Interesting when you're doing a convention for the first time, you have an idea for how you think things will go, and you plan accordingly, but for lessons already learned for next year...
1: Two day games will only be of interest to groups of people who've already played together, there was practically no interest in any of the two day games from the general public, which I think is certainly something to consider when thinking about what games to put forwards.
2: Most importantly, don't run the convention opposite another major established convention, I could have easily sold out on Pathfinder had not Paizo con been running the same weekend, but two things to consider on that one being that I don't actually want to have nothing but pathfinder at the con, and if it was all pathfinder, I might as well call it Paizocon 2...
3: Dungeon games, no interest at all, when you're sitting down for a game that takes all day, you want more than just bashing things...
4: There is no back up plan with these sorts of games, if you haven't got players sorted out before the day, there will be no other games that are running in the same slots that *might* need players, the whole focus of this is having it planned weeks in advance so all the preliminary stuff between players is taken care of, and dropping in people on the day won't work (Or will negate the extra prep time everyone else has put in).
5: We've got no traders in this year, for several reasons, the first of which being that having a trader present disrupts the games, and for the most part, if the games are running properly, there won't be many people taking breaks from the games to go and visit the traders, so it won't be worth their while, the second of which being that it suggests there's more to do at this convention than just games, and that's just not true...
So it's been an interesting process and there's been sufficient interest that I'm not going to bankrupt myself on the matter, which is cheerful. Don't get me wrong, most year one conventions run at a loss, and I was already prepared for that in the interests of getting it off the ground and seeing if it would work, so no problems there, but four games running with a good number of players is around 66% of all games loaded in advance, which I'm happy with.
I'll be interested to see the feedback from all concerned at the end on if the general feedback is that the convention will work going forwards.
http://doddherderofcats.wix.com/longcon
