r/gencon

I have not been to Gencon in several years and I do not remember anything going on in the stadium last time I was there. I signed up for a True Dungeon event which lists a stadium hall and a Magic event which shows field. So my questions is did they move all the Magic events to the field? And if I have a Magic event that ends at 8 and a TD event at 8:37 are they right there next to each other? Map seems that way and I am probably over thinking all of this.

I know my 10 events is a very small sampling, but for the first time ever they are all electronic tickets.

Has Gen Con finally turned the page I started to make GMs go paperless?

Hey all! Does anyone know which keywords may show me all play and take home events? Type of game (board,card, rpg) doesn't matter to me, and my budget is flexible since I'm trying to maximize my Gencon experience and have already signed up for Magic Pre-release and the Pokemon game, I wanna see how many of these type of events are still available!

This is my first Gencon so I’ve tried to be meticulous in my planning. But as they say man plans and Event Registration laughs.

I only got tickets for two of my initial events so I was pretty discouraged. I followed the advice from Gencon veterans on here and waited a few hours to see if any tickets were freed up but no luck. So I went back to the events list and started digging.
My mindset was that I’d have to find some second string events just to make the weekend feel worth it.

But much to my surprise i found games that I’m more excited about playing than some of my original options. I’m especially excited to play the Orc Borg multi table game. Role playing a legally distinct 40k ork on a mission to krump god may be one of the funnest ttrpg pitches I’ve ever heard!

tl;dr If you’re a first timer at Gencon don’t be discouraged that you didn’t get your initial events. Could event registration be better? Absolutely. But there are still a ton of great events happening all weekend.

Let me take you on a journey...

The day is May 17, 2026. I'm in St. Louis for the annual Geekway to the West convention with several of my gaming buddies. We're in the lobby just before 11 am local time. GenCon wishlist submission is mere minutes away, and we are frantically organizing our wishlists.

11:00: I mash my "submit" button... and I am 601 in line. Holy rusted metal, Batman! That's an amazing slot.

11:03(ish): I receive (majority) rejections, but also a few acceptances. I feel loved, at least a little.

11:15: I've spent the last 10 minutes trying to figure out how any of this garbage was possible! The numbers just don't add up. How did he get me a ticket for that event, but I also got a ticket for it? Why would it let me get two of the same ticket? I give up and pile into the van to drive back home with my friends. I'll deal with this crap later...

We spend a portion of the next four hours of our drive back to Indy saying, yet again, for the umpteenth year in a row, that GenCon couldn't have designed worse software if their goal was to design the worst software ever. (Almost all of us work in software to some extent)

Some background...

GenCon is a small company, and they haven't always been the most viable. They seem to be thriving now, and that is a good thing! All that said, their event system has never been their crown jewel. Yes, they have software people on staff, but they aren't a software company. I try to keep that in mind when I feel as defeated by their software as I do today.

For those who don't know, GenCon's event system works roughly like this:

• GMs submit events for consideration (the GMs are the angels in this story... it's hard work)
• GenCon reviews and eventually approves those events
• The events are populated into a catalog for attendees to peruse
• Attendees then add events to a wishlist, which they can organize and modify
• On a Sunday in May, at noon EST, the whole world scrambles to hit the "submit" button so they can get queued into a line to have their events assigned
• (This is the really messed-up part) GenCon's system seems to process the event requests in the least equitable way possible...
  • By assigning #1 in line EVERYTHING they asked for, then doing the same for #2, #3, etc...
  • By the time it gets to #1200, almost no events are left because the folks at the front of the line took everything.
  • So, essentially, there are a handful of BIG WINNERS, and everyone else is a loser.
    • It's basically everything we hate about corrupt capitalism distilled into software that should instead be helping everyone have fun.
• (The nearly infinite ways it could be improved will be saved for another post.)

So that's how it "works." A few people are very happy, and everyone else is confused, disappointed, defeated, and despondent. But we're used to it. It's been this way for at least a decade. Likely far longer.

Some new garbage this year!

So, back to my friends and me trying to figure out our GenCon schedules. We've been sifting through the results on and off for a few days, and we've noticed a pattern... we have WAY TOO MANY TICKETS! The system has given me a ticket for an event and charged me for it, but it has also given my friend a ticket for me and charged him for it. So the system has "decided" that I need two tickets for the same event? And this happened several times in just my 5-person friend group...

