Inaugurated in 2009, JordanCon is “a Science Fiction/Fantasy literature convention founded in honor of Robert Jordan, author of the Wheel of Time (WoT), and taking place each April in Atlanta, GA.” JordanCon XI ran April 26th to 28th, 2019 at the Crowne Plaza Atlanta Perimeter at Ravinia hotel.
This convention is an author’s convention setup as a panel-con, a convention that focuses on Jordan and other authors’ works discussed through activity tracks/panels and not as focused on, say, gaming or art or celebrities. Not to say they do not have gaming or artists or celebrities, just that they are in addition to their core competency, discussing Robert Jordan’s work, specifically the Wheel of Time, and, to a lesser degree, Brandon Sanderson (the author that completed the Wheel of Time after Jordan’s passing) and the fiction he’s created (including the Mistborn, which has its own RPG by Crafty Games).
Set up in a high-end hotel in the northern arc of Atlanta, this con draws a narrower collection of fans than a general interest convention. 2019 was their top attendance year-to-date at 890 paid badges. However, what the con lacks in size it makes up for by being friendly and well-organized. To illustrate this, Jon Hermsen, one of the individuals in-charge of the Gaming Track, came over and introduced himself to me while I was running my mouth in the gaming room. He wanted to make sure I was having fun and offered any help I might need. It was nice to see a great level of courtesy and customer service from the volunteer staff, something I rarely see in for-pay employment. The JordanCon staff genuinely wanted me to have a good time.
Speaking of hospitality, I’m going to let my inner George R. R. Martin take over (even though this was Robert Jordan’s convention) and talk about the food. [If you have not read the books of A Song of Ice and Fire, Martin talks about the food a great deal.] With your badge comes access to the con suite which served full meals and snacks for every type of dietary plan: vegetarian, gluten-free, and vegan/dairy free or those that are celiacs. When I say full meals, I mean meals like fried chicken, falafel, hot dogs, pizza, and more, all well-prepared.
JordanCon boasts an impressive art show with a great array of artists including their Artist Guest of Honor, Dan dos Santos, along with other artists like Melissa Gay, Amanda Makepeace, Michael Bielaczyc, Charles Urbach, Lisa Sell, A.L. Ashbaugh, and many more, all with work appearing across a range of media. Alongside the dealers’ hall was the art show, giving fans a chance to peruse the work and vote for the People’s Choice Award in the art show. The art show alone sold $25,747 worth of prints and original work and, to give you an idea of how good that was, their “previous high-water mark for sales was last year’s total of $14,456!” Taken as a metric, that’d be an average of nearly $29 per show attendee (well over half the price of a badge), which is an exceptional number for an author’s convention.
I should note, this incredible increase may be the result of new licensors taking over the WoT license. It has been reported that they are not planning to renew the WoT artist’s licenses as was the practice with the prior regime.
Another element of the con is their JordanCon Anthology featuring a variety of writers and a sharp cover by Dan dos Santos. With only limited copies available and an incredible contributor list including Brandon Sanderson, this book will be in-demand in the years to come.
While there’s a number of tracks (discussing WoT, Brandon Sanderson, SF, fantasy, and more), a dealers’ hall (which included my childhood friend, Tessera Guild co-founder, and award-winning RPG artist, Amanda Makepeace), authors’ alley (which included Milton Davis, co-author of the Ki Khanga RPG), an art show, a charity auction, and more, my focus is gaming, so I spent most of my time in the gaming room.
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Friday Gaming. Between talking to friends and enjoying the convention, I played four tabletop roleplaying games and some card games. When looking for the thread about the gaming – the way I want to share my experience – it boiled down to Felix. When I play con games, sometimes I forget to ask players or the GM their name, so I end up knowing them by their character’s name. Friday night, I played a session of Call of Cthulhu 7e, the “Blackwater Creek” scenario. We started with four players as mobsters in Prohibition-era-Boston-come-to-West-Virginia, so, naturally, I played with the worst New York accent EVER. We made characters and the guy to my left named his Felix. Without giving away the plot, we ended up dealing with some moonshiners and Felix, the character, sampled their whiskey. He asked what color it tasted like. The GM decided purple. But, for Felix, purple wasn’t the right answer so he proceeded to attack the ‘shiners. That was all of the provocation – ‘shine not to taste. RPG-Jeff-Foxworthy would say, “If that was logical to you, you might be a murderhobo.” For us at the table, it was hilarious. CoC is a deadly RPG, so Felix gets killed which worked for the player because he had an event he needed to get to. For my part, I lost 2 characters with identical, terrible New York accents (which may have been the reason they both died due to friendly fire… hmm…). Despite being CoC, it was a con one-shot, so it was a funny and fun RPG that I wanted to repeat throughout the weekend.
