Register a SA Forums Account here!
JOINING THE SA FORUMS WILL REMOVE THIS BIG AD, THE ANNOYING UNDERLINED ADS, AND STUPID INTERSTITIAL ADS!!!

You can: log in, read the tech support FAQ, or request your lost password. This dumb message (and those ads) will appear on every screen until you register! Get rid of this crap by registering your own SA Forums Account and joining roughly 150,000 Goons, for the one-time price of $9.95! We charge money because it costs us money per month for bills, and since we don't believe in showing ads to our users, we try to make the money back through forum registrations.
 
  • Post
  • Reply
Fellis
Feb 14, 2012

Kid, don't threaten me. There are worse things than death, and uh, I can do all of them.

ZachAttack posted:

Decided last minute to go to pax unplugged. Any other goons around this weekend?

I will be there all weekend!

Adbot
ADBOT LOVES YOU

Frozen Peach
Aug 25, 2004

garbage man from a garbage can
Geekway Mini is this weekend! If you're one of the few here come say hi. :D

Will trip report in a couple days.

Dr. Quarex
Apr 18, 2003

I'M A BIG DORK WHO POSTS TOO MUCH ABOUT CONVENTIONS LOOK AT THIS

TOVA TOVA TOVA
I suppose I should update the original post huh, nobody likes those opening posts that stay stuck. Or maybe I should just make a new post like that occasionally? Hmmmmmmmm

Fellis posted:

I will be there all weekend!
Was it as fun as 2017? Truly can anything be as fun as watching people play a boardgame based entirely on currency trading

Frozen Peach posted:

Geekway Mini is this weekend! If you're one of the few here come say hi. :D

Will trip report in a couple days.
I imagine it was good stuff but I do appreciate any write-ups of various conventions, especially if they can actually impart a sense of uniqueness. I realize not every convention can sound unique even if it is; I imagine there is a very friendly and close-knit vibe at the Geekway shows given how prolific they are?

Definitely looking forward to Gary Con as usual, even if my new job may end up meaning I have to skip the liminally regional Origins. But I should have time to go to GameHole Con again this year.

Speaking of: Now that I went to :siren: GameHole Con :siren: and got to experience what the GameHole actually is, I have to put it up there with Gary Con in terms of conventions that have way more going on than you would expect from the size and relative newness. Not a huge surprise, given Wisconsin is probably as close to roleplaying ground zero as you can get (apologies to Minnesota), but it really is funny that you can go to relatively small conventions here and constantly like recognize people from your old issues of Dragon Magazine. I do not think I said more than "oh hey!" to Ed Greenwood, but I probably bumped into him on three separate days, and it will always be fun to think about how the guy responsible for such a substantial amount of what people think of as the D&D world is not even that old yet and just hanging out being a nerd at conventions. Realistically the Forgotten Realms are a much bigger part of what my mind thinks of as "a fantasy world' than even Middle Earth, as questionable as that may be, so it is always nice to be able to see the creator still doing his thing and remember just how recent this history is, even as someone born after D&D was created of course.

Oh but even beyond that aside, I would definitely recommend GameHole Con on about the same level as Gary Con honestly, as both have a lot of available space and thus a lot of games running in a variety of genres (and both have respectable vendor areas, albeit still tiny compared to the big leagues; I did pick up some sweet Beadle & Grimm stuff at GameHole Con I do not think they were carrying at Gen-Con). Though you are likely going to run into even more gaming luminary-types at the latter if that is a big draw for you. Do we call everyone "influencers" now? Anyway, I also like how GameHole Con takes place at a proper convention center so parking is effortless, though of course that may change if it grows too much. But it sure beats how Gary Con's parking is permanently full from before the convention begins, though that might be my aversion to shuttles making it a bigger deal than it is.

Also I went to Planet Funk Con and it was, in fact, a convention. Not really a gaming convention, though there was plenty of that going on. Other than getting pictures with the Godfather I probably would have forgotten most details of my time there already. Everyone I was going to attend Fan Expo Chicago with backed out because they were not requiring masks or vaccines so I am sure my VIP badge had a great time by itself in the envelope

nesbit37
Dec 12, 2003
Emperor of Rome
(500 BC - 500 AD)
I have all kinds of opinions on Gamehole Con vs Gary Con and such (they're both great cons but are also rather different from each other IMO) if thats a discussion people want to have.

