For the past couple of weeks I’ve been quietly asking prominent figures in the OSR, particularly those in the greater NYC area, if they’d be interested in participating in an East Coast convention targeted at an OSR audience. (No offense if I haven’t reached out to you specifically!)
Thusfar the response has been enthusiastically positive. I won’t name names right now, because nothing is graven in granite, but it could wind up being quite an interesting event.
I’ve also been in touch with the fine folks who run the Dexcon convention, held each year in Morristown, NJ, and this year to be held over the July Fourth weekend. They’re more than happy to let an OSR convention piggyback on their own convention as a sort of convention-within-a-convention, with the possibility of spinning it off to its own independent thing down the road if there’s enough response.
The chief feature of the convention, of course, would be the games. Having a whole track of old school type games would be the big draw, from my point of view. Not having to travel to Wisconsin or Texas would be an added bonus (with no offense intended towards Garycon or NTexasRPGCon, of course!).
So the questions for the hall are, would this be something you’d be interested in seeing? Do you think the OSR can stand another dedicated convention, specifically geared towards us East Coast types? What sorts of games would you like to see represented? Just RPGs, or some old-school wargames and miniatures as well? (Like the really cool Chainmail games that some folks have been running in the last couple of years.) I’ve run events myself at this con and others, and invited other DMs to do so as well, but this would have more of a self-identity, and a dedicated track on the schedule.
At this point, I’m still gauging interest, but if it looks like we could hit a threshold of activity, we could see a dedicated OSR track at Dexcon this year, with an independent con in 2015 if it works out well enough.
What do you say? Sound interesting? Have some ideas? Let’s hear your thoughts in the comments.
In like Flynn as you well know 😉
I'd be willing to run S&W and maybe ACKS – maybe a DCC Funnel (not sure I want to lug the book 😉
I'm down for it. Willing to run a few games and play a few games.
Very interested, though not wild about the date. A long holiday weekend might not be the best choice for a con whose primary audience is likely to be people with families. I know I will be travelling.
If by some bizarre coincidence I'm not working, I'll try to make it this year!
So you have a few options, you might also try to reach out to the really fine folks at nerdnyc. They've been running a popular quarterly minicon, Recess, right in New York City for a number of years. They might be able to offer some advice, information and promotion if you wanted to try and do OSR Con as a stand alone event. In fact, the theme of one of the Recess events was Old Skool in which many an old school event was played.
If you need any help or advice feel free to ask…we at NTRPG con have learned quite a bit the last few years. It will be great to see an East coast OSR con…if you guys need prizes or any items to give away let us know!
Total Confusion in Mansfield, MA has a dedicated Old School Gaming area. Its coming up at the end of the month. Its been getting bigger over the last four years. It happens the last weekend in February. Frank Mentzer, Tim Kask, Michael Curtis, Jeffery Talanian and James Carpio will be there running games along with some of us other masshole GM's.
This would be awesome. The cons I want to go to are too far away so I have never been to one.
This would be a great! I live in the DC area and would make the drive for something like that. You'd probably want to deconflict it from Garycon and NTRGPGCON as much as possible, but I'm sure you've already thought of that.
hell. yes. you going to dreamation? if so, rich and i will be there – we can discuss crazy large 3D dungeon crawls.
I could make it up to Morristown for something like that. Not sure you'd want this young whippersnapper DMing, but it'd be fun to play with and learn from the Olde Guarde in person.
I will indeed be at Dreamation, warduke. I'll be running a whole mess of Ogre games this time around, and selling some of my wares.
I'd be interested. And while it's a hike from Baltimore, it'd be worth it.
Worth a drive down from Maine, especially since my Mom lives in Morris Plains. Would love an OSR convention in Morristown!
Would love to have a chance to play Warriors of Mars/Chainmail. Who has the Thark and white ape minis? Tag your it!
I would definitely be interested in an OSR con
That would be great!!!! I would love a con dedicated to old school gaming- especially in good ole NJ
I would be into this, live in Stamford, CT, game a great deal in Westchester County, but I'm having some trouble finding a group of people who are willing to take the plunge into OSR as I have (prefer gaming in person). Definitely advertise with Westchester Geeks meetup, RPG Geezers, etc., sure you will get tons of people.
Live in South Jersey, so I'm totally in!