CON JOB: Brief Reflections On Convention D&D

A last reflection on my con experience a few months back. Never hit post so thought I'd get it up later than "never".

CON Games are an interesting species of game to me because they feel like a sorta "exhibition one-shot". Maybe I put too much pressure on myself to rep BX D&D, ensure people have a good time, and ensure folks don't think I suck at DMing. For ReaperCon 2022 and 2023 I ran Through Ultan's Door and Tomb Robbers of the Crystal Frontier.

I wanted to give people a micro experience with BX from rolling characters to dungeon delving. Rolling characters to showcase the speed of old-school D&D and dungeon crawling to showcase player-driven adventuring, instead of laying out signs painted with arrows toward the end.

The point of rolling characters is it showcases the speed with which characters can be created in BX. For both of my games, 6 players were about to roll complete characters with equipment and small backgrounds in ~25 min.

My two con games were four hours. But I really wish I had planned them for 3. First, because playing for 3 hours means you generally give folks a 1-hour "break" for them to do other things before the next slot starts. And second, it helps not to go overly long if it turns out it is not something folks are really into.

To me, the most difficult thing about con games is sticking the "landing" particularly when using dungeons which are more geared toward a more methodic 3-5 game session. By sticking a landing, you give the player the feeling of a completed arch and a sorta sense of accomplishment. For the Ultan's players that was getting the mark after a fight with the priests and follows of a rival god. For the Tomb Robbers players that was releasing then pledging loyalty to the Red Queen- a short narration gave them a sense of what that choice meant.

I can't decide if it is better to run something between a large battle map or a much smaller modular dungeon like the one Frank Mentzer supposedly ran in public games (redrawn here by Dyson Logos). 

And next year I will try and ask folks two things they liked and one thing they would want more of in a game just to better understand what folks want from a convention game.