Gen Con 2012

Normally I watch Gen Con from afar. I’ve rapidly refreshed live blogs during interesting seminars, jealously read twitter updates, and generally wished I could be there for the fun. This year, I’m finally making the trip to Gen Con for the first time.

Gen Con Schedule

I’ll be arriving in Indianapolis on Wednesday to give myself plenty of time to get settled in my hotel room at the Conrad Indianapolis and ensure that I get to spend all day Thursday at the con. I’m signed up for most of the D&D panels and one of the D&D Next playtest sessions:

• D&D Digital Discussion – Thursday 10:00-12:00
• D&D Next: Creating the Core – Thursday 1:00-3:00
• Miniatures, Board Games, and Beyond – Thursday 5:00-6:30
• The Future of D&D – Thursday 7:00-8:00
• D&D Next: Monsters, Magic Items, and DM Mischief – Friday 10:00-12:00
• What is the Sundering – Friday 1:00-3:00
• The Future Look of D&D – Saturday 3:00-5:00
• Sorcere & the Clawrift: D&D Next Playtest – Sunday 11:00-12:30

Other than those events I’ll be wandering the exhibit hall and keeping an eye out for pick-up games and cool people to chat with.

Things to Check Out

I’m pretty much planning to just wander the exhibit hall and checking out whatever catches my eye, but there are a few games I’ll be making a point to take a closer look at. The first one on my list is the Caverns of Roxor expansion for Super Dungeon Explore. SDE is a fun dungeon crawl board game with some fantastic miniatures, and there’s a good chance that I’ll end up buying the expansion. Second on my list is stopping by the Catalyst Game Labs booth to try to get one of the Mechwarrior Online/Tactics posters and try out a demo game of Leviathans, a steampunk airship minis game. Speaking of demos, I’m also hoping to play a game of the new D&D Dungeon Command game to see if it is something I’d want to buy. A few other games I’d like to either try out or take a closer look at are 13th Age, Android: Netrunner, and Iron Kingdoms.

Predictions

The past couple years I’ve shared my predictions for Gen Con D&D announcements (2010 2011), but this year I don’t really have much interesting to say. With the announcement of D&D Next at the beginning of this year, it’s a no-brainer to predict that there will be a lot of talk about D&D Next and broadening the D&D brand into non-RPG games. I’d love to see the Future of D&D keynote announce digital versions of previous edition books, but I’m not holding my breath after expecting it to be announced last year and being disappointed.