Musings

Convention Tips

Let's talk about cons. I'm a big advocate of cons. Some of us have a hard time maintaining a regular game and cons are a great way to get a little gaming in a few times per year. However, cons have a dark side too. They are crowded, noisy and it is a pain to find a good game. Here are a few tips from my experience:

For attendees:

[Let's start with the obvious]

Register as early as possible. This is your best chance to get the games you want.
Get there early. If you can afford to be at the con the day or night before you can usually avoid the crowds to pick up your registration material. Additionally, if you GM at the con, there is usually a different line than those merely attending.
Don't choose games in every time slot. You will want to wander the dealer's room, attend the auction, and hit some of the discussion panels. Leave yourself some free time.
Get a locker. Hauling around all that gaming material, especially if you play different types of games or are a GM, is exhausting a leads to major neck-aches. If you can get in early and snag a locker, you can store some of your stuff there and treat it, instead of wherever you are crashing, as home base. For a quarter a shot, it is the best deal you will find at the con. Works for me!
Bring throat lozenges of some kind. If you are a GM, you will be shouting over players, loudspeakers and other GM's; same goes for players. After a day or so, your throat will be sore, guaranteed.

For GM's:

Be VERY prepared. You will typically have only a limited number of hours to run your players through your scenario (or scenarios if you are running a multi-round tournament). There is an art (which I never fully mastered) to keeping a game within a few hours. Prepare good maps and some other visual aids for the players (like graphics of significant places and objects). These definitely move the game along. Good maps are the best thing, since visualizing where you are is the most time consuming thing for players.
Choose a relatively familiar location for the module (an inn, a regular dungeon, a castle, etc.). This will make it much less difficult to get the ball rolling (again, that visualization thing). I have adapted movies (The Warriors, Die Hard, The Running Man, etc.) using AD&D and GURPS and been very successful at getting the players off and running very fast.
You MUST playtest your scenario to see how long it runs.
You must also prepare 'toss away' sections of the module, so that if one section starts running too long, you can throw away another section and still have the players reach the end. I find it disheartening, personally, and players have expressed it to me when you don't finish the module.
Prepare character sheets. Often people won't bring their own characters or want them to be in your one-time module. You must have characters for those people.
Be ready to wing it. I'm sure as a GM you have found that the players do something you did not anticipate in a module. That is not too bad when you have time to deal with it, but in a tournament situation you have to be very quick on your feet. Playtesting the module will help, but it is also useful to simply dream up some ideas for how to get the players back on track if they veer off.
When GM'ing, be very animated and enthusiastic. There is nothing worse than a GM who sits behind his screens and talks to you over them. Get up; move around; use your body to describe situations, monsters, NPC's, etc. The more excitement you build up in the players, the more inclined they are to move quickly through the module.
In the module, set a deadline for the characters ("You must bring the potion back by midnight, or the princess will die."). Again, it help move things along and prevents them from getting hung up in any one spot in the module.
Choose mid-day time slots. Players are half-awake in the morning, and fading out at night. Shoot for something in the late afternoon, or early evening. Makes for much more animated play.

Hope that helps. If you have any more advice for the con-goer, drop me a note I will add it to this page.

Adam Lesh
Editor-In-Chief

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