Tales from the Gazebo – KantCon Introduction


KantCon Introduction
By Cape Rust

The next few episodes of Tales From the Gazebo will be different. Instead of GMing advice I will be covering KantCon. I think it is important to take the time to cover conventions, because for some it is the only time during the year where they actually get to sit down with other gamers and roll polys. I know of several gamers who only dust off their books for conventions. It is important that as gamers we support conventions, because if we don’t , they won’t be there next year and when that happens a little part of the worlds we create and play in die. YES, just like The Neverending Story! I won’t be able to provide coverage during the entire Con, but I will try to provide updates as best as I can while I’m on scene. If I can I’ll try to add a few posts to the RPC facebook page and I might even tweet about it. (Twitter name: caperust).

As we all know Cons have a tradition of having clever or at least relevant names. So why KantCon? Well, according to their website www.kantcon.com the first KantCon was held in Kansas City in 2009. It was held because the organizer was unable to attend GenCon for the first time in 13 years. The first KantCon was invitation only and had 30 attendees.

The following year the event changed venues to Johnson County Community College where it was opened to the public and had 110 attendees. Activities included RPGs, card games, board games and miniatures. There were over 200 attendees the following 2011. The 2011 KantCon saw the addition of more events, more board games and a refreshments area.

2012 promised even more gaming goodness. Some of the highlights for this year’s KantCon, in my humble opinion, include Guest of Honor Shane Hensley. If you don’t know who Shane is, you might know some of the RPG products he has worked on; those products include Deadlands and Savage Worlds, he will be participating in the KantCon Tomb of Horrors Celebrity Game and will be running two sessions of Deadlands Reloaded: Storm Caller. KantCon is running a meal plan this year. What they have done is to coordinate with local restaurants and allowed attendees to pre-order food that will be delivered to the convention. If you have ever attended a convention, you know how important a service like this is. Many conventions provide meal breaks, but just like your regular work day, there never seems to be enough time to find affordable food located near the convention and don’t even get me started on the parking and re-parking before and after the meal.

I was impressed with KantCon’s use of Kickstarter to run it’s preregistration. I think it is the first time I personally have seen that done. This preregistration process enabled the Con to bring Mr. Hensley up to KC to attend. I could go on and on, and I just might, but I’ll save those thoughts for later as I am walking out the door after I finish this sentence headed to KantCon 2012.

KantCon occurred July 6 – 8. This introduction was originally written prior to Cape’s leaving for the convention.

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One Comment

  1. Nitehood says:

    I had a great time!

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