I just realized that I’ve been back from Gen Con Indy 2010 now for at least three weeks without having told you much about it.

I arrived in Indianapolis late on Wednesday evening and checked into the hotel, calling it a night. Thursday morning I went down to the convention center to check in and pick up my badge. The lines were amazing! The pre-registration line alone went from the starting point through all the “snaking” lines they’d set up, down the hall, back by the door, and all the way around to where the press room was setup. It was the longest Gen Con line I’d ever seen. I suspect also, in retrospect, that attendance was much higher than in previous years. If not, it certainly seemed that way.

Being a member of the press, I was fortunate that I didn’t have to stand in that long line. I made my way to the press room and checked in, receiving my badge. I then walked down to the Exhibit Hall to look around.

The “Who North America” folks were there, with their Tardis prop and tons of Dr. Who themed merchandise. I’m guessing their sales were pretty decent, because a couple of items I’d intended to pick up were sold out when I went back later during the convention to buy them, and several other interesting items I saw were sold out as well.

WizKids promoted some new HeroClix figures, including a set from the Watchmen movie. Their “Colossal Dr. Manhattan” figure was very impressive and detailed, but priced at $80 it was a bit out of my range.

One company who always manages to impress me at Gen Con is Fantasy Flight Games. In 2008 and 2009, I was really impressed with what they’d done with the Battlestar Galactica franchise. I was even more impressed at how popular their demos of the game and its Pegasus expansion were. I couldn’t even sit down for a demo of either at Gen Con. Since then, of course, I’ve had the opportunity to play the Galactica game at Origins and really enjoyed it. My brother Matt, who was at Gen Con and Origins this year, played several rounds of Galactica at both. I’ve been trying to get him to provide us with a strategy guide for the game, but no luck yet.

But I digress. This year, I was interested in seeing the Dust Tactics game that Fantasy Flight is selling:

When I went to sign up for games at Gen Con, I was unable to get into any of the Dust Tactics sessions that were running. It appears that once again the folks at Fantasy Flight have another winner on their hands. Congrats! (Since I’ve been accused of sarcasm at times when it wasn’t intended, nothing I’ve said here was meant that way. I am genuinely impressed with the work Fantasy Flight is doing, with their representatives at the conventions, and the success of their product lines. No sarcasm here.)

Each year at Gen Con, there seems to be a common theme among several vendors’ products. A couple of years back, it was pirates and zombies. If you had more than one product for sale, it seemed like you had at least one with a pirate or zombie theme. This year, there seemed to be two recurring themes.

One was paper or cardstock terrain and buildings. For example, Fat Dragon Games was there with its various terrain items, including Dragonshire, E-Z Dungeons, and the like.

World Works Games presented a slightly different line of paper terrain, Terraclips:

These are basically components you assemble using plastic clips. This allows you to do things like explore up and down through a building by unclipping and removing (or adding onto) the structure as you move miniatures through it.

These folks offered paper based maps:

Another recurring theme was the whole “Steampunk” genre, which was represented by quite a few vendors in the Exhibit Hall. Like this booth, which was pretty much all steampunk-themed items:

The booth also featured this “Steam Powered Computer”:

And these folks, with steampunk (and perhaps a bit gothic?) clothing and hats:

There were some others I don’t have pictures of who had steampunk goggles, watches, glasses, and other items.

While in the Exhibit Hall, I enjoyed what I saw in several booths, including:

• Z-Man Games: They celebrated their 10th anniversary this year, and held a drawing for a collection of all their games.
• Catalyst Game Labs: Producers of Shadowrun and Battletech, their booth featured a large red mech prop. It seemed to be one of the busier booths in the hall.
• Privateer Press: Their Warmachine and Hordes games always seem to draw lots of attention and requests for demos. Their miniatures are consistently among the coolest I see at Gen Con.
• GameSalute.com: Game Salute is all about promoting specialty games. The site actually represents a network of game professionals, retailers, media members, publishers, and others.
• Hirst Arts: Makers of various molds which produce parts you can assemble into all kinds of fantasy, gothic, and sci-fi terrain.
• The Game Crafter: Something that’s gotten attention in writing circles recently is the self-publishing options. Writers no longer need to work through agents and publishers to get books to market. Using sites like Amazon’s CreateSpace, you can self-publish a book offer it for sale through Amazon.com and other outlets at pricing competitive to big-name publishers. The Game Crafter is attempting to do the same, but for those who want to manufacture board games.
• Geeky Clean: I didn’t really spend a lot of time at this booth, but I did find it interesting. They sell soap. Their soaps are shaped and labeled to represent various science fiction and gaming properties, like “Tardi-Soap” that’s shaped like a certain blue time machine, Browncoat field ration soap, and “Bar Trek” soap. Silly stuff. (Not cheap, either. A bar of Tardi-Soap, while large, is $10.00. But I must be alone in that thought, as they apparently sold out of it at Gen Con.)
• Irondie: I didn’t stop to talk to the fellow running this booth because he seemed pretty busy with other visitors, but they offer some metal dice with very unusual shapes. From what I’ve gathered off their web site, this is a dice oriented game based on the collectible dice they sell. The “collectible” element turns me off, to be honest, but I did think the dice were very neat looking.

In Part 2 of my Gen Con report, I will talk about a couple of the games I played at Gen Con. In Part 3, I’ll talk about the seminars I attended.