2024 Conventions - Meetups, Discussion, Etc.

Anyone here plan on going to any conventions this year? Might be a little late to ask this right before May, but several are still coming up including a couple of the big ones. Personally, I am going to Buckeye Game Fest down in Columbus this upcoming Saturday. I have no real gameplan, but I wanted to try out a smaller convention to see how things differ. Might bring Inis and see if I can't wrangle some passersby into a game.

I also plan on returning to GenCon this year. I am working with the some company as last year to do demos, this year being Dwellings of Eldervale which should be a blast.

I'm going to do Friday and Saturday at Gen Con this year, although I have yet to get a hotel room thanks to the housing block being gobbled up before my randomly assigned hotel registration time even occurred.

I want a room downtown so I keep checking, but no luck yet.

I think I'm going to skip GenCon this year and go to NashCon instead. August 15-18 Nashville, TN. Mostly historical miniatures but a lot of other gaming too.

My FLGS is throwing an inaugural "SonomaCon" here in Santa Rosa at the end of August. Not too much information yet, but I'll go to support if I can.

I bought an official Warcry Organized Play kit on eBay for 40 bucks a couple months ago, and it includes a nice engraved glass Store Champion trophy. I keep thinking about running an event locally for fun.

Y'all are welcome to visit my humble little convention in Southern Maryland. Better yet, host an event!
9/14/21

www.csmd.edu/hawkland/index.html

(and I'll see some of you at Gen Con and NOVA OPEN)

I'm finally filling out the trifecta: I'm doing WBC. Got an AirBNB on site that's cheaper than the hotel, and it's 500y from the front door basically. Allows me to have a full kitchen and cook my own meals which saves me a bunch and also prohibits me from getting food poisoning.

I don’t know of any AirBnB quite as close as 500 yards, but there are certainly tons within a few minutes drive . Many are at the top of the ski slope, so during certain hours you can ride the chairlift up and down .

SuperflyPete wrote: and also prohibits me from getting food poisoning.

I dunno, I think you can pull this off still.

Alright, GenCon 2024 report. I was once again there with Envoy to help demo games for publishers. This time, Dwellings of Eldervale. A rep from Breaking Games was there to help me out and it felt nice to get constant communication and feedback from the people whose game I am promoting. I appreciated the time and care put in, and I worked my ass off to not waste that. Of course, everything went great. My teach takes about 20 minutes (not including teaching combat later), but questions after were few, most groups finished their games, and everyone seemed to have a great time. Had a scare earlier today when a guy collapsed during the teach, but it was just low blood sugar, so he was fine and was able to keep playing.

My amount of games played was relatively few, but I did plenty of fun things and some of my best friends were working for Envoy with me, so no time felt wasted. I did get some plays in of Unmatched, Dodos Riding Dinos, Seas of Havoc, Skull King (first time I played trick taking!), and one of my best game play sessions in years with a game of my beloved Inis. If anyone has any questions on these games, let me know.

In terms of acquisitions, let's see... Dodos Riding Dinos and its sequel/expansion Dino Dash, Barbarian Kingdoms, some expansions I was missing like Concordia Salsa, Cosmic Frog: Find Muck, the Fresh Meat box for Cutthroat Caverns, and Catacombs Wyverns of Wylermuir, two of the new content packs for Cosmic Frog, a little game called Oathsworn, an Allplay board game bag, and an artist's playmat for when I play Yugioh. I was also given the Black Box for Catacombs for free. Finally, one of my friends lives in Canada and left some stuff with me that wouldn't fit on his flight. So, I have temporary copies of Arcs and Tigris and Euphrates.

Probably the biggest highlight is what I posted over on the Phantom Division forum, but I also got to meet and get signatures from most of Leder Games, Level 99 Games, and the Dice Tower. I also got to meet our resident hotseatgames in person, and it was great to be able to see the face behind some of these posts.

Hard to tell if I liked this year more than last, but I adored last year's so I'll just say it was back-to-back bangers so far. Will definitely be back next year.

My Gen Con experience was quite different from Hammy's, except for the part where we met up.

Friday my girlfriend and I checked out the dealer hall. I got the two new card pack expansions for Cosmic Frog and Jenna's new fantasy novel. That evening we met up with Jenna at Fogo de Chao, the Brazilian steakhouse that is fucking awesome. After dinner, my girlfriend and I hit up a few of the downtown bars, and a Blink 182 concert let out, significantly livening things up.

Saturday was more dealer hall, I got a Godzilla t-shirt. Then True Dungeon since my girlfriend really liked it the year prior. We do the introductory stuff because the legit scenarios are full of try-hards who take this shit way too seriously. Anyway, the setup for this was 2 combat rooms and 2 puzzle rooms. I was the rogue, and did pretty well with combat, including a sneak attack against a harpy for MASSIVE damage. In the puzzle rooms, I failed one puzzle box and succeeded on the other, only to be rewarded with a fairly useless clue. Our group was terrible at the puzzles and we failed both of them.

Regardless, it was fun, although the whole place was way too loud. You could hear other adventurers the whole time. Each chamber could really use a roof.

Gen Con was great, but we may not go next year, on account of making a pact with Jenna to go to Origins. I haven't been back to Origins in many years.