Unrelated to that day’s games, there was another moment that needed to be share from Friday, April 26th, 2019. On that evening, if you felt *all* of the problems of gaming were magically solved, that every challenge to ever occur at the gaming table was debated then resolved, if you felt that, you’re welcome, because that was Sean and I. Yep, that night I had a chance to talk to Sean Hillman (Reign Dragon Press, SHMWorlds at EN World, and the host of the SF Track at JordanCon) and, together, we solved all of the ills that have ever impacted tabletop RPGs. Figured’em all out and brought peace to the gaming table. No need to thank us, just felt you were owed an explanation as to why gaming was all perfect that night, it was because Sean and I were shooting the breeze. The world saved, we broke for food and Magic: The Gathering.
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Saturday Gaming. I ran a Dungeons & Dragons 5e session specifically for first timers and Felix II. That’s right, the player that played Felix from the night before asked to play. Thus, Felix II was born. While this was a game for first timers, we had one true first-timer, two players that had not played a great deal, and one veteran.
For the one-shot, the setting was a four-day-wide gravel desert and a navigator that abandoned them halfway through the trip. They then worked together to find a path to the next town (learning some history of the region and defeating some leftover enemies from another era). My goal was to let the players work together, find oddities, and play some D&D that was tense and included combat but didn’t just focus on combat a la a typical dungeon crawl. That said, for once my dice were hot. As an example, I rolled a 20, 19, and 20 in three successive attacks against the players. My goal was not to TPK the party, so I dumped all of those rolls because who wants their character to die mid-way through the first session? Beyond unwanted dice rolls, we saw some nice roleplaying as they developed the story. We had several walkups to check out the game and one that pulled up a chair to see roleplaying up-close. At the end, I asked if they had a good time and I got a lot of nice feedback that led me to believe the players had fun (my number one concern). After the game, Felix II’s player hung around to share an idea he had for a convention RPG with pre-generated character (which, honestly, I’m still thinking on because it’d be a winner of a game).
The Wheel of Time inspired a D&D 3e RPG supplement rulebook, a campaign book, and a few Dragon Magazine articles, and, since I’m at JordanCon, I’d hoped to participate in a WoT RPG session. I met a gamer that had the books and we discussed the game (he felt that they mis-stat’ed some of the characters when they converted them to NPCs; I could not weigh in as I don’t own the books). Post-con, a friend of mine that played a WoT campaign shared his thoughts including a love of the HP system used for WoT.
However, there was not a session of D&D 3e WoT, or the Mistborn Adventure Game scheduled, both on my JordanCon game list. That would have been a missed opportunity, but, before we played my D&D 5e session, another gamer came over and mentioned that he planned to run a game of WoT that evening, just not the 3e version. Instead, it was a homebrew that used Fate Core and the magic system from The Dreseden Files RPG (itself a Fate RPG), both by Evil Hat Productions. The system lent itself to the feel of the setting allowing us to channel the magic system of Robert Jordan’s world and recreating the combat enough to feel like we were immersed in the books. We started at 10 in the evening with 3 players and completed the first combat. A quick break later and a pair of friends joined as did – ha ha – Felix III. With the additional players, the game started along a new trajectory as Felix III and his brother decided to do my character a solid by sneaking after my backstory-nemesis and, you know, murdering the captain of the guard then bringing proof my character was innocent of his backstory-crime… but now an accessory to murder. RPG-Jeff-Foxworthy would say, “If that’s how you handle an investigation, you might be a murderhobo.” Of the four games I played, this one took first place at the murderhobo Olympics. That said, we laughed hard and started a meme that *WAS* our in-game in-joke for the rest of the con.
