A couple of weeks ago we were looking for a venue for our new convention - Spaghetti ConJunction and - quite by accident - ran across Geek
Retreat in Birmingham. It's a purpose built gaming cafe and was perfect for our needs. The proprietor, Sam, was more then keen to host our convention.
Then, wishing to promote his new store and to attract the RPG community, he arranged to run an "RPG day". As a local lad, I was keen to support this - despite the short notice. With no conventions between DragonMeet and StabCon, I wasn't expecting to squeeze any more roleplaying in before Christmas. But I have my one-hour "Introduction to RolePlaying" demonstration game setup ready to go at the drop of a hat, so the event was well within my wheelhouse.
I also put Sam in contact with Christopher Dean, another local lad. Chris has been developing his own Space Marine type RPG - with a thoroughly detailed setting - "I Love The Corps", for a couple of years now. He's just completed a really successful Kickstarter campaign to produce the book. Chris agreed to come.
Sam apparently asked other Geek Retreat outlets for advice. They pointed him at the Pathfinder Society. This is the group devoted to playing and promoting the Pathfinder
RPG. They send along William Cheung, one of their accredited referees - two star, no less.
So that made three excellent referees (though I say so myself). We posted on every Facebook page and in every forum we could think of, but it was at short notice and we weren't sure how many people - if any - would turn up.
On the day, I was pleased to discover that I have a bus that takes me virtually door to door between my house and Geek Retreat. The event was a bit slow starting - it was a Saturday morning, just before Christmas. But it soon warmed up. Three referees seemed to be the perfect number. Chris was running a game from the moment he arrived - in fully combat fatigues naturally - until he left. He did his usual trick of offering players a one hour game but then hooking them into his epic web, so they lost track of time.
William was the same, but with rather more players. It was fascinating to watch the "Pathfinder effect" at work. William is Roleplaying machine, effortlessly GMing a table varying from 4-6 with only a small break partway, through the day.
I was keen to make the event work. I greeted people as they arrived, explained tabletop RPGs to them and offered them a game. Often as not, if there was a space at Chris or William's table, I'd slot them in there. If someone wanted to find out about "Dungeons and Dragons", it's better to slot them into a 6 person game of Pathfinder than try to run a gratuitous 2 person game of The Black Hack. Still, I managed to referee three games - my "Firefly" scenario, a Steampunk and one "The Black Hack".
Paul Baldowski, designer of THE CTHULHU HACK, had kindly send me an advance copy of the demo scenario he's going to use to show off the game. I was desperate to run it but, alas, no one showed an interest. My other failure was not having business cards promoting my products and blog, or fliers with the details of Spaghetti ConJunction on them. I need to get both of these sorted before the new year.
The business model of Geek Retreat is a "fair usage" model. You use the facilities for free but please try to remember to buy a coffee every so often, eat lunch there etc. When you're deep into an RPG, sometimes it's easy to forget to order another snack, and the kitchen didn't see much trade at first. It picked up throughout the day, however, with coffees and other items flowing out on a regular basis. Their milk shakes seemed particularly popular.
I made a point of eating and drinking there throughout the day. The menu was surprisingly broad and everything was fine on the food front - with the cheesy nachos being a surprising high point.
Though Geek Retreat has capacity for more people, I'd say the day was a success given the short notice and the time of year. The venue is - of course - ideal and I have great hopes for Spaghetti ConJunction. Chris and William are both superb ambassadors for our hobby. My feeling is that most of the people who I meet at these events are people who used to Roleplay years ago (and want to get back into the hobby) or have dabbled a bit on their own (but went some advice). However, there are people new to the hobby and that's great. These often reference Big Bang Theory.
A bonus was that I sold some books! I don't do this sort of event to self promote. I also make a point of selling the books wholesale to a trader or - in this case - to venue itself so both they and I make a bit of profit. But still, two each of all three of my "Code" titles and and the shop asking for more is a pretty successful day for me.
I'll be back at Geek Retreat on February 11th for Spaghetti ConJunction, but don't be surprised to see me there before then. Great day.
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