But.

I am mostly in here to say I am on the planning committee for a new regional con just outside of Philadelphia. January 5-7. 2024 we're going to hose the Philadelphia Area Gaming Expo. Its being run by a guy named Ron who did a lot of local cons in the 90s, and I am helping out with it in general but also a lot with the D&D Adventurers League part of the con. It is time to not just be part of the con but to BE the con! Quarex should be excited because the convention is also going to feature an auction that should be pretty good. I don't know if it will rival Gamehole con's as far as collectible stuff it gets but it should be good. Ron, myself, and several others are pretty big into the game collecting world so hopefully we get good stuff.

Here is the event page for the con if anyone is interested: https://www.facebook.com/events/854102116024015

Fellis
Feb 14, 2012

Kid, don't threaten me. There are worse things than death, and uh, I can do all of them.
That does run the same weekend as MAGfest in National Harbor, VA. Definitely not 1:1 overlap with your attendee pool though

Dr. Quarex
Apr 18, 2003

I'M A BIG DORK WHO POSTS TOO MUCH ABOUT CONVENTIONS LOOK AT THIS

TOVA TOVA TOVA

nesbit37 posted:

I am mostly in here to say I am on the planning committee for a new regional con just outside of Philadelphia. January 5-7. 2024 we're going to hose the Philadelphia Area Gaming Expo. Its being run by a guy named Ron who did a lot of local cons in the 90s, and I am helping out with it in general but also a lot with the D&D Adventurers League part of the con. It is time to not just be part of the con but to BE the con! Quarex should be excited because the convention is also going to feature an auction that should be pretty good. I don't know if it will rival Gamehole con's as far as collectible stuff it gets but it should be good. Ron, myself, and several others are pretty big into the game collecting world so hopefully we get good stuff.

Here is the event page for the con if anyone is interested: https://www.facebook.com/events/854102116024015
You mean... the PAGE page I see

I see MAGFest has not announced its 2024 dates yet, which ... I guess is not weird, but seems weird to me, as I try to decide whether there is any chance I would make it to this. I guess ideally they are back-to-back weekends and I just go crazy and go to both! Fake edit because I took a long time making this post: oh no Fellis has crushed my dreams already :smith:

nesbit37 posted:

I have all kinds of opinions on Gamehole Con vs Gary Con and such (they're both great cons but are also rather different from each other IMO) if thats a discussion people want to have.
Bring it on!!! What you got?!? NOTHIN

I definitely enjoy Gary Con's vibe more; finally attending Dragon Con last year helped me realize that I definitely have room in my heart for more hotel-based conventions. I do like a nice wander around a convention center now and then, but I would really ideally like to alternate between types of venue with every convention I attend.

I also realized I am probably more into the act of attending conventions than experiencing what is actually happening at the convention, but that is my own issue to come to terms with and how dare you bring it up

Admittedly GameHole Con might have been less amazing to me if I had not been able to actually see The Game Hole itself, as my cartophilia combined with actually being face-to-face with the original map of the Forgotten Realms meant I established a core memory before the convention even started. But I liked that convention's system highlighting games being run by their creators or by special guests as a different category, as I think it lends itself to increasing attendance from said guests. Maybe that happens just as often at Gary Con, but other than playing Braunstein with David Wesely, which admittedly was absolutely a highlight of my gaming life, I do not remember seeing many other games run by luminaries (Luke Gygax notwithstanding).

Midjack
Dec 24, 2007



Fellis posted:

That does run the same weekend as MAGfest in National Harbor, VA. Definitely not 1:1 overlap with your attendee pool though

National Harbor is in Maryland, but close enough. It's just across the river.

nesbit37
Dec 12, 2003
Emperor of Rome
(500 BC - 500 AD)

Dr. Quarex posted:

You mean... the PAGE page I see

I see MAGFest has not announced its 2024 dates yet, which ... I guess is not weird, but seems weird to me, as I try to decide whether there is any chance I would make it to this. I guess ideally they are back-to-back weekends and I just go crazy and go to both! Fake edit because I took a long time making this post: oh no Fellis has crushed my dreams already :smith:


I didn’t pick the dates, and I am not surprised the organizer of the con double booked it with another con that is quasi local. I do think the two cons are after different audiences though. I’ve never been to MAGfest but hear about it all the time.

