TLDR: Steampunk convention. Ran games continuously for two days with the most AWESOME players you'll ever find. A real tonic!
Asylum - the biggest steampunk convention in the world. Four days over the bank holiday weekend in the historic city of Lincoln. I decided to give it a try with my "Choose Your Adventure" set-up. Unsure of how successful it'd be, I chose to go for two days (Saturday and Sunday) to dip my toe into the water and only pay for one nights accomodation. During Asylum accommodation is at a premium in Lincoln but I managed to bag a relatively cheap B&B.
The website promises oodles of events and, nearer the time, a packed programme spanning the entire city. The organisers were very accommodating and my two days of games were posted as events on the website. However, that was only from 10:00am to 5:00pm on each day. The room I was in closed for the night to allow - pretty stunning sounding - evening events to take place. None of these seemed appropriate to host a gaming table. The organisers suggested the Student Union as a suitable venue but this was not listed as an evening event on the web site. All other events were ticketed separately.
I did a load of plugging of my games on the convention's various Facebook pages and created a Facebook event for for evening game - which I decided to offer as a special one-off four hour game rather than the one hour demos I offer during the day.
So I got up stupid o'clock Saturday morning and arrived at the event about half an hour before it was due to start. I was personally welcomed by one of the main organisers and taken up the room. This was a large bright room in a University building. Around the outside were tables containing "The Great SteamPunk" exhibition of items people had built. The room was divided in half. One half was set up with rows of chairs for a variety of Steampunk related talks, the other had three large tables - one for my "Choose Your Adventure" display, one for me to play on and the third for general board games. There were volunteers designated to supervising the room.
10:00am came and there was the usual quiet start - or so I thought. Within half an hour I had a full table of people and we were off! Throughout the day I ran a total of 5 games. It was a good job I'd brought my own sandwiches for lunch because it seemed like I barely had a break.
The players were absolutely awesome. Steampunk aficionados just want to have fun. They also pride themselves on being splendid. I had combinations of people who'd played before, were interested who had never played, had played decades ago or who I just collared to sit down. Ages ranged from under ten to - I'd guess - people in their sixties. I managed to break through to some people who said "Oh, I couldn't play that, it's too hard" etc. But they were pretty much universally awesome.
The room was locked at 5:00pm so I popped over to the student union to check in. Only a couple of minutes walk. They hadn't heard of plans for me to run games in there that night but were very receptive. I had time to nip down to my accommodation to check in and get back in plenty of time. The student union had beer at student union prices and a pie and mash based menu. It was perfect!
I snaffled a table. Through a combination of advertising during the day and plugging the event on Facebook I got a table of five players. They voted to play "The Great Martian Tripod Race" and - again - we had a rollicking good time, lubricated by cheap beer.
Getting a taxi in Lincoln proved difficult, so I started walking to my B&B following my iPhone's instructions. However, I managed to snaffle a black cab half way back.
When I arrived on Sunday, the organiser told me I might have a slow start due to everyone being out watching the grand parade but he was wrong. Two guys arrived specifically wanting to try TTRPGs and, soon after they sat down, we began to get others and the table filled up. The day went by in the blur as people were stood around watching and then sat down to play as soon as a game finished. Every game I played was a Steampunk one and I was glad I'd taken the time to think up two new one hour adventures. As each group sat down I ran a different story to the one they'd been watching.
I took a lunch break and the last game finished at 4:30pm but, again, ran 5 games with eclectic combinations of universally awesome players. What was really nice was the way more experienced players supported those new to the games.
The Asylum was absolutely and totally a stunning success, for me. My Refereeing addiction was completely assuaged. I think I will seriously consider coming for all four days next year. I had people checking out my display and watching my games as I was running them. I think there's definitely the capacity for at least one more Referee with the volunteers in the room running an official booking system. There's the appetite for RPGs here.
But the best thing about the whole weekend was the people. The players were enthusiastic, engaged, imaginative, polite and just looking to have FUN!
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