would have if the selection hadn’t been abysmal. Thankfully we were up early enough that we were able to head towards the convention center and visit the lot and street with all of the food trucks. Naturally, we had to go to our friends at The Naughty Lobstah, which sounds like an odd choice of breakfast, but there was a pretty decent line, so we weren’t the only ones thinking lobster rolls for breakfast. Tator made me an Elote Lobster Roll, which was delicious, and David had a Chicken Quesadilla.

I went to all five of my panels today, and then had the Tales of the Valiant adventure. I will say that for the most part what was discussed in the panels felt a bit obvious and basic, but I still did take some notes. Perhaps I’ll share some of my favorite comments from the Writers Symposium in another future post.

We ended our day going to a Tales of the Valiant RPG adventure. Tales of the Valiant is by Kobold Press and is easily something to adapt to if you are a 5th edition D&D player. You can actually easily convert your 5e characters/monsters/adventure over to ToV, because they have a free Conversion PDF available on their website. We played a really fun adventure, from their recent Labyrinth adventure book, and our Game Master was nice enough to approve the characters we had built on our own, instead of using one of the pre-generated characters.

Day Two

For breakfast today, because it was my birthday, we went to Waffle House, and it was delicious, reasonably priced, and filling (all very important things during Gen Con).

I actually skipped a couple of my panels today so I could spend a little more time walking the vendor’s hall and trying games on the floor. I did go to Drawing Inspiration from Religions and Myth and the panel I was most looking forward to Writing Despite Existential Crisis or Despair.

I will say that the Existential Crisis panel was extremely cathartic and therapeutic, and honestly most of us at that panel were tearing up. Obviously we all know that there is so much awfulness going on in the world right now, and we know we’re not alone with our feelings, but there was something so lovely about being in a room with others and getting to truly see and feel that we weren’t alone.

We also picked up a couple of tabletop games, and ended up playing a couple of them in the hotel room that night, which is always a fun way to end the day after being at a board game convention all day.

Day Three

I went to both of my panels today, got to meet Mark Hulmes of High Rollers, and of course, went to the Critical Role live show. So today’s panels were When to Stop Worldbuilding and Structure 101, but I also managed to squeeze into the sold out 21 Days to a Novel panel as a bonus. The insights in the Worldbuilding panel were interesting, but weren’t as eye-opening as I would have hoped for. It basically boiled down to: stop Worldbuilding when you’re finished.

Mark Hulmes was SO NICE. Most of the time with signings at conventions, you stand up to meet the celebrity, they sign a thing, maybe talk for a minute, maybe take a quick photo, and that’s it. Nope, Mark was running it like a meet and greet. We got to go and sit down at a small table at the Roll & Play Press booth, chat for a handful of minutes about whatever we wanted to, and then we got my 5e Player’s Handbook signed and took a couple photos. That was such an incredibly lovely experience.

The 21 Days to a Novel panel was 2 straight hours of note taking, and this panel was about spending 21 Days of character development and then plot development, so at the end of that period, you’d be ready to start writing your novel. This presumably would make it so you could write your rough draft quickly, but I’d have to test that method first to see if I think it works for me.

And then we drove to Fishers Event Center for the Critical Role live show, which was incredible! It was Bells Hells using the Daggerheart system, and it was a lot of fun, with some serious stakes to it. I won’t talk any specifics because it’s not available for everyone yet, but I can’t wait to watch it again after Critical Role releases it on Beacon and YouTube.

Day Four

Day four started with a Daggerheart adventure, and then playing a bunch of other games around the vendor’s hall.

The tables of Daggerheart were set up for 6 players and the Game Master, and David and I ended up getting seated with a group of four. I know in these scenarios it can be easy to basically stick with your group, but these four guys so eagerly jumped into figuring out how to have all of our characters be connected and to make sure we could all have great moments for spotlight in and out of combat, and it was a really nice time.

After that we only had a couple hours until the end of the con, and we made the most of it by sampling as many games as we could (and buying a few of them). And so we bought our last games like one minute before the show floor closed, so we got to hear the closing announcement, and cheers from the remaining attendees in the hall.

Before our long drive home, we made our customary trip to Giordano’s and got ourselves some mozzarella triangles and pizza. It was delicious, as always. And then we had a five and a half hour drive home.

Gen Con Haul

Here’s our haul. The first photo is everything, all the games, accessories, books, etc. We did a pretty darn good job with getting a nice variety of options, and we’ve already discussed playing through them and bringing back our Tabletop Tuesday series here on the blog. It won’t be every week, but we do have more content coming.

The other two photos are the books I picked up, either from Author’s Avenue in the Vendor’s Hall, or as a freebie at the Writers Symposium. So I got House of the Raven by Ingrid Seymour, Dungeons & Dragon Dating by Virginia McClain, Return of the Sistah Samurai by Tatiana Obey, Structuring Life to Support Creativity: A Resource Book for Creative People by Sandra Tayler (this is a pre-press edition with bonus typos. The fully finished edition will be out soon), an ARC of The Changeling Queen by Kimberly Bea, an ARC of A Philosophy of Thieves by Fran Wilde, an ARC of When the Tides Held the Moon by Venessa Vida Kelley, and Godsrain by Liane Merciel.

All in all, it was a great four-day con, and we have already begun saving up for next year.

Well, that is all from me for today. I’m sure there will be more tabletop content coming, as well as more overdue book reviews, and hopefully some more writing content. Thank you so much for stopping by, and I’ll be back soon with more geeky content.