By Ryan Lenz
The Associated Press

INDIANAPOLIS - They've come with backpacks filled with dragon-toothed dice and ragtag stacks of worn game cards, their heads reeling in realms far beyond their surroundings. They're "gamers" - fans of fantasy - and they've come by the thousands to Gen Con Indy, one of the largest gatherings in the country for fantasy hobby games.

"We're the gamer geeks," said Jenny Brazas, 16, of Chicago, looking up Thursday from a game of Pokemon and tipping a black fedora to reveal a bleached strip of hair. "Basically we're the kind of people who stay up all night testing different decks of cards."

The moniker is hardly derogatory, though. The fans of these games wear it with pride, lugging trading cards by the thousands across the country to compete in marathon gaming sessions at conventions such as Gen Con.

What began 35 years ago in Milwaukee has grown into a global affair. Dedicated to fantasy games such as Dungeons & Dragons and Magic, which mix collecting and competition, Gen Con now attracts the world.

This community, with players from Madrid to Montreal, takes role-playing and fantasy gaming as seriously as a checkmate. Millions say these games border on a lifestyle, a constant they carry into middle age.

"You couldn't play a game like Monopoly that many years without wanting something new," said Peter Adkinson, the "gaming mogul" and president and CEO of Gen Con. "The games are always changing, and they're always getting a facelift."

The convention - jokingly named after the Geneva Convention - attracts roughly 25,000 gamers and 800 exhibitors over four days. A second convention is even planned later this year.

The Indy convention, which features marathon gaming sessions that end only when players leave the table red-eyed and weary, also marks the 10th anniversary of Magic, the first trading card hobby game.

A cross between bridge and a choose-your-own-adventure, Magic now has 6 million followers. A retrospective featuring every Magic card, all 6,000 of them, has been set up to tour.

But most who had come to the convention made short order of their first intention - just to play.

Standing in a corner of the gaming room dedicated to the Legend of the Five Rings, a game about feudal Japan, Jonathan Heep pulled at his goatee as others dropped cards, hoping to move into the game's next round.

The game's world champion will be decided before the convention's end on Sunday. Having already qualified for the next round, Heep watched his future competitors.

"I enjoy this sense of whimsy," said Heep, 28, a network analyst from Milwaukee. "This is a social activity, a random fun thing. It's time to do something fun."