Confused Con, at least that is how it felt to me
I attended Dexcon 19 this past weekend. so this is how it went down. First off, it is Morristown NJ and you really had no choice but to pay for parking...
I arrived Friday evening and I go to the Lobby... after wandering around for 10 minutes, I finally ask where the registration desk is.... I was toold to go down a hall way and then across to another hallway... then I found the Registration Desk... They hand me an envelope, with the badge in it, then laminate the badge there
They do not tell me that a sheet needs to be filled for each game so I had no idea that I was supposed to do this.
SO I ran my Evening Toon game and that went very well and I was going to go to the D20 burlesques, however, I went upstairs to where the show was.. First I was told they had to see my ID by the 2 security people... and then I was told the tickets were 15 dollars and 25 for a VIP seat.... seeing as how there was no mention of any additional cost on The DEXCON info page... and I was tired... I decided to pass.. Then looking at their page for the event, they were charging 10 and 25....
So I left the con and found a place to sleep and Returned on Saturday... To run another TOON game and a Firefly game.. .
One of the things I do, is run systems and games that no one else is running... I have never seen a Firefly game looking through past games that are run there... I do not dare to Run AD&D 1st edition because this is not a con for classic gamers.... More on that in a bit
So, my 9 AM TOON players really came ready to play, they were awesome and really got me going to be even better then the night before...
Took a break and walked around then got my Firefly game stuff... This was my first time running the system and everything went great, the player loved it . Toward the end the Cupcake cart came around and they had Serenity Cupcakes, the woman pushing the cart asked us if we knew what ship was on the cupcakes....
But the owner missed out on playing in my game
Dexcon tries to be everything from Board games to LARP to Video Games to all sorts of other things... as I was not their to partake in anything else, I can't really comment on most of it.
They do not cater to Tabletop RPGs... They do have Living City, Pathfinder Society, Adventures League and that with Indie games is where they devote their RPG...
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| Johann Sanchez, first met him at Defcon in the 90's |
The LARP has been slowly going away according to a friend of Mine and Living City is losing space every year...
I have attended Dexcon and Dreamation in the past many years ago and they still use the same systems as they always have.
I got free entry into the con for running 3 games and that is an OK perk, but to not comp parking for a GM is kinda lame..
People like that this is a many track con that tries hard to be many things, but for myself, as a GM stuck in a hallway to run my games while people are walking by was not something I was fond of.
So I walked around and there are people selling and running demos everywhere, yet they needed to check my badge when I went into the "Dealer Room" There were artists and stuff down one large walkway and RPG games in another hall way. The Registration desk was in the middle of the hotel need the "consuite" where they put out munchies and drinks... Side note... I went in to grab a single cookie, as I reached for a tong, some lady was yelling at me to sanitize with the sanitizer on the table... OK.. fine... squirted a huge glob on my hand grabbed the tong with santizer dripping off my hand, got my ONE cookie and left the tongs slick with sanitizer...
First off, I am there to run game for the con and not put up with bullshit, I am running games, It is not up to me to read your shit when I am trying to get my games going, and why the fuck where the sheets not in my envelope to begin with.
SO, there were signs on some bathroom that (and this is a new trend) that they do not police bathrooms and people should use whatever bathroom they feel like using in the moment and on some bathrooms they replaced the Mens and Ladies signs with a Printout of a toilet... Nice, instead of just not commenting, they went the extra step to make some of their attendees feel completely uncomfortable
SUMMARY
As a place that I could partake in the other offerings, it was not very friendly, there is no Facebook page or any way to generate interest in getting together with people. Simply people tended to be on their own there was no change to do any real open gaming because so many people were not there for RPG
The people who played in my games, I assume, had a great time, I had a great time running my games.
The other issue this Con suffers from is the Fourth of July Weekend, that is when it run. That is what keeps me away from attending
DEXCON 20: July 5 - July 9, 2017.
Next year they get a reprieve because the Fourth is a Tuesday, bout they in the following year it starts creeping toward the weekend again
Now I did manage to run into a couple of old friends from many years ago.
