Damage Control: Double Shot
by Steven "Bull" Ratkovich [ bull@dumpshock.com ]

Conventional Control

Ahhh, summer. ‘Tis the season that school children long for, when school is out of session, the ice cream truck drives by daily (if they're lucky), the sun is bright and warm, and the days are long and lazy. For those of us who are a little older, summer means other things. Picnics, baseball games, fireworks, swimming pools, girls in bikinis, take your pick.

If you’re a gamer the most important thing the summer season brings is the game convention. Dragon-con, Gen Con, Origins, plus hundreds of smaller conventions around the country take place during those long, hot days. And if you’re a hardcore gamer, you’ll try to attend as many of these as you can. There are generally three kinds of conventions: local, regional and national.

If money and time are an issue, you might be able to find a small local convention hosted by a nearby college. Most larger public colleges, especially state schools, have a gaming club that puts together a convention of some kind. These are typically quite small, with a handful of games run by volunteers, and possibly some dealers from local game shops. If the club is lucky, they may be able to pull in an industry guest of some kind, but that's unusual for a little convention like this, and you rarely see any sort of presence from game companies. These conventions can be a fun chance to get out, try a new game, or just game with people you don’t know. You can also often get some good bargains from some of the vendors that do set up for these conventions.

After the local con, there is the regional con. Often these are put together by an organization other than a college gaming club. Sometimes this is a group of shopkeepers in an area, and sometimes it is members of several gaming clubs working together. The results are usually more impressive than the local convention, though still somewhat confined. These will often attract GMs from outside the group putting it together, will usually have a handful of professional and amateur vendors in a dealers' room, and will occasionally have a couple of minor industry guests, such as a writer or an artist. These industry guests are often people who someone on the planning committee knows or who live in the area. These conventions are usually weekend-only, and are worth attending if you can. There are almost always games available for the more popular RPGs, and often a handful of smaller, less well known games will be run. Plus the dealers' room and auction are often a great chance to find bargains.

Finally, you have your national conventions. These range in size greatly from smaller national cons that draw several thousand attendees to the mecca of gaming, Gen Con, which brings in over 30,000 attendees each year. Conventions of this size always have some sort of dealer room or exhibitors hall area with a number of dealers and usually have some presence from at least a few game companies. Several of these shows, namely Origins and Gen Con, have representatives from almost every game company out there despite the hefty expense of renting booth space. There are also often an anime rooms showing various movies throughout the day, an auction room, an art exhibit hall where you can check out and buy pieces of original artwork, game demos, open gaming, tournaments, and guests of honor from gaming, television, and movies.

So, you want to go to a game convention. Now what? Well, there are a few things you can do to make the convention experience go a bit smoother.

1. Plan ahead
This is one that I cannot stress enough. The larger the convention, the more you need to plan for it.

1a. Travel Plans
This is the first thing you should figure out. How are you getting to the convention? If the convention is nearby, driving is an option. If it’s cross country, you need to decide if you can drive to the convention, or if you want to fly. If you want to go by plane, buy your tickets months in advance. The earlier you buy them, the cheaper they will be. You’ll also want to plan to get to the convention a day in advance, most likely. This allows you to take care of the preliminaries and get settled in, so that you can just enjoy the convention when it starts.

1b. Pre-Register
Register for the convention as early as possible. Often, it’s cheaper to do so. Plus it will allow you to register for games, and possibly get hotel accommodations more easily. Once you get the pre-registration book, go through it carefully, highlighting any games that look interesting. Once you’ve seen what’s available, work up a schedule that seems feasible to you. Don’t sign up for too much, as you’ll burn out. Keep in mind that there will be more games that are scheduled after the pre-reg book is released, so there will be more to check into on site. Make sure you sign up for any games you really want in on, as you don’t want them to sell out. With 5,000+ attendees at some of the larger conventions, and often only six slots available, game space goes fast.

1c. Rooming Accommodations
Having a place to sleep always helps make the convention experience a little more enjoyable for you, as well as those around you. Sure, you may be able to handle going three days with no sleep and no shower, but trust me, no one around you wants to deal with it. Whether this is making arrangements to crash on a friend's floor or reserving a hotel room, you want to have sleeping arrangements worked out ahead of time. There’s nothing more frustrating than getting to the convention and finding out every hotel in the city is booked up (and for some of the larger conventions, this is not just a possibility, but an inevitability).

2. Prepare
With pre-planning finished, the next step is to figure out what you should take to the convention. Packing is a major step in preparation.

