What was your first gaming convention and what stood out about it?

[BiggusGeekus]

Origins 2005

... hanging out with Monte Cook and trying to find out where he lecture room was on Sunday. That was pretty cool.

 

[Teflon Billy]

Westercon 44. Played in a game of GURPS Cyberpunk run by Steve Jackson.

Met most of the folks who currently make up my circle of friends.

Got drunk with William "Neuromancer" Gibson. Cyberpunk was booming at the time,a nd Gibson was there being--for whatever reason--almost entirely ignored by the attendees (who seemd to think that interating witht e guy would be "hassling" him). Eventually another guy and I just said "Mr. Gibson, come sit here" and 'lo and behold, he did. Quiet guy.

Met physicist Freeman Dyson. Had nothing in common :\

Met about a dozen really cool guys who were publishing their own Sci-Fi magazines. Glenn Grant's "Edge Detector" was the best of them. Man they were entusiastic

 

[Just_Hal]

Mine was awesome it was our first year as Thunderhead Games and we were having a blast, we had a bunch of teh writers/people invloved come doen to a lil Tampa Con called Necronomicon, people stayed at mu house der_kluge and his wife came down, we games, we ate and we were on panles as guests of honor, it was pretty cool!

My first GenCon was cool, the first year they moved to Indy and I was on a couple of panels with some big names, I was really feeling small .

It was a grand ole tme being recognized and asked for autographs (weird also) and I am sorry to all those to whom we wanted the ride to continue but could not afford to do so.


Bu all of my con experiences have been fun, may try and go to GenCon 07 as a gamer.

 

[Man in the Funny Hat]

Technically my first con was Spo-Con in Spokane, WA though I don't remember the year. Probably @1979. It wasn't memorable as such. I had illustrations done of my two favorite characters at the time which I still have. We entered a tournament; the first that any of us had ever done. We spent hours the night before prepping our character sheets and such. I remember one of the first things out of our Tournament DM's mouth was, "I use my own critical hit charts." It did not bode well. The trouble really turned out to be that he spent WAY too much of our time just drawing out the locations on the battlemat rather than trying to move us through the module in our limited time. Not the best experience either for the tournament or the Con as a whole.

I really consider my first Con to be Gen-Con in 2000. 3E was being released, I'd always wanted to go, and even though I was short of money I HAD to be there. Mostly I just attended the 3E-explanatory events. Got my shiny, new PH, met some nice friends, entirely lost track of the nice friends, and generally enjoyed myself a HELL of a lot more than that thing that I'd gone to many years before.

 

[Crothian]

Mine was Cap Con a local convention run by OSU that really is bad. Over half the DM's didn't show, the other ones sucked beyond belief. I had arguements with the staff over things that were in the convention booklet and other stupid stuff.

 

[Crothian]

Origins 2005

... hanging out with Monte Cook and trying to find out where he lecture room was on Sunday. That was pretty cool.

Are you saying the highlite was not meeting a certain awesomely cool EN World member at the Paranoia LARP??

 

[kenobi65]

GenCon 1983, at the University of Wisconsin-Parkside, the day before I went off to college.

What stood out was who I saw there: Gary Gygax, Frank Mentzer, Kim Mohan, Ed Greenwood, Jeff Easley (signed my copy of the then-brand-new Monster Manual II), and Larry Elmore (talked to him at length; he was just hanging out in the Exhibit Hall with an easel pad, doing sketches and giving them away).

I'd only been playing D&D for about a year and a half, and was already an avid reader of Dragon...so all these folks were celebrities to me.

 

[Glyfair]

I do have two memories from my first major gaming convention. It was Origins when it was in Towson, MD (don't ask me the year, but it was the 80s). I went with a group of gamers who were running games, and I was running couple. I couldn't tell you what I was supposed to run, probably champions and maybe D&D.

I do have two strong memories of this convention.

The first was I was given about 2 hours to prepare for a Melanda, Land of Mystery adventure. Origins had either oversold an event, or else a GM had no-showed at the last minute and they needed a fill in. I was asked if I could run, and I agreed (not a difficult system when you've played it). I asked for the adventure, when I was asked if I remembered the playtest. Well, I hadn't playtested it. Opps

It turns out, the complete resources were two maps and a sheet listing what was in the final encounter area. I remembered the overland map because an artist friend of mine was asked to draw it. However, I had very little to go on. I fudged my way through the adventure, and everyone had fun.

However, when we finish I go to the main room where Lee McCormick, one of the games author was running a session with many of his acquaitances (including Ken Rolston, as I remember). They had never left the main inn. They had spent 3-4 hours roleplaying and really never got anywhere. I admit, I don't really game for that, but I would love to have the skills to be able to do that and have a fun, interesting session.

The other thing I remember was sitting in the open gaming room with a couple of friends. They wanted to play something, so I agreed to run a Melanda adventure off-the-cuff. So, I gave them a plot hook and sent them on their way. They started getting into an argument about hunting techniques (IIRC, the characters were a lizardman and an elf). They went in character for a while, so I got up and walked around to see what was going on. I came back after a couple of minutes (while keeping an eye on my friends) and still wasn't needed. During that session, I did manage to walk around the gaming area for probably 5-10 total minutes while they were involved in roleplaying that didn't need a GM.

 

[pogre]

GenCon 1983, at the University of Wisconsin-Parkside, the day before I went off to college.

What stood out was who I saw there: Gary Gygax, Frank Mentzer, Kim Mohan, Ed Greenwood, Jeff Easley (signed my copy of the then-brand-new Monster Manual II), and Larry Elmore (talked to him at length; he was just hanging out in the Exhibit Hall with an easel pad, doing sketches and giving them away).

I'd only been playing D&D for about a year and a half, and was already an avid reader of Dragon...so all these folks were celebrities to me.

Amazing! Two folks have mentioned this Con and it was my first GenCon!

 

[JDragon]

Well mine first was DallasCon about 16 years ago.

I think I was 15, in town visiting my dad for the summer.

It was almost an hour to the hotel it was at from our place, my dad droped me off around 9am or so. I had a pencil, a brand new 1st level character I had written up the night before and about $60. No books, no dice no idea what to expect.

At that point there was not internet so I couldn't ask what to expect. From the add in Dragon I knew they would have a dealers room so I wasn't sure what I could have with me and not have problems.

I ended up getting into my first game on stand-by, and had to borrow a character and dice to start with cause the dealers room didn't open to 11 or so. The guys were cool and I had a great time. I actually still have and regularly use the d20 from the set I bought at that con. NOt sure where the rest of the set went.

Once we finished the D&D game, the guys decided to play Battletech, which I had never heard of. The invited me to play so I hung around. When they started pulling out the minis, I was hooked cause it was a game version of Robotech to me. It was just after the Clan stuff had come out and I got to play a Madcat. Had a blast and I think I picked up the starter set while I was at the con.

I don't remember much else about the con, other than my dad picked me up late that night and took me back both Sunday and monday.

When I thought about it later I realized how cool my dad really was, in 3 days he spent almost 12 hours driving me back and forth to that con.

I made it to Dallas Con two more summers, and then Origns when it was the the DFW metroplex a few years latter.

Have been to at least one con a year since then. Most of those being DunDraCon in the Bay Area Ca.