09-12-2016, 05:01 PM
I attended a board-game convention this weekend, in DC. It was my first time ever attending something like this -- in all my years of gaming, I've never gone to an actual con. Very well-attended -- maybe a thousand people over 2 days. There were family games (kid-friendly), euro-games in great abundance, social/party games intended to get people mingling, role-playing games, card-driven games (like Magic the Gathering), and even a light scattering of war games.
I met one fellow in particular, who lives in my general area, whose focus is on RPGs. He plays online, using a system (d20?) in which a web server keeps track of all the stats and I guess they play via voice chat and/or text. He remembered the PBM days and was interested in hearing of new developments.
As a number of us sat at one of the many tables and played several euro-games, a guy dropped off a leaflet advertising another upcoming local con. It occurred to me that we ought to have some sort of presence at these gatherings. We ought to have a few leaflets ready to hand out, a newbie-friendly web page to welcome them, and some good games to direct them to (galac-tac comes to mind). Maybe even arrange a live demo of games in which turns can be run by the moderator "on demand". It would be wild to see a "live" game of Alamaze packed into a 2-hour window!
I met one fellow in particular, who lives in my general area, whose focus is on RPGs. He plays online, using a system (d20?) in which a web server keeps track of all the stats and I guess they play via voice chat and/or text. He remembered the PBM days and was interested in hearing of new developments.
As a number of us sat at one of the many tables and played several euro-games, a guy dropped off a leaflet advertising another upcoming local con. It occurred to me that we ought to have some sort of presence at these gatherings. We ought to have a few leaflets ready to hand out, a newbie-friendly web page to welcome them, and some good games to direct them to (galac-tac comes to mind). Maybe even arrange a live demo of games in which turns can be run by the moderator "on demand". It would be wild to see a "live" game of Alamaze packed into a 2-hour window!