Dear /co/,
this weekend I attended my first con in years and it was pretty gud. Got to play The Strange and Numenera and ran two games.
One thing I noticed is that a lot of the younger players where more "normal" looking guys (there where still some spergs), while the +30 crowd was really a bunch of gamer cliches (metal shirts, fat, long hair or thin with almost no hair). I met one cool dude that was working on his own system though
What was your last con like /tg/ ?
>>46452972
Good.
No culture shock, no generation gap, as always.
Went to the UK Student Nationals this weekend. It was fun. Played in the Action/Adventure category and got on really well with the group.
Anyone been to Concrete Cow?
https://www.mk-rpg.org.uk/Concrete_Cow_games
I'm gonna limit it to /tg/ stuff. Some guy taught me dice masters, it was ok? Made me waste $20 bucks buying two sets the way home I can play with my friends. There was a 40K guy but no one was paying attention to him. Oh, and a guy with an MLP TCG. No one bothered with him either, though a little girl asked him how to play so they played a mock round. Her parents must've been weirded out if they weren't weirdos already.
>>46452972
Cons in my country are generally small-ish venues, and even the big ones are 80% comics and cosplay, so I can't say I've had particularly bad experiences with other players. If anything, I'd say that you find more sperglords among the younger folks, and older ones are generally more well-adjusted, but that might very well be my personal bias as I'm over 30.
One thing I've noticed on multiple occasions is that while players come in all stripes, the DMs tend to be more closely fitting to the classic fa/tg/uy stereotype. Once I saw the DM flip out over the historical accuracy of the weapons a guy was randomly doodling in his notepad.
>>46457201
Oh don´t get me wrong, the older people all were really cool, they just looked the part.
I will say though, it sucks when you want to experience the whole story in the time window you have and some sperg is wasting everyones time by fucking around with corpses and lighting stuff on fire
Also: Don´t play with your phone when I´m explaining shit!
Also also: Don´t play CoC and get pissed when you die
Been to a few cons that have advertised themselves as having tabletop games. Nothing but Magic: The Gathering and the occasional game of Ticket to Ride or something.
How is Dragonmeet, for anyone who's been?
I hold boardgame rooms at anime cons in this small country sometimes.
Can't really imagine running a tabletop like that in just one evening, it would kill much of the fun for me. Not like the con itself doesn't tire me to shit to begin with.
I did a lecture on That Guys once, though, and covered a bunch of classic /tg/ storytimes in it alongside my own experience. People seemed to have a blast on that one. Big Boy Blue doesn't seem to get any worse with a retelling.
I have never seen a cosplayer or a comic booth at a gaming convention. I considered going in LARP garb but though wiser of it. The only overlap is between genre fiction, board games, and RPGs. Even the vidya publishers, one of whom regularly tries to get gamers to play at test stations, mostly just get ignored.
Gaming conventions aren't like fairs or panel events. There are some panels, but it's maybe 2-3% of the schedule. 95% is groups playing games they brought and half of those you cannot even spend money on if you try because they're OOP.
And the crowd spans from parents with young kids over board gamers and roleplayers all the way to full grognards. People have places to be, rounds to start, and authors to find. The only sales pitches are for new board games and complete niche RPGs. Like there's a designer sitting at the stall selling their work, not a hostess or a regional sales manager.
>>46457201
That's because any random person can walk into a con and sign up to play on a moment's notice, but to be a DM you have to sign up beforehand to run a game for a bunch of strangers, which takes a special kind of person.
>>46461793
>a special kind of person
What do you mean?
>>46452972
>What was your last con like /tg/ ?
me and a few friends brought there so random people can try out larp swords and if they aren't totally retarded we might even try to recruit them for larping.
It was okay as far as local animecons go, but as always there were numerous people who were either painfully funny or clinically retarded...
If you are at a con and you basically offer some kind of service I think you will meet these kind of people no matter what you do.
Out of curiosity, OP, it wasn't GSGC was it?
>>46452972
> Dear /co/
>general con gender split: 50/50
>its RPG section: 90/10
Shiet
>>46462651
Goddamnit, I´m really not paying attention today
>>46462514
Nope
>>46462246
Not Hungar Games?
