[Deptheads] RPGA & D&D 5th

[Fred Upton]

We had a very successful launch of 5th edition D&D at Gateway.  More than 200 people came and tried a game, which is our highest by far compared to previous conventions.  At Gateway 2013 we had 129 total people playing RPGA events.  So we're up more than 50% from a year ago.  Some of that is cross-pollination with other departments but some of that is also from new faces.

We don't have official numbers from anywhere else, but from the chatter in social media it appears we had one of the most successful convention launches of 5th edition anywhere except for Gencon and PAX.  And unofficially, we weren't all that far off from PAX in our number of tables of 5th edition D&D.

Wizards has actually gotten clever about one aspect of their organized play in 5th edition, which is that they are emphasizing partnerships with local brick-and-mortar game stores.  We handed out a flyer at Gateway listing all the local stores we know of that are running 5th edition organized play events, so that our attendees can continue playing their characters at their local stores.  For us, this gets us word-of-mouth about our convention at these stores and should bring new people in to OrcCon.

Wizards is allowing certain upcoming adventures to premier at various conventions.  That means you are the first place in the county that runs it -- the local game stores and other conventions get it the following month.  Mickey and I will be making the case that we should get one of these premiers at OrcCon 2015.  This is a fairly exclusive thing so we don't know if we'll be able to get one or not, but we'll certainly be asking enthusiatically.

-- Fred

 

________________________________
From: Jim Sandoval <plustentoawesome at gmail.com>
To: deptheads at strategicon.net 
Sent: Tuesday, September 9, 2014 4:33 PM
Subject: [Deptheads] RPGA & D&D 5th



I just wanted to send out mad props to Mikey in handling the 5th edition D&D rollout. I have gotten nothing but positive feedback on the RPGA events and am glad to see the grand ol' dame of RPGs getting some much deserved praise. Great job up there guys.

Jim
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