Hello everyone! I wanted to do a quick rundown of Gen Con 2023. I have attended this convention since 2001–so this was my 21st year, not counting the online-only version that I did not attend and the year I decided against attendance in 2021. I found several lovely things, including a future book to review for this blog.

I attended Thursday, Friday, and Saturday. On Sunday, I was wiped and decided to stay home and sleep.

I’m looking forward to writing about The Fool’s Path. This is the first installment in a fantasy series about an heir to the House of Wands who must go through a personal quest that is based on the Major Arcana. I can already picture a friend of mine tapping the tips of his fingers together and saying ‘you don’t say…’. No promises on the quality of this book–since the text is rather large and the book is a bit thin. But, I’m at least going to give it a shot based on the premise alone. 

I also grabbed a lovely card mat. I don’t usually use them for gaming, but for oracle and tarot photos. Although, it does belatedly occur to me that one in this blog’s color-scheme would have been a better choice. Insert Midwestern Ope Here. In the event that this blog ever has more than 6 followers, maybe I’ll design an official card mat as some merchandise. 

I got a sample of Bismuth and a lovely card for my familiar. Although, I very much doubt her thirst for glittery and sparkly objects will ever be quenched. Included in the phat loots for this year are a new paint pad and new detail brushes to replace ones that I had been using since undergrad. There was literally nothing that could save those old brushes. They were cheap synthetics–and these new ones are also cheap synthetics. One of the vendors asked if I wanted to see some Sables–and I told him to keep them the hell away from me. Do I look like the type of person who could afford Sable brushes? Absolutely not. 

Last Sabbath is a game that can be played with friends or solo, and it is a journaling game based on prompts. I have the inklings of an idea about using journaling games as a method of shadow work. More work needs done on that before I’d feel comfortable posting about it. 

Gen Con 2023 had its fair share of Nonsense. Off the top of my head, the two largest unfortunate happenings were the theft of a whole-ass pallet of TCG cards before the event, and the entire mess of Lorcana. The Mouse is trying its hand at trading card games, and oh my goodness did people get heated. Remember, it’s never worth getting into a fist fight over a trading card game. And Lorcana has already joined the ranks of slug-fest games–even before its official launch. Maybe now convention security will have a reason to move from the Yu-Gi-Oh! hall. 

And maybe in the future I can meet some of you readers at a convention.