Run Your Own Con!

I love games. LOVE them. If you’re like me you have adventures, entire RPGs, and board games on your shelf that you’ve never played… maybe never even opened! Even as a kid I didn’t have time to try everything. Now that I’m an adult, I have more money and even less time so the books continue to pile up behind me. I tend to run long campaigns so my groups only have a chance to switch systems every two years or so. I never really got to try anything new. Then I went to my first Gen Con.

Conventions are a great way to try games you never get to play otherwise. You can run that adventure you’ve been dying to play or experience a complicated board game none of your regular group knows and have a veteran teach you the ropes. When we came home from our first Gen Con, Rudy Basso and I preached the gospel of gaming conventions to our regular game group. We tried so many awesome games surrounded by other who understood the glory of tabletop! We asked our friends to come with us the next year… but when the time came it was just Rudy and me again.

Our friends all had valid excuse for not wanting to attend a gaming convention. “It’s too expensive.” “Too much time off work.” “I can’t leave my wife alone with the baby for that long.” “I don’t really travel well.” “Large crowds make me anxious.” All of those made sense to us. We didn’t want to force our friends to do something they didn’t want to do. Still we couldn’t help but feel a convention would be more fun for us if our regular group of friends attended.

Rudy and I got thinking about why we wanted our friends to come to a convention with us. When it came down to it what we really wanted was to immerse these friends in a weekend of new gaming experiences. We didn’t need Gen Con to do that. We could do it in our own backyards with less expense. We were going to throw our own con.

In November I organized my buds to spend the weekend gaming at one of our friend’s beach homes (which was close for most attendees). It was such a rousing success that we’re in the middle of planning the next one in July! I planned the thing so my friends dubbed the gathering IntroConso and the name stuck. It was such a good time that I want to share with you how you can plan your own weekend with your friends.

Step-By-Step Planning

To create your own IntroConso follow the steps below.

1. Make Your Guest List. First things first, figure out everyone you want to invite to this shindig. Put all of their email addresses (or Snapchat names or Twitter handles or whatever you use to keep in touch with your friends) into a group because you are going to be contacting them regularly to get this thing off the ground.
2. Find a Weekend. Or a day. Or a week. Or month! Figure out how long you want your private con to be. We settled on a weekend from Friday afternoon to Sunday afternoon so people wouldn’t have to take too much time off from work. To plan the event you need to find the right time when most of your friends are free. Even with 15 people this can be a headache, but free apps like When Is Good or Doodle make scheduling a lot easier. Try to start planning at least 3 or 4 months out so people have a maximum heads up for family and work commitments. Even then odds are not everyone will be available at a given time, so pick the time when the most people can attend for maximum fun and promise those left behind they’ll remain on the guest list for future cons.
3. Find a Place. Once you have your dates, find a place to throw your con. Pick some place close so that travel isn’t a pain in the butt. IntroConso has been lucky in that an attendee has always donated a place for us to stay. Maybe that’s the case for you. If one of your friends has a house or the extra space somewhere that can fit everyone and is willing, free is always good. It’s not too many people for a home. If you’re not so lucky, have no fear. Airbnb is a great way to find entire homes for rent near you for cheap. If everyone chips in it could cost you less than $100. Another option would be a cheap hotels where you might be able to also grab a conference room.
4. Ask for GMs. Ask your friends what they want to run be it a board game or RPG. Even ask those folks who are always players. Many may be fine remaining such, but this con experience will give others a chance to be a game master for the first time. They can do so without fear of failure or a ton of prep, since it’ll only be a couple of hours and not a couple of years. When people sign up to run a game be sure to ask the following questions…
   1. What game(s) do you want to run? Please list in priority order.
   2. How much time do you need to run your game? (include any time caps here like 4 hours max, etc.)
   3. How many players (not including you) does your game need to play?
   4. How many players (not including you) are the max for your game?
   5. When do you plan on arriving to and leaving from the con?
5. Make a Schedule. Armed with information from your GMs, you can now make a schedule.
   1. Figure out how many tables you can run at once.  First figure out how many games you can run at once based on the number of attendees. In general I figure 5-7 people to a table (including the GM for RPGs). So if you have 7 or less attendees, you can probably run one game at a time, 14 or less, two at a time, and so on. Keep in mind you may less attendees at the beginning and the end of the con based on who is coming or going early.
   2. Make slots for games. Create time slots for games. For IntroConso we break our days up into four-hour time slots with all the tables on the same schedule. This way when one table ends a game, so do the others, which makes it easier for people to schedule themselves and easier on you as a scheduler. Four hours is enough time to get in a solid adventure and time with an awesome board game. With the first IntroConso we found that games tended to run a little over their time limits and that people liked to take a break between sessions to eat, chat, etc. Realistically you can fit about three four-hour sessions of gaming in a full day of a private con. That’s accounting for games running over, food breaks, etc. It’s not really fun if you’re watching the clock the entire time you’re rolling bones, so I recommend scheduling your games this way. Of course you may have a different idea for your con and that’s ok too. Maybe one table wants to run Curse of Strahd for an entire day while another table runs a new game every two hours. The choice is yours!
   3.  Fill the slots with games. I like to make sure each GM gets to run their first choice and then go down the list and see what’s left. If something looks like it might run short, I put it toward the beginning of the day and if something might run long I put it at the end of the day.
   4. Example. 
6. Send the Schedule to Attendees. I make the schedule in Google Drive, duplicate it, and then send it to the attendees to fill in their names. If you make a spreadsheet like the example above it should keep everything clear. The main point is that they can’t sign up for more than one table in the same time slot.
   • Subnote: To cut down on costs, I recommend scheduling people to take care of meals, snacks, drinks as well. Here’s what our food schedule looks like if you’re curious. 
7. Have GMs Prepare Their Stuff. GMs need to be ready to teach the game to their players and have an adventure good to go. That usually means a lot of work on the GMs part so make sure a busy person has the time to run a bunch of new games. Published adventures will save prep time and can often be found for cheap or free online. Then the GM has to decide if pregenerated characters will be provided for the PCs or if character generation will happen at the table. If you’re playing a game where character generation requires everyone to have a copy of the book or takes more than 10 minutes, go for pregens. A quick Google search will probably help you find what you need. If there’s a starter set for a new game you want to play, that’s always a great place to start since you get quick rules, an adventure, and pregens all at once. Don’t forget to double check everything after you pack to make sure you have the promised games and food you’re bringing.
8. Have fun!  No notes needed.

Has anyone else ever done anything like this? Do you want to? How can I improve IntroConso? Sound off in the comments below!

If you like what you’re reading please follow me on Twitter, check out my podcasts, find my products on the DMs Guild, tell your friends about the blog, and/or leave me a comment and let me know you think. Thanks!