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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Baron Opal" data-source="post: 1695260" data-attributes="member: 10433">Past GloriesThat's a real shame. Council of Five Nations was once the northeast's premier gaming convention. Throughout the 80's it steadily grew until about '89-'90 when we topped out at about 2000 attendees. We rented out that ice skating rink on Central in Schenectady, and we rented out some halls at Union College a couple of times. Some smart marketing and schmoozing with other convention managers resulted in the convention doubling in size each year until about '91, I think. I remember there was a major power struggle then in the gaming club that was based out of the Price Chopper Community Center (then the Studio of Bridge and Games). It had major repercussions. Circles of friends were broken and I know of two couples that split up over acrimonious debates. New folks were now in charge. Rather, there were fewer people in charge, but the once who ran the main convention were still in charge of it, so there was little thought of the aftermath by the rank-and-file.The next two years sucked, majorly. There was some grace after the first; rather than growing, the next convention shrunk by about 10%. Bad, but recoverable. The next year was even worse, and then the attendance just fell. There was an incredible refusal to partake of RPGA events, mostly driven by a hatred of the Living City circle of games. While you can certainly have D&D games without the RPGA, people actually have to write the event and show up to run them. The main problems were poor organization, cancelled games, missing DMs, lost pre-reg packets. Awful. The main money man voiced his concern, and when he looked into the spending practices, the embezzelment was discovered. That pretty much killed it right there.The last I heard, about the Council from two years ago, there was mostly miniatures and wargamining and there wasn't a D&D book in sight.Baron Opal</blockquote>

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