Coverage of Gen Con 2019. Includes cosplay planning and photos, day-by-day ramblings at the con, and other things related to the best four days in gaming in 2019!
One of the big reasons people go to Gen Con is to buy games – lots of them. And this year, I definitely bought some games! Not as many as some folks, but I did bring home a couple new additions to my game collection. Of course, I found some not-quite-game-related goodies too! My Gen Con 2019 haul is a little smaller than it’s been in previous years, but here’s just about all of it!
Some – but not all! – of the haul.
Want to hear more about what I got? Read on!
Seeing all the different cosplays at Gen Con is one of my favorite parts of the convention. Well, that and having the chance to do some cosplaying of my own! This post is all about the cosplay at Gen Con 2019.
As you all know, I brought two costumes to Gen Con this year – President Laura Roslin and Jadzia Dax. While not many people recognized President Roslin, plenty of people recognized Dax!
Left: President Roslin, right: Jadzia Dax
Apparently I did a good job with the Trill spots, as I got plenty of compliments on them. That made the 30+ minutes I spent awkwardly applying them while looking in the mirror worth it!
Now, I know you don’t just want to see the costumes I wore. However, with the LARP I was running on Saturday I didn’t have too many chances to get pictures of people on Saturday (the big cosplay day). Thankfully, Ross stepped in as photographer for me! He took loads of pictures of the costume parade, and here they are, in addition to the pictures I took while walking the con!
It’s that time of year again – time for the Gen Con 2019 report!
I’ll admit, I’ve only ever gone to Lucas Oil Stadium to play nerdy games, and not to watch the Colts…
This year was a pretty good year for Gen Con! The convention had another record-breaking year, with almost 70,000 attendees, 19,600 ticketed events, and 538 exhibitors. Plus, Gen Con and Make-a-Wish helped grant a 13-year-old boy his wish to come to Gen Con and play Dungeons and Dragons! Drake Kiderlen made the first dice roll of the convention, too, for Gen Con’s annual charity dice roll.
Drake ended up rolling two sixes!
Much like last year, I kept up with what was going on at the convention via the Fans of Gen Con Facebook group. The group kept everyone up to date on will-call line wait times, helped reunite people with lost badges, and also helped people collect badge ribbons, among other things. There was also a fair bit of complaining about the usual things – backpacks in the dealers hall, the wait times in the will-call line, how long it took to get food at the food trucks… but others in the group did their best to help keep things positive, which was good.
This Gen Con was actually a little more subdued on my end, due to Ross being sick on and off through the convention. He’s been dealing with mysterious stomach issues, and due to that he didn’t cosplay this year (which you probably noticed already, from my daily Gen Con posts). I ended up keeping a pretty light schedule as a result, just in case Ross needed me. I still had a great time, though, and got to see a lot of great games as well as some fun traditions, like Cardhalla:
Cardhalla 2019, in its early stages.
Until recently, I wasn’t sure what Cardhalla was about. People built card towers, knocked them all down at the end of the con, and somehow it related to charity – that was all I knew. Well, at the end of the convention, people toss coins at the card towers in order to knock them over, and all the coins are collected for charity! I love how Gen Con finds so many ways to give back to the community.
Cardhalla on Saturday morning. I’m bummed that I didn’t get to see it on Sunday!
Overall, Gen Con was pretty good this year. There were more vendors to check out than I could actually visit, and I got to hang out with friends I don’t see often. I got to eat tasty cupcakes from The Flying Cupcake (like the butterbeer flavored Wizards Unite!), and enjoyed tasty food at downtown Indy restaurants. I got to dress up as Jadzia Dax! And, I got to help run a LARP too!
To make things easy to find, I’ll link to detailed coverage of different aspects of my Gen Con experience here. (These links will become active as I write the posts!)
Stay tuned for the next post in my Gen Con 2019 coverage, focusing on all the goodies I got at the con!
Since Day 3 is mostly going to be covered in a post specifically about the Blue Rose LARP, and there wasn’t much to Day 4, I’m going to cover these both in a slightly belated post.
Day 3 of Gen Con was a blast! Granted, I spent most of it helping run Trials of the Rose: The Call to Adventure, but that’s what you go to Gen Con for, right? Running or playing games!
Before prep started for the Blue Rose LARP, I got the chance to wander around the convention center a bit. I saw some awesome cosplayers, and also ran into this little guy!
