I am new to Gencon, but not cons in general.
I am running rpgs in JW room 30--.
About how many tables are in a room? Are you 5 ft from the next game or 15?
Do you have to speak up to be heard?
What should I expect?
The number of tables varies from room to room and hotel to hotel. Rooms in the JW range from 3 to 6 tables, usually. Rooms in the Marriott are usually 4-9 tables. Rooms in the convention center are 12+ tables. Rooms in other hotels vary too much to provide any useful range.
And tables are 5' apart - there is no way we would fit anything if they were 15'.
- Derek Guder Event Manager Gen Con LLC
I'm in the JW. 6 tables is way better than what I was imaging. Thanks for the replys.
I have been running games at GenCon, all of them at the JW for 5 years. The rooms have 4 tables each all 6 ft. round tables. They have ice water and candies on a side table in each room. There are two larger game rooms with 6 tables. The rooms get very loud at times. My games have drawn crowds toward the end. If someone get too loud you can always ask them to tone it down some. We just yell louder. It is not always that way, just depends. The restaurant downstairs has great wings!
I've run RPG's in rooms at Gen Con with between 4-8 tables over the years. It hasn't ever been an issue (in a negative sense), since most cons I've run things at has that as a standard thing.
Much better than running ANY game (board game, minis game, card game) in the giant ICC hall with those kinds of games at Gen Con. I won't ever even try that again after running a few board/card games the last couple of years...totally ridiculous trying to hear or be heard. I'm only running RPG's this year so that I can be in a space I know I won't have to shout in or ask a player to repeat his or her self three times to know what they are asking/saying.
Last year we were in the Downtown Marriott, but the previous few years our events were in the JW. We liked running games there a lot. Not a lot of tables per room, the staff kept the rooms well stocked with extra pens and notepads, and there's a convenient Starbucks near the meeting rooms.
Yeah. I've ran in some pretty adverse conditions like that.
The reason I asked the original question is it determines what sort game I want to have.
I do horror RPGs. If there is a bunch of kids there running a Paranoia game, I skip the theatrics and long creeps down hallways and stick to trying to wow the players with novel settings and situations they can ponder later.
You can search the catalog for what events will be playing in the room with you, but sometimes it's hard to determine the tone of an event from the written description, so you might have to play it by ear.
It really kind of depends on what other games happen to be in the same room as yours...I've had rooms with no one else running at the same time, rooms with others who are quiet, and rooms with multiple others than can have some louder background noise. Seems to be the luck of the draw, more or less...
Thanks. It would be a truly absurd amount of thought, if it didn't make me so happy.
Have a good con, folks.
You can also request a smaller room, or even a private room. That can be hard to accommodate, but possible, particularly if you are flexible on the time you actually run your event.
I second the post from Derek. I am not running it this year (will be next year though) but he has always managed to put my Cthulhu by candlelight into its own room. It was in the Omni last year and was PERFECT.