"Club-sponsored games at conventions" Topic

Let's imagine that your game club has been invited to host three games at a local convention.

Would you rather:

Put on three different games?

Put on the same game three times, but rotate umpires?

Three different games, but linked in some way.

3 different.

Brian

Three different linked games.

Depends on distance travelled. If it is very far I would want to minimize what was being lugged around, probably by utilizing most of the terrain over as it is usually the bulkiest item.

The question seemed to assume that the entire club would be required to put on a single game, whether it was 3 individual games or the same game three times. My club would have the ability to have different subgroups each take responsibility for putting on their own unique game…in that case we could actually put on three games three times during the course of a convention…nine is always better than three.

db

We have done this before with our own club (Susquehanna Historical Gamers) together with another local club (Northern Lancaster Wargamers) and we usually put on lots of different games. But all of us are local to the major HMGS East cons, so transport is not an issue. Personally, I like to run different games rather than the same, but try to use as much of the same terrain as possible.

Ooops hit submit too soon…

Meant to add:

We have also done large games run several times (The Battle for Kohima being a good example).

It is better to run three differnt games unless you are sure that there will be enough attendants who want to play the game to fill it for three sessions. Often when you run the same game over again three times, you have run out of players who want to play it by the third time. Unless it is extremely popular.

Our gaming group ran: DBA, DBA Hordes of things for the chil'ren, Gutshot, and some clown ran a colonial SATF SpongeBob game at RECON.

Mix it up. brothers!

Three different, and as Oldnorthstate says, if you have
the resources, three different sets of GM's…

We would put three different games with the same figures/terrain (or with small variations). We are only 6-8 members and do not have enough logistics capacity.

Often when you run the same game over again three times, you have run out of players who want to play it by the third time. Unless it is extremely popular.

But if a game is popular, then people will miss out if it isn't offered more than once.

The Editor makes a good point…my experience is that, for whatever reason, at conventions bigger is interpreted as better. We all have horror stories about the "big" game that gets lots of buzz, everybody wants to play, and then all we hear are the complaints about how it looked nice but was unplayable. But putting that aside, these types of games are attractive.

My Carnage and Glory gaming group will be putting on a "big" game at Historicon, Mockern, October 16, 1813 in 28mm. It will be played over a 6'x24' table, using the Carnage and Glory Napoleonic computer moderated rules and will have at least 20 commands of division or higher available. We have scheduled to put it on twice, on Friday and Saturday.

Given the size of the game, which begin at 1:30 pm (gametime) and will continue until nightfall, 6:30 pm (gametime), could go as long as 20 turns. Previous experience with smaller games suggest 30 minutes per turn might be optimistic, but even at that rate we might have a 10 hour game. We will need to really ride herd on the gamers to get it done if we need 20 turns. We struggled with the option of doing two seperate games over the two days or starting on Friday and just continuing the same game, ending on Saturday. Although that would be much easier for us, it was not at all attractive to me since I suspect there will be a great deal of interest in playing and I want to give as many players the opportunity as possible.

I think the other side of the coin from the original question, and I've seen this at conventions, a group will put up a big, great looking game at say Historicon, and then only play it once, despite the fact that there were players who could not get in the game. I understand the old show business motto of always leaving the audience wanting more, but after all that work, setting it up, etc. unless there is some scheduling issue I am not aware of, I just don't see why you don't at least run it more than once.

db

Like Keith said, we tend to run multiple games with each one being different. I try to use as much similar terrain as possible though so I'm not killing my back hauling stuff in.

from NLW,
Doc