Yesterday, I returned with my eleven year old daughter from my third Gen Con, a convention billed by its organizers as "The Best Four Days in Gaming." One of the features of the gathering of 70,000 tabletop gaming aficionados is the "Dealers Hall" where hundreds of creators, designers, and publishers hawk their wares. This includes art, fiction, dice, and of, course, the games themselves. The checked baggage of the attendees flying home from Indianapolis is always heavier than it was going to Indy, as we haul our loot back to our castles.

My treasure included four games, all of which I bought off the floor...

Die Laughing

The first day of dealer's hall, I walk around and don't buy anything but do grab photos of games that catch my eye. The cover of Die Laughing, an abstract version of a dead smiley-face warranted a photo. It was a GM-less one-shot role playing game.

On the third day, our final for shopping, I realized I had forgotten to capture the booth number so, we went back and hunted down the NerdBurger exhibit. The friendly staff explained it's not a dungeon crawl but rather takes place on the set of a B movie where all the characters are actors in the film. And when (not if) they die, they return to the game as producers.

Perfect to introduce my improv friends to RPGs, I snapped it up.

Keepers

As I was walking by a table in the far right corner, my eye was drawn to the photograph featured on the box of Keepers: water sliding over a gentle slope of moss-covered stones. I stopped to look closer and a gentleman introduced himself as Byron Jorjorian, the photographer. I decided to buy the game immediately.

I decided before he offered to sign the box. Before I saw the equally beautiful expansion Moments (which I also purchased). I decided before I even knew the mechanics of the game, which follow the general contours of Dixit (infer an abstract connection between a single word and an image).

A beautiful box and a personal connection to the game's creation? I value that immensely.Thank you, Van Ryder Games.

What the Cup?

I was drawn to the fun tiki-themed display which was promoting a surfing-themed board game from The Op (formerly Usaopoly). At the bar they had gregarious staff using dwarf red solo cups to demonstrate What the Cup?, a variant of Liar's dice with added cards to keep things interesting.

Not my typical game and it's not something I would have purchased myself. My daughter however, was entranced, so into the bag it went.

Shortly afterwards, we were playing Tappet, a quick word listing game with a large plastic timer. The demo was being conducted by Dane Chapin, the CEO of the publisher. This is a guy running a good-sized game publisher doing a demo for an 11 year old and her dad. That's so down to earth, I was deeply impressed. Then after the demo, he simply gave the game to my daughter. Well played!

Rabble

Finally, as we were on our way out of the hall, we passed a table full of pastel colored boxes. There are 500 or so vendors at Gen Con. Most of them follow a certain theme based on the colors of black and red. Their logos involve dragons, zombies, and robot warriors. The demographics are strong here. This tendency makes a few games stand out even stronger. I found memorable the table selling a tea-themed game along with a selection of loose teas. And the publishers of Rabble made me stop and look and buy just on the uniqueness of their palette.

Sure, it helps that my sister and her family were visiting the week before and we plowed through several of the party games we own. And having a conversation with both the owner and the artist was a big draw. But the colors are what stopped me and made me look at Rabble.

It's clear from writing these synopses that the qualities that lead to me buying a game off the floor of dealer's hall:

• Attractive, eye-catching art.

• Open play opportunities

• Staffed by actual owners, designers, and artists

• Also, friendly, but not overbearing non-owner staff

I'm looking forward to unboxing all these games and admiring their art and gameplay over the next week. Happy gaming!