No two cons are alike. Philcon, which celebrated its 87th year on November 8th is no exception to this rule. Filk ad costuming workshops and pageantry are alive and well but at its heart, Philcon is a literary con. A literary con focused on sci-fi, fantasy, and horror. Nestled in just outside of Philadelphia in Cherry Hill New Jersey the con has started to reach out to younger participants by upping the ante. In several the categories of anime, media, and gaming.
Older cons struggle to compete with big-name venues like Dragon Con and Comicon since authors and comic book illustrators draw fans but not as ardently as big-name
cast from blockbuster movies. Philcon is combatting this by attracting potential participants who are looking to write their own novel, make a slash in the world of comics or devise their own game.
I did look at quite a bit of anime and walked away than more than my fair share of books but my primary focus over this three day weekend was gaming. Philcon, like most cons, offers a con-suite within the same convention center. They took particular care to make sure to offer a wide variety of tabletop games. Game developers were on hand to offer download codes to entire eager players to try their offerings. I was able to participate in gameplay for several games I have had the interest, but lacked opportunity in the past.
For those interested in game developing, Phil-con offered a wide variety of panels to assist some titles included:
- Intro to Board Gaming An overview of the games, gaming culture, and tips on establishing a gaming group of your own.
- Creating More Inclusive Games What kind of changes can you make to both your game world and your gameplay that lets potential players know that they are welcome in your group?
- Writing Branching Narratives for Game Play What different considerations do you have to make when creatiing a story that needs to have multiple middles and possible endings?
- Setting the Scene: Ambience for GMs discussing what kinds of things you can do to your physical gaming space to connect your players' senses to the world your game is set in.
- Making Physical Games from Digital Files Planning to playtest an original creation? Want to make a nice sourcebook from a downloaded pdf? A look at printing, binding, and other crafting techniques & services you can use to turn your gaming files into tabletop objects.
- Call of Cthulhu for Dinner *Again*? Can't we try something else? Sure, CoC is foundational in the RPG industry, but it's not the only game in the village. A look discussion about the Lovecraftian and Mythos RPGs that have arisen since CoC was published.
- The Beginner's Guide to Game Development Children Driving Robots for a look into the world of indie game development. The discussion will cover everything from story development to level design to programming, as well as software and other resources available to novice developers.
World-Building in Tabletop RPGs Role-playing game manuals have to do much of the same world-building that novels do, but with limited space and with other goals. We'll examine the various strategies that RPG manuals employ to build their worlds, from art to the invocation of other literature through quotations and recommended reading lists.
Alongside the panel offerings for gaming Philcon offered loads of opportunities to meet with like-minded gamers and get ideas in an atmosphere that was much more low key and laid back than the average con.
All and all if you are free the first couple weekends of next November you should make the trip to Philcon for a great con experience with a great group of fans.
Comments