Non-Gencon Conventions

[Scribble]

Has anyone in here ever organized/thrown one?

If so, what were your experiences?

How did you go about it?

What was involved?

(if you don't mind sharing of course...)

 

[Keeper of Secrets]

In college the Sci/Fi fantasy group I belonged to organized a gaming con every year. It seemed that we had a lot of people show up but I had no idea what they did because they never seemed to do anything other than play Magic. I would say we managed to draw about 150 people to our little convention and it made some decent money every year but it seemed like it was a lot of work for about 8 of us. It was fun, though.

What are you planning on doing and what kinds of advice are you looking for?

 

[jcfiala]

Has anyone in here ever organized/thrown one?

If so, what were your experiences?

How did you go about it?

What was involved?

(if you don't mind sharing of course...)

I've been the RPG coordinator for Tacticon for two years running - in fact, Tacticon starts on Thursday. (On Thursday! Dear god!) I don't have to worry about hotel liasoning or the other various game types - just handling DMs and games and the RPGA. (The convention webpage is at http://www.denvergamers.com/tacticon/generalinfo.asp)

My experiences go pretty well. The group which puts on this convention (And Genghis Con, which is larger, in February), has been doing this for a while, so they've got a lot of the detail work down to a fine art.

At about 4-5 months before the convention, I make several calls for DMs who want to run their own games. I gather up their contact information and the info I need for the games (System, title, # of players, senario blurb, how advanced a player do they need).

I also go out to the RPGA site, and gather up senarios for the living campaigns popular in my area. (Arcanis has a small but loyal following, as do Death and Spycraft. Force has a small following too, but the campaign ends next year so we're seeing some decreases. Living Greyhawk is huge. Living Kalamar has all but died.) I order these modules, noting down the same info as above.

Then, when the schedule is finalized and turned in for printing, I start trolling our local roleplaying mailing lists for judges for my RPGA games. In this I am ably assisted by our charismatic and skilled LG Triad, who help me out with the Living Greyhawk end of things. This usually takes up to very close to the convention - because someone always backs down for a good reason. (Last year, they had a disease. This year my back out had a family emergency. Expect that someone will not be able to show.)

Last night I created mustering signs for all of my events - the RPG events don't happen in fixed areas - instead, at the beginning of each slot we all meet in a big room with signs on the wall to direct people to their games. Then I send out the groups with GMs, to their rooms. This also allows for a lot of socializing, and it's fun. I also created a CD I'm going to drop off at Kinkos containing modules and certs to print.

At the convention my duties are:
a) Send folks to games with paperwork (see mustering, above.)
b) Hand folks who forgot their module printout at home a copy of the module. (I always keep one copy of each module printed out. Thus, when bob shows up w/o module, i can hand it to him. Or, if Bob has been in an accident but Judy can run that module for him, I can hand it to her.)
C) Collect paperwork. (Lots less of this now that the RPGA is no longer doing as much paperwork.)
D) Handle crisises.

After the convention I have to gather up my paperwork and report the results to the RPGA, and I like to write up a report of how the weekend went to submit to the Convention Head.

As long as you pace yourself while you're getting the work done, it usually isn't too much work at any one time.

 

[Scribble]

I would say we managed to draw about 150 people to our little convention and it made some decent money every year but it seemed like it was a lot of work for about 8 of us. It was fun, though.

What are you planning on doing and what kinds of advice are you looking for?

Well, I'm not sure at the moment, possibly nothing.

It seems like in order to get information from a hotel on booking meeting rooms and such, you have to have an idea as to how many people will be attending.

But in order to get that idea, you'd need to poll people about wether or not they'd be interested in attending (or running games) ahead of time...

But how can you do that if you don't even know where/when the con will be, because you can't get the info from the hotel...

Catch-22esque?