2a. Clothes
Take enough clean and neat clothes for the entire convention. As with showering, you may be comfortable wearing the same clothing for days on end, but trust me: No one else is. Take enough clothes for each day of the convention, plus an extra days worth, just in case. Plus if there’s the possibility of other actives, such as going clubbing, or going to a formal dinner, prepare accordingly. As silly as it sounds, plan your wardrobe for the entire convention. Nothing is worse than spilling chocolate syrup on your only pair of jeans.

2b. Gaming Books
First off, do not drag every book you own with you. And if you do, don’t drag them all to the convention hall. Two hours into the convention, you’ll be regretting it. Gaming books are heavy, much more so than you’d think. I’d suggest only taking what you’ll absolutely need—core books for the games you’re going to play. Most games will have both books and pre-generated characters available. Bring the types of dice you’ll need, but remember that conventions are excellent places to pick up brand new dice for you and your friends back home.

2c. Other
Beyond the essentials, you may want to take a water bottle, as drinks and food at conventions are expensive. If there are any people there you want to get an autograph from, take something to get signed. Sometimes they give away a photo, but often they charge for them. A backpack to carry stuff in is a must, and a wheeled backpack is a godsend if, like me, you need to lug a bunch of books around.

3. The Convention
You’ve successfully prepared and packed for the convention. You’ve traveled, survived the trip, and settled into your residence of choice. Now, on to the convention!

3a. Registration
If you planned ahead, you pre-registered for the convention. However, it’s not always possible to do so. Either way, you’ll want to head up to the convention hall and take care of registration. If you pre-regged, you should have a badge and anything else you pre-purchased waiting for you, just show them the confirmation information—usually it’s just a printed receipt from the web. Otherwise, you’ll need to purchase a badge—the lines for this are often long, especially on opening day! You’ll also want to pick up an on site program to get the updated game schedule, maps of the convention hall, and other information.

3b. Meetings
A lot of times you’ll be meeting up with people you know, either from real life or online. Regardless of whether you’ve ever met them before or not, the first thing you need to do is set up a time and place. Even if none of you have attended that particular convention before, you at least know that there will be a registration booth of some kind, so that works as a default if you don’t know of a better place. The time is relatively easy, the key here is simply to be where you’re supposed to be when you’re supposed to be there. If you’re supposed to meet at the Shadowrun booth at 3:00, and you’re not there on time, you have no one to blame but yourself for not hooking up with your friends. Finally, you need a signal of some sort. This could be a sign, a recognizable t-shirt, or a unique hat or costume. This isn’t so necessary if you’ve met before in person, but can still be handy, especially at a busier con.

3c. Gaming
This is what you’re there for, right? Try out demos of games, play in the games you registered for, try out the company sponsored tournaments. Just be careful not to burn yourself out—you’ll get worn out quickly if you get involved in a lot of games. Leave yourself time to eat, browse the dealer room, hang out with friends, and time to just relax.

3d. Hanging Out
If you’re meeting up with a large number of people at the conventions, it’s almost imperative that you plan your group outings carefully. Too often there are 20 people standing around, and someone is hungry. The next thing you know, there are 20 people tromping off to find some food. Quite simply, this is too large of a group. You can’t talk to everyone, you can’t get a table easily at a restaurant, so why go through the hassle? Break the groups off if you can. Try to avoid going out to public restaurants in groups larger than six, and try to vary your groups. If you want to hang out with everyone, realize that this means you won’t hang out with anyone for very long. If you want to spend time hanging out and talking with just a single person, plan ahead—make dinner reservations and make sure that you don’t pick up any leechlike friends on your way!

3e. Game Booths and Guests of Honor
Do not play drooling fanboy or fangirl at your favorite game company's booth during a meeting (if you’re lucky enough to get one) with one of the guests of honor at a convention. Be polite, tell them you’re a fan, thank them for their time, and move on. If there’s not a huge line and you have time for a second or two of small talk, ask how they like the convention, and watch for the slightly haunted look in their eye. The same general principles apply to game company booths. You may think Angst: The Agony is White Wolf’s coolest product ever, but don’t sit there drooling over the booth workers and pestering them with questions. Even worse, if the game designer, line developer, editor, or janitor at White Wolf is at the booth, do not pester them with rules questions every three seconds. They’re at the convention to meet fans, sell product, and to answer questions, but rarely do they have time to talk to a single fan for a half hour at a time. Some companies sponsor seminars for gamemasters or players of their games, so if you have questions you may want to attend them. Also, if you happen to see one of the guests of honour or your favorite game writer outside of the convention—at a shopping mall or resturant, for example—mind your manners! It’s very impolite to interrupt people who are with family, or who are eating dinner. If you must approach someone when they’re in public, wait until they’re finished eating and be as polite as possible. Don’t be surprised or upset if you get a quick brush off. While some people don’t mind talking to fans for a few minutes, they don’t have an hour to stand around the malls food court and talk to every fan there.

