This concept is a cool one, you find some space, use your house, the local library, a school gymnasium, whatever you have available. You get all the people you know who are gamers and you run your own event, on the gaming convention model. Minus the cool trade show, the swanky hotel (well ... swanky is being kind ... lol), and the celebrity geek guests. I have done this myself for now three years running and it has been a wildly fun event that we all look forward to every year. It is damn good fun and cheap.
So to talk about LARRYCON III. I've been doing it each year since I moved to Utah and actually it is upon me soon. I'm running it the second weekend in July. LARRYCON is my own little summer gaming micro-con that I've been running up here in northern Utah for three years now. I run it at my house and the main point of it is to reunite most of my old gaming group from Las Vegas and bring them together with my new gaming group up here. It has been really fun and in essence it embodies at least the kind of gaming that we all do at the typical game con. We actually manage to get far, far more gaming in because we are all crashing at my house and gaming probably 18 hours a day for the duration. People show up early Friday and leave Monday morning. Attendance has varied but I usually get between 15 and 20 people who cycle through during the weekend with a core of about 8 friends crashing at my place.
I send the wife and kids off on a fun mini vacation (whatever my wife decides that fits with our budget). This year the in-laws are taking the kids and my wife is going to have kind of a spa weekend/just stay at home and maybe even do a little gaming. All in all it is pretty damn awesome. Anyone can easily do this really and probably put on a bigger and better one that I do. Honestly for me it is easy because I have two groups of friends in two different towns and getting together with cool new people to game with is always fun (as opposed to playing Russian Roulette at your average con or game shop). Also for the guys in Vegas it is a cheap trip and in the middle of the summer it is nice for them to get out of the heat down there and get up here in the cool mountain air for a weekend ... wall to wall gaming also doesn't hurt :)
The games pictured up top just arrived from the Miniature Market and I've been ordering more and more from them. Free shipping over $99.00 and a solid discount, plus good customer service. I still order alot from the Warstore and I love Neal's customer service which can't be beat. It is just a matter of what he has in stock vs. Miniature Market usually. They are both equally good I'd say. At any rate I'm trying out Quarriors, Command and Colors (which I hear is damn awesome!! The wargamer in me is excited!!) and some new maps for the classic ticket to ride. I have a massive library of board games already that will also get some play, but I have several more board games coming as well.
We'll also have quite a bit of RPGs going, usually indie stuff, but this year we are going to do a test session of D&D next (what the hell ever it is called), hopefully some of the Margaret Weiss Marvel Superheroes game, Dogs in the Vineyard, Fiasco, and many many more.
