Neoncon 2008

This past weekend I spent some time at Neoncon 2008. Neoncon is a roll playing game convention that was held at Palace Station. It mainly focuses on roll playing games along the lines of Dungeons and Dragons. There is far more to it than just D&D, of course. There were dozens of tables with a couple hundred people playing all sorts of games that I have never heard of. For as much of a geek as I am, RPGs just never caught on with me. Honestly, I have no idea why not.

My initial plan was to go to the convention for a few hours and take some photos for my friend Doug who was the organizer of the event. Todd, my Son and I showed up around 11:30am. I was a little concerned that my Son would be begging me to leave in just a few minutes because, even though the place has a lot of activity going on, it’s all centered around tables with everybody studying intently on what is going on in their own little world. We walked around for a few minutes, checked some tables out and a few minutes later I realized I had lost my Son to a collectible card game I had never seen before. It would be 3 hours before he even looked up to figure out where I was at.

Todd and I walked around, spoke to several people and then, at Doug’s request, we joined in to a game called Star Fleet Battles. The game was wickedly complicated and thankfully we had the help of an awesome GM to help us through the game. When I say it’s complicated, let me just say it took probably 45 minutes for him to explain it enough for us to even get started, and then it took another hour or so for us to complete 2 turns of the game. This is most likely due to Todd and I knowing NOTHING about the game ahead of time. He was amazingly patient with us and was happy to be introducing the game to us. Apparently they have a group that meets to play here in town twice a month. We may just have to go out to watch how a real game is played…

The convention looked to be a huge success. Everybody was having a good time and there were enough different games going on that it would have been easy to sit in and play most anything you wanted. For fans of RPGs, if you weren’t there, you better mark your calendar for next year. You do not want to miss this event again.

Congratulations Doug on an awesome convention. Get some rest and then start thinking about what you’re going to do next as an encore.

Here are a few photos I took at the event.