Gamemasters and Conventions

For many a gamemaster, a convention is their release, a break from the constraints of a gamemaster screen and the daily grind of dodging rules lawyers, power gamers, munchkins and loons. If he’s feeling particularly frustrated, he may decide to become one of those irritating players. While a GM should know better than to become what he fears and loathes, often this is a necessary step in recharging the ol’ batteries. Plus it often helps the players, for a short time at least, as the GM remembers what it’s like to be on the outside of the GM screen.

The game convention also presents the gamemaster with the opportunity to grow, learn, and to master new tricks and traps to foil his players. If there are seminars about your favorite game, go to them, especially if they are "Gamemaster Seminars." I picked up some great tips one year at a 7th Seas GM Seminar, and I’ve never played nor ran that game. But a lot of strategies, tricks, and the like will cross games easily enough. Learn what you can, teach what you can, and the gamemaster community as a whole will be better for it. If you don’t come back from a convention with at least a half dozen new ideas to deal with your players, you were sleeping too much.

Also keep an eye on the bargain bins and the auction room, if you can. There are some great deals on old products that come through. And even if you don’t ever plan to run the Tomb of Horrendous Unknown Elemental Nasties against your players, you can always use it to generate ideas and plans. Even the crappiest adventure or sourcebook out there has something in it that makes it worthwhile, and often you can find these gems at rock bottom prices.

If money is an issue, or you just can’t handle sitting at a table without a GM screen in front of you, gamemasters can volunteer and register to run some games at them. Most often, the convention will have some kind of reimbursement deal set up for anyone who GMs a certain number of games, usually a refund on the entrance free. If you have an "in" with a game company, you may even be able to swing a free hotel room and/or some free product. An enterprising gamemaster can trade in on the skills he learned while dealing with his local munchkins by heading to a convention and pimping himself out.

1. Know your game
Run it by the book as much as possible. Other players aren’t going to know your house rules, so unless they’re minor and few, don’t try to run a convention game using that ream of house rules you’ve spent the last 15 years collecting.

2. Bring materials
Don’t expect the players to have all the books they’ll need with them. They expect you to provide this information, so either have all the relevant data on the character sheets, or bring those sourcebooks you’re using data from. While you're at it, bring extra scratch paper and pencils, too—it's easy to lose simple things like that during a busy day.

3. Prepare characters
Regardless of the game, generating characters is a time consuming process, so making characters during the game session is a poor idea. Giving the players the chance to BYOC ("Bring Your Own Character") is just asking to get a handful of the most annoying and abusive characters you’ve ever seen. Unless you’re running a game where balance doesn’t matter, always bring characters for the players to use. This also allows you to customize the characters to the adventure, so they’ll have the necessary skills and experience to tackle the adventure. Four hardcore street sams on a run with heavy magical influence is not a good plan!

4. Test your adventure
Often you have a limited time slot to run in, usually three hours and 45 minutes. You need to make sure your game can wrap up in that amount of time. When plotting out your adventure, make sure you take into consideration time factors. As you don’t know the players, you can’t plan for all contingencies—maybe a fight scene will drag for longer than you intended, or maybe they’ll miss a vital clue. Even though you can’t predict everything that may go wrong, it’s wise to have backup plans for most situations so the characters—and players—don’t get stuck. Nothing is less satisfying than getting into a game for four hours, then not finishing the game because of time.

5. Stay hydrated
Remember the water bottle I mentioned earlier? You want one if you’re running a game, and if you don't have one make sure you bring something else to drink. Water bottles can be filled up for free, but a can of cola at the convention will run twice regular price. As a GM, you’ll be talking a lot, so you’ll want something to keep you hydrated. Another thing to keep in mind is a bathroom and smoke break midway through the game session—most convention areas are non-smoking and you don’t want players having a nicotine fit three hours into the game!

Well, that’s it! Now you should be prepared to tackle a game convention and survive! Go forth, my sons and daughters. Learn, grow, have fun! And remember... The GM is always right :]