Alan became convention director for Q-Con I, during his second term as chairperson of Dragonslayers in 1994 - eTTN.

Going to Q-Con XI in the Students Union was a bit weird for me. The first Q-Con, organised over a decade ago (has it really been that long?) also took place in the Union and there are more than a few comparisons to be made between the first and the latest.

Run Up
The convention did not get off to the most illustrious of starts, with the Dragonslayers being unable to fill the post of convention director; almost as if no one wanted to taste of the poisoned chalice. Jonathan, however, stepped into the breach, functioning as a DS committee member and the de facto convention director. And so it was with Q-Con I, when the chairperson had to fill a similar role. 

Early advertising seemed to depend solely on Jonathan, from the literature, through online promotion to delivery of advertising. Awareness was not aided by the up-down nature of the DS website and lack of official visits to conventions outside Northern Ireland, particularly to our southern sister cons. Again it seemed to be Jonathan filling this harbinger role.

Indeed advertising in the few local shops seemed to consist of one or two folk delivering occasional flyers. I spied no literature in the bookshops and, of course, it’ll come as no surprise that a certain workshop for games did not allow Q-Con literature to be displayed on their premises.

This state of affairs may be put down to the low numbers on the Dragonslayers books these days – the convention director for Q-Con XI did not have a club with well over one hundred members to rely on.

The Venue
The first Q-Con was organised at the Students Union mainly because we lacked confidence to book anywhere else, an issue rectified by Q-Con II. I think when the brave decision was taken to consider another venue, as it became clear that the Senior Common Room couldn’t guarantee its services, the same lack of confidence kicked in with Q-Con returning to the relative safety of the Students Union. The Union is not an ideal venue for a convention, being, well, a typical Students Union with well-worn furniture and the ubiquitous unidentified sticky objects. The Union is also a used facility, with non Q-Con events happening to distract and interfere with the con – most notably Shine – the Saturday night disco event, which required the convention to relocate to the Senior Common Room for the pub quiz and the Wuthering Heights Game.

Despite these debits, the convention organisers did avoid some of mistakes made at the first convention. First, if Q-Con had to be in the Union, the best possible room to have it in was the Beech Room. If memory serves (and it doesn’t serve too well these days), this room is a difficult one to get – requiring negotiations with the university’s catering department rather than the Union, so it’s to the negotiator’s credit that this room was secured. Second – all of the games were located in the Beech Room and not scattered throughout the building – a mistake this reviewer made in spades.

The Organisation
The registration desk should not have been at the front of the Union; it should have been in the Beech Room. I know that the anime took place in the conference room and the bar was used for Xbox games – but the odd trip to make sure people in these areas had badges on and the small risk that one or two might not have paid in, weighed against having a vibrant registration desk at the convention hub, would have saved wear and tear on the convention director’s legs and allowed people to find out what events were taking place a lot easier. Oh, if you’re interested, Q-Con I had a registration desk at the front of the Union – though the silly decision to spread that convention over the building meant that one place was as good as any.

The attitude of the convention director frankly amazed me. With only a con-dedicated person or two (including Casper Love, another committee member), Jonathan did all of the running around, communication, co-ordination and query answering without a grouchy word or a snarled remark. This attitude of "can do helpfulness" is something that this reviewer struggled and failed to maintain during his watch and I dare any of Jonathan’s predecessors to say they never once mumbled under their breath or didn’t have at least one diplomatic incident during their stint.

The director needed this however. Q-Cons of late seem to lack the tried and tested method of using volunteer helpers. Red shirts, gophers, table-luggers, playmates. Whatever you want to call them, Q-Con needed them. Whether its because there are fewer people in attendance at the organising club’s meetings these days, whether it was felt they weren’t needed or whether people refused to volunteer I don’t know – but the convention suffered at least a little without them. One attendee had a mix up with their accommodation – the best that could be done was a helpful phone call with the delegate sent with a note to the halls of residence. During the early Q-Cons the redoubtable Seamus McKenna, in his red-shirt capacity, used to ferry people up to halls to help sort such problems. Similarly, the registration desk was outsourced to Students Union staff, who, while friendly and efficient, just didn’t seem to have the knowledge or passion about the convention that a red-shirt might have.