Dr. Quarex posted:


Bring it on!!! What you got?!? NOTHIN


I like both Game Hole and Gary Con, but I like Gary Con more. I think part of this is because of my work on the D&D Documentary. We did a big trip to Gary Con and I got to know a lot of the old timers there as we interviewed them and I tried to pry documents from them for my camera. It’s great going back every year and still seeing them there and even getting to play games with some of them. It was also surreal getting to go to what essentially turned out to be a drinking party with the Gygax children. With all of that, my vision is probably a bit colored.

Still, Gary Con feels like a family con to me. It’s the whole Gygax family, plus the old TSR family. The games all take place in one hotel complex which makes it feel nice and tight and a lot more welcoming than a more traditional convention center like where Gamehole is. The con also goes pretty late, and you can have no problem still staying up and chatting or even gaming with people in the hotel bar after your last game gets out at midnight. It’s care to gaming history is also special to me. The wargaming room they keep there complete with sand table is great, and you get to play Wargames you probably would never play anywhere else. There are also a lot of, albeit mostly TSR, games from the 80s and earlier run regularly which I like a lot as well. I don’t know how much of this will persist as the old timers start to die off but for now its a great con, and how old everyone is getting is part why I am super bummed to not be able to make it this year.

Gamehole I love for how they handle D&D Adventurers League. Every year I’ve gone I’ve attended as an AL dm and ran tables for like 24-30 hours of my Gamehole time. There are other games going on there but they just don’t, to me, seem all that plentiful or all that special. Gamehole of course also has True Dungeon which is amazing for a con of this size but considering how expensive that has gotten I haven’t done a run since like 2016 or 2017 and don’t see myself going pack. Some of the things I like about Gary Con get replicated at Gamehole Con because of the hotel they put the DMs in. I forget the name of it but its the hotel attached to the convention center. They have a free happy hour every day from like 6 to 8, something Gary Con kind of does as well, and I enjoy. It’s also where a lot of people gather after games to hang out and talk and whatever else. What I don’t like about Gamehole Con is the night life. There is no bar (the pullout cart that is like $12 a beer doesn’t count) at the convention center or the attached hotel. Once the afternoon games wrap up the place becomes totally dead in the convention center. Post 10pm its truly dead, and you see few people playing games and almost no one hanging out. There just isn’t much to do at Gamehole Con except attend games and sleep in your hotel unless you have a car and can drive into Madison. It’s different at Gary Con, especially since its held at a resort and you can use the stuff they have there if you want to.

One caveat to the above is I’ve always stayed at the hotel for Gary Con. I might feel a little different about it if I couldn’t eat a room in the old Playboy Club. They’re getting harder and harder to get every year so I am sure my luck will run out at some point.

Edit: 1 thing negative about Gary Con is the Hollywood influence. I’ve definitely noticed it creeping in over the past decade. I am convinced Luke living in California has had him hanging out with influencers more and people like manganiello and its leaked into some of the con. Prices for some things have gone, there has been more streaming, there has been some ridiculous things like the Satine Phoenix wedding, and some of the more high profile games have been kind of ridiculous. Some people may like that stuff but I don’t.

nesbit37 fucked around with this message at 03:33 on Jan 28, 2023

Golden Bee
Dec 24, 2009

I came here to chew bubblegum and quote 'They Live', and I'm... at an impasse.
Is there a master list somewhere of all the online cons?

Dr. Quarex
Apr 18, 2003

I'M A BIG DORK WHO POSTS TOO MUCH ABOUT CONVENTIONS LOOK AT THIS

TOVA TOVA TOVA

nesbit37 posted:

