I recently wrote about preparing to run games at a convention – specifically at Origins Game Fair. That’s over now, so let’s look at how things went.
Category: Gaming Page 1 of 3
Games, games, games. Everything game-related. There are subcategories too!
This year I am hosting some games at two conventions, Origins Game Fair and Gen Con. One takes place out of state. The other is a 45-minute drive from home. In both cases I need to pack everything I need. But I must pack light, because I have to carry the game materials a fair distance through the convention to get to my game table. So today, let’s talk about organizing for conventions.
Miniature figures to depict the characters in an RPG can really add a lot to a game. But conventional metal miniatures are heavy, fragile, and expensive. They’re bulky to store and difficult to move, and you need a lot of them. What’s more, you need to paint them yourself, and that’s an entire skillset (and, for some, and entire hobby) in itself. Paper minis serve as an alternative that provide most of the advantages of conventional minis without many of the drawbacks.
We love playing RPG’s, and we hate to miss a session, but we’re grownups (technically), and sometimes life happens. Everyone understands why players have to miss a session once in a while. But during that game you missed, a bunch of things happened. The player’s character missed it, somehow. Why were they gone? There must be a reason. Here’s a few to get you started!
Sometimes in the course of a roleplaying game (RPG) the characters come across documents. These are often very important to the overall plot of the game. But documents are boring. Players don’t want to sit around and sift through pages of text to find important clues. They want to roll some dice and move on to the next scene.
You probably don’t want to write pages of text either. What’s a poor GM to do?
Every game master does their preparations for a game in the style that suits them. I have run a few games and have developed a system that works well for me. Especially when I am taking my adventure on the road (not playing at home!), I want to be sure everything is organized and easy to follow. There’s nothing worse than realizing you forgot an important character sheet or your tokens.
McSweeney’s has now published two articles by Dave. That’s pretty exciting!
One of our favorite events each year is GenCon. We have been attending every year since it moved to Indianapolis (even 2020 when we participated in online events).
There is so much to see and do at GenCon. You can play board, card, and role-playing games. There are seminars and hands-on classes.
Here are a few pictures from this year. The event is spread out across the convention center, several hotels, Lucas Oil Stadium and Georgia Street. There are banners on the light posts and fun things to see outside the convention center.
A group has “yarn bombed” the event for the past couple of years. They even have a game. This year, they asked for knitted sections of yarn to decorate the giant planters outside the convention center. They put tags on the sections and we saw ones from all over the world.
Walking the halls
The hallways are busy and you get to see all kinds of neat costumes and displays.
The dragon in the background above has a special meaning. The artist who creates these amazing balloon sculptures has been attending for the last several years. This year, he made Genevieve, the mascot for GenCon. He auctions off the chance to pop the creation for charity, one of several events that GenCon hosts to support a local charity or two.
In the dealer hall
In the dealer hall, you can find games galore but there are a lot of other things to check out.
One of our favorite things about GenCon is getting to see people at events year after year. We have been playing with a couple of groups including the fun folks at Evil Fleet Productions who run role playing games. The run a game called Can of Whupass and the winner is crowned with silly string.
We hope you enjoyed this glimpse into a trip to GenCon!
Walt and I like role-playing games (in case you couldn’t tell). Much of the games are theater of the mind, where the events are described but not actually seen. Often times, tokens of some sort are used on a map to help show where characters are in relation to each other. For an online game, they are images, such as Walt described here.
These tokens can be simple pieces of card stock or they can be more elaborate miniature figures. Here is a glimpse into my painting set-up for working on figures.
A good prop can make an RPG session really memorable. A map written on actual parchment, for example, grabs the imagination a little harder than the same drawing on a page ripped from a spiral notebook. Good props help the players feel immersed in the game, and give the setting verisimilitude.
Some purchased adventures include such handouts. But if you’re writing your own adventures, you have to make your own props too.
And if you play online, the props have to be digital.