My friend and I do a podcast about games and gaming conventions in 2018 we completed a pretty extensive series on Gen Con. With event Registration coming up, seemed like a good time to re-post the event registration link!

https://highshelfgaming.com/all-episodes/gencon-survival-series-part-3-event-registration

Highlights:

• If you don't get your event, don't worry! buy generics and show up anyway. a lot of times they can find an extra seat for you
  
• If you're going with friends, add each other on gencon.com as friends and be willing to buy games for each other (first friend in the lottery can end up buying games for all their friends).
  
• Show up for your event! If you bail on the event it ends up as a mark against the event organizer to the convention.
  

Oh hey, just listened to this yesterday.  Good stuff!

I admit thought I kept thinking to myself an important point, albeit one you basically mentioned in at least your first part of the series (I have not finished all 8 parts yet to see how often it comes up): Gen-Con is possibly unique amongst all gaming (or even nerdy) conventions in that, especially the first time you attend, you could almost certainly fill your time completely and have an amazing time without signing up for a single event.

That said, certainly if there are games you want to play that you never get to play in your regular life, then yeah, you should probably make sure to take the chance there.  But I probably ghosted 80% of the events I signed up for back when attending in the early 2000s before realizing I fundamentally was more interested in wandering and finding, uh, "procedurally-generated fun" if you will, rather than attending specific events, haha.

You are too right! Every year after event registration I see the wave of posts about people frustrated they couldn't get into their one event and then quitting the Con. It's a bummer because generics, wondering around, and just asking if you can fit into a pre-booked game works waaaay more often then people realize.

We're looking to refresh the series for Gen Con 2020 and I'll try to do a better job talking that up.. It's not all about getting that registration, it's mostly about the overall experience and getting to see friends you haven't seen since last Gen Con