Still, Gary Con feels like a family con to me. It’s the whole Gygax family, plus the old TSR family. The games all take place in one hotel complex which makes it feel nice and tight and a lot more welcoming than a more traditional convention center like where Gamehole is. The con also goes pretty late, and you can have no problem still staying up and chatting or even gaming with people in the hotel bar after your last game gets out at midnight. It’s care to gaming history is also special to me. The wargaming room they keep there complete with sand table is great, and you get to play Wargames you probably would never play anywhere else. There are also a lot of, albeit mostly TSR, games from the 80s and earlier run regularly which I like a lot as well. I don’t know how much of this will persist as the old timers start to die off but for now its a great con, and how old everyone is getting is part why I am super bummed to not be able to make it this year.
You know, the late-night socializing differential had admittedly not occurred to me, so I can definitely imagine that tipping the scales for me towards Gary Con by itself. Very related is that I have never successfully stayed on-site at the convention, either because I was only going for a day back when it otherwise would have been possible or of course now because you just do not get to stay on-site unless you are some sort of MANIAC or Nesbit37. I do look forward to this year, though, as I diversified my hotel portfolio and discovered if I do not exclusively stay at Hiltons that there are hotels, you know, like less than a mile away to stay at, rather than having to drive 20 minutes. So I will probably be more willing to sit around and do whatever in the evening this year just from that.

I did not quote the Hollywood influence stuff but that is really interesting, particularly as clearly Luke just inherited Gary's fame gene and followed a weirdly similar path of growing D&D's asociation with pop culture (though much more indirectly or unofficially, obviously, with this generation not actually being involved directly with the company making the game). I certainly hope we have seen the last of Satine Phoenix until she divorces Chiseled Steve or whatever his name is and claims of course all the abuse and trauma was all him, I swear, and manages to work her way back into slightly more good graces

Golden Bee posted:

Is there a master list somewhere of all the online cons?
That is a good question, and I definitely saw something along those lines in, you know, 2020, but I wonder if its curation was continued after non-online conventions started returning?

nesbit37
Dec 12, 2003
Emperor of Rome
(500 BC - 500 AD)
Yeah, I'm really curious how not staying at the convention hotel changes things for Gary Con. I guess if you stay at one of the places they shuttle to it wouldn't be too bad, but I would hate to have to drive back to my hotel. I'll probably find out next year since its next to impossible to get a hotel room in the convention these days.

John Romero
Jul 6, 2003

John Romero got made a bitch
is anyone going to the goddamn connecticut gamer con in march


i went to terrificon which was put on by the same group in the same location last summer and it was very well put-together, and mohegan sun turns out to be a great con location as the facility is still new and nice and theres so much else to do. going to go on sunday with my kid so we can troll for Deals. theres supposed to be a lot of tabletop stuff

Frozen Peach
Aug 25, 2004

garbage man from a garbage can
Geekway to the West is next week! I'll be there all weekend and my first published game design, Heckin Hounds, will be on the Play and Win shelves! Come say hi!

Dr. Quarex
Apr 18, 2003

I'M A BIG DORK WHO POSTS TOO MUCH ABOUT CONVENTIONS LOOK AT THIS

TOVA TOVA TOVA
drat I want to go. It seems like I have so many more weekends free than usual this year yet somehow never on the actual weekends I can go to gaming conventions :cry:

I should really post about the like three conventions I snuck off to in the last month though. If I knew what we were using instead of IMGur I might have posted some photos already

Midjack
Dec 24, 2007



If you post through an imgur account your stuff won't be deleted. Phone apps aren't set up to handle that at the moment though.

Frozen Peach
Aug 25, 2004

garbage man from a garbage can
I forgot to post Geekway Mini details and now it was months ago, and I legit barely remember what I did last week let alone back in January. It's been a year y'all.

Note: I'm on the Board of Directors, so this is a slightly biased post. I started going to Geekway in 2012, and joined the board in 2018.

I'm going to post a whole lot of words about Geekway to the West in general though. It's literally my favorite board game convention, and no convention I've been to has the same feel. When it says it's Four Days of Peace, Love, and Board Games, it means it. That's all it is. It's four days of board games. Not four days of tangentially related hobbies. Not a massive vendor hall full of tangentially related wares. Not an auction of tangentially related objects. It's four days of board games.

Not that conventions of tangentially related hobbies are bad. They're just different.

Geekway is a convention where you can spend the entire four days doing nothing but playing games you've never played before, and not feel like you've missed out on anything. The star event of Geekway is the Play and Win collection. This year we have 109 individual unique games on Play and Win that you can check out, play, return, and have a chance of taking home at the end of the convention. Sure, you may have heard of Play and Win before, but I'm not lying when I say Geekway invented it.

