Report from GorillaCon3
Posted: Mon Mar 20, 2006 3:27 pm
This past weekend a friend and I attended GorillaCon3, a small, mid-western states general gaming convention. The Con was held in Pittsburg, Kansas and ran from Friday night through Sunday afternoon. This is a review of the Con itself and the events I participated in or got to observe.
I should probably preface my review with a few general thoughts to give you some context for my comments that follow. First, I have not been to many gaming conventions over the 25 years that I have gamed. It was just not something that was important to me as a hobbyist gamer. And, of the conventions I have attended, all have been pretty small events. Second, GorillaCon is a very small, local convention that draws gamers from primarily four mid-western states: Kansas, Missouri, Arkansas and Oklahoma. The prior year’s GorillaCon drew around 150 gamers, so I was expecting something like that for this year’s con. Third, I was only able to be at the Con for the events on Saturday. I imagine that Saturday’s events probably were the best attended of the Con, but I really don’t have any sense of how things went on Friday or Sunday.
Overall, I’d say that the numbers were down from what I was expecting for the Con. I don’t know official figures yet, but I would estimate that there was between 125 and 150 gamers attending. There were three rooms set up for gaming, with one of the rooms doubling as the vendor area. In the room where I ran my First Edition AD&D event, there were 12 or 14 tables set up, but not all of the tables were in use. And while I suspect that some of the events were cancelled due to lack of participants, the tables that were in use were completely full.
I ran a Goodman Games DCC [/b](#12.5 Iron Crypt of the Heretics) that I converted to First Edition AD&D specifically for the Con. Originally this was set up as a tournament for two separate teams of players. But, since there were not enough players for the early session, that session was cancelled, and the later session was ran as a straight dungeon crawl. This DCC is designed for 4 to 6 players, but since we had to cancel the first session, we expanded the second session and allowed a couple more players to join in. All in all, the party had 7 players for the adventure, two of whom had never played D&D under First Edition (AD&D) rules. I did the PC conversion myself, and added a seventh PC to the original six.
The party was able to make it almost through the entire first level in the four hours allotted for the session (which is about as far as I was thinking they would get). If you know anything about DCC #12.5, you know that this dungeon crawl is a little light on combat encounters and a little heavy on problem solving and trap resolution. Most of the traps were triggered by the party, yet only one PC death occurred. But, much use was made of the Staff of Curing and healing potions.
All told, I think the players had fun with the Iron Crypt of the Heretics. I know I had fun running this dungeon in a convention setting. It is different from campaign-based gaming, but it was still very enjoyable. I would do it again (run a 1E event), and will at this specific Con if there is a GorillaCon4.
I had the opportunity to observe a little of the D&D game that Casey Christofferson was running at the table next to me. Casey writes for both Necromancer Games and Troll Lord Games in his spare time. He brought a truckload of Dwarven Forge stuff, and had the players running around in a maze for hours. It looked like a fun session, and I wish I had had more time to join them.
But, I had already registered to play something else for the second session on Saturday: Wham-a-thon! Tom Wham made the trip from Lake Geneva to GorillaCon3, and was playing & playtesting his latest board game, Filithian Factories. There were four of us for this session of Wham-a-thon, so Tom acted as referee for our game. This game is kind of like Monopoly, only in space, an Interstellar Monopoly, of sorts. We all had a blast playing this Tom Wham game, and even though I finished in last place, I’d like to see this game get published someday. It would be fun to play it again.
The balance of Saturdays events were filled with various types of games. There were Living Greyhawk 3.5 D&D events, D&D minis events, Reaper Minis Warlords events, several miniature painting events, and a couple of other D&D 3.x events. The minis painting tables looked to be pretty full, and were busy most of the day on Saturday. The minis games tables were largely unused on Saturday, further supporting my notion that the attendance was less than expected.
The convention’s charity auction was held Saturday night, between gaming sessions. There was a lot of great merchandise that was up for auction, from Necromancer Games’ hardcovers and modules to Goodman Games DCC modules and other d20 supplements, to dice and Reaper minis. There was a bunch of Hackmaster stuff from Kenzer & Company, and one vendor threw in $200 worth of Dwarven Forge pieces.
Unfortunately for the charity benefiting from the auction, Habitat for Humanity, the auction was both poorly attended and poorly supported by the convention participants, in my opinion. I saw bundles of really great d20 products with retail values of $50 to $100 go to winning bids of $12, $15 and $20. I saw bundles of books that included single titles that I didn’t have go for less than the retail price of the one title in the bundle that I wanted. Now, given the sheer volume of merchandise that was sold off, I have no question whether that there will be a nice donation made to Habitat for Humanity. But, given the quantity and quality of the merchandise that was contributed, some of which I purchased personally for the auction and some of which I solicited directly from the publishers (like Necromancer Games), I am really disappointed in the support shown by the gamers at the Con for the charity auction.
All in all, this was a fun con for me to attend. There were highlights and lowlights. I think there was a lot of fun to be had by all in attendance, and yet there is lots of room for improvement in both the event offerings for the Con, and in the outcome of the charity auction.
