I've been to London Anime Con a couple of times before. It's held twice a year at the "Rocket Complex" of the London Metropolitan University. It's a quirky and - it must be said - slightly tatty venue.
The bright and noisey website offers all sorts - with CCGs, board games and RPGs alongside all the Cosplay, guests etc. In reality these are all based in an out of commission, slightly out of the way, cafe area, which isn't ideal.
The whole RPG element of the anime conventions across the country has been spearheaded by a great guy called "Mr Purple" and, sometimes, this has been a thankless task. He's persevered, though. Hero!
In the past we've struggled a bit getting interest. And accommodation in London isn't cheap. So, though the convention is theoretically Friday to Sunday, I've never attended the Friday. I've even travelled down and back on Saturday and then separately on Sunday. It's cheaper than staying down there and gave me the option of knocking Sunday on the head if Saturday was a bust. This time, with the support of my wife (2nd weekend out of three on the trot RPGing - thanks love!) I booked a hotel to stay overnight. I also chose to travel Birmingham Moor Street to Marylebone rather than New Street to Euston. This has traditionally been cheaper, slower and less reliable. Nowadays though, there isn't much difference in the time and I've had some nightmares trying to get out of Euston on a Sunday evening.
I packed my "Choose Your Adventure" kit, got up at stupid o'clock Saturday morning and set off. The only glitch was forgetting my iPad. I can handle all my stuff on the iPhone (I'm typing this report on it now) but it's all so much easier on the iPad.
I got to the convention before it opened. Found the RPG room. There was no-one there. I was pleased to see Purple had invested in a table cover and some stands. (I wonder where he got that Idea from?) There was already an impressive but eclectic display of RPGs on offer, mainly microgames of the "Lasers and Feelings" variety.
I swept them to one end, added another table and set up my display.
There was good news. Purple has built up a team now and there were six of us.
There was bad news - the current renaissance in board and card games meant that the tables were stacked high with loads of colourful offerings to take punters' interest away from MY offerings.
As usual, things were slow starting. Visitors have to filter their way through the convention to the Tabletop room and then usually take a look and say they'll come back later. Purple is clever, opening up with easy games to hook them and then gets them into more challenging ones. The big success was Jenga. There for a Dread game (which never ran) it just attracted player after player and crowds. I played several games of Alien Kerplunck, exploding kittens, one night Werewolf before running an RPG. (Apparently a full game of werewolf is perfect for a scout troupe).
Across the day I ran my The Black Hack and Code of Steam and Steel intros. But I also made contact with two anime artists about my forthcoming anime game and got my games mentioned on two podcasts. I was even interviewed for one. (I could see his eyes widening as I explained all about the story of Golden Heroes and Superhero RPG theory. I think I gave him more than he was expecting.)
So it was a fruitful day. I didn't stay for the evening shennanigans with the youngsters but retired early to the hotel to do some bloggjng.
On Sunday I ran The Black Hack, again, The Comics Code and The Code of the Spacelanes. These were just introductory games but were fun as always.
I also started to play in a game of "Frontier" a well designed forthcoming sci-fi game, refereed by its creator. He's from Greece and was refereeing at an RPG convention in English for the first time. Impressive. I say, started playing. It was the usual case of playing to make up the numbers to get the game going and then passing my character off to an interested bystander.
I also refereed a session of the "Actual Cannibal Shia Leboeuf" microgame. This is basically just a slasher/monster horror movie RPG with a neat mechanic that I was able to pick up and run on the fly. I think I did OK. The ending was perfect. The last surviving character trapped in an overturned fire engine, petrol dripping all around, rummages around and finds an emergency defibrillator. As the monster approaches she uses it to set fire to petrol, killing them both. Perfect. A draw.
I left slightly before the end of the convention to find my way home.
This convention has a very young demographic. I need to be sure that it's appropriate for me to attend. I'm pretty sure I put off a couple of people who might have played if they'd been offered a game by someone more their own age. But, I wasn't the only older face there (parents accompanying their offspring was a feature) and most people seemed to appreciate my games.
An anime convention is a safe space for devotees to feel comfortable wearing a wide variety of Cosplay so I won't give my personal opinion here except to say that most of it is extremely impressive.
An anime con definitely isn't for outsiders. I have a soft spot for the genre and can hold my own. (I can tell the difference between Dragonball Z and Attack on Titan.) But I helped over a dozen people experience Tabletop RPGs for the first time, widened some people's experiences to games outside D&D 5th, met other designers and gleaned numerous ancillary benefits. I definitely think it was worth me coming.
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