Here's this year's list:

https://boardgamegeek.com/geeklist/312080/geekway-2023-play-and-win

You'll notice it's full of bangers. The board hand selects the cream of the crop to have something for everyone on play and win. Odds are at any point during the convention you'll be able to find a game on that list available to play. (There are 6 copies of each game available throughout the convention) Sure, if your heart is set on playing one individual new hotness from start to end of the convention that's going to be hard without your own copy, but branch out a bit!

If that's not good enough for you, there's a curated library consisting of just about everything you'd ever want to play at a convention.

The vendor hall is small and intimate. Sure, I could spend all day in there talking to people, but there are board games to play.

There are no RPGs (unless someone for some reason brings their own and has people to play it)

There is no Magic the Gathering (i don't think I've EVER seen someone break out a commander deck)

If you're a designer? The St. Louis design community is one of the best. From big names like Stonemaier to individual indie designers just getting started, Geekway is a great place to connect. The only event I sign up for and schedule is Prototype Row on Friday Night. Sure, there are other events if you want them, but that's not me. We used to do a design contest, but COVID kind of ruined that. It's something I want to bring back, but I'm not sure in what capacity or how to make it happen yet.

Often times I'll just grab one of my prototypes and set up at a table, put up a sign, and players find me. Other times I'll just sit at a table with my close friends and join whatever Play and Win selection they recently pulled out of the Play and Win library. Sometimes I'll just wander the hall and take it all in.

This year I'm sure I'll be spending an inordinate amount of time looking for people playing Heckin Hounds. I'm so excited that it made it literally two weeks before the convention. It's like a dream come true for me.

Frozen Peach
Aug 25, 2004

garbage man from a garbage can
So I'm looking for Fool! and if it were in the right place, it'd be in a box of small box games near the top, and I knew right where that box was. So I check there, and of course I didn't put it away that would be silly. So I have to figure out where I would have been the last time it got played, and depending on where/when the last time it got played was is what unsorted pile of games it'd be in.

And of course I had to go through 4-5 piles in random places throughout my house before I found it and figured out where it was.

Rinse and repeat as I find the specific games that I intend to bring for the convention.

This is how I prep for the night before Geekway.

nesbit37
Dec 12, 2003
Emperor of Rome
(500 BC - 500 AD)
I just posted my Origins report to Facebook, figured I would copy it here so this thread gets bumped and has some content:

Back from Origins 2023! First time I attended since the “mini” Origins they held in the fall of 2021 which I attended to promote the Red Burnoose. Overall Origins felt mostly back to what it was like pre-pandemic levels, and was much less crowded than Gen Con as usual. I don’t know what their actual attendance was, but I got my badge something like 2 weeks prior to the convention and was in #10,000 something (on the low end) so I am guessing they didn’t have too many people more than that.

Wednesday I got in to the convention center by about 11:30 after checking into the hotel. Got in line to get my badge and that took about an hour, which was a lot longer than I was expecting it to take. Went to lunch with a friend after that and picked up some Gen Con ICC carpet from him to take home and then headed to my first game of the con, a learning game of Avalon Hill’s Advanced Civilization. Despite owning both the Eastern and Western Empires board games I had not previously had a chance to play Advanced Civ before so I was excited for this one. The game was a lot easier to learn than I was expecting. It was also a lot more brutal than I expected. Me and another new player got into a war on like turn 3 and it pretty much sealed our fate at being in the bottom of the scoring chart the rest of the game. He came in last place and I was somewhere in the bottom 4 of 8 players. The game was not very forgiving, i got 4 different calamity cards where the top scorers didn’t get any, so it was impossible for me to ever catch up. The only card that seemed to work as kind of a catch up mechanic was “Civil War” that can let a bottom ranked player shoot back up, but its complete luck if you get that card and if its going to be effective. I liked the game overall and see how innovative it was when it first came out but its definitely an old school game that doesn’t coddle players like some of the more modern board games do.

Thursday I started the day early with an 8am character creation event for Shadowrun. I usually like to try and play at least one new-to-me RPG at cons, and I chose Shadowrun to be that for me this con. I am quite familiar with the Shadowrun world, but knew nothing about how it worked mechanically so it was interesting getting some help to pull a character together to play in a con game later in the weekend. After that I went to the dealer hall for a couple of hours. Origins had a lot of new to the show vendors this year. They marked them out in the program and it looked like about 50% of the vendors this year had never vended at Origins before, so that was encouraging. Wander the floor was nice but I didn’t buy too much this time around. I had the evening free so went to the open play area and found someone who was looking for players for Dune Imperium. Played and enjoyed that, the game came together quite well and was relatively easy to pick up. I ended up taking 2nd place which I was happy with since 2 of the other people playing took to playing the game regularly.

