Volcon and Longcon
The announcements for Longcon haven’t gone out this year, and there’s a
number of reasons for that, but I keep getting people asking, so I thought to
tell people what’s going on with it.
Longcon, for those who don’t know, followed the idea of having a single
game that ran across an entire weekend, as things used to when we were all
younger and had the time and availability to be able to give up whole weekends
just to spend with our friends.
It worked, and at the same time, it didn’t work, but I learned a lot
from running it, and in some way, it will continue, but in a different form.
The first Longcon worked well, but was primarily composed of existing
groups that wanted to run a longer game with a number of friends and still have
the social aspect of a convention where everyone had a few drinks in the evening
and just kicked back. There was one group
that decided to hold Longcon at their own house rather than coming to Longcon
itself, and I can’t blame them for that, indeed, that for me was always the concern
for Longcon. If you have a group of
people who want to play a game together, all you have to do is provide a room,
and they can organise themselves. They
may not have recognised that they all wanted to play for the whole weekend, and
if by starting Longcon I gave them the inclination, that’s good enough for me.
The problem for Longcon was always in the games being offered. In a regular convention four hour slot, if
you have a bad game session, you run the risk of having four hours lost. At Longcon, you have a bad game session, and
you’ve lost the whole weekend and ended up paying travel and accommodation for
yourself for no reward.
Don’t get me wrong, when the games go right, they are the best in the
world (Steve Ellis’s epic Dracula Dossier game in year two, Neil Gow’s massive
Watch campaign over several years.), but the increasing risk that if the
players didn’t know each other, there was more chance of something going wrong,
and on the weekend, there would be nothing I could do to prevent that.
And it has been that, that played on my mind, and has been all this
year. It has been that, that prevented
me from putting the announcements out. Because
there’s something about me that many don’t know, and in telling everyone, it’ll
make a lot of what I do make a lot more sense.
I do conventions so that gamers, board gamers, war gamers, role
players, all of us, can have a good time.
I don’t do it for the money, I do it because then there’s a place where
other gamers can have a good time without worrying about anyone giving them a
hard time, just for being gamers.
If there’s a chance that a convention I run will end in them not having
a good time, then I get stressed about it, more than I let on, but this year,
it’s been really playing on my mind.
Most of the games that have run at Longcon have done really well, but
there have been two that ended in the players not entirely enjoying them. The “Don’t pay if you didn’t like the game
you were in” guarantee has only been taken up once, but still, it concerns me,
and I’ve found that despite this being the one convention where I should have
had no stress at all, I was looking forwards to it less and less.
Here’s where the change is going to be…
Longcon will continue, I’ll still be offering to run weekend long games
and I’ll still accept submissions for day long, weekend long games if anyone
wants to play them, but I want this to be something that people can enjoy, no
matter what game they play. I’ve long
wanted to give something back to all the people who offer their time to
conventions, some place where they can enjoy games with others like them, and
know that the convention will run itself, it’s just a place for them all to
come together and play games, drink, kick back and have a good time.
This is Volcon…
I’m still renting out the Garrison for the entire weekend of the 6th
and 7th of July, I’m still offering weekend long and single day
games, but more than that, I’m also bringing a stack of board games, and I’m
making it open to everyone, with one particular caveat.
If you volunteer at any convention, any convention at all, this weekend
is free. There will be no payment asked or taken for this space, this is my way
of saying thank you to every person who does things so that others can have a
good time. It’s not sponsored by any
other convention, it’s from me to everyone else out there. If you want to turn up and bring games to
play, that’s fine, if you want to turn up and just catch up with everyone without
having to wonder about turning up on shift, that’s fine. If you want to run games across the weekend,
tell me what they are and I’ll put them on the website, submission before the
end of June if you could please.
If you don’t volunteer at a convention (and there’s no distinction to
which convention or in what you volunteer as, GM, volunteer, door troll, ambassador),
then you can still book into games at the convention, same price as it
always was, £10 for the one day, £20 for both.
And between this Longcon and next year, just volunteer at any
convention and it becomes free to you as well, any of the Garrison cons, Airecon, Concrete Cow, Stabcon, any convention at all, so spread the word, this is for those that have already put their time in. Feel free to share this everywhere.
Any Questions, just ask, if you see a game you want to play in, send me
a mail and I’ll put you on the list.
For more details, find us at
