Gothcon 2024 – Arrival and Day 1

Last year I was delighted to be invited over to Gothenburg, Sweden to attend Gothcon. This is a large gaming convention in Gothenburg. Taking place over 3 days it has everything from Magic: The Gathering Tournaments to live roleplaying. Due to some family emergencies I couldn’t make it last year but Pontus who invited me, kept the invite open till this year and I managed to make it over!

Arrival

I came over on the Thursday before the convention got started, eager to lend a hand where I could to help setup. I was invited over primarily to take part in the podcast area of the convention where games will be played in front of an audience and panel discussions would take place. Before arriving I wasn’t sure what to expect in terms of scale of the convention. The convention takes place across the buildings belonging to one of the schools of Gothenburg. Each of these buildings is massive in its own right and the convention takes up at least 2 of them. I haven’t had the time to poke around properly!

I quickly met up with Anna who I had been chatting to about events at the convention and who was in charge of running the podcast room “Podrummet”. I helped out with a bit of setup, met some other folk that I had been talking to online and then made our way to the pre Gothcon event. I hadn’t really gotten a sense of the scale of the event up to this point, expecting a small meetup. There must have been a good 100 – 150 folk there and I began to realise how big Gothcon really was.

I spent a lovely couple of hours chatting with folk about all sorts of things, having some food, and a beer or two. Everyone switched to English the moment I started to talking to them and their ability to do so I find incredibly impressive and humbling. I have no aptitude for language and Britain is bad at emphasising the importance of other languages in our education. The Swedish attitude appears very different, and correct.

Day 1

After a very good nights sleep in the lovely hotel that the convention is putting me up in, Hotel Lorensberg that I thoroughly recommend, I made my way to the con with fellow podcaster Micke. I had breakfast with Micke and couple of folk he knew just beforehand. Everyone has been instantly welcoming and friendly. The shared reason we are here gives us all talking points and a recognised kindred spirit.

I had committed to a couple of events for the day. First thing I was doing a character creation workshop with Emil and Hjalmar. Emil is from the ROAR podcast and Hjalmar from Red Moon Roleplaying. This was focused on a system called EON that I am 100% unfamiliar with. Set low fantasy medieval with some extremely deep character creation options. Emil expertly rook Hjalmar and I through some of the options with the intention being to see if it was possible to have a game idea pop out of the options we chose as characters. We had a good time doing this and it was an excellent way to ease myself into the convention.

I went for a bit of a wander to give myself an idea of what else was on offer. The convention is split over the school as I’ve mentioned, and you will certainly get your steps in at this event! So far I’ve spied miniatures games, artists selling their wares, a large Fria Lagan (Free League) presence as you might imagine, and almost an entire couple of floors for the various board game clubs that exist around Gothenburg. Everywhere there were folk playing and talking about games, from breakout games in the corridors, to more organised tournaments. The Loopin Louie tournament is hotly contested.

I’ll be going around the convention with a press eye more in the next couple of days but one publisher immediately caught my eye. Blackfisk Forlag (Octopus Publishing), are an RPG publisher producing some really interesting looking games. Lucas, one of the folk behind the publisher, was good enough to talk me through their products.

What initially made me stop was a deck of cards that contained an RPG. Lucas told me this was in development and is basically a shortform RPG in a deck of cards about warring Vampire families. It is called Flowers Withered on the Stem and I’ll be keeping an eye out for it for sure. They also have some other small RPGs I may bring back with me. I love finding games that I have never heard of before, made by people with passion and focus.

The con puts on their own Cafeteria and I was fortunate enough to be given some vouchers to pay for food over the course of the convention. I went and grabbed some before making my way back up to the podcast room to watch Andreas from Sweden Rolls run Dragonbane, Drakar och Demoner. This was in English and it was a pleasure to watch Andreas and his players have fun and lead the audience along in their story.

I was up next! I wanted to contribute to the podcast room and I set about to run some Blades in the Dark as a one shot. Hjalmar from the morning joined mysel, Andreas who had just finished up GMing, and Krister from SvRP. I was using the session to show what Blades can do and I was really nervous as it was my first time doing this in front of an audience.

I think I did a pretty decent job and and the players and audience seemed to enjoy themselves. All the players brought it and there were some great moments. It was a wonderful experience and has really got me thinking about how that sort of activity works and the adjustments needed to make sure the players know what is happening mechanically, and how you bring the audience along with you.

I spent the rest of the day wandering around, looking at some of the shops, and chatting and playing games with folk. I run into Micke who took me along to the RPG awards at the convention. He was good enough to translate for me and it was wonderful to be in a room where people where celebrating the achievements of their hobby. Fria Lagan won a lot of awards. Dragonbane is really popular! More on that as I find out what that is all about!

I showed Anna, Krister, and Michael? (sorry if I have that last name wrong) High Society before Anna headed off to an event. The remainder played Can’t Stop, I will never stop advocating for that game! I ended my day playing Mint Tin Delivery with Krister in the Cafeteria. This was a cute pickup and delivery game, that we both agreed we wanted to see at a higher player count.

I had a great first day at Gothcon. I feel very much at home, the weather is very Scottish, and everyone has been warm, and welcoming. I have a panel on reviewing RPGs this morning and then the rest of the day is going to be poking my nose around the place and see what I can get up to. See you tomorrow!

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