85,000 fans attended Dragon Con from August 29th through September 2nd, 2019 in Atlanta Georgia. Among those fans, a number of gaming industry professionals. This year saw a parade including Tracy Hickman, Larry Elmore, Jamie Chambers (“I have attended every single Dragon Con since 1991.”), Dixie Cochran, Fred Yelk, Brian Colin, Milton Davis (“I’ve been attending off and on since 2013.”), David Boop, Chris Tang, Dedren Snead, Jason Bulmahn, Keith Baker, and many more. With so many gamers there, I asked a cross-section of the industry what they enjoyed most about this year’s Dragon Con.
Kenneth Hite (Pelgrane Press) has been attending Dragon Con since 2013:
“The highlight of Dragon Con 2019 for me was appearing on the panel on the Murnau film, NOSFERATU, with Bill Mulligan, Thomas Mariani, and Dacre Stoker. Dragon Con has such a great panel culture — the “GMing Tips” panel I did with Eloy Lasanta was 250+ people overflowing even the standing room only — and this one really let me flex some of my DRACULA DOSSIER muscles.”
Follow Kenneth @kennethhite on Twitter, and listen to Ken and Robin Talk About Stuff.
Amanda Makepeace, Fantasy and Sci-Fi Illustrator:
“I’ve been attending Dragon Con off and on since the early 1990’s but in 2014 I made the jump to participating in the convention as an artist in the Art Show. Every year is full of crazy amazing things and this year was no different. The best moment came when a fan presented me with a pendant she made that was inspired by the pendant in my painting, Fly Fast. Wow!!”
Josh Beckelhimer, The Lone Bards:
“Highlight: My wife and I and our kids got to meet Garret Wang. He was a great guy! He took the time to speak with me, our kids and loved the crazy story my wife told him about “almost” meeting him before.”
Chris Tang, OneBookShelf/DriveThruRPG and After the End LARP:
“Dragon Con is a vast sea of amazing geekdom. This year I spent most of my time in Non-campaign gaming trying out new ttrpgs and it is a hidden gem among all the wonder. I also swam in a mermaid tail but that’s a story for another time.”
Tony P. Henderson, Geek Vs podcast:
“This was my 10th Dragon Con (all consecutive). This year, I stayed busy moderating a lot of panels which I absolutely loved. However, having a group of friends together in one place singing along to the Cybertronic Spree was definitely my highlight. They spanned from friends I’ve known for 25 years to friends I’ve known for 3 days.”
Dedren Snead, SUBSUME Studios of Sorghum & Spear:
“Been going for five years as a single-day participant, with my second year on the Diversity Track as a panelist, and fully participated in the entirety of the event. The highlight was chatting about my comic series as a game design with a few people at Blizzard and other creatives in the gaming room, who gave me some great advice on current trends and their own feedback on building games and developing their own works. It was a very inviting space to have a new idea, and I’d like to concentrate on this track and focus more next year.”
Tony Cade, Challenges Games and Comics:
“I’ve been going to Dragon Con since the late 1980s. Mine would be something game-related but not RPG. It was 10 pm. at the Hyatt Hotel. My shop, Challenges Games and Comics, was hosting a free gaming event for the Dragon Con Diversity track. The room was packed and we had a line wrapping around corners of people still desperately try to get in on the fun. It was awesome!”
Learn more about it here.
Michael Bielaczyc, a 15 year Dragon Con veteran, creator of the SagaBorn RPG, and founder of Aradani Studios, Inc. shared:
“Dragon Con has the best fans and friends! Every year I get to reconnect with the people who use my products, and my creative friends who are there to sell their own stuff! Plus a 5 hotel party is never one to be missed.
Derek A Kamal, Shoreless Skies Publishing and the creator behind Heavy Metal Thunder Mouse, the 2018 Silver ENnie Award for Best Family Product:
“I’ve been attending Dragon Con off and on for probably 10 years. Maybe less? I’m not sure.
Not getting to visit many panels this year, my highlight was definitely the parade. More specifically, it’s tough to beat Queen Arwen shouting ‘You look fantastic!’ at my daughter who was dressed as Gimli.”
Robert Jeffrey II is a comic book and prose writer with some RPG experience:
“Having a chance to attend Dragon Con as a guest and actually be invited to sit on a group of panels this year was pretty spectacular. I’ve been attending the convention since 2000, and to have a chance to go from fan to an actual guest was a bit mind-blowing. Also selling a few books in-between panels was pretty awesome.”
Eloy Lasanta, Third Eye Games and New Agenda Publishing, wrote his summary of the con on Facebook and invited me to share his post. Click this link to read his full story.
“Friday, otherwise known as WORK DAY! This is where I had the majority of my panels for Dragon Con and it was a blast. I got to meet Jason Massey and Brianna Marie on Friday and actually got to be on a panel with them later on.
The first panel was the State of the Industry, with Jason Bulmahn, Jenn Ellis, and Keith Baker. I almost had a moment of Imposter Syndrome as I went into it, because I’ve felt so out of sync with the industry over the last year or so, but I got my confidence back as Rucht (in typical Rucht fashion) turned the panel to me and said “And what about Indie games, Eloy” and go fig, I actually had a good answer. One I didn’t even realize I had in the moment. Weird.
The second panel was Designing Combat Systems with Jason B. and it was a great time. I always have fun playing the role of “opposite of Jason” when I come to Dragon Con. It’s WHY I’m invited every year, I think. This year, though, we agreed on a lot more than we disagreed. I know I didn’t change… does that mean…? Nah!
Then came The Best Gamemasters in the World. No hyperbole there! But also, yeah, I really do consider myself one of the better GMs, having played with a ton of bad ones and great ones. I’d change it to “one of…” but I have to say, I’m pretty darn good. Okay, enough of that… the panel was the biggest one of the day, even got to be in the BIG room and it was almost full. This one was me, Keith and Jason M and it was a blast.
The last panel of the day was my Horror Panel with Kenneth Hite, who is the bee’s knees. I honestly thought I’d have very little to say sitting in between to Ken to my Right and Rucht to my left (like, not everyone knows that Rucht specializes in horror stuff. he’s wonderful at it). I feel like I held my own, even though I wasn’t nearly as funny as Ken is, but my advice was different and yet reinforced a lot of what was said generally, so I was happy with it.
Then I played in a great game run by Rucht and got to play with a great crew that I haven’t played with in a long time, including Abby Plemmons, Mike, and a Croissant. Great ending to the evening.
[Saturday] was my off day, so I decided to try to get to some panels. My first was Women of Color in Media and I was happy to say that it was full and that the interest in there for such a thing. Standing room only tells us that. Also, the fact that the room wasn’t filled with only black women, means people get that this affects everyone and not just the subject of the conversation.
Then I realized that we had a gaming guest not show and that Ken was going to be on the panel all by himself. Of course, he could have handled it, but it’s always better to have a conversation than a single viewpoint. So, I jumped on that panel and we had a ball with our banter and the questions we got. It was again about GMing, so this is kind of my comfort zone and Ken knows his stuff so we could give useful info and have fun at the same time.
[On Sunday], my last panel was Managing a Campaign, which kind of felt like “how to create a campaign and GM it” rather than managing an existing one, but people ask the questions they need help with and I help. It is my way. But someone bought up a Zune at one point and the panel descended into constant Zune jokes that made everyone crack up the whole time. It was a great panel to end on, cause I love helping others run better games.
On the whole, I think I had more fun this year at DragonCon than in previous years. Thanks to everyone who made it epic and I can’t wait until next year!”
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