It is a mess. Somehow, GenCon's software got worse this year. It did a bad thing it has never done before. It assigned all of us multiple of the same tickets. If I requested an event with a ticket for me and one for my buddy, and my buddy did the same thing, it processed both requests and gave us each 2 tickets. That then removes those duplicate tickets from the pool, so attendees later in the processing queue couldn't get them.

Are you friggin' serious!? Your system already makes life hard for people further down the queue, but now you add this new wrinkle so that they have even fewer options?

Is it a scam?

Here's what we believe happened. Just spitballing here...

GenCon has figured out that they can print money if they sell a bunch of extra tickets to things, knowing we have to return those extra tickets, and only being willing to give "system credit" for the returns. Essentially, the buyers rack up a bunch of costs they shouldn't have been able to get, then GenCon refuses to reimburse people.

When we return our extra tickets, they get put back into the system for someone else to buy. If those people don't also have credit, GenCon gets the revenue from the second purchase as well. Meanwhile, the people who returned the tickets and have credit will have limited options for how to spend it in the system, because all of the games sell out.

So GenCon is left with a bunch of "credit" in the system that no one can use.

That's just a guess... but all of the new ways in which the software "works" add up to this as a logical conclusion.

I mean, every other piece of software we use has been inshittified, why not this one too?

We have spent no less than 10 collective hours trying to make sense of the situation and rearrange our tickets and schedules. It has resulted in nearly $250 dollars of system credit (between just 5 of us). It has taken my hobby and turned it into work.

GenCon, if you are listening...

I would help you redesign your software at no hard cost (free VIP badge for life?). It would work better for event registration, guaranteed, because there is almost no way to make it work worse.

The game was kinda like Street Fighter meets yahzee. All players threw handfuls d6s simultaneously trying to get certain combos for their characters (base set box came with four characters). If you banked A+B+⬆️+⬇️ you could use your special and damage another character's HP. I played it with a group of guys at the airport and they said they had bought it at the con so it was sold by a publisher there but I don't know if there were any events for it.

Am I correct in assuming they don't have a location assigned yet and will be sending me info or should I contact the GM or ??

They are both small (6-8 people) events so I know we just need a table somewhere, but wondering how/when/if I find out where to go.

My partner and I signed up for a Legends of Greyhawk DnD session on Saturday that's hosted by Baldman Games. It's a 4-hour session, listed as being for levels 5-10. We've played DND before, so we were fine with the idea of starting at level 5 and thought it would be fun to play a one shot with a more experienced DM while we're at GenCon .

Upon further reading, it sounds like you're supposed to have a character that you started at level 1 with and have leveled up by playing through other sessions with them. Is that accurate? Will it be impossible for us to participate in this "levels 5-10" event? If so, is there a better option out there? It sounds like we completely misunderstood how this company's events work.

Update: Thanks for the info everyone! We've only been playing DnD for a couple of years so Adventurer's League was a brand new concept for us! I ended up swapping our existing session for another with BMG that's meant for levels 1-4. We'll give it a shot and see how it goes! Good luck with your events!

Just as the title says. Please do not offer to buy or sell tickets or badges here. Posts offering to buy/sell will be removed without notice, and repeat offenders will be warned, and removed if necessary.

I wonder if I am alone here. My group now has all our events picked and we balance that with quite a bit of time to walk the hall during the day. I create a google sheet as a schedule and look it over to better plan out the days.

I was wondering if anyone else does this. I normally try and not slam events late at night and super early in the morning but this year we did that one time.

Also do you try and get reservations at any restaurants? We don't but I am curious if anyone else does that.

In general I wonder how many people are as weird as I am, with planning out almost every 30 minutes of the Con. 😄.

I will say we leave Sunday open besides going to mass in the morning. Other than that I think we have almost everything planned.

What is the Warhammer experience? Like what would I see if I went?

This is my second time going and I really appreciated the GenCon Program book the last time (I don’t know what it is, just having something physical in front of me helps). Obviously, I can’t have it delivered but do they ever post the digital copy early? If so, when?

Anyone ever do the escape rooms(the ones at Gencon and not escape rooms USA) and if so are they pretty good?