Let’s tackle another topic about Gen Con and that’s how you tackle the convention with a plan, or without a plan. Because, I’d argue, even without a plan, that is a plan that you’ve made. Let me explain better what I mean and how that works.

Gen Con vs Smaller Conventions

I think that this is worth starting off by discussing the difference between a Gen Con and say a Dice Tower East or West or Board Game Geek Con. There are similarities. They are game focused conventions. The difference between is how people focus on the games.

Dice Tower East or West and BGG Con are much smaller and about playing games. Gen Con has an element of that, but it’s much less built for people to come along and sit down with a random group of people and play a game.

Now, you might think, what about ticketed events or the dealer hall? That is true, Gen Con, you play with random people at your events or in the dealer hall. But it’s specific spots and specifically planned spots. And that kind of leads into the crux of what I am talking about with today’s article.

Coming Up With Your Plan

In general, Gen Con offers two different plans that can be blended together as much as you want. They are the scheduled event or dealer hall plans. Let’s talk about these two ideas and how they compare and contrast and how you end up blending them at Gen Con.

Scheduled Event

This is what it sounds like, when people schedule a large number of the Gen Con event calendar events. And I see reasons for doing it, even though I tend to float towards the other extreme. But for some people it is about planning out enough events to keep them busy throughout, basically, all four days.

The big reason for doing this is that you always have an event to do. You aren’t wandering around hoping to find a demo table for a game that you might be interested in playing. Instead you know that you will play the game that you want to play, because you paid for an event ticket.

A reason not to do this is that you play in, let’s say, an average of 5 events per days over four days, that’s between $50 and $150 extra dollars spent on your trip. Maybe, to avoid the stress of finding a random game, it is worth it. But it is an increased cost to think about. And it limits flexibility in what you are doing.

Dealer Hall

The other big way is to schedule almost no events. Your event is walking around the dealer hall of Gen Con. There you find hundreds of games to demo and play. And if you are patient and wait a little bit, you often can get into a game of almost any type.

The advantage to this method is you play more games. In 2021, I think I played 40 different games or so at Gen Con. And that is a ton of games. With my example of scheduled events, I think 20 events is reasonable. That is 20 different games versus the dealer hall with 40. But I play whatever game, and that might not work for you.

Another potential downside is that there is downtime in this. You need to wander around until you find a game that looks good. And sometimes that might take a while, or even a bigger one, you find a game you like and now you need to wait for it. Potentially the newest and hottest games, or some, won’t be for demo on the floor as well.

Blended Approach

So I think that the combination approach is what most people take. I see some people clearly there only to demo on the dealer hall or buy games. That is their goal. On the other side of things, I see people who just play events. But most people try and do a blended approach.

This is gone about two ways, I think. The first is to schedule events around the dealer hall. That dealer hall has limited hours, so schedule events before it opens or right when it opens, and then in the evening after it closes. I kind of did that. I only have one mid day event. Otherwise I play at 8 AM to 10 AM for my early events or 4 PM to 7 PM for my late events. I believe the dealer hall is either 10 to 5 or 10 to 6. Either way, I keep my time generally free to wander and play games.

The other plan that I have done, this I did at my first one in 2019, is to leave a day free. I think we picked Friday as our mainly free day. But that is the day that you spend your time wandering the dealer hall and demoing games. You fit in times to wander throughout other days between events. But you specifically set aside a single day to do that. And you schedule your events the other three days.

Which Approach Is Best?

I think that any of the approaches can work out best for people. And this might sound weird because it’s very wishy-washy on how I approached it. But I think a lot of it depends on your personality. For myself, I am not outgoing, perse, but I like being around people. Gen Con gives me energy. So I see no problem in sitting down and playing a game with random strangers. In fact, I like that element of Gen Con. And it isn’t a stress because we are all there to play board games.

But if you find that very stressful, then my approach is not the one for you. You might find it much better and easier to schedule events. It gives you a fixed plan for playing games. And even though you might still be playing with strangers, it is a pre-agreed upon contract, by getting the ticket, that you’ll be playing those games.

So experiment. See what is going to work for you. Because it likely will be somewhere along that spectrum. It is really a situation where there is no right way, but what is it that works for you.

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