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Sunday Gaming. The next day, the last day of the con included another game, this time an RPG titled, SageBorn. GM’ed by the game’s creator, Michael Bielaczyc, this game was a variant of D&D that focuses on Heroic Actions. Heroic Actions are a version of the 5e Grapple rules that allows you to perform fantastic moves that may defeat someone without having to drop them to zero hit points. Combat involved more bonuses, so you felt more powerful compared to D&D. We played aboard a 3D-printed ship, which could be pulled apart so we could see the action at every level. The ship made the adventure! We could really pick where we wanted to be and get our characters in position for it as it added a literal new dimension to the game. Also, it was an effective vehicle [oy!] to demonstrate Heroic Actions and defeating someone without murdering them (toppling enemies overboard into the water).
This game had six players (with one addition that joined at the end), Olaf the Barbarian among them. Why call out Olaf? Because he was played by the same player as Felix I to III. During the con, all four games I played, I played with the same player. It was nice because whenever I think about JordanCon, one of the better memories is making a friend through gaming and knowing that at JordanCon 2020, playing a game (or all of them) with him is on my list to-do. JordonCon 2019: Felix and Me!
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Going to cons is about gaming, talking games, and making friends. JordanCon did an outsized job in every category I care about. The con put forth the maximum effort to feed all of the attendees, providing us with meals, drinks, and snacks. For the cost of your badge, you eat well at JordanCon. It’s friendly, fun, and I made great memories in and out of the gaming room. The gaming was varied offering RPGs beyond what I played including a Willy Wonka-inspired adventure using 5e, as well as a Savage Worlds game that promised to open with an alarm sounding aboard your spaceship, waking you just in time to pull on your red shirt before you report for your mission. There was a nice variety of games to play and individuals interested in trying out RPGs.
JordanCon 2019 put to bed, in 2020 I’d like to see one tweak to the con’s setup. While the primary focus is Robert Jordan, the secondary is Brandon Sanderson and, as such, I’d love to see Crafty Games sponsor a GM’s badge for one GM ready to run 3 or more sessions of their Mistborn Adventure Game. It’d be the right game to promote as JordanCon’s *unofficial* tabletop roleplaying game. At this con, the Mistborn RPG would resonate with a roomful of fans versed in the setting and ready to dive into the world.
JordanCon 2020 has announced their Guest of Honor is NYT Bestselling author Faith Hunter. She “writes three series: The Jane Yellowrock series, dark urban fantasy novels featuring Jane, a Cherokee Skinwalker; the Rogue Mage novels, a dark, urban fantasy / post-apocalyptic series and roleplaying game (co-written by Christina Stiles) from Misfit Studios featuring Thorn St. Croix; and the Soulwood Series featuring Nell Nicholson Ingram.” As with Sanderson’s Mistborn RPG, this is the right con to honor the Guest of Honor with at least one session of the RPG she created.
NOTE: I’d suggest the same – a gaming company sponsoring a GM’s badge in exchange for running their game at the con – for a WoT game, but there’s no active WoT RPG license as of this writing, so I’m focusing on what is available.
Since he helped me to solve all of the gaming quandaries during the con, I made Sean Hillman (Reign Dragon Press, SHMWorlds at EN World, and the host of the SF Track at JordanCon) read a draft of this article and he shared this thought. “Since the WoT ended, the convention has been expanding its reach in terms of authors and literature we talk about.” He’s right, to think of JordanCon as just a celebration of Robert Jordan is too limited in scope. True this is a convention that focuses on authors, but that’s the secret, it is authors, plural. This convention has a solid base and I expect it to grow year-after-year. With an excellent setup and the upcoming WoT TV series on Amazon Prime in 2020 or thereabouts, I believe JordanCon will expand from a small, focused project into a moderate-sized affair. At the rate it is increasing, it should grow organically allowing it to retain its charm even as it ramps up its audience. If you have a love for the Wheel of Time and Robert Jordan, Brandon Sanderson, or any fiction author, or just good gaming and art, all mixed with good food and friends, this con to waiting for you every April.
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