Conception 2002 - Convention Report

Pretty much all of the article before this point, except for minor edits, was written in one marathon typing session on Sunday morning, whilst the rest of the guys played a game of Munchkin. I was pretty upset, which might come across in the tone of the article, but I've decided not to rewrite it, because although I've calmed down now, I haven't changed my views.

Just before we left, I had another chat with Jay, which happened to be overheard by a bloke who apparently helped out with the organisation of previous Conceptions.

He defended the principal of the "no reservation / turn up and play" system, but stated that when he had been involved, it had been done differently. He would say: "Okay anyone for Shadowrun... you four... okay you stand over there for a moment... anyone for D&D etc.". He would keep everyone there and go round and round the process until everyone had a game to play. Only then would he send the groups off to their games. If necessary, he would ask GMs if they could take extra people. He said that he had only once had to turn someone away because he didn't have a place for them.

Now I still don't think I like this system, but if it had been done like that, I'd have been a lot happier.

A few other thoughts...

When you get into a game, you write your details on the back of the ticket, and hand it into the GM, from where it finds its way to the organisers (this is the case even in delegate organised games). They, therefore, know exactly how many tickets were used to gain entry to a game.

(There were various computers humming away in the admin area, which were - I believe - being used by the RPGA to record who had "won" each game. Personally I think that's information that we could happily do without, but they obviously feel differently).

It would be interesting to compare the number of tickets used to the number which were sold, and therefore see how many people bought tickets that they weren't able to use. I know that some people might purchase tickets, and then decide not to bother to turn up. After all, they might figure that since they're not actually booked into a particular game, no-one will be inconvenienced. However, since people are, after all, there to roleplay, I would expect the "usage rate" to be at least 95%. Certainly, if it was less than 90% I would start to worry.

Obviously, only the Conception organisers would know these figures, but we know that it was at least 11 tickets. Here's a movie of us burning one of them.

The former organiser did say one thing that seemed a bit weird. He said that an awful lot of people stayed in their chalets for the whole three days, because they had simply come down to meet up with old friends and game with them. Now maybe for a lot of people that was true, but it seems a dodgy assumption to make. After all, we spent a lot of time in our chalet playing games of D&D, but that was through necessity, not choice.

There were also a few other things that bugged us. In no particular order:

Numbers: At each slot, there were usually a maximum of six games on offer, although we think that some of those might be multiple games of the same scenario. There were usually something like 20 or 30 people milling around before each slot waiting for a game. And yet there seemed to be more games than that going on, in the main hall and in the bar, and in the pub (which we only found out was holding games on Saturday night).

We used to sit around trying to work out how come there were only 6 games on the timetable but many more than that, or so it seemed, on the go. We were more confused when Jay estimated that there had been two hundred people attending. (A post on Monday by one of the organisers said that they'd had many more people than Conception 2001, and I believe that had around 130 people attending).

Now we might be getting confused (perhaps it was multiple "instances" of single scenarios) but it seemed like there was some kind of parallel convention that was going on that we were unaware of. Perhaps it was RPGA scenarios or something.

But it felt a bit cliquey.

We also found that the environment didn't work socially in the way that we'd hoped. Now this is a harder one to draw conclusions about, because it could just be down to us being snobby and not mixing. But this was my first visit to a residential convention, and I suppose I thought there would be more sitting around in the bar mixing with other roleplayers.

Which didn't happen. In fact, on Saturday night the bar contained only one RPG group (the rest were residents) and they were the "Witchcraft! Witchcraft! Witchcraft!" mob, so we felt a bit awkward about talking to them.

I'm not sure what could be done about this. Certainly, if we'd played more games, we'd hopefully have met more people, and therefore would have been more able to meet up with them again in a social environment.

The only real suggestion I could make is to run discussion panels, such as were run at Killercon in previous years. Maybe it's a bit geeky, but I like the idea of getting together with 20 or 30 people to discuss some aspect of roleplaying, perhaps with an expert on the subject. I remember James Wallis did an excellent session about how to get published in the roleplaying industry, which started with a talk, then turned into a question and answer session. At the end of that you have a shared base to chat with a whole load of people, and I would have liked to do something like that at Conception.

But then maybe that's just me.

In conclusion, I'd say that I did enjoy the weekend, but that was more because I was going away with some mates and having a laugh. For me, the thing I will probably remember the most was going down to the beach with the vodka and the spade, and building the dam. It's a great site for a convention, and there were a lot of good things about it, but there was also a lot bad, which kindof soured it for us.

Since I wrote the body of this review, I've had a few days to think about it. I still agree with everything I said, but it occurred to me that I probably ought to provide some justification for saying it.

But this article is long enough already, and I don't want to add a whole load of stuff that probably won't be of interest to most people (the exceptions presumably being people who organise conventions and are probably thinking: "What a little shit!" right now).

So, here are my motivations for writing this review, and my thoughts on the responsibilities, if any, that convention organisers have to attendees.

If the anyone connected with Conception 2002 is reading this, and wants to respond to what I say, then we'd be happy to publish your version of events in the next issue of Critical Miss. Just drop me a line at editor@criticalmiss.com.

Also, if anyone out there is thinking of running a convention, we'd be glad to offer whatever help we can, ranging from advice (not that we necessarily know anything), to help with websites, to publicity, and perhaps even a small donation to get things started.

Finally, I thought I'd let the others say a few words:

Demonic

I really enjoyed going to the holiday camp and spending a weekend with some pals. I drank quite a lot and pissed in a dam that Jonny made by the sea when he went all militant about the convention.

Oh yes the convention, that was a good investment of my time and emotional currency, not. I used to like role-playing but this really soured me, see, this was my first residential convention and I had high hopes of role-playing fun. However, it appeared that they weren't really interested in letting people play the games they wanted and that supped from my milk of human kindness.

Oh yeah, doing the Pimp photos was fun, it was worth it to see the looks on the organisers rubberfaced-rat-wolfhat-wearing-freak-demon-jaws. There was a lot of games going on behind closed doors, they excluded me and mine from their inner circles and now I've got a sign of Set and now I've got a name. Sorry, lost it for a moment then.

Conception 2002, death by a thousand cunts, mostly dressed in black t-shirts, unruly beards, bad breath and a fear of outsiders, are you local? No. Thank fuck.

The others can tell you, (we should get inside, they mostly come out at night) that my hopes of a good time were dashed the moment I set foot in the main complex and I surveyed the throng of role-players. Maybe I'm a snob, but then again maybe I have too much of a life, or too little a grasp on reality to appreciate spending time in that place.

Oh yes, you upset Jonny you bastards, that's in my remit.

Read the writing on the wall Conception, no-one is here to catch you should you fall.

Maybe I should be grateful to you for shattering the illusions I had about this fine hobby, but then again who were you to decide when that should happen? Now I've seen the true face of conventions and it's like a looking glass, but darkly and I don't like what I see.

Ostracised,

Mark

I don't have the words to describe how bad it was.

Bubba

Conceptions 2002, what can I say?

I was going to write a long passage ripping the shit out of a poorly organised and poorly thought out event, but being as we wasted a whole weekend attending this event, I am not going to devote any more time to it...

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