GenCon is a convention in Indianapolis that calls itself “the best four days in gaming”.  The convention center and several of the downtown hotels host hundreds of thousands of people and thousands of events round the clock from Thursday morning to Sunday afternoon.  There are scheduled game sessions for an huge selection of games.  There are tournaments for card games (al la Magic the Gathering)  There are board game events and miniatures games.  An entirely different area is set aside for role play game sessions.  Many of these sessions are pay-to-play.  You purchase tickets for $2 per ticket (these are called generic tickets) and you can use those generics to get a seat at a table to play a particular game.

There are also film festivals, workshops for writers and game designers, meetings for game industry workers, and even a schedule of events for spouse who are not into gaming.  The spouse track includes things like massages, cooking classes, etc.

The biggest draw for GenCon is the exhibit hall.  Here is a massive retail space where companies big and small can sell their games and accessories.  Most big companies make new product announcements at GenCon and sometimes you can pick up those new games at their booth before the game hits the store shelves.

If you plan to go to GenCon you need to buy your badges and book a room in January.  The convention is late July/early August but the hotel rooms sell out within 12-20 hours of opening up.  This year they tried a new system to get more people into hotels downtown but we still didn’t get anywere near convention center and I booked in late January.