Bad News from the L.A. Con

[jburneko]

Hello,

I have some rather bad news concerning the L.A. Con.  Deathwish was offered three different times and three different times I got ZERO players.  Friday and Saturday night no one signed up.  Sunday night, two people signed up and then didn't show.

I was rather disappointed.  The con, in general, seemed very empty.  There were a lot of regulars that I was used to seeing who weren't there.

Oh well.

Next con I think I'm going to try again.  I will probably sign up to run this Deathwish scenario for at least one time slot and see what happens.

Jesse

[Matt Snyder]

Well, shoot! That is a bummer.

I have a heck of a time figuring out why folks who've purchased Dust Devils in one form or another haven't gotten around to playing it yet. It's as though they greatly appreciate the concept (especially the high-card-narrates rule, which seems to be the "Aha!" moment for most folks), but either haven't got time to run it or can't convince fellow group members to "Draw!" so to speak.

Anyway, thanks for taking the time to put together the sessions. I appreciate it, and I hope you still had a good time at the con. I sure as hell hope you get some more interest next go round. Any other thoughts on what might be to blame? Was it that few people were there? Were other games going unplayed? What was popular?

[jburneko]

Matt,

Yes, there were a LOT of games going unplayed.  I, myself, didn't really play much because I forgot about the con and accidentally double booked myself to GM for my own regular group Saturday afternoon.  So, I played a Crimson Cutlass game on Sunday afternoon for which I was the only player.

There are really four different "types" of games that are popular here at the con.

1) Call of Cthulhu - This is king.  There are usually multiple games of this running and they always fill up.

2) RPGA D&D Tournaments/Living Style Games - These are very popular as well.  Recently Spycraft has joined this rank.

3) White Wolf Players - There is usually one or two tabletop games that run through out the weekend but the main focus here are on VERY LARGE Mindnight Vampire LARPS.

4) GURPS Players.  This is the "catch all" category.  Recently I had a revelation.  I think THIS is the category of players I need to start talking to, playing with etc.  From the few GURPS regulars I've talked to, a lot of these people are still into the whole "role vs. roll" debate and play GURPS mainly because it's easy to ignore it as a system.  Some of them may find a game like Dust Devils to be eye-opening as you have experienced.

Outside of those four categories there are the occasional odd-game out here and there.  I've played Everway at this con before and there's a group who steadily runs an In Nomine game.  The In Nomine players were noticably absent from this con.

This is the first time I've totally struckout for players.  I've had zero takers for a single session before but I've never gone without my event running at all.  The last con I ran Sorcerer and the con before that I ran InSpectres.  The con before that I wasn't focusing on Forge games and ran Deadlands and Chill.  Not surprisingly my Chill game was HUGE success because it was basically Call of Cthulhu-lite.

Jesse