Friday I headed to Games on Demand to try and play CBR PNK. I did get into the game but it turned out the GM was a no show we ended up laying Scum and Villainy instead. The game was ok, I played a colonist in the Muscle role and we had to take over a ship and coerce, capture, or kill the crew to bring them back to a religious element in the galaxy. Game was a typical Indy RPG, I enjoyed it but felt no desire to pick up the rules. Afterwards I went to lunch and got news that my Friday night plans were cancelled due to a covid exposure, so I messaged a few people to try and fill up the rest of my day. One of my friends was an Origins VIG (loooots of drama around that program this year) and they offered to take me to the Origins VIG Mixer as their plus one since it started around 4. We went and the food and 2 drink tickets were nice, but we left pretty soon after. It looked like only about 50 people attended the event and we were not at all interested in the celebrity D&D game that they started playing at the front of the venue. We got shushed for talking but someone that was apparently paying attention so we just left. A couple hours later I ended up John Company with a group of people I sort of knew from the internet. I liked the game, but it was much more complicated than we were all expecting. One of the people there had played before and they helped the other 5 of us along, but still in 5 hours we only got through 2 turns of the game and we were all very experienced gamers. Would play it again but would definitely try and look for a way to speed things up.

Saturday was Highlander day for me. I don’t quite understand their timing, but World of Game Design has decided to try and start up a 4th edition of the Highlander CCG that originally came out in 1995. Fun fact, the game has pretty much been in production continuously since 1995, but the 2nd edition, which is still having product produced in small batches, is pretty much impossible to get into, and I think the 3rd edition pretty much imploded. They want to bring back a version of the game that is more accessible and can be sold in game stores again, and since I liked the old game I figured I’d try and help. There was some confusion with the Origins events for the game as well as my schedule, but I ended up helping them with it for a good chunk of Saturday, running a sealed event in the late morning, helping demo the game to a few people, and then I was supposed to run a Cube event for them in the evening but it turned into another sealed event. We didn’t have a lot of players but those that joined us enjoyed it a lot and I had a fun time. They also gave me 1 of 30 copies of the playtest sets they had printed, signed by the creators of the game, for helping out and I certainly appreciated that a lot.

Sunday I had to head to the airport around 2 to catch my flight home, so I had time for one morning game starting at 10, a Shadowrun session. I enjoyed the game, but the mechanics definitely felt very 90s. I don’t know how much the rules have been updated since first edition since this was a 6th edition game, but it definitely didn’t feel like an RPG that was designed in the last 5 years. Anyway, I played a troll Arcanist and had fun casting a bunch of spells to do things and the one combat session we had in the game was fun. I don’t know if I’d want to play Shadowrun all the time but I would play it again.

After the game I went to the airport and that turned out to be an ordeal. I am not entirely sure why, but I ended up getting a free business class upgrade to my economy ticket and I think that was a good thing. For one, it meant the carpet I had in a bag could fly for free as my second bag. This was great since though it wasn’t over 50lbs it was technically an oversized bag. No complaints here. Then, due to the weather in Philly, my flight ended up getting cancelled. They ended up bumping me to 1st on the standby list for a 6am flight and a first class ticket for the 4:20pm flight on Monday. I stayed in the airport all night and didn’t sleep, and then at 330am went to check my bags to get into the standby flight. Because I had a first class ticket the woman at the baggage counter was able to get me on the 6am flight in economy, which I happily took, and then just was able to beat out the weather to fly home.

While it wasn’t great having to be up for about 36 hours straight I overall had a fun time. We’ll see if I make Origins in 2024, and I am definitely looking forward to Gen Con in about 4 weeks. Origins is a fun show for playing games, but it seems to always have problems and there also isn’t as strong of an online community for the show, so I feel a lot less connected to it the rest of the year.

