malladin
Explorer
Having just got back from GenCon UK I thought I'd share my thoughts on this, my first convention experience...
The drive down was a nightmare. Friday nights are always a bad time to travel, and a journey that RoutePlanner estimated would take me 5 ½ hrs (which means would normally take me 4 ½, given my usual driving speeds
) took me 8 hrs. I took my laptop down with me so that I could do a bit of work in the evening when I arrived, but just crashed out as soon as I got to the hotel room.
I awoke nice and early, but the hotel kitchen didn’t, and I wanted to get to the con for 8am as I was due to start running the first game at 9. As such I was forced to find a 24 hour supermarket and buy something unsubstantial – a trend that would continue throughout the day.
I arrived at the con at 8-ish and was taken in to sort out my pass and gaming table. At this point I laid out the table with the character sheets, background sheets, pens, brochures and my business card, so I looked all nice and professional. The realised I’d forgotten to bring my dice with me, so I quickly dashed to the trader’s stalls and shouted over the security barriers to see if anyone would sell me some dice. Fortunately someone did and I was able to get some dice out ready to play.
The Etherscope demo had proved incredibly popular and was already fully booked, for both games in both sessions (in fact one game’s worth of players in each session had been booked out with preorders)! The chap at the desk suggested this was rare, but then he called himself “ratty” and had a dinosaur on his head, so I don’t know how reliable he would be.
I was able to get a short break after each break to wander around and do a bit of networking (the stalls were getting a but sparse of new books, and I’ve made a solid plan to make Magic of Eberron and Dragonmech’s Last City my next purchases, an I couldn’t find either [is the Last City even out yet?]). I met a very enthusiastic chap from Independent Roleplaying Magazine, who probably thought I was more involved in the actual publishing than I really am, but it was a nice chat. I also had a good long chat with the guy from UKG, who was very informative on the state of the PDF marketplace and has given me much food for thought. The highlight for me, though, was having a fellow RPGNow Edge publisher (SteamPower) actually playing the Etherscope Demo.
My journey home was much better, taking me 5 hours (with a 20 minute stop off at midnight), but very late. On the journey I got to thinking about the decision to have GenCon on the south coast. I understand that they can put on a better and cheaper con outside of London, and don’t argue with that (especially as being a bit of a London-a-phobe northerner), but I got the impression that they used the south coast to try and attract people from continental Europe. Wandering around and talking to a couple of the con organisers, there didn’t actually seem to be that many visitors from the continent. As my eyelids were getting heavy on that long, late drive home I felt somewhat aggrieved by this and thought how much easier it would be if they’d gone somewhere more central in the country, like Birmingham or Nottingham, both of which I could have got to in two rather than five (or even eight) hours. Maybe next year they’ll see sense…
Cheerio,
Ben
The drive down was a nightmare. Friday nights are always a bad time to travel, and a journey that RoutePlanner estimated would take me 5 ½ hrs (which means would normally take me 4 ½, given my usual driving speeds
) took me 8 hrs. I took my laptop down with me so that I could do a bit of work in the evening when I arrived, but just crashed out as soon as I got to the hotel room.I awoke nice and early, but the hotel kitchen didn’t, and I wanted to get to the con for 8am as I was due to start running the first game at 9. As such I was forced to find a 24 hour supermarket and buy something unsubstantial – a trend that would continue throughout the day.
I arrived at the con at 8-ish and was taken in to sort out my pass and gaming table. At this point I laid out the table with the character sheets, background sheets, pens, brochures and my business card, so I looked all nice and professional. The realised I’d forgotten to bring my dice with me, so I quickly dashed to the trader’s stalls and shouted over the security barriers to see if anyone would sell me some dice. Fortunately someone did and I was able to get some dice out ready to play.
The Etherscope demo had proved incredibly popular and was already fully booked, for both games in both sessions (in fact one game’s worth of players in each session had been booked out with preorders)! The chap at the desk suggested this was rare, but then he called himself “ratty” and had a dinosaur on his head, so I don’t know how reliable he would be
. I was able to get a short break after each break to wander around and do a bit of networking (the stalls were getting a but sparse of new books, and I’ve made a solid plan to make Magic of Eberron and Dragonmech’s Last City my next purchases, an I couldn’t find either [is the Last City even out yet?]). I met a very enthusiastic chap from Independent Roleplaying Magazine, who probably thought I was more involved in the actual publishing than I really am, but it was a nice chat. I also had a good long chat with the guy from UKG, who was very informative on the state of the PDF marketplace and has given me much food for thought. The highlight for me, though, was having a fellow RPGNow Edge publisher (SteamPower) actually playing the Etherscope Demo.
My journey home was much better, taking me 5 hours (with a 20 minute stop off at midnight), but very late. On the journey I got to thinking about the decision to have GenCon on the south coast. I understand that they can put on a better and cheaper con outside of London, and don’t argue with that (especially as being a bit of a London-a-phobe northerner), but I got the impression that they used the south coast to try and attract people from continental Europe. Wandering around and talking to a couple of the con organisers, there didn’t actually seem to be that many visitors from the continent. As my eyelids were getting heavy on that long, late drive home I felt somewhat aggrieved by this and thought how much easier it would be if they’d gone somewhere more central in the country, like Birmingham or Nottingham, both of which I could have got to in two rather than five (or even eight) hours. Maybe next year they’ll see sense…
Cheerio,
Ben
