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Although I’d been a role-playing gamer since I was twelve, I’d never gone to a gaming convention. When I was young, of course, it simply wasn’t a possibility. As an adult, I just never thought much about it. I heard of the big two, GenCon and Origins, which were off in the Midwest, and it never even occurred to me that I could attend one of those. Nor did I think of looking for a smaller convention in the area, such as in Boston, and when I did hear of some, I didn’t think about going.
The fact is, I’d never been much interested in playing games with people other than my close friends. In high school I did join the D&D Club and attended regularly for at least a year, but I found it unsatisfying. We’d start a game one week, and the next week a couple players wouldn’t be there and the others would all be interested in starting some other game. We also had clashing expectations about how to play the games. We started playing the first adventure in the Dragonlance setting, and I chose to play the insatiably curious and mischievous “kender” character, but promptly found myself shouted down by the other players when I would try to insist on investigating anything. I’d read the Dragonlance tie-in novels and so knew about the story and characters the adventure was supposed to be about, but whether or not the other players had read the books, all they cared about was plowing through as fast as possible to beat the monsters and grab the treasure; it didn’t matter to them whether a certain character was supposed to end up with holy artifacts as part of advancing the story, to them the artifacts were just things to make a character more powerful and thus something to squabble over. I know we played two or three sessions of that adventure, and that’s about all I remember from the D&D Club; I went to a bunch more sessions over the year but can’t remember anything else I played.
During college, I got to do a little gaming with my new college friends, but we were always so busy that we never got to play anything for any length. Some time after college, I learned of a local gaming club that met at the public library, and I tried attending that a couple times, but it was similar to the high school experience: the first week, I joined a large group of ten or so people making up characters for a cyberpunk science-fiction game; the next week, half those people weren’t there, the ones who were started a different game, and I joined a couple other people in trying a fantasy game and quickly realized that we weren’t going to have compatible interests at all, so I excused myself and left. Besides that, I gamed on a few occasions with new people that my close friends knew, and that was it.
When I moved to Seattle, I was reunited with my college friend and fellow gamer Tony, and was introduced to his Seattle gamer friends. I also got in touch with and befriended John, a gamer I knew from the Talislanta RPG mailing list that I’d been on for several years, and started playing games with his friends too. So both my gaming circles and gaming frequency expanded, and I enjoyed it a lot. Through John I also got involved in a couple online gaming discussion forums, discovered a bunch of new games, and became involved in designing new games. I still had no thoughts about attending game conventions, though.
But then in the summer of 2006, John went off to a mini gaming convention that some people from one of the forums organized. Unlike the big conventions such as GenCon, which were as much trade shows as fan conventions, this event was just a weekend of people meeting up and playing games, and John came back with tales of the fantastic time he had meeting people we’d only known online in the forum and playing games with them. He and Tony’s friend Brandon also went off to GenCon that summer, and again came back with more tales of the great time they had playing games. Tony and I looked at each other sadly and said, “We want to have a weekend of playing games too!” And we thought, well, the forum people organized their weekend on an ad-hoc basis, expecting it to be just for people in the Chicago area, and found that people from all over the country (such as John) were willing to fly in for the event; we ought to be able to organize something like that as well. John and Brandon were keen on the idea as well, and thus was born our own Seattle gaming weekend event, Go Play Northwest.
We planned our first event for June 2007, to be held at Seattle University. To facilitate the arrangements, we formed our own non-profit organization. We attracted over 50 people, mostly from the gaming forum but also some other local gamers we knew, and everyone had a great time. Having proved we could do it and having had a great time, we decided to continue, and we are now planning our fourth annual event for next June. I’ve had a lot of fun, and enjoyed the opportunities to play some great games with a bunch of people I otherwise never would have met, let alone gamed with. I also feel good about being one of the founders, about seeing something that I would like to do and then taking the steps to make it happen and having it succeed. It’s another reminder that when I do decide I want to do something, I can make it happen.
The fact is, I’d never been much interested in playing games with people other than my close friends. In high school I did join the D&D Club and attended regularly for at least a year, but I found it unsatisfying. We’d start a game one week, and the next week a couple players wouldn’t be there and the others would all be interested in starting some other game. We also had clashing expectations about how to play the games. We started playing the first adventure in the Dragonlance setting, and I chose to play the insatiably curious and mischievous “kender” character, but promptly found myself shouted down by the other players when I would try to insist on investigating anything. I’d read the Dragonlance tie-in novels and so knew about the story and characters the adventure was supposed to be about, but whether or not the other players had read the books, all they cared about was plowing through as fast as possible to beat the monsters and grab the treasure; it didn’t matter to them whether a certain character was supposed to end up with holy artifacts as part of advancing the story, to them the artifacts were just things to make a character more powerful and thus something to squabble over. I know we played two or three sessions of that adventure, and that’s about all I remember from the D&D Club; I went to a bunch more sessions over the year but can’t remember anything else I played.
During college, I got to do a little gaming with my new college friends, but we were always so busy that we never got to play anything for any length. Some time after college, I learned of a local gaming club that met at the public library, and I tried attending that a couple times, but it was similar to the high school experience: the first week, I joined a large group of ten or so people making up characters for a cyberpunk science-fiction game; the next week, half those people weren’t there, the ones who were started a different game, and I joined a couple other people in trying a fantasy game and quickly realized that we weren’t going to have compatible interests at all, so I excused myself and left. Besides that, I gamed on a few occasions with new people that my close friends knew, and that was it.
When I moved to Seattle, I was reunited with my college friend and fellow gamer Tony, and was introduced to his Seattle gamer friends. I also got in touch with and befriended John, a gamer I knew from the Talislanta RPG mailing list that I’d been on for several years, and started playing games with his friends too. So both my gaming circles and gaming frequency expanded, and I enjoyed it a lot. Through John I also got involved in a couple online gaming discussion forums, discovered a bunch of new games, and became involved in designing new games. I still had no thoughts about attending game conventions, though.
But then in the summer of 2006, John went off to a mini gaming convention that some people from one of the forums organized. Unlike the big conventions such as GenCon, which were as much trade shows as fan conventions, this event was just a weekend of people meeting up and playing games, and John came back with tales of the fantastic time he had meeting people we’d only known online in the forum and playing games with them. He and Tony’s friend Brandon also went off to GenCon that summer, and again came back with more tales of the great time they had playing games. Tony and I looked at each other sadly and said, “We want to have a weekend of playing games too!” And we thought, well, the forum people organized their weekend on an ad-hoc basis, expecting it to be just for people in the Chicago area, and found that people from all over the country (such as John) were willing to fly in for the event; we ought to be able to organize something like that as well. John and Brandon were keen on the idea as well, and thus was born our own Seattle gaming weekend event, Go Play Northwest.
We planned our first event for June 2007, to be held at Seattle University. To facilitate the arrangements, we formed our own non-profit organization. We attracted over 50 people, mostly from the gaming forum but also some other local gamers we knew, and everyone had a great time. Having proved we could do it and having had a great time, we decided to continue, and we are now planning our fourth annual event for next June. I’ve had a lot of fun, and enjoyed the opportunities to play some great games with a bunch of people I otherwise never would have met, let alone gamed with. I also feel good about being one of the founders, about seeing something that I would like to do and then taking the steps to make it happen and having it succeed. It’s another reminder that when I do decide I want to do something, I can make it happen.
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