In preparation
I remember racing down Interstate 25 towards Cheyenne, burning at least a quarter tank of gas, maybe even a half. In hindsight, a pretty dumb idea. What was I going to miss by being a little bit late to the convention? Not a whole lot. While I do try to practice punctuality, speed could and should have taken a backseat to safety. Pun intended.
This has been my first ever convention of any kind. I went to it with two goals to achieve. The first was to have fun and enjoy myself, of course. The second was to catalog the event and collect stories. Not just my own story, but the stories of others as well. Who were the people coming to convention? Where were they from? What did they do? Why did they do it? Why did they come?
I learned about the CGC from some Dungeons and Dragons friends. Back in the good old days of studying at University of Wyoming, I was an officer for the student organization Role For Initiative. One of my fellows in the club was Zavier Bates, sometimes Z for short. Zavier is the Vice President for the Wyoming Gaming Library, the organization which hosted the convention. It was something I knew about but couldn’t act on at that early point.
My personal interest in attending this year’s convention started around late March or early April. It increased in mid April when Z posted a video from the YouTube channel “The Old Warlock,” doing an interview with Brad Koch, the President of the Wyoming Gaming Library, about the convention.
I doubled checked my resources to ensure I could attend. I purchased my tickets and booked my room about a week before the convention. I packed the requisite bags a couple of days beforehand. On Friday I worked a half day at my part-time finance job, collected my bags, and hopped on I-25 southbound and down. CGC, here I come!
On the floor
I arrived at the Red Lion shortly after 3:00 p.m. I checked into room 504, took some time to unpack my stuff, and with a quick Instagram post I was out on the convention floor at 3:18.
For those who are unfamiliar with the Red Lion’s convention hall, allow me to try and explain it. The first thing which you see when you walk in is what I will call the “big floor”. The big floor is where most, if not all of the vendors were set up. Along the right side and near the front of the big floor is a bar area. For the convention, it was where the check-in station was located.
Follow along the right wall and about half way you should hit a short hallway going right. If you go down the hallway, you can turn either left or right. Turning left enters into the hotel’s restaurant, while right goes into a sort of lounge area. The bar that is enterable from the big floor looks into this part of the hotel by an open window.
We are roughly halfway down the length of the right side of the big floor. If we continue all the way to the end, we stand at the threshold to a large ballroom type space. During the convention, this ballroom will be the host to the card and board games. We will now turn left and follow the back walkway.
If we were to follow this hall to its end, we discover that it extends past the edge of the big floor and connects two more rooms. One room is on the right bordering the “board game ballroom,” and will hold the miniatures games. Across from it is the video games room. A short double back and right hand turn puts us on the opposite side of the restaurant walkway. Strolling the duration of this path passes by the bathrooms and our final stop is the lobby where we entered.
I hope I’ve not been confusing with this description. Simply explained, the big floor is in the center with extra rooms and hallways splitting off of it like spokes off of a wheel hub. Most of the divergence is focused towards the back of the building where the ballroom is. I should clarify that the ballroom and other rooms have names. I have forgotten them at this time.
I surveyed the layout of the big floor. It was split level with roughly the front third being ground level and the other two thirds being elevated by a few small stairs. The elevation did not go all the way to the back though, saving room for the perimeter walkways. I would describe the lower third as being more crowded with vendors.
I did one or two walk arounds of the floor getting a feel for who were vendors and where they were. The reconnaissance granted me my first surprise of the convention. I got to meet some virtual friends in real life!
One of the vendor booths was for a game called Oathen, and I’ve been a digital play tester for Oathen for the past few months. The game has a server on Discord where test games are held and changes are logged until a proper release of the game. Jason, the game’s designer, said recognized me from my voice. Throughout the convention, I would meet other playtesters and VIPs like Virginia and Frank. It was a blast to meet some of the Oathen crew!
The whipped cream for this Oathen milkshake was that I finally got to play a game of Oathen face to face. The cherry on top was that I claimed my first victory! Win and loss records are recorded on the Discord server and I was winless digitally, so it felt awesome to finally stack one up in the win column! I managed to play a couple of games during the convention. I’ll explain more about Oathen later in the series.
Also during the first part of Friday, I ran into another digital friend. His name is Eric. We are both players in an online weekly D&D game, and he is a player in a miniseries I am running in a setting called “The Wildsea.” We walked and talked around the hall, ended up in the video game room, and dueled on a PlayStation outfitted to play Tekken. And this was all during the middle afternoon and early evening. The late evening and nighttime held their own spoils of fun.
James Meyer 