Back from Gorilla Con IV

Well, I'm back from Gorilla Con IV, and I have to admit that it wasn't everything I'd hoped it would be.

I only got to play in one roleplaying game, and some of it has to do with my own bad planning or timing. It starts with my being scheduled to run a game at 8 PM on Saturday, but not being fully prepared when the con started... I still had character sheets to flesh out and a map to finish! So not only did I have the laptop, I lugged my printer to the hotel as well, and spent too much time in the hotel room working on the adventure. The real irony is that the game never happened... I couldn't scrounge up enough players.

I skipped the Saturday morning slot because I was up past midnight on Friday, and assumed I'd be able to pick up another game, so I voted for sleep over roleplaying. (Hey, I'm 38, I have a kid, and I like my sleep.)

I skipped the Saturday afternoon slot because I didn't want to play in the slot before running my own game. When my own game didn't get enough players at eight, there wasn't anything but Living Greyhawk going on in that slot. (And one Call of Cthulhu game which was full.)

I wish I'd made an effort to play in one of the other two slots on Saturday... I talked to GMs in both slots that didn't get to run their games due to lack of players. If my wife and I had showed up, their games would have run. And I would have played in more than one roleplaying game over the whole weekend.

All in all, I played a few board and card games, and one demo game of Against the Darkness by Tabletop Adventures, my only roleplaying session of the con. Most of the GMs trying to run non-D&D games didn't get enough players... there were only a handful of non-D&D games offered and a slightly larger handful of players interested in non-D&D. And we didn't manage to get enough of those players together in the same room at the same time.

It wasn't a total bust. I didn't find a single roleplaying game I wanted to play last year (it was all D&D and one Vampire game, I seem to recall), so this year was an improvement in that regard. And this year my wife was with me, and we ate at "local flavor" spots for nearly every meal. Good food and lots of fun there. But I'm not sure I'm going to go back next year. If I do, I'm going to have to be more prepared and grab every opportunity to game as it comes along, instead of assuming that "something" will work out.

This has me thinking a lot about the local Roleplaying Game Days and the potential of a gaming con in Wichita, but they're not real concrete thoughts. But it does have me more anxious to get GD3 put together.