A big thanks go to Joseph Goodman (and others in the industry) for his support of the charity auction and to Harley for his support and suggestions for converting the DCC #12.5 module to First Edition.
cheers,
tj
I should probably preface my review with a few general thoughts to give you some context for my comments that follow. First, I have not been to many gaming conventions over the 25 years that I have gamed. It was just not something that was important to me as a hobbyist gamer. And, of the conventions I have attended, all have been pretty small events. Second, GorillaCon is a very small, local convention that draws gamers from primarily four mid-western states: Kansas, Missouri, Arkansas and Oklahoma. The prior year’s GorillaCon drew around 150 gamers, so I was expecting something like that for this year’s con. Third, I was only able to be at the Con for the events on Saturday. I imagine that Saturday’s events probably were the best attended of the Con, but I really don’t have any sense of how things went on Friday or Sunday.
Overall, I’d say that the numbers were down from what I was expecting for the Con. I don’t know official figures yet, but I would estimate that there was between 125 and 150 gamers attending. There were three rooms set up for gaming, with one of the rooms doubling as the vendor area. In the room where I ran my First Edition AD&D event, there were 12 or 14 tables set up, but not all of the tables were in use. And while I suspect that some of the events were cancelled due to lack of participants, the tables that were in use were completely full.
I ran a Goodman Games DCC [/b](#12.5 Iron Crypt of the Heretics) that I converted to First Edition AD&D specifically for the Con. Originally this was set up as a tournament for two separate teams of players. But, since there were not enough players for the early session, that session was cancelled, and the later session was ran as a straight dungeon crawl. This DCC is designed for 4 to 6 players, but since we had to cancel the first session, we expanded the second session and allowed a couple more players to join in. All in all, the party had 7 players for the adventure, two of whom had never played D&D under First Edition (AD&D) rules. I did the PC conversion myself, and added a seventh PC to the original six.
The party was able to make it almost through the entire first level in the four hours allotted for the session (which is about as far as I was thinking they would get). If you know anything about DCC #12.5, you know that this dungeon crawl is a little light on combat encounters and a little heavy on problem solving and trap resolution. Most of the traps were triggered by the party, yet only one PC death occurred. But, much use was made of the Staff of Curing and healing potions.
All told, I think the players had fun with the Iron Crypt of the Heretics. I know I had fun running this dungeon in a convention setting. It is different from campaign-based gaming, but it was still very enjoyable. I would do it again (run a 1E event), and will at this specific Con if there is a GorillaCon4.
I had the opportunity to observe a little of the D&D game that Casey Christofferson was running at the table next to me. Casey writes for both Necromancer Games and Troll Lord Games in his spare time. He brought a truckload of Dwarven Forge stuff, and had the players running around in a maze for hours. It looked like a fun session, and I wish I had had more time to join them.
But, I had already registered to play something else for the second session on Saturday: Wham-a-thon! Tom Wham made the trip from Lake Geneva to GorillaCon3, and was playing & playtesting his latest board game, Filithian Factories. There were four of us for this session of Wham-a-thon, so Tom acted as referee for our game. This game is kind of like Monopoly, only in space, an Interstellar Monopoly, of sorts. We all had a blast playing this Tom Wham game, and even though I finished in last place, I’d like to see this game get published someday. It would be fun to play it again.
The balance of Saturdays events were filled with various types of games. There were Living Greyhawk 3.5 D&D events, D&D minis events, Reaper Minis Warlords events, several miniature painting events, and a couple of other D&D 3.x events. The minis painting tables looked to be pretty full, and were busy most of the day on Saturday. The minis games tables were largely unused on Saturday, further supporting my notion that the attendance was less than expected.
The convention’s charity auction was held Saturday night, between gaming sessions. There was a lot of great merchandise that was up for auction, from Necromancer Games’ hardcovers and modules to Goodman Games DCC modules and other d20 supplements, to dice and Reaper minis. There was a bunch of Hackmaster stuff from Kenzer & Company, and one vendor threw in $200 worth of Dwarven Forge pieces.
Unfortunately for the charity benefiting from the auction, Habitat for Humanity, the auction was both poorly attended and poorly supported by the convention participants, in my opinion. I saw bundles of really great d20 products with retail values of $50 to $100 go to winning bids of $12, $15 and $20. I saw bundles of books that included single titles that I didn’t have go for less than the retail price of the one title in the bundle that I wanted. Now, given the sheer volume of merchandise that was sold off, I have no question whether that there will be a nice donation made to Habitat for Humanity. But, given the quantity and quality of the merchandise that was contributed, some of which I purchased personally for the auction and some of which I solicited directly from the publishers (like Necromancer Games), I am really disappointed in the support shown by the gamers at the Con for the charity auction.
All in all, this was a fun con for me to attend. There were highlights and lowlights. I think there was a lot of fun to be had by all in attendance, and yet there is lots of room for improvement in both the event offerings for the Con, and in the outcome of the charity auction.
A big thanks go to Joseph Goodman (and others in the industry) for his support of the charity auction and to Harley for his support and suggestions for converting the DCC #12.5 module to First Edition.
cheers,
tj
