The 1996 show would find Origins in its permanent home in Columbus, Ohio.  Though there were some attendees who enjoyed the show moving around each year and that it afforded them an opportunity to visit new places, it came with problems.  For one, it made the hotel situation difficult for many attendees.  Not knowing where to book and competing with other events happening in the location at the same time, it was not the easiest thing for attendees to deal with.  Additionally, staying put allowed Origins to get better deals with the convention center via a longer term contract, and also allowed the organizers to build a better relationship with the local tourism bureau.  This all not only improved planning for the convention, but it also allowed attendees to really get to know Origins’ host city.  This let people prepare and anticipate different aspects of the convention each year, and also allowed it to become more family focused as people were better able to see what else there was to do in Columbus than just the convention which made family vacations more viable.

1996 was not just a turning point year for Origins, but for the whole of tabletop gaming.  That is the year the Mayfair Games began to import German games to the American market and kicked off the Eurogame invasion.  The game most credited for making inroads was The Settlers of Catan, which is one of the titles Mayfair presented that year.  Though these games did not suddenly take over conventions the way Magic the Gathering did, they slowly began the infiltration of board games into not just Origin’s audience, but into the American public as a whole.  These games tended to favor strategy over luck, often eliminating or minimizing the need for dice, and were also less violent than many of board games typically played at events like Origins.  Soon, through companies like Mayfair Games and Rio Grande Games, these Eurogames would start to spread and conventions, like Origins, were often how the early adopters of the gaming world first encountered them.