Thoughts on the demise of Trinoc*con

Because I am “in the business”, it is hard to watch a con deteriorate like Trinoc*Con.  I walked away thinking to myself “how could a con-com be satisfied by something like that?”  Not only was the attendance obviously very low, (non-RPGA) gaming was a joke, and the programming tracks somewhat haphazardly thrown together, but the location was not ideal for a convention, some of the Raleigh fans were simply rude, and the gaming coordination was simply sad.

In programming, the only things that seem to make were anything associated to George RR Martin.  Everything else was just basically unused space.

The attendance should have been much larger than it was, for  a con with George RR Martin attending.  They should have easily been packed to the gills by Sat afternoon and weren’t.

Gaming – there was NO “A Game of Thrones” being run – no board games, no card games, and no role playing games.  There should have been at least something.  Despite the fact that there was hardly any non-RPGA gaming, the RPGAers seemed to totally ignore what was there and turn off the lights in the room whenever they wanted to, oblivious to the fact that others needed light to do what they were doing. This is a gaming coordinator’s job to fix and there was none there.

In the interest of full disclosure, the auction was able to somehow raise $1700 which is more that CC did.  Maybe CC is doing something wrong, because we should have done better than they did. We had better attendance and no where near the big name Mr. Martin is.

Also in the interest of full disclosure, they were up-against GenCon which is the following week, so gaming turn out would have been expectedly lower. But I KNOW I could get more than they did.

So it was a sad sight to see.  I made the best of the weekend as I could.  I saw all the Martin events on Saturday, and played “Tide of Iron” with John. But I would be hard-pressed to find a desire to go this con ever again. It was a nearly 3 hour drive to arrive at nothing short of a half-a**ed con… I am sorry.  I can find something better to do with my time and money.