I was looking at Chad Underkoffler talking about whether or not to go to Dreamation this year, and it reminded me of my perspective on conventions in general.  Since I’m both a publisher and a hobbyist, conventions are always composed of some mix of selling (and buying), talking (networking), and playing.  The question, then, when I consider whether to attend a convention is what that convention does best, and whether or not I’m already getting that “best thing” itch scratched by some other convention that year. If I have limited ability to attend multiple conventions, it also becomes a game of prioritizing those three activities and choosing the one or two that get to “win” that year.

In my own personal constellation of conventions, this boils down to a choice among the pros of three specific cons.

I go to GenCon to sell (and, if I make it out of a booth, to buy). For me, the commerce element of GenCon absolutely dominates it. I recognize that part of this is because I’ve never attended the convention as anything other than a boothie. Even my first GenCon was done to spend some time hanging about in the Lulu booth, talking about Don’t Rest Your Head as a Lulu product, as well as a little-known upcoming game called Spirit of the Century. The booth-staffer perspective skews this already commerce-heavy convention more thoroughly in that direction, enough so that the other two points on the triangle are pretty minimal for me.  I’m okay with that.  There are so many people to talk to at GenCon that the talking part tends to drown under the weight of its own embarrassment of riches. And while I fully recognize many folks get great play experiences at GenCon, whenever I’ve peeked over towards that side of things it seems like such stark chaos.  So my personal ranking of GenCon, then, is: Sell, Talk, Play, in descending order.

I go to Origins to talk. I love this convention. This is the convention where Ken Hite took me out to lunch to talk about Don’t Rest Your Head and generally get to know one another. The same day I sat down with Paul Tevis and the guys from the Game Master Show Podcast in the “Big Bar on Two” and talked forever, with drinks getting poured down my gullet (I eventually declared myself The General, which kicked the GM Show crew into later awarding me with a T-Shirt as the head of the Hicks Army, or HA).  Chris Hanrahan and I finally met in person and have become fast friends. And Tevis also brought me along to a dinner (at the resplendent Burgundy Room) where I got to sit down with Will Hindmarch, Jeff Tidball, Chris Hanrahan, Ken Hite, Hal Mangold, and of course Paul. I may be forgetting one other there, in which case I am profoundly embarrassed.  Hal leaned over to me at one point that night, grinned, and said, “You might be one of those indie guys, but you know how to hang.” And overall this is a convention where the completely artificial membrane that separates fans from creators is permeable enough that it all but dissolves. Sure, I’m naming a bunch of awesome creators here, but there were just as many fantastic moments just talking to brother and sister gamers. So many good moments at this convention, and they’re all about talking — also paired with eating, and thankfully the food options here kick GenCon’s ass. The convention center’s right across from the original location of Jeni’s Ice Creams after all. The convention’s all right for commerce, and I hear it’s pretty good for playing, but I get very little of either done on a personal level when I’m there; talking occludes all other activities. For my experience, this is Talk, Sell, Play, but I suspect for most attendees it’s Talk, Play, Buy.

Finally, there’s Dreamation, which happens twice a year but gets called Dexcon when it happens in the summer. But that summer instance is hard hard hard to accommodate when you’ve bracketed it with GenCon and Origins in the same summer, so Dreamation tends to get the somewhat larger attendance (though it’s still small) as it kindly takes place in January or February of each year. Dreamation is hands down where I get my play on. It’s crawling with small press designers and play opportunities. Absolutely crawling. Occasionally we get crazy bigger-press outliers like that Chuck Wendig joker — it’s where I met him, over breakfast or something with Rob. Plus the convention often ends with a Indie Design Roundtable event that I’ve occasionally helped run — an incredible pressurecooker for taking peoples’ game ideas and adding extra sauce of the awesomeberry. So Talk gets a strong secondary placement here. But anyway, the play. Oh god, the play. It’s so abundant, so good, that it took me several years to get to a point where I remembered to give myself permission NOT to play in every slot that I could. This is where Judd won my cold dark heart with a session of Dictionary of Mu. This is where I met Bill White’s Ganakagok. And much much more. Plus there are sightings of the elusive Jennifer Rodgers in the wild. Anyway: Play, Talk, Sell. No two ways about it. (The “sell” part would be vanishingly small too if it weren’t for the presence of the IPR booth.)

This year, Origins is going to get the win as I attempt to amp up the sell side of it just a bit — we’re going to be launching our Dresden Files release or preorder there, as I’ve announced over on the Dresden Files RPG website. And because of that, the usual “rank my priorities” approach doesn’t really fly this year. I mainly have time for one convention, and Origins is preordained. If I make it to Dreamation, it’ll be last-minute at best, but I’m not planning on it. I’ve got layout to do.