>>46452972
>Friend who lives across the country comes to semi-close con
>Drive five hours to Chicago to attend
>Got a really good milkshake from some podunk town in Indiana on the way
>Got my ticket from will-call
>Get inside, mostly anime stuff some vidya
>Kinda ignore most of it
>Meet up with friend, chill with her in the 'artist's alley' for the rest of the day
It was alright. I didn't really see much of what was going on there because anime really isn't my forte. Did buy some pokemon-related plush and sold some shirts at my friend's booth. Main fun was afterwards when we crashed at another friend's place in the city and spent the next day going to the Shedd Aquarium and the natural history museum to see the T-Rex.
>>46468324
>friendzoned
Roll 1d20 to see if you cry, and if yes how hard.
>>46452972
This sounds fun, OP. I haven't been able to go to a con yet because of work, but I'm looking around. Which one did you go to?
>>46468830
>friendzoned
That's the point? I'm not gay.
>>46468894
Why not?
Did circumstance perturb your spirits?*not sure if girl on internet
>>46452972
>What was your last con like /tg/ ?
I taught people I've never met before how to play games that I have never played before.
>>46469070
So... success?
>>46469108
Pretty much. Looking forward to the next one at the end of the year.
>>46456012
I went also. Not as good as last year but both my GMs were cool.
Did EiJ and L&F on an hour of sleep and 2 cans of coffee. It was grand!
I've always kinda wanted to check out a Penny Arcade con since they come by so close but I'm a shut-in so I'm kind of afraid I'll just wander around alone awkwardly the whole time
>>46469269
>Go to board game section
>Check out a game from the library that you know how to play.
>Take either a "Looking for players" or "I can teach this game" sign.
>Sit and wait for people to rock up.
>???
>Profit!
>>46469343
It took a lot of effort for me to go to my first LGS game night, and if a really nice guy there didn't invite me to sit at a table and learn how to play, I probably wouldn't be posting here today
Crippling shyness is just that - crippling
Last con I went to was the Las Vegas Open.
Less if a con and more a huge tournament scene, but my buddy lives down there and it was good to hang out with him and actually see Vegas.
Next con for me will be Salt Lake Gaming Con. Had a blast last year, looking forward to this year.
>>46469343
At my closest annual convention the tables are gone 2 months before the event. And the seats at those tables go in a frenzied 30 minutes after they are displayed on the sign up board. It's like a high school drama club sign up where the whole school absolutely needs to get the lead.
The only time I had no players was when I put up a sheet that wasn't in the internet database.
>>46469361
>Crippling shyness is just that - crippling
True, still it's literally people interested in a thing you like to do that thing. That's got to be a lot easier than approaching a gaming group. Maybe just use the "looking for players" sign if you're not super comfortable teaching people games.
>the +30 crowd was really a bunch of gamer cliches (metal shirts, fat, long hair or thin with almost no hair).
Geek stuff used to be 75% losers. It's not like today where normal people watch Game of Thrones.
And at 25+ there's a lot of attrition among the non-sperglords. They get roped into the workaholic lifestyle and/or have children.
Many go full-stealth when it comes to geek stuff. I have all my gaming books and minis in a closet. One of the players in my group is from an ethnic group known for being rich/haughty and keeps her gaming PC and RPG books in a locked study.
>>46469491
Are you talking about RPGs or something? I find it hard to believe there's board games being scheduled months in advance. Excluding big ones like TI, of course.
>>46469571
Yeah. There's publisher presentations of board games, some rounds play strategy games, but no one puts Seven Wonders on the sign up.
>>46452972
My father was dying of cancer, and used it to milk every piece of swag GenCon had to give. As I was driving him home I remarked he had made out like a bandit. He told me to make good use of it all. That was the moment when my dad's cancer became real to me.
>>46470220
Well....well damn.
/thread
>>46470220
Welp
>>46470220
are you this guy?
>>46472898
That.
Is fucking hilarious.
>>46466524
... no. not Hungar Games.
But there will be a Hunger Games larps in the near future here
>>46452972
My Uni society runs a RPG convention which is where we get most of our funding for the year.
It's like 90% old, fat, 30+ year olds, and most of them just wank off over Pathfinder. We're trying to get more people within the society to come along, but as it's more of a social society, they're usually not that interested in going to a "convention".
