Convention Season

We are well aware that it is convention season.  GENCON use to be the biggest weekend of Board Enterprises’ year, both in importance and cash flow, but also in fun.  There was a time when we were (at least in our own minds) convention royalty.  The other publishers knew us and even invited us to their parties.

We debuted Legend Quest at GENCON in 1991, and then again (in the soft bound edition that distributors were willing to work with) in 1992.  Pretty sure our last GENCON was 1996, so only the six consecutive years, but a lot of good times!  We did a bunch of others, not the least of which was Concentric which we were involved in.  But all of our convention going ended by the end of 1997.

We don’t do conventions any more.  Why not?  Well, originally, it was because those damn card games just sucked all the money out of the industry.  Now it is more that we don’t print the books.  Having not been there for a while I don’t know if there’s anyone out there selling thumb drives with their books on them, but that’s what we would have to do.  Seems a bit odd to me.

We’re smack dab in the middle of GENCON and Dragon Con, being about five hours from each, so they’re within reach, but we’ve avoided them.  There’s a bit of nostalgia about them.  We got into a conversation this month with a comic book artist we’re friendly with and were swapping stories about cons.  The problem is, just attending would be such a different experience, sort of like regressing back to our teens; it just doesn’t feel right.

So just wondering if you folks are attending cons, and which ones.  There’s a part of me that would like to return to a fairly major con, but probably as a Game Master and not as an exhibitor.  Not sure I’m ready to jump back in that deeply.  Also, I continue to wonder what’s best for Board Enterprises.

Just a bit of moping around and listening to what you folks might have to say.