This is Gandalf, and he’s become a bit of a Gen Con celebrity over the years. Ross and I were behind Gandalf and his owner in the costume parade last year, and I ended up following Gandalf’s Facebook page afterwards. This sweet little dog gets to go to a lot of conventions, and probably has more costumes than I do! I’m happy I got to see him – and he definitely loves his fans, he ran right up to me as soon as I took my camera out and gave me a bunch of doggy nuzzles. I even got his pawtograph!
After wandering the convention center for a bit, it was time for the LARP!
I’ll cover most of the LARP in its own post – from the prep I did to the actual storytelling that happened. I will say, I think I did a much better job storytelling at Trials of the Rose than I did at the City of Heroes LARP last year. (Then again, I think anything would have been better than that, given that I had a nasty anxiety attack just before the City of Heroes LARP.)
I was one exhausted nerd on Sunday.
Day 4 of Gen Con didn’t really happen this year, due to Ross being sick. 🙁 He’s been struggling with stomach issues on and off for months now, and parts of Gen Con were particularly rough. On Sunday morning, he wasn’t feeling well at all, so we decided to just pack up and go home. It didn’t help that the Marriott never actually sent a bellhop up to help us with all our luggage, despite us calling twice, and never passed the word on to valet parking that we wanted to pick up our car. (Then again, I think we got off easy with hotel difficulties, given that I heard a story about a valet backing someone’s car into a window at the JW Marriott…) Once we dragged all our stuff downstairs, and once the valet brought Luna up from wherever they parked her, we headed home to look at all the goodies we got and relax a bit. (And, in my case, wash lots of costume laundry.)
And that’s the day-by-day report of Gen Con 2019! I’ll be posting more about the con in general, cosplayers at the con, the Blue Rose LARP, and my Gen Con haul later!
Today was my big cosplay day, since tomorrow is the Blue Rose LARP. And I am SO PLEASED with how my Jadzia Dax cosplay turned out.
Sure, it took me a half hour to get all those Trill spots on, but it was so worth all the work! I got so many compliments on my costume, and even on my Trill spots. Plus, the costume itself was less toasty than I thought it would be! However, I ended up not switching to Ezri midway through the day. Just about everyone I talked to said Jadzia was better than Ezri, and so I figured I may as well stick to Jadzia. Ah well – maybe I’ll do Ezri for Halloween.
I also got to help my friend Kasi turn into a Trill! Drawing her Trill spots on took a lot less time than drawing my own on, thankfully.
Kasi played a doctor in the Deep Space Ten LARP today, and I’m glad I could help her with her spots!
While wandering around the dealer’s hall, after posing for some costume photos, I stumbled across something I’ve been wanting for a while now: a Toothless kigurumi.
Of course I bought it, and I’m not going to lie, I wore it around Gen Con for a couple hours. It’s so comfy, and cute, and it has pockets! It’s amazing and I love it, haha.
Today also involved some last-minute planning for tomorrow’s LARP game. I’m really excited for it – and I hope everything goes well tomorrow!
And there you have it: my Friday at Gen Con! (It looks like I didn’t do much, but there was a lot of aimless wandering in costume, heh.) Come back tomorrow for Day 3 at Gen Con!
Day one of Gen Con has been a blast so far – and it’s not quite over yet! I’ve got some down time, though, and figured I’d post about the day so far.
Long story short: Gen Con is great, as always! I always love how I manage to find people from all areas of my life here – in the past 36 hours, I’ve seen two people from my LARP group, one of my co-workers, a bunch of folks from a professional organization I’m a member of, and my mom-in-law – all here at the convention! It’s strange and wonderful, seeing people from all the different parts of my life in the same place.
I love going into Lucas Oil Stadium to see the football field covered in games.
Today was split between wandering around the convention center/dealer’s hall and hanging out with some friends at the board game library. I’ll admit, I was pretty excited to get to play games on the field at Lucas Oil Stadium – they’re definitely the type of game I’m interested in as opposed to football, haha.
And while I didn’t end up wearing the costume for very long (multiple layers of polyester = very bad idea), I did manage to get a couple of photos in my President Roslin costume in front of this advertisement for a Battlestar Galactica game! Ross and I picked it up, and Ross is currently watching videos about it as I’m writing, heheh.
