Hi everyone!
Today I want to talk a little about preparing for large conventions.
My Januarys are often consumed by this, between myself and the other Games Masters who will be running at Contingency, which remains my favourite UK-based convention.
There is a lot to organise – over 30 sessions – and while I don’t need to write the other GM’s sessions, I do need to make sure that all the character sheets, sign-up sheets and any extra materials are printed and ready to go before anyone sits down at the table. Not to mention planning all the streams and interconnections for the multi-tables.
Each session is different, which means there is no such thing as a standard set of characters. With up to six players per table, sometimes more, that already means around 30 x 6 character sheets at an absolute minimum. For one of our multi-table games, there is a very real possibility that characters will die, so I have an additional 15 spare character sheets prepared for that campaign.
It would be possible to reuse sheets, scrape off names, and keep going. But I think it is important to give players the best experience possible when you bring a session to life on the tabletop. That is why weeks of preparation go into every convention game long before the first dice are rolled.
So when you are at a convention and chatting to a GM who is trying to deliver you a great experience, it is worth remembering that a lot of unseen work has already gone into making that happen.
I hope you are having a wonderful start to the new year, and I hope to see you at a convention soon if you are here in the UK.
– Ed
P.S. Come to CON-Tingency! If not this year, then next year! You will not regret it!
