It’s an eight-and-a-half-hour drive from Toronto to Indianapolis. And the route, which takes me through Sarnia, Detroit, Toledo and Fort Wayne, is far from scenic. But Gen Con is the biggest boardgame convention in North America, and there’s no direct flight between the two cities. Which is why, during the first four days of August, I spent 17 hours in my car getting to the gaming floor at Lucas Oil Stadium, best known as the home of the NFL’s Indianapolis Colts. Almost 70,000 gamers attended Gen Con this year, including fans of every boardgame under the sun.

I tell people that boardgaming isn’t a culture. It’s really a collection of subcultures, since fans of one gaming niche often have little interest in any of the others. But balkanized as it is, the hobby has taken on some unifying characteristics in recent years, including a commitment to diversity, inclusivity and what might generally be called political “wokeness.” Gen Con itself has an anti-harassment policy that bans “any behavior that…produces an unsafe or non-inclusive environment,” including “offensive verbal comments or non-verbal expressions related to gender, gender identity, gender expression, sexual orientation, disability, physical appearance, body size, race, age, or religious beliefs, [which] may take the form of comments, epithets, slurs, jokes, teasing, display or discussion of written or graphic material, repeatedly standing too close to or brushing up against a person, or giving gifts of an unwanted or sexual nature.” The rules also explicitly forbid “20^th and 21^st century uniforms,” including “any uniform that can be construed as a military uniform.” After a Dungeons & Dragons artist and game designer was publicly accused of abuse in early 2019, Gen Con banned him from attendance, and declared publicly: “We admire the bravery of victims who report their abuse or harassment, and we’re here to support you.”

This all sounds annoyingly politically correct and doctrinaire. But to be fair, the organizers’ hands are tied—since the bulk of their attendees are (as in other creative subcultures these days) young and woke. Plus, there are a lot of people in costumes at Gen Con. And the organizers’ admonition that “cosplay is NOT consent” arguably is necessary for the benefit of those socially challenged men who still think it’s okay to stroke Catwoman’s body suit or to make sex-trade jokes about her cheap hotels on Baltic and Mediterranean. World War II is a popular theme for many of the wargames that get played at these events. And few of us want to play Secret Hitler with a guy dressed in a Gestapo uniform, even if he assures everyone that he’s just “setting the mood.”