EndGame Minicon

Update 7/20/2024: EndGame closed in 2019. It was a home for so many of us and it will be missed. More details on the story closing here.

EndGame has been running their awesome minicons for a little over five years now. I’ve run games at a majority of them and attended even more, but this time up (April 14th), I’m part of the action!

Chris Hanrahan and I have been talking for a couple years now about a good sign up system for cons. After we both saw how well Events Manager worked for Big Bad Con, Chris decided to give it a go for the next minicon. Together we setup the sign ups and I’m very excited to see it go live on 3/31. You can check out the games now at endgameoakland.com/minicon and sign ups will go live on 3/31 at noon.

Note: To use the system, you need an account. So if you want to play get registered now. Don’t wait till the last minute because new accounts have to be approved, which is a manual process, one you don’t want to be waiting for as you’re watching all the awesome games fill up! Register here.

My ultimate goal is for the Northern California cons to get away from the lottery and adopt a sign up in advance system like this one. That way the con never over books and everyone knows what games they’re signed up for in advance! I know it’s unlikely, but a guy can dream.

4 Comments

  1. Erica Schmitt

    I hate to say it, but if every convention moves to this style of sign up, that’s it for me and conventions – I often am not able to be at my desk when sign-ups are live, and the very nature of first-come-first-served means I’d have to be in order to get a spot. At least with a lottery I have a chance.

    • seannittner

      My experiences are that first-come first-served doesn’t fill up nearly as fast as all that.

      Gen Con uses that system and both when I attended in 2009 and 2011, I didn’t sign up for games until weeks after they opened and I was still able to get a full 4 days of awesome, with very little difficulty.

      Big Bad Con was the same way. Up until the event itself there were openings in great games. You could miss the go live date by hours, days, or weeks and still have plenty of options.

      I can see that as demand catches up with supply this would be and issue, but on my part, I was watching the sign ups very closely, and when a game would fill up immediately (like Dungeon World or Lady Blackbird) I actively recruited GMs to run more of those games so there would still be options for gamers who wanted to play in them. I also asked all the GMs if they were willing to run their games multiple times so that if their game filled up, and they were willing to, I could schedule them to run the game in a second slot.

      • seannittner

        Here is an example. It’s now the Monday after the Minicon registration. The big Saturday rush is over and sign ups are now just trickling in. As of my current count, of the 18 games listed, there are still 21 seats open.

    • twelves

      I admit to being one of those campers that registers for the minicon the minute it’s open, but I always find that there are still spots available right up until the games start. And there are also people who drop out at the last minute, and even no-shows (which I think is really lame).

      At the start of each timeslot, GMs indicate if they have extra space or are willing to take on an extra player even if they’re full. Anyone who shows up looking for an open game is accommodated.

      So, just speaking in regards to EndGame, it’s absolutely possible to still play something with this sign-up system.

      I went to DunDraCon for the first time this year and was very disappointed with the shuffler. And I saw other people who paid for passes and didn’t get in to ANYTHING, and instead spent the whole con at hotel lounge. You could do that without a badge hanging around your neck; it seemed like an unfair waste of money.

      I like knowing that, if I have to pay for a con in advance, I can also register in advance, especially for the small ones that don’t have seminars to sit in on, because otherwise I just paid an expensive entrance fee to a dealers’ room.

      And EndGame doesn’t even take payment in advance. You pay per game, when you’re at the event. Kind of the best of both worlds–you pay for exactly as much gaming as you get.

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