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Normally we'd all be sitting around the microphones, arguing over games, movies, roleplaying, and whatever other rabbit hole we decide to wander down. But this week... well... life got in the way in the best possible fashion.
We went to Gen Con.
You know, there are some places that just have an energy all their own. A baseball stadium on Opening Day. Walking into Disney for the first time. Maybe your favorite band's concert before the lights go down.
Gen Con has that same feeling.
But for many of us our favorite time isn't actually when the convention is packed.
It's setup day.
You walk through those giant convention center doors and everything is buzzing. Forklifts are backing up. Pallets of games are everywhere. Booths are half-built. Someone is hanging banners thirty feet in the air while somebody else is frantically looking for a roll of duct tape they swore they packed.
The halls are busy...
But they're not crowded.
Not yet.
That's the strange part.
You've been here before. You know exactly what these halls are going to look like in less than twenty-four hours. Right now you can actually see the floors.
Tomorrow...
You won't.
Tomorrow every aisle will be shoulder to shoulder with gamers, collectors, cosplayers, families, creators, publishers, artists, dice goblins, card sharks, miniature painters, and people carrying bags that somehow weigh more than they do.
You know it's coming.
And everyone setting up knows it's coming too.
That's what makes setup day so fascinating.
Every booth tells a story.
Somebody spent years making the game sitting on that table.
Someone mortgaged vacation time, emptied a savings account, drove across three states, or spent months designing artwork just hoping people will stop, smile, and say...
"Tell me about your game."
That's where we are this year.
Over at the Oddfish Games booth we've got a whole table full of products we're proud of. Adventure Scents. How to RPG With Your Cat. Cooking with Dice. Radiance.
And this year...
Leviathan Rising.
It's Christina Stiso's brand-new roleplaying game, and we've poured an incredible amount of time, creativity, testing, rewriting, and plain old worrying into getting it ready for people to experience.
And that's the thing about Gen Con.
Hope.
Every publisher hopes people stop at their booth.
Every game designer hopes someone sits down to play.
Every artist hopes somebody notices their work.
Every creator wonders...
"Did we make something people are going to love?"
You don't really know.
You can playtest for months.
You can have friends tell you it's great.
You can polish every page until you're convinced you've found every typo.
But none of that answers the only question that really matters.
Will complete strangers care?
That answer doesn't arrive until Thursday morning.
Ten o'clock.
The doors open.
And then...
It happens.
Thousands...
and I mean thousands...
of gamers surge into the exhibit hall.
They actually have a nickname for it.
The Running of the Nerds.
And I say that with absolute affection.
It's glorious.
People aren't running because they're escaping danger.
They're running toward games.
Toward their favorite publishers.
Toward limited editions.
Toward demos they've been waiting all year to play.
Toward that one booth they've had circled on their map for six months.
It's one of the happiest stampedes you'll ever witness.
There's nothing quite like it.
Because for four days, Indianapolis becomes the center of the gaming universe.
Now, because Gen Con has a funny way of consuming every waking hour we had planned for recording, we didn't have time to put together a traditional episode this week.
So instead...
I grabbed a couple of microphones.
I wandered the convention.
I cornered my co-hosts.
I talked with friends.
I chatted with designers.
I may have accidentally eavesdropped on a few conversations that were just too good not to share.
What you're about to hear is Gen Con as it really happens.
Not polished.
Not scripted.
Just real people experiencing one of the greatest gaming conventions on Earth.
We're going behind the scenes.
We're getting first impressions.
We're talking to people while the excitement is still fresh.
And that's where we're going to begin.
Our first guest is someone pretty special to us.
He had just finished playing one of the very first public games of Leviathan Rising.
The dice had barely stopped rolling.
The adrenaline was still there.
The story was still unfolding in his mind.
Before he had time to overthink anything, we handed him a microphone and simply asked...
"So... what did you think?"
Here's his immediate reaction, recorded just moments after the game ended.
