I love nerd conventions. I spent many years going with a large group to C4 ComicCon in Winnipeg every Halloween weekend, I have visited Essenspiel and recently the UK Games Expo, as well as many smaller cons in my area, but I have never been to GenCon or any of the other American cons. Aside from a few trips across the pond, I have stuck to Canadian cons, largely due to them being nearby and thus easy to attend.

As great as it would be to announce that I will be at GenCon this year …that is not the case, and with so many people announcing that they are going, I feel like I am missing out. To be fair, there is a good reason that I won’t make it this year. I went to the UK Games Expo in May and spent 2 weeks touring England, Scotland and Northern Ireland, and it was totally worth it, but that also means that I spent 2 weeks away from my day job and that leads to a huge pile of work waiting for me when I got back.

The odd local convention is easy enough to do. I just take Friday off of work and drive into the city, but taking an extended trip is something that I can really only justify once a year and for various reasons, Birmingham was more appealing then Indianapolis, as was Essen back in 2019. It’s not that I don’t want to go, rather it’s a matter of these business trips also acting as the closest thing I ever get to a vacation and I often want to get out of North America and experience other cultures.

Much of the problem is that my day job is my primary source of income, so I can’t just walk away from it whenever I feel like it. It also doesn’t help that summer is an extremely busy time time for me. Unfortunately, in order to attend all the cons that I want to attend, I would need to get big enough to operate Trapped Chest as my sole source of income, which of course can only happen if I can set up at some of the biggest conventions. so I find myself in an unfortunate situation, where to quote Bart Simpson, “your are damned if you do and you are damned in you don’t”.

Will I ever visit GenCon? Yes, absolutely. I kind of have to if I want to grow my company, but it won’t be this year …or next year, because next year will take me back to the UK, hopefully as an exhibitor, but at the very least as a guest.

All is not lost. I do have others cons lined up. I will be running a booth at the Minitoba Market on September 14th in Winnipeg alongside the Manitoba Board Game Designers Association. Winnipeg ComicCon is coming up in October, where I won’t have a booth, but I will be showing up, and finally the end of January, I will be hosting events at Game-itoba. I am also looking into attending ToonCon in Saskatoon next year, but that still requires some planning.

To those lucky enough to be heading to GenCon, I hope you enjoy your weekend and maybe one day I will join you.