Dr. Quarex
Apr 18, 2003

I'M A BIG DORK WHO POSTS TOO MUCH ABOUT CONVENTIONS LOOK AT THIS

TOVA TOVA TOVA
Origins 2023 was definitely less catastrophic than Origins 2022, even with the VIG absurdities. Actually specifically because of them I suppose, on my end; last year the VIG benefits were mostly lost on me, and I just ended up giving most of the swag to Goons at Gen-Con, whereas this year they basically failed to procure swag and thus refunded almost the entire extra cost of VIG beyond a normal badge, but as I had enjoyed the early Exhibit Hall access, got to eat for free at evening mixers both Thursday and Friday, and liked the shirt more than last year, it basically felt like I came out ahead overall, normally a rare feeling at Origins.

Plus drat the new Hilton towers are basically double the height of anything else in Ohio and I never got sick of returning to my 27th floor view of basically the entire metropolitan area

But yeah overall you could tell they were trying to rizz up Baby Gronk to be the new Drip Kingimprove everything this year, and I appreciate that they are aware they should make efforts to appeal to attendees. But yes it remains to be seen whether they gain attendees for a few years in a row and then suddenly lose about half of them, as that seems to be the pattern.

Golden Bee
Dec 24, 2009

I came here to chew bubblegum and quote 'They Live', and I'm... at an impasse.
Does anyone know if there’s a master list of online only conventions?

nesbit37
Dec 12, 2003
Emperor of Rome
(500 BC - 500 AD)
A complete list? I would be amazed if that existed. I think if you go to tabletop.events you can at least see all of the conventions using that platform, which would cover a lot of them. But there are going to be a lot that get missed. I haven’t even seen a comprehensive list of in person conventions since the Chainmail Girl Calendars from the turn of the century.

Golden Bee
Dec 24, 2009

I came here to chew bubblegum and quote 'They Live', and I'm... at an impasse.
You could also find the stuff on Warhorn.

SonOfGhostDad
Nov 16, 2022
Anyone going to Midwinter Gaming Con in Pewaukee?

nesbit37
Dec 12, 2003
Emperor of Rome
(500 BC - 500 AD)
Similarly, PAGE is having its inaugural convention just outside of Philadelphia in Oaks, PA this weekend.

John Romero
Jul 6, 2003

John Romero got made a bitch
theyre bringing a star city con to my city

i guess its free to get in unless youre competing. is it worth checking out for shopping?

Dr. Quarex
Apr 18, 2003

I'M A BIG DORK WHO POSTS TOO MUCH ABOUT CONVENTIONS LOOK AT THIS

TOVA TOVA TOVA
Holy poo poo three new posts and two of them are about conventions I know nothing about (and I only know about PAGE because I speak with Nesbit37 on the Astral Plane in addition to the Forums)

Completely based on nothing at all I wonder if Lorcana is staying so big that they are adding a new show based on its strength alone (I mean in conjunction with the other stuff they ostensibly do at this trading card convention). There are few conventions I would not recommend checking out for shopping, honestly; I cannot say that I have ever been to one and been like "oh, that dealer room sucked" except for some early year Gary Cons and that was really not why anyone was attending anyway

Ugh I absolutely want to and even SHOULD go to Midwinter Gaming Con given I am only a few hours away, a shame I am busy Friday night through Sunday night. Hey wait a minute though, what the hell is going on with this convention

"Convention Admission ONLY, Waterpark passes are purchased separately"

And it starts Thursday morning but the Exhibit Hall does not open until Friday, HMMMMMM I could actually go and maybe game Thursday and then check out the Exhibit Hall on Friday before escaping back to the safety of the other side of the Mississippi

And I see when buying your badge you can add a buffet breakfast on Friday morning to it for $15, that is my kind of add-on

poo poo thanks for posting about these conventions everybody, I now tentatively have MGC on my list and am trying to send my podcast co-host to the one in Philadelphia

Frozen Peach
Aug 25, 2004

garbage man from a garbage can
Geekway Mini is happening next weekend (sadly not this weekend) and I couldn't be more excited. I've spent the last 4 months rewiriting the entire backend of our play and win system, library, and attendance systems, and added a bunch of new features. We just finished setting up the new production environment, with proper CI/CD pipelines and the whole works. Everything is deployed in docker containers on AWS ECS. We have logging and status monitoring in place. It's very fancy.

Our previous convention software was written 8 years ago and started showing it's age, especially when it crashed during Geekway to the West's busiest day last year for 8 hours. Effectively because of the haphazard way everything was previously deployed, and thankfully these new pipelines and logging and everything will make sure that won't happen anymore.

