@BryanB – A nice capsule review; gaming together at cons and meetups is a great way to find new people to game with.

And an update; elevator problems resulted in the con’s delay, so the prep has not yet had a chance to see daylight. I hope that a successful rescheduling happens soon, though with the school semester beginning soon, it may be a while.

Scott is dead right about gaming groups. They change over time. People move away and new players are invited to attend. In some cases, work and family can disrupt a group to the point that it just fades away due to distractions. These things happen. If it happened to you, wouldn’t it be a good thing to have made some contacts or have available a place to meet new players? These cons and meetups serve that purpose well.

Three years ago, I was three months into a serious case of group collapse. Due to a number of reasons that I won’t retell here, my group disintegrated. I was bummed out and maybe even burned out. I had been the glue that held the previous group together for many years. At some point, my reward was not worth the effort and I allowed the group’s direction to take its course.

Enter the Fresno Roleplayers Meetup (now on hiatus). I just happened to see the meetup group on the web. I hadn’t gamed in nearly four months. I was burned out on d20 and especially D&D. I had been reading about a new game called Spirit of the Century on RPGnet and it sounded interesting enough to give it a try. Gnomestew’s very own Scott Martin offered to run SotC on the local gaming forum. Being a bit reluctant to venture onto new ground, I pushed myself to go. I brought another friend from Hanford and we had one of the finest gaming sessions we’ve ever had. It was new. It was different. It was a hell of a lot of fun. Gaming could be fun again.

Playing in that SotC game was one of the best things I ever did. I decided to run Coyote Trail at the following meetup. I had never run CT before and I let everyone know it. But everyone was patient and forgiving and we had a good time, despite my failure to furnish pre-gens like I had wanted to.

As time went on, I continued to go to the meetups. I had no gaming group for nearly ten months. Scott Martin and I began to realize that we were playing in each other’s games. Star Wars Saga Edition had come out and I was preparing to demo it at the meetup. We realized that we should probably just start playing twice a month at one of our homes. We forged a new group with other friends and have since added two more players. Despite some scheduling issues caused by adult real life obligations, we have had great times during the past two plus years. The point is that it never would have happened had we not ventured out to help build the gaming community.

The first two years I went strictly as a player. With a nominal fee, it was a fun way to spend a day or two, and I hit every RPG my schedule could reach (the excellent gyro restaurant nearby was a big plus too). I realized though, that without continuing help and support, the con would never grow, and would break up when enough of the organizers moved on. So the civic booster in me decided to help out by doing what I do best – running a game or two. The first year I brought along my Nuclear War Mega-Deck and play mats. It was a resounding failure. No one showed up until I guilted my FLGS owner to take a break from his booth and come over to play. I was pretty disappointed, but looked back on it and decided it was a bad time slot. I resolved to not only keep contributing but to widen my availability.

The next year I joined the Gnome Stew community and Gary Gygax passed away, so I decided to run Tomb of Horrors in Gary’s honor and my own created adventure, Against the Gnomes. The con expanded, but the RPG room was so far away from the con floor that I didn’t get any takers again, except for a father-and-son couple who had a no-show game that folded and a guy from my group I brought with me. Not one to give up, last year I returned, running Against the Gnomes II. Again, almost no takers, but I will continue to bludgeon RPGs at their gaming community until I get solid groups. Next year I hope to be debuting my own homemade RPG, so wish me luck with that.

I love how people in my own neighborhood know me as a gamer, and I have lots of friends in my community through gaming. Since I transplanted here from college, I guess you could say all my friends, either directly or indirectly, I have met though gaming. It keeps me going and sane, and I have years of great memories and stories, some heartbreak, some triumphant. I consider my local community to be very important, and I give back when I can.

You’re a veteran GM, Scott, so I’m sure you’ve prepped enough. Without knowing who your players are, you can’t really tailor the adventure to fit them, which is what makes running games at cons challenging. Besides, if things go awry, a GM worth his salt knows how to ad-lib and BS his/her way through. If the players don’t know you, it makes it harder for them to detect that you’re off script, trying to get them back to the planned route. Keep fighting the good fight, brother!

So sayeth Omnus.