Finally some games were empty because of this over-reliance on the super-human efforts of one person. Red-shirts could have helped to guide people to games and fill games that otherwise disappointingly didn’t start. I think one or two GMs/Referees were slightly disappointed when their events were not filled – not realising that they were not just responsible for running their events but for filling them as well.

The layout of the convention was pretty good given the space. There has been the odd comment about the DBM competition being to hidden from the rest of the con and while it would be good to have it "on display", many of its participants prefer to be "sheltered" in order to protect equipment. The games were perhaps too spaced out – though I’m not sure bunching up would have made matters better – there still would have been big empty spaces in the room.

The lack of catering and the ban on alcohol may have kept people outside the Beech Room more often and for longer than might have otherwise been the case. The convention organisers’ attitude to this ban was very pragmatic however. The smoking ban seemed to have no effect at all – I only saw one or two people outside having a drag.

The Format
Some foresight and adventure was shown by the organisers. Q-Con seems to have stuck to the same format for a little too long – and while some might say don’t fix what isn’t broken – I think some effort should be taken to stop the convention getting stale. Vampire didn’t work on the Friday night and I’m not convinced the pub quiz worked well on the Saturday – many people had wandered off to do Saturday night things. Nevertheless – if these little format changes aren’t tried no lessons are learned. I think these little experiments should continue. In fact I’d go further and play with staggered start times so that "late comers" can still find stuff to do.

The Events
Many of the games seem to have been outsourced to a greater or lesser degree. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing, though I wonder if the numbers available to the organising society had anything to do with this. The MagicMon people ran what seemed to be a fairly large magic tournament. The well-oiled RINIWA machine ran the DBM competition, while the RPGA ran sanctioned games. Board Gamers Anonymous were there as well with a game or six, while TableTopNorth ran many visual RPG, Board and War games, with Dragonslayers also running participation games. Unusually for a gaming convention, Richard Phillips organised a weekend long anime fest in the Union conference room - any time I stuck my head in, there were always upwards of half-a-dozen people. Another offshoot made use of the Speakeasy’s Xbox screen and while the pub quiz may have suffered a little numbers-wise by being on the Saturday evening, the event did create some esprit de corps, despite a fluffy fracas.

As always the scale of the DBM competition made it look exciting, and I’d hope an objective observer would think that most, if not all of the TTN games looked interesting – including the Vampire competition organised jointly with Dragonslayers. The demonstration game of Mechwarrior Heroclix, organised by Dragonslayers also looked the part.

I didn’t make the Q-Con party – which by all accounts ended when the Senior Common Room closed. While never an "official event", some of these parties have gone down in infamy as being some the zaniest après con events in Ireland. I’ll refrain from inserting the usual male bravado drinking stories here – but some of them even had Mr. Jennings lying semi-conscious. Q-Con I’s impromptu party has yet to be superseded in my view – opening with Fiona O’Grady leaning out of a Halls of Residence window to ask the beleaguered convention director who the f**k he was, while he desperately tried to gain admittance. Neil Simpson’s beer-can-off-underpants-head routine remains the benchmark, though Dave Hayes’ brush sketch, years later, comes close. Come on guys – you students should be teaching us a lesson or six! Here’s a clue – every party started with a secured venue (usually someone’s house) and the purchase of a crate of beer or three as a convention expense.