And speaking of games, I picked up a copy of Fuzzy Mage Fight – I’m excited to play it, it looks like fun! (Plus, I’m a sucker for cute furry animals.) I also picked up some Blue Rose books (surprise, surprise) and a couple of other goodies. All in all, a fun first day at the convention!
Tomorrow, I’m demoing the game Arch Ravelry, as well as finally getting to wear my Jadzia costume! I hope I don’t end up roasting in it like I did in my President Roslin costume, but if I do end up overheating, I have a secret backup Jadzia costume, just in case. 🙂
I think I love this graphic even more than the one I made for last year’s Gen Con.
It’s that time of year, folks: almost time for Gen Con. And in case you couldn’t tell by some of my previous Gen Con posts for this year, I’m excited.
So it turns out I’m actually going to do three costumes this year! I got hit with the grand idea for costume number three while I was taking a walk at work on Friday: how fun would it be to cosplay as both Jadzia and Ezri on the same day? All I need to transform from Jadzia to Ezri is a pixie-cut wig – which I found on Amazon for a pretty reasonable price. So, surprise! I’m gonna cosplay as Ezri in addition to Jadzia and President Roslin.
I’ve also got a separate costume for the Blue Rose LARP I’m helping run! Keep an eye out for Liana Masri – envoy in the Sovereign’s Finest, bard, and hopeful Aldin noble. I’ll be wearing a royal purple shirt and skirt with a beautiful spring green corset for Liana’s costume.
For those of you who might be going to Gen Con and want to say hi, here’s my costume schedule, so you know who to look for!
Once again, I’m helping Phoenix Fire LARP run a game at Gen Con – this year we’re hosting Trials of the Rose: The Call to Adventure, which is loosely based on the Blue Rose tabletop game that J’s been running for a small group of our friends for almost two years now. I’m excited – not just for getting to LARP as Liana, but also to see our small tabletop group all dressed up as our characters! And to see J in the role of Fosteno (*fancy hand swoosh*), one of the instructors from our game. (Fosteno is so fancy, he gets a hand-swoosh every time anyone says his name, haha.)
In addition to helping run a game, I’m also attending a demo of a knitting-themed game – ArchRavelry! I’m curious to see what it’s like. I’ve also got plans to wander around the dealer’s room on Friday and learn about as many games as I can. Given how my work has started focusing on how to make training fun by gamifying it, I’ll definitely be looking for inspiration for work projects.
I’m also going to Trade Day this year, with my co-worker and fellow geeky media creator, Rachel of the Five(ish) Fangirls Podcast! As I mentioned previously, our work has shifted to include exploring gamification of learning, so we’re going to a number of Trade Day events to learn about how others approach games in education. We’re both excited about being able to take things we learn at Gen Con back to our work! I may nerd out about gamifying training at some point post-Gen Con, since it’s a delightful combination of two things I really enjoy: gaming and teaching.
Like in previous years, I’ll be posting the following:
I hope everyone else is as excited about Gen Con this year as I am! (Now, time to start packing for the Best Four Days in Gaming!)
Folks, take a look at the awesomeness that is my newly-altered Starfleet uniform for my Jadzia Dax cosplay! I love it so much. (I just need to figure out what to do with the turtleneck dickie to make it lay flat…)
Ignore the bare feet, haha.
I think it’s safe to say my Jadzia Dax cosplay is ready for Gen Con! Or just about ready, anyway. I picked up my uniform (as you can see), bought the makeup I need, and now I just need to figure out how to style my hair. (It’ll probably involve some hairspray and a curling iron, I think…)
Liby at Bloomington Stitchery clearly had fun altering my Starfleet uniform. 😀
Liby’s channeling the Doctor from Star Trek: Voyager in the photo on the right, haha.
Plus, I got some practice drawing trill spots recently!
It was a lot easier to paint them on than I’d originally thought! I decided to switch to brown liquid eyeliner instead of black, though, to make it a little more natural looking. I’ll likely test out the trill spots in brown this weekend. For those who might be wanting to do trill spots of their own, I’ll put together a tutorial the next time I do a trill spot test run. (I might even try to make it into a video!)
I’m so incredibly excited about this costume, folks. While it’s nowhere near as elaborate as last year’s Sailor Moon costume, it’s still pretty dang awesome – I’m excited to get to be Jadzia Dax for a few days at Gen Con! As I’ve said before, Jadzia is my favorite Star Trek character, and cosplaying her has been something I’ve wanted to do for a while. I can’t wait to see what people think of her at Gen Con this year!
