Gaming at Conventions

Theory
1

What can you do at a convention that you can’t do elsewhere?

It’s a unique opportunity that differs from most of our gaming tables. An extended period of gaming with a larger pool of gamers. As I ran one shots at my local gaming convention last year, I thought about what I could run that is only really feasible to run at a convention.

Here are some of the kinds of things I’m thinking about:

  • Tournament module - As it was in the old days. Multiple groups play through the same module and are assigned a score based on their actions.
  • Multiple tables simultaneously - A game with multiple GMs and maybe an arch-GM orchestrating a larger scenario (e.g., multiple parties with different objectives in a city during a siege).
  • Evolving setting - Over the course of the convention multiple groups have adventures within the same setting. If you have a player play at the table multiple times, they could play the same character (unless there are large time skips between sessions). This one may be easiest with a megadungeon.

I’m interested in hearing about your experiences and ideas.

2

Once at North Texas RPG, two DCC judges ran two competing tables simultaneously. It was pretty fun although I did kind of pull a cheesy tactic by spell burn dumping on them.

Speaking of DCC, look up the tournament games they run at GenCon. Some interesting mechanics and scenarios that would mostly just be fun at cons.

1 Like
3

That’s a good place to start. I forgot Goodman Games is still running tournaments.