Un-Conventional
We’ve established by now that I’m a gamer. I love being a gamer. I love where I live. However, these two things don’t always jive with each other. I have my gaming group, a bunch of guys who I can easily and readily call my friends, but it took me a long time and a lot of effort to find these guys, but it was definitely worth it. Still, it shouldn’t have been all that hard to find my group or at least you’d think so. After all, I do live only half an hour away from a major metropolitan area.
Baltimore is kind of a weird place for gaming. Gamers are out there and they get together, but they’re lacking any kind of central group or authority to flock to and get organized. There’s the Heroes Guild of Maryland, a group that I absolutely adore and they do a great job getting us all together, but they can’t reach out to everybody.
What Baltimore needs (at least I think so) is a convention. It doesn’t have to be very large, or not at first anyway, but something to gather all the gamers together under one roof and get to know each other. DC, our southern sister has SynDCon as well as its own ENWorld Game Day. We don’t have one that’s dedicated to gaming and it’s time that we did.
The idea would be to start out small, like an ENWorld Game Day and see how it goes. I’d see if maybe I can bring in some board game enthusiasts as well, get them hooked into the scene. After that, wargamers and all that lovely terrain and hordes of miniatures that come with them. Each year, it’d get bigger and bigger. Yeah, that’s the stuff.
Getting this off the ground won’t be easy, this I know. But if goes slowly and progresses a little each time, it could grow into a big deal.
Xer0 Rules 
I’d be up for this, and it’s an idea that’s been floated a couple times among different groups. The main limitation has just been someone to actually do the legwork – when I was involved trying to plan a Nerdly-style event here, I just found myself expected to do everything myself, and I don’t have time for that.
Incidentally, space-wise, I looked into the 2640 Space – I think Tom C and I figured we’d need about 75 attendees to break even at a reasonable entry fee.
Well, you and I have talked about it before and it just kinda died on the table. I’d really like to give it another shot. As I was saying, the best thing to do is start small with a small venue, a library or a community’s common hall space – something cheap, so there’s not much risk financially to the organizers.
We’ll have to talk about this again next time we see each other, see what ideas we can come up with on how to handle this project.
How much was the space at 2640 anyway? And did you know if they wanted anything else out of us for use of the space?
I don’t know if this is a good thing or a bad thing, but Tim Buckley, the creator of Ctrl-Alt-Del started a con in his home town, Providence in 2005 and apparently it has had lackluster attendance, he believes largely because of the location. So, this year he’s going to have the convention in Baltimore, May 27-29. I know some of the internet hates Tim Buckley, so YMMV. But regardless there will be a gaming con here this year. If you’re interested, you should check it out. I haven’t decided yet myself as I’m only a casual gamer. Let me know what you decide though.
http://digital-overload.com/
As you and I have already talked about, I know about Digital Overdrive and while it’s piqued my interest in such that Baltimore now has a “major” video game convention that’s near to me that I can drive myself there, I’m a casual video gamer myself these days. Since The Wife and I have had The Kid, my time is so limited that I’d rather spend what free time I can get on other gaming, typically of the tabletop variety. That’s the kind of con I’m looking for.
Sounds like an excellent idea. There is no local con in my area either, so I really had to reply on my gaming organization (Much love to CARP, which I could participate more). In your case, having an organization in place may be a boon. They might not be able to reach out to everyone, but they might be able to help you spread the word as far as possible. See if they are able to team up with you. Networking can be key; lots of hands make light work.
Oh, absolutely. I’ll have the support of the Heroes Guild to call on if I need it and I know I can almost certainly get immediate support from a couple of folks in the Guild right off the bat. It’s getting the impetus going to get this off the ground that’s hard.