Re: GenCon Plans Anyone?

On Tue, 06 Aug 2002 23:46:54 -0500, Scott Siebold <gamers@ameritech.net>
wrote:

>At one time this was the big convention of the year for ALL wargamers
>(role playing, miniatures and board gamers). After the "role players"
>(TSR) took over all the miniature games got stuck in side rooms where
>only those playing the game could see the figures. 

I attended GenCon from 1995 to 2000. Being a roleplayer as well, I could
see
the need for roleplaying taking over larger areas. However, in 1995
through
1997 the miniatures games typically had better locations than the
roleplaying
games. They were in rooms above the dealer's room at the old MECCA
facility,
but that was a better location than the arena, for instance. 

I remember in 1995 playing in a number of historical games, including a
DBA
tournament. Miniatures started getting shunted aside when MECCA was
demolished
and the new facility came "online". They only had half the new place set
up,
and still had to use Bruce Hall and the Arena for some things. In 1998
they
stuck miniatures into the bottom level of the Arena. No one could find
it. In
fact it was so bad, some folks (mostly dealers, I think) produced "I
Found the
Miniatures Events at GenCon" buttons and handed them out for free.
Historical
games had been on the decline at this point. What was busier in this
phase of
GenCon was card games, though the bulk of people were still playing
roleplaying games. In 1999 it was slightly better... we were in the
arena
proper, which gave us more space and you could breathe, but didn't
result in
much walk-in traffic.

Ironically, we (that is GZG and Geo-Hex) peaked event wise in 1999, the
first
year I ran the events. We hit something like 35 events that year. That
included Dean Gundberg's Sci-Fi Crossover running twice and Mark
Siefert's B5
game running twice, but it was a good turn out. The number of events
went down
in 2000 for a couple of reasons. I was less agressive in just throwing
out
events and hopefully finding someone to run them. Also, there were fewer
judges attending. 

A good part of the attendance trouble with judges had to do with
WotC/Andon
taking over control of the con. Organizationally, it wasn't very good.
They
made event mistakes, and they screwed up housing pretty badly. The
pre-registration system was a mess, particularly for Canadians (though I
never
got confirmation of this, the apparent problem was that they sent out
the
pre-reg packets to Canadians at the same postal rate as to the US, not
realizing mail to Canada is slightly higher). 

In 2000 we had a _great_ location. We were in the room right next to the
dealer's room. Even still, much of the damage had been done. Historical
miniatures were few and far between. Even non-historical miniatures were
in
decline, due to the problems the previous two years.

I got an e-mail last year asking me to attend. I had decided if I got to
any
convention, it would be a miniatures heavy convention. The person at
WotC
pointed out that they had more board and miniature events than any other
type
of event! This is true, but somewhat deceiving. First, miniatures events
had
radically declined (I know; I went through past convention books).
Second, a
_Settlers of Catan_ board game event with 4 people was "1 event". A
_Magic:
The Gathering_ tournament with 200 people was "1 event". Obviously not
equal
in number of attendees.

> The miniature gamers
> rebelled and went out and formed HMGS (Historical Miniature Gaming
>Society). 

I don't think this is true. I heard from one of the HMGS chapter
presidents
that they rebelled over what happened at Origins, not GenCon. Historicon
was a
direct response to Origins.

> My SciFi games had to be classified as "future history" to be
>put on at Little Wars ( midwest convention) but the East con
(historicon)
>banned all SciFi and Fantasy in a knee-jerk reaction. In recent times
the
>ban on SciFi and Fantasy has been lifted at historicon.

This is, in fact, one of the reasons GenCon and Origins is a good type
of
convention. You can play historicals _and_ science fiction/fantasy. I
see why
they banned sci-fi/fantasy. They didn't want the convention overrun by
Warhammer games. There is a certain bit of snobbery in historical
gamers. Oh,
and there are a number of historical gamers with strong religious
beliefs who
think that fantasy games -- with their magic component -- are somehow
evil. (I
had an interesting discussion with someone over this...) At the same
time,
there are plenty of folk who prefer to game sci-fi and fantasy because
they
see more of a disconnect from "reality". It's easier to see NSL troopers
or
Elven archers cut down than someone who could easily represent a grand
father
or father.

>Except for the time I was in the army I attended all of the gencon
>conventions since gencon II..

WotC did realize the importance of bringing board games and miniatures
games
back "into the fold" as it were. Board games were important because WotC
was
bought by Hasbro. It will be interesting to see what will happen now
that
Hasbro has sold off GenCon.

I really liked Milwaukee, but the way that city handled housing was a
mess.
They required people to go through the housing bureau, which parcelled
out
housing to all the available hotels downtown. You could get stuck in a
hotel a
fair distance away (one year it was 18 blocks, and some were far worse)
even
though the big hotels right next to the centre still had slots. In fact,
lots
of folks determined when the "controlled" time was lifted for the hotels
and
booked rooms in the bigger hotels that week. Others booked rooms two
years in
advance outside of the convention. Everyone I talked to suggested that
this
was a major reason for the convention leaving Milwaukee.

I don't know about last year, or this year, but I know in 2000 they had
the
largest attendance ever at about 25,000 people. This was a 25% increase
from
the year before (a difficult trend for them, as WotC lost a fair number
of
judges, thus the number of events dropped).

While I prefer miniatures over other games, I also like board games and
roleplaying games, and even the occasional card game (Mythos, in
particular).
General conventions were better for me, even though I had a ball at
"Fall In!"
in 2000. I think these general games are more positive about sci-fi
events.
For GZG events, GenCon is the big convention in North America. Aside
from
running modern or WW2 events in SG2 or DS2 (or ACW games in SG2, for
that
matter), it's hard for GZG to make it at miniatures events, as they
either
tend to be GW events or historical events.

Allan Goodall		       agoodall@hyperbear.com
http://www.hyperbear.com

"At long last, the earthy soil of the typical, 
unimaginable mortician was revealed!" 
 - from the Random H.P. Lovecraft Story Generator:
http://www.darkicon.com/Library/randsent.htm