Also: Geekway to the West 2024 Patron badges go on sale tomorrow.

Hotel Patrons get in the hotel block and get some extra swag. So if you want to come to Geekway in May and stay in the attached hotel, you basically need a Hotel Patron badge. We're expecting to sell out tomorrow for those, but regular attendee badges go on sale next week.

Frozen Peach fucked around with this message at 01:22 on Jan 5, 2024

theironjef
Aug 11, 2009

The archmage of unexpected stinks.

I'll be at ECCC (Emerald City Comic Con in Seattle) at the end of February hosting a couple of events related to my RPG adjacent book series. I'm from San Diego, so any con that isn't an overstuffed hell pile of lines that just lead to other lines is a refreshing delight.

Bucnasti
Aug 14, 2012

I'll Fetch My Sarcasm Robes

theironjef posted:

I'll be at ECCC (Emerald City Comic Con in Seattle) at the end of February hosting a couple of events related to my RPG adjacent book series. I'm from San Diego, so any con that isn't an overstuffed hell pile of lines that just lead to other lines is a refreshing delight.

I just recently moved back to Seattle, does ECCC have much of Tabletop Gaming programing?

nesbit37
Dec 12, 2003
Emperor of Rome
(500 BC - 500 AD)
The first Philadelphia Area Gaming Expo is in the books! I think it went well overall for a first year con. It had some problems, some of them not the con's fault like Saturday's weather, but overall I had a fun time and think it was a success. They were hoping to sell 500 badges and sold around 1000 of them, so that is great. The con is already scheduled for next year. I think its the first weekend in January again but I have to confirm that. The auction was phenomenal, and I got to play in 2 games with a special guest which was great. I hope its a little less old school next year to help draw in bigger crowds. The guests were almost all either old industry people from pre-2000 or people who produced content related to materials from the older era. I love having those people, but I think it could benefit from bringing in some newer blood as well.

Sadly if it is the first weekend in January next year I probably won't be able to attend, but I'll still help out with getting the con organized and such leading up to it.

Here are some photos of the con. I didn't capture any of the gaming space at the con's hotel, so this is pretty much all the space the con had at the convention center. I took these at about 6pm on Saturday, so what should have been a relatively busy time everywhere but the vendor hall which was about to close. I know they sold 1000 badges but it never felt like there were 1000 people there.












Frozen Peach
Aug 25, 2004

garbage man from a garbage can
Geekway Mini is this weekend and we just finished setting up the library for the weekend. This is just the play and win collection. We have over 2000 games total.

WerrWaaa
Nov 5, 2008

I can make all your dreams come true.
I'm going to Magic Con Chicago at the end of February if anyone else is going to be there!

Dr. Quarex
Apr 18, 2003

I'M A BIG DORK WHO POSTS TOO MUCH ABOUT CONVENTIONS LOOK AT THIS

TOVA TOVA TOVA
I might be in Chicago starting like the exact moment that convention ends, let me know if you are sticking around, haha

My current plan is to try to go to at least one convention a month, which has been going great as I have not been to one since October. But I have a handful coming up certainly:

* Winter Fantasy, Basically Just D&D in Indiana this weekend

* GamiCon in Iowa and/or PlatteCon in Wisconsin, as both are like 90 minutes from me, the weekend of MagicCon

* EverCon in scarily rural Wisconsin the first weekend of March, solely to go to a convention in a place that barely looks like civilization on a map

* Founders & Legends in mid-March and of course leading directly to

* Gary Con!

I think after that I will end up not being able to go anywhere in April but hopefully my overabundance the previous two months will help mitigate that

nesbit37
Dec 12, 2003
Emperor of Rome
(500 BC - 500 AD)
Jealous of your con schedule. Why oh why did I have to have babiez.

Adbot
ADBOT LOVES YOU

Dr. Quarex
Apr 18, 2003

I'M A BIG DORK WHO POSTS TOO MUCH ABOUT CONVENTIONS LOOK AT THIS

TOVA TOVA TOVA
Hey I emerged on the other side of babiez with more con-drive than ever, it can happen to you too!

  • 1
  • 2
  • 3
  • 4
  • 5
  • Post
  • Reply