Con Man I: Registering for Conventions

This series is an extremely subjective report about gaming conventions. Despite the temptation to be second person dictatorial (“You must, you should, you shall”), I’m going to keep this first person apologetic (“I did, I think, I was”), because I really can’t tell you what your convention time will or should be. In part 1, I examine registering for conventions.

One of my biggest flaws (and trust me, there are many)  is the inability to simply hang loose and let things happen, reacting to events as they occur. To put it another way, I’m a planner. No, that’s not quite right. I’m an OVER-planner. I will book dinners, shows, and flights a hundred years in advance, and then leave for those activities shortly after I book them. I can get a little squirrelly about life improvisation, when the world takes an unexpected left turn and normal people roll with the change and I stand dithering in the middle of the road and get run over by a truck.

I signed up for my recent convention many months in advance, just days after the pre-registration window opened, and I only waited that long because I wanted confirmation from a friend of mine that he was going too. After registration, I had to wait anxiously and impatiently for the con organizers to post their RPG schedule, just barely resisting the urge to fire off “Well? WELL?” e-mails to them.

Finally, their games went up, and I fussed over the listings for an entire week before booking my weekend roster. The schedule I settled on was–oh, what’s the word?–ambitious. Driven by lunacy and stupidity, I filled in every available minute of Friday, Saturday, and Sunday, mourning several games I wanted to jump in on but simply couldn’t because of that appalling federal prohibition on cloning.

My plan was:

FRIDAY

• 10 AM: Arrive and collect badge
• 12 PM – 4 PM: World of Darkness
• 4 PM – 8 PM: Call of Cthulhu
• 10 PM – 12 AM: Eclipse Phase

SATURDAY

• 9 AM – 1 PM: D&D 4E (I was running this one)
• 2 PM – 6 PM: D&D 4E
• 6 PM – 8 PM: Unhallowed Metropolis
• 8 PM – 12 AM: Shadowrun

SUNDAY

• 10 AM – 2 PM: Gamma World (Again, running this one)
• 2 PM – 6 PM: Gamma World

Because of the timing of my own games, smack dab in the hot zone on Saturday and Sunday, I missed out on a lot of gaming opportunities, but figured I might sneak about looking for open slots or pick-up games if at all possible. I didn’t build in a ton of time for meals, sleep, breaks, or socialization recovery, since I am a terminally introverted person and all this interaction with humanity could have a debilitating effect on me.

Needless to say, my carefully constructed schedule exploded and fell to pieces almost immediately, and part of that was a raucous chaos of any gaming convention and the rest of it was my own tender system rebelling around Saturday afternoon, forcing me to hide inside my room and miss several games. But I get ahead of myself.

Badge Collection

You might think that because I pre-registered (and received confirmation), and this was a convention that has been running several years, and the start date wasn’t a secret to anyone, that it would have simply been a matter of showing up at the right place, checking my name against a list, and then grabbing my badge. You would be wrong. The processing line was long, angry, inefficient, and immobile, despite several organizers walking up and down the line shouting at us. What should have been a 5-minute inconvenience transformed into an hour’s infuriation, and I actually missed the worst of it. Other registrants wound up standing in that line for up to three hours, missing their games entirely.

Is there a take-away here? I’m not sure, except for a feeling of smug justification for showing up absurdly early. I couldn’t predict and shouldn’t really plan for such a total cluster-mess, but these things do happen, so I think I’ll go on arriving early, expecting the worst and hoping for the best.

Game Schedule

For those of you young’uns (young, dumb, and full of… energy) out there, my schedule might seem like a stroll, but for me, it rapidly spun out of control, and I started hating the idiot who put it together. That would be me, of course. This was me from several months earlier, who took the position of the arrogant playoff pitcher who says, “I’ll sleep in November.” So I’ll be going to bed late and getting up early, so what? So I’ll be missing meals and running on adrenaline and Mountain Dew, who cares? This is a great chance to play in new games with interesting people for an entire weekend, so I’ll push myself to the absolute limits and the heck with my rest, food, and sanity. That me from several months earlier really was an idiot.

For my next convention, I am going to schedule less and build in more breaks, along the lines of SESSION-[BREAK]-SESSION, even if it means fitting in half as many games. One thing that rapidly came into focus for me was how freeform many of the gaming sessions were, allowing (and even encouraging) walk-ins, since the people who had registered had gone mysteriously missing (probably because they were still standing downstairs in that registration line).

Repercussions

I am, by nature, and insufferable contrarian, and if you tell me that I have to color the sky blue and the grass green, I might choose purple and yellow instead, and then throw my crayons at you. This is pretty much what happened to me on Saturday, as I examined at my string of back-to-back-to-back games, and muttered an angry, “No.” After running that first game and then scampering around snorking food, I started feeling the pressure of the rest of the day and reacted badly, blowing off my 2 o’clock, and then my 6 o’clock, and then, since I was on such a roll, my 8 o’clock.

No, this wasn’t fair to the GMs, and it reflects poorly on me, but it was a good opportunity for learning, since I now know that I don’t have it in me to be so straightjacketed by a schedule. If I had it to do over again, I would have left that 6 PM – 8 PM block empty, and maybe even the 8 PM – 12 AM one empty too. I could have swung by those rooms, poked my head in and said, “Room for one more?” And you know what? There would have been.

Conclusion

Ultimately, I’m going to have to get better at reacting instead of proacting, since it fits better with my convention abilities. I need to schedule less and wander more, see what’s available and let the world take the turns it’s going to take. I’m going to have to get better at improvisation, since this life doesn’t stick to a script or a schedule. I’m going to have to get better at hanging loose and letting things happen.