My current D&D game started two years ago. We had our Session 0 on 18 August 2022. I had notes for a small city, some NPCs, and vague ideas of three different plots the players could involve themselves in: joining up with an army preparing for war, finding out why river pirates had turned to kidnapping, and chasing down some cultists looking for a ceremonial sword.
That first session was spent on the players choosing among several characters they had made, then a simple scenario of busting out of a brig on a pirate ship and figuring out what to do next. They decided to lay low, ran into a bear being harassed by ravens over the dead body of an elven woman, and the campaign was off to a rousing start.
Only two of those players, Vic and Shawn, stuck with the game the whole time; we’ve added three other players, Scott, Adam, and Zach; the current group has been stable for at least a year, I think. Through the entire run of the game, we have been playing online, through Discord, with the use of the Avrae bot and the help of D&D Beyond. Until now.
This Friday, we all met in person for the first time as a group. I’ve known two of my players in real life for a while; the others I have only known online. But a couple of months ago, Shawn, who lives in Arizona, mentioned he had to come to Portland for a work trip and we planned some in-person gaming.
Since Shawn, and Scott, both had to come to Portland from out of town, we decided to use one of their hotel rooms for the game. Since we had a weekend for gaming, both myself and the other DM, Vic, talked about running sessions for each of our games. We joked about sheduling, and somehow that gave it a feeling of a mini-convention, just for the six of us.
Someone said we should name it, the warlock’s imp familiar lent his name, and suddenly we had gone from arranging a game weekend to running and attending Biscuit Con 2024. We dreamt up logos with the help of AI, someone asked Google Gemini to design a badge. Biscuit, a little imp with the manic energy of a pyromaniac six year old, was an excellent mascot, along with actual biscuits (the English kind, not the American kind, because the AI did not understand we wanted fluffy dinner rolls and not hard cookies.)
The next step was putting up a domain. The site is empty, under construction, but the joke will keep going.
I have actual reservations about running an actual D&D oriented gaming convention; as an organizer I’d be managing things and not, y’know, playing D&D. But it is a fun idea to loop more people into a chaotic scheme, and if it meant I get to hang out with this loony group would be more than worth it.
Biscuit Con 2024 was a rousing success. Sorry you missed it. Stay tuned for registration information for next year. I proposed we have the goal of doubling attendance. I think we can do it.
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