Badges of Geekness

There are certain things that gaming geeks know; like that GenCon is one of the biggest geek conventions held in the United States. True geeks know that the convention's title is short for "Geneva Convention", so titled for the fact that the first GenCon was held in Lake Geneva, Wisconsin (1968). As a miniature wargame convention, the title also paid homage to those same historical conventions of Geneva, Switzerland. I wonder how obscure this reference is to the folks who now attend GenCon, as it no longer has strong ties to its historical miniatures foundations? Sure there are still tried and true wargamers heading to GenCon, but these are only a small fraction of the attendee population. The con's primary purpose is not wargames.

And so it was that from those hex-based wargames of yore came Chainmail, the small booklet that was one of the first to outline sword-n-sorcery wargaming. Then Chainmail begot Dungeons & Dragons. And D&D begot the whole pen-n-paper rpg craze. And then all this morphed into online rpgs and tactical warfare games. Now, this is a big, bruising summary of the industry and history of GenCon, which has not been held in any town called Geneva for many, many years.

My initial point was that there are badges of geekness.

Knowing that GenCon is short for Geneva Convention is one of them.

Wisconsin, not Switzerland.

200

Shortly after the last post and the comment about having a bean bag chair made of dice, I got a shipment of 200 dice delivered to my doorstep. This summer we're releasing the next wave of the WEGS Kreator Kit, which will include 5 dice per set. Dice are all stamped "Fabulous Las Vegas", appropriate for a night of WEGS-ing it up! The new Kreator Kit is pretty slick with an upgraded carrying case and heavier poker chips. It contains everything we use for our con games (pawns, markers) and will instantly let folks start playing along at home! It's everything a Kreator needs to get the game started in a jiff (and it's pretty handy for use with any adventure game). Folks might even just use the kit for their home poker games...

Play WEGS!