Gen Con 2026: Photo Journal

Gen Con 2026 was one to remember.  It broke attendance records, brought over 83 million dollars to downtown Indianapolis, and featured a tornado warning about 30 minutes before the vendor hall closed on Saturday.   In reflection of the convention, it is probably my favorite of the five Gen Cons I have attended.  Here are some of my favorite images of my experience: 

Checking out the board at the D&D Tower

Indy Gets Behind Gen Con

Fourth Wing dragon art

Gen Con is always magical

Time for adventure!

Adventure Over!

My favorite new game at Gen Con

No detail missed at the Witchlight Carnival

The Dungeon Masters stage

The destruction of Cardhalla

Farewell Gen Con, until next time!

Gen Con Days 1 and 2 Reflection

Walking into the hotel room at 11:30 PM with tired feet from miles of walking, sore shoulders from carrying bags of games, and a heart filled with joy from new and old friends laughing, strategizing, and putting all “to the roll of dice” means Gen Con is here, and it is the midway point. A weary body and buzzing mind are in reflection of what I have experienced and in planning what I still want to do. For now, I reflect on my top moments of the first two days of Gen Con 2026.

5. Dungeons and Dragons shares plans:

From the D&D Tower on West Washington Street, company leaders announced Dungeons & Dragons: World of Warcraft, and a revival of the gritty, post-apocalyptic D&D setting Dark Sun. Writer, producer, and actor Joe Manganiello took the stage to announce D&D Icons will bring Margaret Weis, Tracy Hickman, and Luke Gygax back to creating classic settings. R.A. Salvatore brings back the Forgotten Realms hero Drizzt Do Urden. Greyhawk was highlighted in the reveal of Greyhawk: Crown of the Witch Queen, where we will experience the ascent the very famous Tasha. Maybe the biggest reveal, at least the one with the most questions, was made by Darth Vader. He announced a partnership between Dungeons and Dragons and Star Wars in 2027. Vader said nothing more other than to stay tuned.

4. G.I. Joe Operation: Crimson Masquerade:

Friday opened with espionage as I joined a G.I. Joe RPG adventure. Five of us took on the roles of various Joes, as we went undercover to stop an arms dealer at a Metropolitan Art Museum Gala. We discovered Major Bludd was planning to sell state-of-the-art weapons systems to a foreign power. Our GM was awesome at teaching us the mechanics of the game and encouraging a game with serious role-play. Then, he let us set up a very cinematic fight at the end to top off the session. Let’s just say the final battle would be great on screen but was probably even more epic in our imaginations.

3. Dungeon Crawl Classic:

There isn’t much to say beyond this was a simple dungeon crawl of zero-level (basically civilians) characters who are certain to die. Not much story, not much role-play, we simply go in, fight, and try to survive. The laughs and action, with new and old friends at the table, made this a game to remember!

2. The Four Doors:

This may be my favorite game discovery of Gen Con 26! The Four Doors was created by Matt Leacock, Matthew Riddle, and Ben Pinchback. Matt Leacock is known for his very popular game Pandemic. I learned and played this game with four enthusiastic strangers who were fun and ready to play. We worked together to try to keep the evil shadow from closing the four doors of a magical lighthouse. Our job was to collect four sacred treasures to protect the doors, then cast a spell to ignite the lighthouse to stop the sinister shadows. This collaborative game was easy to learn, but we found it challenging to win, which is a good thing!

1. The Stars Come Out:

I had the chance to meet, face-to-face, authors Jim Zub and Stacey King, whom I have interviewed several times on the podcast Teachers in the Dungeon. While waiting in line to see Margaret Weis and Tracy Hickman, creators of DragonLance, I met Jesse Theiler and Joelle, creators of The Dungeon Cocktail Experience. Then Joe Manganiello stepped in front of me to talk to Margaret and Tracy. I came face to face with Joe’s dog Bubbles, with whom Joe carries everywhere. He turned to say hi to me, and I gave him a hi right back. It was a good afternoon checking the box of “rubbing elbows with celebrities.”

As I finish writing this, I have crossed the midnight hour, sliding into early Saturday morning, which means we have officially passed the halfway mark of Gen Con. I plan to post the top 5 moments of days 3 and 4 on the normal day Seeking Positivity In The Galaxy posts, which is Tuesday, August 4.  

Dungeon Crawl Classic: A Wild Time!

Our monthly D&D group had to take a hiatus as our DM, was unavailable.  Not a big deal, it happens.  We normally just pull out some board games or just take the month off.  Not this month!  

One of our players has been running a Dungeon Crawl Classics game in our school game club and thought it might be fun for our group to give DCC a try.  We were all up for it, so when Friday night came craziness ensued.  

For those who aren't familiar with Dungeon Crawl Classics, it is, as the name implies, a straight-on dungeon crawl.  What does that look like?  Move into a room, fight, investigate and move on.  That may be simplifying it a bit, but actually, probably not.  One thing that didn't take long getting used to was character death.  All of the characters start at zero level.  We were playing ordinary townsfolk like Squire, Rutabega Farmer, Hunter, Cheesemaker, Locksmith, and our favorite Gongfarmer.  There are many more, but the point being these characters are regular people so hit points and bonuses are quite low.  The max hit points on any character was 4 and the fewest was 1.  They all might as well have been one, because almost any hit was a death.  

Marc our game judge (that is what they call the Dungeon Master in DCC) handed out four characters for us to start with.  I knew things were going to be a little crazy when I saw that the stack of pre-made characters was quite large.  Marc gave us a bit of a preview for the game and we were off.  The first room we examined had some statues that we all investigated and a negative energy field of some sort killed off about 6 characters, two of them mine.  Great start!  The night went fast as we got the hang of fight, investigate, survive, move on.  We also got used to character death.  I was the worst about it as I lost my original four pretty quickly.  I drew two more characters...lost them.  Then I drew two more and one of those survived the end.  A couple players, Paul and Nate, managed to keep an original character to the end.  Careful, they were, or maybe they were just lucky.  

I think what made this so fun is that we were playing with a group that has been playing Dungeons and Dragons for a few years and we caught on to what each other was doing pretty quickly.  The other aspect to the fun was, even thought it was kill or be killed and characters didn't last long, we still tried to build in some role play.  This is when things got crazy.  You could have some fun with the personalities of the characters

because you knew the likelihood of them hanging around was pretty slim.  So, why not have a little fun?  Olfana the Rutabega Farmer just wanted to get back to her plants, while Grave Digger, Bob Shovelsmith, was excited at the job security the group was creating for him.  These conversations teetered on the ridiculous, but on a Friday night hanging out with friends, why not let loose?  Dungeon Crawl Classics did just that.