grifter730 says:
As someone that’s never been to any of these types of conventions, what do you actually do there? I hear about people playing games and stuff, how does that work? Do you play with strangers who just sit down at the table? How much content can you possibly get through? Character creation itself can take forever to do.
Different gaming conventions do things differently, of course, but at a primarily TTRPG-focused convention like Dundracon, I run games, I play games, I visit with people I only see at conventions (I have a handful of friends I've known for decades who ran the university gaming club with me, some of whom are now running some of these conventions), I paint minis (they have a wonderful service where companies donate minis and paints, so everybody can paint and get minis for free), I usually buy more games, and sometimes I help playtest prototypes for new games (designers are encouraged to bring games and demo them for playtesting and feedback). When I was younger, I used to give seminars.
This weekend I'm running a
Strontium Dog game. When I run a game at a convention, I try to do a number of things. First of all, I try to run something relatively obscure that hopefully no one else is running, because I feel strongly that one of the draws of a convention is variety. It's fun for people to get to go to a con and play something that they've never had the opportunity to play otherwise (it's also good for me, because I own more games than I will ever get to play; this way I can whittle down my "unplayed" section of my library a little). To support this, I create a high-level rules reference for people to use during the session, as I don't ever assume that anyone has played the system before sitting down at my table. I also create a bunch of characters in advance. Making pre-gen characters is pretty standard practice at conventions, although each game will say whether the GM is providing characters or expecting players to bring their own. You're correct; in the vast majority of systems, char gen is too complicated and time-consuming to do at the table (particularly when people don't know the system). What I do is make more characters than there are seats at the table, so everybody has a selection they can make.
With regards to play, there are two basic modes of play: "open gaming" and "registered games." Areas of the convention center/hotel/venue - usually a grand ballroom - are set aside for open gaming: dozens of tables are set up, and people can just sit down at a table and say "Hey, I'm ready to run a game of Tales from the Loop" and people who are interested can sit down and join the game. Open gaming is fun, but it's very hit-or-miss; as a GM, I don't like it, because you don't know what people will be interested in, and finding players is tough. I
love it as a player (though it is really hit-or-miss finding a game), because I'm always up for trying something new. I had a great time last year because I stumbled across someone who was looking for players for an
Edge of the Empire game, and between us we managed to grab the interest of several random people so that there were enough of us to play. In practice, though, most people who play in Open Gaming are people who know each other already, and they're planned to play together at the con.
Registered games are ones where people plan to run a particular game in advance, so that it gets in the convention schedule: people can see that it's happening in advance, and can decide whether they're interested. They can also sign up for the game in advance, so that people can schedule their weekend. Registration differs from convention to convention: Kublacon allows people to register for games for free online, so it's first-come, first-served. That has the advantage of letting people KNOW what games they're playing for the weekend, but the disadvantage of "All the games I want to play are full already!" Dundracon allows any number of people to register for a given game for free, but if there are more sign-ups than seats for players, there is a random drawing to determine who gets to play. That's more fair, but the randomness can be frustrating. Bizarrely, the giant game convention GenCon forces people to pay for every game they register to play, on top of the cost of the pass to the convention, which can make that convention super-expensive if you actually want to
play games. But no matter how people register, what you get is usually a bunch of people who don't know each other sitting at a table and playing a game session together for a few hours. Then you go on and do it again with another group at another table, and possibly in a completely different RPG.
As to how much content you go through, convention games are usually one-shots: adventures/scenarios that are meant to be started, played, and completed in one session. They can go anywhere from 2 hours to 12 hours (*). Decades ago when I got started at conventions, the standard session length was 8 hours, but there's been a trend in recent years for increased brevity, and there are more 4- and 6-hour games than anything else.
Let me know if you have any more questions about any aspect of game conventions; I'm (clearly) happy to talk/type about it.
* - At a GM orientation meeting that Dundracon held ~30 years ago, there was a GM who was very upset because the convention had not allotted him the full SIXTEEN HOURS he had requested for his game!
