Wednesday, September 25, 2019

Gaslands at Cape Con 2019

2019 has been a something of a rebuilding year for the South Jersey Gamers Association. The club has a proper logo now, as well as a discussion forum where members can talk about what they're doing (preferably I'd like more activity on there, but you can only do so much).

Visibility has been another big part of the plan to get new members into the club. It's one thing to spread information about the club via word of mouth to existing wargamers, and quite another to introduce the concept of miniature wargaming to an entirely new audience.

The local library system has been a big part of that effort (not least because I'm a librarian in it which offers some advantages). The club currently has a display in one of the libraries with miniatures from half a dozen games, and informational flyers in others.

But a personal touch is always best, which is why I volunteered to be a club representative at Cape Con, a mini comic and pop culture convention hosted at the library system's main branch.


As I mentioned in last weeks post, I chose Gaslands since it fit in pretty well with the pop culture theme of the event. Everyone I talked to instantly understood when I described it as "Mad Max on the tabletop."

There were plenty of questions, and I had about 10-12 flyers go out, and a few more people took pictures of the flyer to save the info.


I explained that the club's focus was on historic tabletop wargaming, with some fantasy and scifi as well. Next month's game of Blood & Plunder also caught some attention - people like pirates and big ships! Other interests were Saga (both Dark Ages and Fantasy) as well as the American Civil War and the American War of Independence.


Next year the event is going to be in February, since September is just too crowded for the library to compete for space. After some discussion with a few members of the SJGA, we're looking at putting on a game of Rebels and Patriots with some AWI figures.


Hopefully this means we'll have at least one or two new people checking out the club in October, but at least we're getting the word out!

5 comments:

  1. Good luck! I am thinking of trying to run a very small Con in my remote and rural area.

    Any pointers would be much appreciated.

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    1. Pointers for a participation game or a small convention?

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    2. I asked around with the people who ran the event and best advice I got was to not go it alone. Find 2-3 other people who would be willing to work with you as a group/committee to delegate work. Doing everything yourself will result in burnout quickly. It also helped that there was already a population there who was interested in the content of the event, and just needed notification that there was something going on.

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