Ahh, cosplay – it’s one of the things I really enjoy doing at conventions. Every year, I spend a chunk of time thinking about what cosplays I should do for Gen Con. And of course, 2019 is no different. Back in February, I wrote about a couple of costume ideas I had, including Lapis from Steven Universe, a casual Usagi costume, and potentially resurrecting my Pinkie Pie costume. However, if you’ve been reading the blog recently, you’ll notice I’ve tossed those ideas out the window for something new.
Not only did I pick new costumes, I’ve even got a theme this year: strong women of sci-fi. For my Gen Con 2019 cosplay, I’ll be going as Jadzia Dax and President Laura Roslin!
There are a couple of reasons I switched to Jadzia and Roslin for Gen Con. First off, the hotel Ross and I originally had for Gen Con was out by the Indianapolis airport, and that meant planning comfortable cosplay outfits. That takes Sailor Moon out of the running for this year (oh god, those boots were PAINFUL), and possibly Pinkie Pie as I typically wear a corset under the costume to help everything sit nicely on my frame. I also wasn’t sure about Lapis, because she wears flip flops – which can be problematic. Flip flops aren’t always comfortable, and I’m pretty sure I don’t want unprotected toes while wandering the dealer’s hall.
So, this brought up the following question: what the heck am I going to wear to Gen Con?
You might remember from pretty much every What I’m Watching post up until May that I finally got to watch Battlestar Galactica – and one of my favorite characters is President Roslin. She stood up for what she thought was right, and did what she thought was best for the survivors of the 12 Colonies. Sure, she may have made some questionable decisions, but in Battlestar Galactica, who didn’t? Throughout the four seasons of the show, I ended up growing really attached to her character. When I realized I have a suit in my closet that looks like something she’d wear, the idea to cosplay as President Roslin was born.
I’ve also been wanting to cosplay as Jadzia for a while. She’s my favorite character in all of Star Trek, for a number of reasons. First of all, she’s determined, as shown by the fact that she didn’t give up on her goal of becoming a Trill symbiont – even after initially being rejected from the program. Jadzia’s also very confident in herself, which is something I’m continually aspiring to be. And she goes adventuring with Klingons! How awesome is that?
Of course, the most fun part of cosplaying is actually putting together each costume. While I don’t have to gather as much for President Roslin and Jadzia as I did for Sailor Moon last year, I’ve still got some costume assembly to do.
Sure, the pant legs are a little wide and the jacket sleeves are a little short, but I can totally see Roslin wearing this.
President Roslin’s costume was really easy to put together – I already have everything I need for her cosplay in my closet! Between the dark brown pinstripe suit I picked up at a consignment shop years ago and a simple white blouse-like camisole, I’ve got everything ready for Roslin right now. I’ll likely wear my leather riding boots with her costume, as likely only the toes will be visible from under the pant legs. (If not, I’ve got other shoes I can wear.) I just need to try everything on and make sure it all fits. If not, it’ll likely have to be altered. Which brings me to Jadzia…
I forgot to get a picture of myself wearing this before I brought it to be altered, but believe me, it looked like I was wearing oversized pajamas.
Jadzia’s costume is a little more complicated. The closest thing I’ve got in my wardrobe to Jadzia’s science officer uniform are a pair of Star Trek: The Next Generation science officer pajamas. Well-worn pajamas aren’t exactly what I’m looking for, so I decided to get a DS9-era Starfleet uniform from Amazon. I figured it wouldn’t be the greatest quality, since it was only $25, but it’s better than nothing, right? The last time I bought a Starfleet uniform from Amazon, it ended up being too small. So, I went a size bigger with this one.
That resulted in a Starfleet uniform that’s comically large on me. The crotch is down practically to my knees, and the arms and legs are way too long. If it were just the arms and legs being too long, I’d alter it myself. Altering the torso part, however, is a little beyond my skill level. Rather than try to fix it myself, I decided to take it someplace to get it altered. Thankfully, there’s an awesome place in town that does tailoring and alterations – Bloomington Stitchery! One of the owners (Liby, I think? I am bad at matching names with faces) nerded out with me about Star Trek and Gen Con while pinning up the uniform. I’ll be sure to post pictures again in a few weeks when the alterations are done!
And that’s where things are at with my Gen Con cosplay for 2019 so far – once my Starfleet uniform is altered, I’ll try that and my suit for Roslin on and share pictures!