For today’s Shadowrun Sunday’s post, I wanted to talk about gaming conventions. The small gaming cons don’t get a lot of “con love.” People tend to spend their money and time concentrating on the larger conventions, like GenCon, MegaCon, etc. But there are a lot of smaller events that deserve some props. The local organizers do their best to build events for everyone to come together and share in their love of gaming.
In my current stomping grounds, for instance, is Ancient City Con. The first time I went, the con had one large room with a collection of dealers against the walls and several gaming tables in the middle. The next year, a video “room” had been added that was in the same room but curtained off from the rest of the room. But the con has been growing in leaps and bounds, adding a panel room at one point, then 3 panel rooms. Last year, it was up to about 5 or 6 rooms, one being video, a couple of panel rooms, a separate gaming room that was at least the size of the dealers’ room, and (of course) the dealers’ room.
Then there are a pair of gaming-only conventions in my old stomping grounds. I actually lived in Omaha when Nuke-Con was created. The people involved originally started it to take the place of the defunct OmaCon so the local gamers would have a place to go for gaming. If I recall correctly, it started out as a one day event and evolved into a multi-day event. I just recently discovered PretzCon, which will be happening this year while I’m visiting for SQL Saturday Omaha. Hey, since I’m there, I might as well stop by and play a little myself. All in the name of research, of course. @=)
Local gaming conventions give everyone a chance to meet people who like similar games, gamers we might never have had a chance to meet otherwise. It’s a different kind of networking. Not the kind where we hope to get a job out of it, but where we can be our own geek selves, knowing that this is the place to relax and have fun.
The small conventions can be rather disappointing to people expecting grandiose things. Dragon*Con has 3 dealers’ rooms and GenCon has a ginormous room filled to the brim with all sorts of different merchants. Smaller cons don’t tend to attract many dealers (if they offer a dealers’ room at all) because most dealers’ can’t make back the price of their booth rental during the con, let alone travel expenses. Celebrities don’t tend to come to the smaller cons because the organizers can’t afford the price of celebrity appearances.
I’ve been to small cons where I’ve seen everything there is to see within an hour. I’m a fan of giving the smaller cons a chance, though, because great things can come out of small events. The more fans that show up to these things, the better chance there is of the convention succeeding and growing on to the greater things.
So where is your small con love? Does your local area have small gaming conventions that you’d like other people to know about? Let me know what you think about this whole thing! I’d love to hear from you.