Attendance and Attendees
This year Q-Con competed with a Lorien Trust event, Conclave, which apparently could only secure its venue on the same weekend and a Belfast Buffy Convention. Nevertheless, the convention just about held its own – the convention director reporting that 170 people attended. It didn’t seem like that many, though there could be many reasons for this – from the size of the hall, through people wandering off for food, to people not attending for the whole weekend. I did see some of the usual Q-Con suspects, but I know a few more didn’t attend because they were at Glastonbury! DCU headed up a very much reduced Southern contingent. Why this was the case, I’m not sure. Conclave could form part of the answer, but how many Northerners head to the Southern conventions these days – convention support is a two way street and how many of us have been to Gaelcon, Warpcon or the others in recent years?

I’ve already mentioned that there were quite a few organisations doing things at the convention, but other than TableTopNorth there were no banners, stalls, literature or vibe from those groups –except for the odd Gaelcon or RINIWA teeshirt and Gamers Guild membership forms. In the past there have been great SCA, The Gathering (who presumably were busy working at Conclave) and Belfast Games Club (now defunct) promotions.

Gamers Realm from Galway had bought the rights to sole trading at the convention, by all accounts this is because other traders weren’t exactly falling over themselves to sign up. I would have thought that the two Northern Irish stores might have coveted the publicity and awareness, if not the sales – but then I don’t know anything about running a retail outlet! There was no Robinson Imports, Dungeon, Replay, Waterstones or Forbidden Planet stalls – all featuring at one or more previous Q-Cons. While the Gamers Realm stall took up a relatively small area, their stock was far from run of the mill, with a good variety of games of all sort available, including the odd German board game – much to the delight of Tall Paul. I have no idea how well the stall did, but the next time I’m in Galway, rest assured, I’ll check the shop out!

The Vibe
The convention felt like Q-Con to me and it felt like Q-Con to others as well – more than one person commented on the unique blended flavour of Irish and UK conventions that is Q-Con. Given that many of the previous Q-Con contributors were not there, that DS seems to have fewer numbers these days and that there were several other competing events over weekend, that was no mean feat. Several big events of yesteryear, such as the Paranoia game and the Star Trek Mega Game have not been replaced and the event as a whole lacked some confidence and structure. Nevertheless, Jonathan has earned his stripes – having contributed to and learned from previous conventions, he has stamped a little of his own personality on Q-Con XI.

TableTopNorth at Q-Con
TableTopNorth had a good Q-Con and that is due, at least in part, to the Convention Director. We arrived on Friday to set up and Jonathan gave us the run of the hall and helped us decide where we wanted to place ourselves. We made a bit of a mistake there – placing ourselves too far toward the back of the hall, mostly because we overestimated the number of games and people on Friday. This made us a bit isolated, but we moved our games toward the entrance on Saturday, making the con seem less spaced out, with TableTopNorth being the halfway point between the stall and the DBM competition.

Our games went down well and looked the part. We suspected that we would have to actively seek players out and this proved to be the case – though there were too few people on Friday to fill the three Vampire games we were prepared for.

Our literature all but disappeared. I heard a whisper that our "programme" ruffled a feather or two as it was seen as competition for the official program. In retrospect perhaps we should have called the flyer our "show case" or "itinerary".  I suppose our game registration forms might have been seen in the same vein, but the convention director was very glad of them – as it saved him having to write them up! Thanks to Jonathan we also had literature at the registration desk.

This was our first outing and we found our feet well. It was also interesting to see how Dragonslayers, the alma mater for many TTN folk, would feel about our presence. We got off to a good start with the joint Vampire event and all four of Dragonslayers honorary members commented on how well the two clubs could compliment one another.

Final Thoughts
I’ve tried to reflect on the pros and cons for Q-Con XI, but really the navel gazing introspection is no replacement for the experience, which was an enjoyable one. There was mention of the convention being at The Welly Park next year. That suggests two things – that there will be a Q-Con XII and that the organisers feel confident about the future of Q-Con. See ya’ll there.

Run Up: 6/10
The Venue: 5/10
The Organisation: 6/10 (+ 1 for Director’s attitude)
The Format: 6/10
The Events: 7/10
Attendance & Attendees: 6/10
The Vibe: 8/10

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