Category: The Gauntlet: Gauntlet Con

GAUNTLET CON ANNOUNCEMENT:

(warning – long post)

Wow.

93 games in three days.

Over 280 hours of games played.

Some folks played 16 hours of games in a single day.

Scores of happy gamers buzzing about this hobby we love in a hopping Discord server.

Hours upon hours of amazing games on the Gauntlet YouTube channel for the world to see how amazing this hobby can be.

10 hours of panels.

Thank you to our wonderful GMs and guests.

Kudos to the exuberant, giving, and helpful players who joined us this weekend.

Most of all, thank you to the Help Desk. From Thursday afternoon on, you all were in the Discord providing great information, helpful ideas, and positive support to everyone who came with problems or questions. It didn’t start this weekend, though. The Help Desk spent the last month and a half getting ready for this con, meeting together, researching games and Discord and Google Hangouts, preparing documents and quick cheat sheets, reaching out to GMs during their scheduled shifts.

During the con, the Help Desk’s preparedness shone, and I was amazed. As a co-organizer, I kept nervously checking every Discord channel to see if there were any fires. And the Help Desk team was already on it. Every time. Pinning helpful information, sharing skills and techniques, covering each other, reaching out to worried GMs and lonely players, thinking up new and better ways to do this thing I’ve never seen done before this well.

Help Desk Staff:

Dylan Ross

Michael G. Barford

Patrick Knowles

Christo Meid

Paul Edson

Auzumel Srsly

Maria Rivera

Tyler Lominack

River Williamson

Tom McGrenery

Philipp Neitzel

Timothy Bennett

Yoshi Creelman

I love you, Help Desk. You all made my con.

Thanks to Jason Cordova for having the faith to ask me to organize this thing. The writing contest was a bang-on success leading up to the con. Dude, you ran a long-con during the con and were on, what, a third of the panels? Wow.

Huge thanks to Kate Bullock, who despite having Toronto Area Gamers, Fan Expo, and Breakout, agreed to co-organize this thing with me. Her wealth of experience, patience, support, and leadership is what made this thing actually fire. I’ve participated in a few online cons. Coming into this, I had ideas. Kate made them realities. And the prize support? The amazing guests? Wouldn’t have happened without Kate. Kate was the A+ superheroine of Gauntlet Con.

Okay, all the thanks are done, most folks have probably checked out of this post, but my fingers aren’t tired, so I’m going to say a little something.

Gauntlet Con was the most pure expression of the Gauntlet community. Exciting games, giving players who put their emotions on the line, hard-working GMs, a thoughtful community. This is what we do. This is who we are. Gauntlet Con 2017 is over, but Gauntlet City Limits is playing tomorrow. A Blades in the Dark miniseries kicks off Wednesday, as does a pair of Durance games. The Gauntlet Community continues playing. Con drop? No thanks, we don’t need it.

This is what we do. Gauntlet Con was a compressed version of what we’ve been doing for months and months. Of what we will continue to do. Because we fucking love this hobby, and we’re here to play games and be awesome together.

If you were thrilled by this con and haven’t been actively participating in the community, this is me, inviting you, to be a part of this tribe.

Gauntlet Con game of Monsterhearts 2 run by Avery Alder is live right now!

http://youtu.be/F6goNaY_e9M

http://youtu.be/F6goNaY_e9M