For the first time in almost 25 years, I’ve found myself at the Conquest gaming convention in Melbourne. It’s been held over the Easter weekend for as long as I remember, and for the first time I was going as an organiser of games.
In particular, I was organising D&D Adventurers League games.
Conquest is a small convention, which had an unfortunate hiatus a couple of years ago when the venue it used became unavailable. Convention gaming has also fallen out of fashion in Melbourne as well, so it’s a real triumph for the organisers to offer any kind of convention at all. As it is, it’s in a very good location – Swinburne University in Hawthorn – and offers a nice range of games, even if there aren’t the number of tables at present that I’d prefer.
However, this is the first time I’ve offered D&D games there. I hope it helps them grow.
The numbers we’ve had for our games are very small by US standards. Heck, they’re small by recent Ballarat standards. However, the only thing you can do is offer the games, get experience, and hope you provide a good game for the players.
With luck, they’ll have a good time and bring more players next time!
It was a bit disheartening this morning. Easter Saturday at 9 am, and we had all of two DMs and four players. We ran one table. Was the entire day going to be like this?
Second session. 12:30 pm. 3 DMs, 17 players!
Third session. 4 pm. 4 DMs, 24 players!!!
Fourth session, 7:30 pm. 2 DMs, 12 players.
Oh, that’s better.
I scheduled the event so we had 6 DMs covering 3 tables. The fourth table required me to get one DM to run an extra table. Thankfully, Stuart agreed. And he got to play in the last session when he’d otherwise would have DMed due to the lower numbers for that one.
I had a great chat with Stephen White, the organiser of the Pathfinder games here in Australia (and Conquest and PAX in particular) about the challenges we both face. There were three or four tables of Pathfinder running, although they were more consistently attended. He’s done a great job with the Pathfinder community here, though it isn’t an easy task.
The challenge ahead of us? To persuade the D&D and Pathfinder and other RPG players that conventions are worth going to. That it’s great to play games they wouldn’t normally play, and that they can learn from seeing a range of DMing styles how to improve their own games.
This is my first Conquest convention since 1994. I do not think it will be my last!
I am so glad things picked up for you throughout the day. It can be disheartening to see a low turn out. I live north of the Pittsburgh, PA area, and there is a small convention that happens here twice a year. I only started playing D&D two years ago, but I got my start at one of these conventions. I quickly realized that they were hurting for more DMs (this must be a regular thing) so I decided to start running a few games. I really enjoy playing at conventions. I like getting to meet new players, and I love learning from the other DMs. Keep up the great work, and thank you for all of the great blogging you do. I have used your posts to help me run my at home game and the modules I run at conventions.
I remember attending cancon many years ago and playing 2nd ed d&d with mostly strangers…but they didn’t stay strangers. It was fun and i was disappointed to discover that rpg gaming at cancon is no longer offered. It seems to be a dying breed and it will take people with passion to make it grow again. Keep it up merric and remember you have grown ballarats gaming population enormously.