"When hosting a con game, ever have anything stolen or broken?" Topic

This fall, I thinking of hosting some convyention games for the first time. This might turn into a series of con related polls

When hosting a convention game, have you had anything pilfered or broken?

No scale at the moment. We can work it out as we go. :)

No. I myself have lost items at cons for games I was hosting. I always seem to have a horrible habit of misplacing things right before I put the game on.
Broken or stolen? Nope.

In many years, I think it's been the occasional broken spear or tank barrel or a guy falls off the horse or the base. Never anything major that some superglue didn't take care of, and really rare. I often seem to come back short a die, so most of my dice bricks have 34 or 35 dice in them, but it's not pilfering, just dice getting rolled somewhere funny. In fact, somehow I have 39 red dice, they were gaining instead! I would not worry, guys are going to be respectful of your stuff.

I've been doing four to six games a year for over twenty years. I had one board game stolen when left unattended. I don't think anything else has been lost or stolen, though it's possible I didn't notice a stray miniature. Some terrain has been damaged, but only accidetntaly and nothing that couldn't be easily repaired.

When I buy a brick of dice I like I often buy an extra die or two in the same pattern to protect against loss, but this insurance has never paid off.

Yes! Ham fisted asses mishandling troops. Broken swords, lances and pikes! Pick them up by the base!!!

Luckily, never.

It has occurred. People get careless with figures they don't own and aren't familiar with, plus the effects of booze or distractions and hurry-up or "convention hysteria". My casualties have been mainly breakage, but I do believe a few miniatures/rubber monsters have mysteriously vanished from public games in the past. There are things I haven't found in years and I'll think, "Oh, the last time I put this on a table was at blank-blank but I haven't seen it since then. Hmmmm…"

Stolen? No.

Ive had the odd thing damaged by clumsy handling, although always repairable. Someone managed to stand on an aircraft which had fallen on the floor once. I even managed to fix that.

Ive been running games at shows and conventions for 25 years and it is fine. My biggest problem is forgetting to pack something, so I triple check.

Two sappers from the Vietmeyer Memorial Game at Historicon, long ago. I always figured someone's idea of a souvenir. Mind you, I've had people walk up to me at conventions and give me figures a number of times--sometimes complete strangers, just because I seemed to be interested in a particular period/scale.

Pre-Covid I would run All Quiet / Martian Front. One game I had a mid-teen player who was VERY excited to be playing. VERY. It became his turn, for some reason he VERY excitedly jumped up and decided he needed to move to a different part of the table. Instead of excusing himself to the other players he decided to Bull Rush past them, tripped, crashed down on the table and smashed one of my Tripods.

I was speechless…

The rest of the game he was quite subdued. But the damage had been done….

Dave

i am sure very minor damage has occurred, but nothing comes to mind. Been running games at shows for 30 years.

I've had a few things broken but nothing too serious. I've had worse experiences with stuff stolen from the bring and buy table

Many years of running games.

One pilferage at Anime Boston when two kaiju figures got swiped. One was a 4" King Kong figure that I only paid $6 USD for, but I've never been able to find a replacement, grr!

In general, come packing up time I tend to lose dice but gain tape measures. So, probably a net gain there.

Minor breakage is inevitable. Having a bottle of Zap-a-Gap on hand is always useful.

You know, it isn't just cons. For some of us, it isn't even mostly cons. "Missing" sure, though figures and terrain I've misplaced exceed by orders of magnitude anything I ever brought to a con to play with.

But damage is a fact of life wherever you game, and whoever you game with--including solo. I figure when you plan time for a game, you plan time to repair figures and terrain--an hour or two for a 3x3 board to maybe half a day for a 6x8. If it's an army that doesn't get out much, allow a little time to fix one or two paint jobs you didn't remember were that bad.

Hi

I ve run 40-50 games over the years and Only had 1 thief, So its rare.

I've not put on a game but did have something stolen from a display I left at my local hobby shop. Also I had something lifted from my flea market table but I just let it go.

Yes, someone walked off with a whole platoon of 28mm WW2 German figures that I had in a Chessex box. Never got them back.

I never ran games at cons, but I have done model shows, and model train shows with tables of stuff for sale and in one case a display table of stuff to show what a wargame looks like, never had anything stolen.

People gamed at my home in Southern California for 30 years from 1987 to 2017 almost every week, sometimes three days per week. Probably at least 100 different people come and go. Only had one guy take items. We had a big game set up NATO / Warsaw Pact and over a period of a couple weeks he took about a dozen WP vehicles.

Found out when his roommate returned them to me, he found them in the guys room while kicking him out.

I had not missed them because the game was still ongoing.

My thought is don't take anything you can't reasonably replace if you are concerned about theft or breakage. That $1,000 USD, custom made, fragile thing is better left at home.

Mike Bunkermeister Creek

Nothing stolen, but had a fat guy almost walk off with some 15mm Pikemen stuck to his stomach when he leaned over the table to move units……

Been running convention games for over a decade. Never anything stolen, and a few (very) few broken. It happens. I usually start my game briefing with, ‘Please be careful with the miniatures, but breakages happen. If it does, the key thing is to tell me and hand me the broken part so I can fix it properly.'

Funnily enough, I gave that speech at Little Wars this year and 30 seconds later a young man picked up a heavy figure by the arm, which came right off. It was a super easy fix and I wasn't mad, but it gave me the opportunity to illustrate the point "Like that!" He felt pretty bad, but lesson learned.

If you are overly concerned, don't bring figures you couldn't bear see break, but I haven't seen it as an issue.

Nothing stolen, trivial damage to minis is all.

Yes several times.
A few figures. The worst case with Raguet we had a napo game over 2 days. In the night all bridges and some houses disapeared.

Nothing stolen, maybe a few spears or swords broken, had a few figures come off their bases.

I ran 3 or more convention miniatures games a year for over 10 years, and never had any problems with theft or breakage.

Role-playing games are so much easier logistically that I tend to run them now.