Dragon*Con Bound

[Darth K'Trava]

I'll be there! I'll be there from Thurs-Mon. And trying to fit in alot of picture taking and shopping around my volunteer schedule. Lots of nifty costumes there!

 

[JoeBlank]

How is the parade? I've seen pictures, but never the actual parade. I'm thinking about taking my sons, ages 4 and 6 just to see all the Star Wars and fantasy characters walking down the streets of Atlanta, but I want to be sure it is worth dragging them downtown.

Until a couple of years ago I worked in a building adjacent to the con, so I could sneak out of the office during the day Friday and catch a few seminars and such.

 

[Wolfspirit]

While I've never seen the actual parade for more than just a glimpse from the Peachtree Center walkways, I HAVE seen the Starwars march through the mall, which took about a good 5-10 minutes easy. It was pretty impressive, I'll tell you that.

Never done the gaming, but if it's that bad I think I might skip it, since I'm going to be on a kind of tight schedule anyways.

Costumes, eh, I'm not really a goth person, and that's what a lot of the costumes I've seen in the past (with the exception of Stormtroopers) have been. Of course, for the past couple of years I've spent my time between Voltaire, Rocky Horror Picture Show, and Ghoul Town (they're comming back, by the way. Wonder what changed), so I've been smack dab in the middle of some... interesting people. (I'm talking about the fans. The musicians are frigging cool people).

Oh, and Monday is the best time to buy stuff you've been wanting that isn't going to sell out. A lot of people REALLY don't want to have to bring a lot of stuff back, so most of the Vendors have discounts, and even if they don't if you say "I'll take that for 10% off" they'll give it to you. Yeah, sure, you might be able to buy it off Amazon for less, but that's not going to help for the long trip home, is it?

 

[howandwhy99]

How is the parade? I've seen pictures, but never the actual parade. I'm thinking about taking my sons, ages 4 and 6 just to see all the Star Wars and fantasy characters walking down the streets of Atlanta, but I want to be sure it is worth dragging them downtown.

I went 2 years ago and woke up early Saturday morning just to see the parade. It wasn't that bad, but it was only about 10-15 minutes long. For that year at least, (I think it was the 2nd time a parade for D-Con was held) it was pleasant, but not really a big event.

Your kids would probably get a bigger kick out of the Star Wars fan flicks and a lot of the large ball room entertainment shows. (but not the "late night" shows)

 

[Stormborn]

The Parade last year was great, and IIRC longer than 15 mins.

For those of you who have said you have negative esperiances gaming, what was the problem? I have only played one game at DCon, and while not the greatest event, it was OK.

 

[howandwhy99]

For those of you who have said you have negative esperiances gaming, what was the problem? I have only played one game at DCon, and while not the greatest event, it was OK.

Well, IME gaming is a very small part of the Con and doesn't compare to many others. Growing up in Milwaukee with GenCon all those years may skew my viewpoint, but I rarely see more than 10 tables gaming at DragonCon in the past. And all of those were pay-only. The vast majority are RPGA too as very few others sign up to run games.

I would prefer catching a free game, but we were never allowed to do that on site. I guess there were other games in the hotel rooms, but they weren't exactly easy to find.

The thing is, there is so many other things to do at DragonCon gaming seems take a back seat when I plan out the weekend anyways.

 

[talien]

Thanks, Mike. Very informative.

I love your web site, by the way. I grabbed many goodies there!

Thanks, glad you like it.

For those of you who have said you have negative esperiances gaming, what was the problem? I have only played one game at DCon, and while not the greatest event, it was OK.

Con gaming is always a crapshoot if you go solo. That is, unless you come with a group of friends, who you end up playing with tends to vary greatly in terms of quality, skill level, and attitude. I've experienced some really excellent gaming at cons, mostly because I was with experienced players. I've also had some incredibly awful experiences, with Dragon*Con standing out as the worst.

The problem was that the GM decided to start making racially offensive jokes. And there was a lot of "I'm the DM, and I have this rule if you speak out of turn I kill you." For a little while I thought he was kidding. But he wasn't.

Worse, the adventure was a mystery that was hard. Most new groups take hours to get to know each other; we had to tackle the challenges of a mystery as well as learn to work together in the span of four hours. Then we fought the overpowered vampires who slaughtered the group.

So: offensive jokes, egomania, difficult mystery adventure that was really hard to boot. All that = not a whole lot of fun.

This does not by any means indicate that ALL games are like that at Dragon*Con. But I've gotten the impression the less RPG-oriented the con is, the harder it is to find a good game. Dragon*Con's about the the partying. And like a million beautiful people in costumes.

 

[Mark]

Have fun!

 

[Shallown]

Dragoncon gaming at one time was a lot of fun. When open games were only a room or two but the people who played and ran were fun. When I went about 11 years ago I had a blast gaming. I did nothing but open games and we had fun. I was there more or less alone as far as Gaming went since my friends were there for other things.

When I last went year before last I didn't game at all doing mostly CCG stuff. If I getthe chance to go back I will probably check out the open gaming but not worry about it too much. Dragon-con has a lot of other tsuff to offer that is fun. It has a much more festive party like atmosphere.

later

 

[Wolfspirit]

Well, off I go, hope I see you guys there