I live in the Denver area. The Denver Gamers Association hosts two gaming conventions each year. The bigger one is Genghis Con, held over Presidents’ Day weekend in the winter. TactiCon is held over Labor Day weekend in late summer. This means that it’s time for TactiCon 2011!
My first gaming convention ever was TactiCon 2010, where I ended up running three Living Forgotten Realms adventures and playing in six others. I had a blast. When Genghis Con 2011 rolled around, I once again ran some adventures (one of which I had written myself), played in a few LFR games, and tried my hand at GURPS, Savage Worlds and Call of Cthulhu.
I’ve had so much fun running games at these conventions that I decided I wanted to try to Iron Man TactiCon 2011. I’m running games in all nine slots. That’s 36 hours of DMing over the course of three days. 12 hours a day. Wow.
I’m happy to say that I’m mostly ready. I have completely finished preparing the adventures for eight of the nine slots already in MapTool (for use with my projector setup), and I’m part of the way done with the ninth (I should finish this afternoon). This will leave me with time to polish the three adventures I’m running that I’ve written myself, get props and handouts together, get pre-generated characters on hand, re-read each adventure, etc. I’m taking Thursday off work (even though the convention doesn’t start until the evening), so I’ll have one more full day to do some prep work before the point of no return.
For those of you who will actually be at TactiCon and would like to play at my table, here is the schedule of the games I’m running (all of them D&D 4th Edition Living Forgotten Realms):
- Thursday evening: CORE 2-4 Lost on the Golden Way
- Friday morning: MYRE 3-1 The Staff of Suha (written by me)
- Friday afternoon: MYRE 3-1 Tallinn’s Tower (written by me)
- Friday evening: MYRE 3-1 Descent Into Darkness (written by me)
- Saturday morning: CORE 2-4 Lost on the Golden Way
- Saturday afternoon and evening: SPEC 3-2 Roots of Corruption – Dark Seeds (two slots)
- Sunday morning: CORE 2-4 Lost on the Golden Way
- Sunday afternoon: LURU 2-4 Need to Know
I’ve run the three MYRE adventures before (obviously) as well as the two-slot SPEC event. I’m done prepping CORE 2-4, and I’m working on LURU 2-4 today.
Am I nuts? Maybe, but I think I’m going to have fun! I’ll be exhausted afterward, but that’s why I’ll have Monday to recuperate (Labor Day).
OnlineDM, you are crazy! I don’t know how I could keep so many stories straight and moving.
I’m guessing there’s two reasons you’ll be successful: magical Map Tool, and your excellent DM skills. I wish I could sit at your table for some of these. I look forward to hearing your results!
Have fun
Well, I only need to keep one story straight at a time. And I’m cheating a little bit in that three of the nine slots are adventures I wrote myself, so they’re a little easier to remember. Running CORE 2-4 three times over the course of the weekend will help, too. At the very least, the people who play it on Sunday will have a good time, because I’ll have it down cold by then!
I’m glad to see that you’re blogging now that you’ve left us in Colorado. I’ll be interested to hear whether you find a good gaming group in New Mexico!