by PrairieCon | Apr 3, 2022 | Newsfeed |
Hello PrairieCon Gamemasters!
PrairieCon is on! May 28-29 in Brandon! Get excited!
I am reaching out to ask if you will help make PrairieCon a successful convention once again and run some games!??
How the games submission system will work is… well… still in the works. All I know right now is that it will not be the same as it was in previous years. But, start thinking about what you want to run and start collecting the basic info (titles, description, links, publishers, etc.), this way, you’ll be ready when the submissions open!
No matter the challenges of the past two years, it’s time to game!
Please contact games@prairiecon.com if you are interested in running a game!
We’ll be in touch with you soon with the exact info required and the game submission links.
by PrairieCon | Mar 27, 2022 | Newsfeed |
As many things have changed with the pandemic, so is our venue!
We’ve had many, many great years at Assiniboine Community College, and we want to thank the administration over there for being such great hosts, but PrairieCon will be moving to the Keystone Centre for this next year.
Most of us in Brandon are very familiar with the Keystone Centre, however, for the out-of-towners, the Keystone is located right on 18th street and is right near hotels and restaurants, making it easier to get your food and rest and get back to gaming that much sooner!
Further details will come out as we get closer to the event, we look forward to seeing you all soon!
by PrairieCon | Mar 15, 2022 | Newsfeed |
That’s right, folks, PrairieCon is ready to return for 2022!
There will be a lot of changes, starting with our date. Please plan your vacation time for May 28th and 29th (we will be going back to a two-day event for this year). We haven’t signed all the contracts and paid all the down-payments, so we can’t announce a whole lot else just yet, but that information will be coming to you soon. Very soon. We are excited about some of the new (and, honestly, maybe a bit terrified of some too), but we have two months to make it work.
Think about that. Two months. Well, two and a half, but in the convention-planning world, it’s a really tight timeline. Be prepared for us to ask you for help because if ever we needed it, we need it this year. Dust off the books and boxes and get ready to game because that part isn’t changing: PrairieCon is about a community playing games, and we have missed you these last two years!
Most sincerely,
Your PrairieCon Convention Board of Directors
by PrairieCon | Jan 25, 2022 | Newsfeed |
Hello PrairieCon Family!
We know you are wondering if we will finally be able to get together in June, play all the new games that have come out in the last couple of years, and resurrect some golden oldies (this is not a reference to our older players, although we are pleased to welcome Kevan back as Venue Coordinator on the organizing committee!). We are wondering the same things. Currently, members of the committee are engaged in discussions with two potential venues, so there is hope! However, we are still faced with the reality that we are living in truly unpredictable times. There is nothing more we want than to send out a save-the-date and start ramping up to the most amazing event we have had in at least two years (I hope someone gets that joke), but we are committed to following all public health guidelines in the interest of protecting the health of our community.
Uncertainty sucks. Some of you need to book vacation time well in advance. Some aspects of convention planning should have started already but have had to wait until we know if we have a green light. Some of you may have already given up and planned a trip to some exotic location like Winnipeg. We hear and share your frustration. At the most recent organizing committee meeting, we set March 15th as our deadline for a decision. On March 15th, we will let you know if we are moving ahead with planning an event or if we are going to postpone again.
With that information in mind, please start thinking about games you would like to run! If we are a go, there will be very little time to organize the game schedule, so it will be really, really important for James’ sanity to hear back from our many DMs and GMs of the past (or others who want to try running for the first time) as soon as you can.
On a more personal note, I have been mostly a shut-in for the last couple of years. Gaming is a big part of our community, but I kinda like hearing about the other fun things people have had going on too. I hope others just want to sit around and catch up as much as I do, share cat and/or baby pics, tell the old stories over again (ask me why Perry was nicknamed Perry the Liar for years!), drink too much Mountain Dew, all that stuff. We want to play games with each other again, absolutely, but there is more to our community than just games. I miss you guys!
Alex (on behalf of the PrairieCon organizing committee)
by PrairieCon | Mar 29, 2021 | Newsfeed |
Hi all!
You’ve been asking, and we’ve been deciding, so here’s the skinny: we will not be hosting a PrairieCon gaming convention in the summer of 2021. We aren’t happy either. However, we feel really confidant about being able to put on a great event in 2022, and Andy has a 3D printer that has been running non-stop for months now, so there might even be weird and exciting things to come from that!
At this time, we are tentatively expecting to run an early winter Gamesday, but it will all depend on gathering limits and the state of the pandemic. It might end up being a mid-winter Gamesday. We do expect to gather in a flock at some point before June 2022, so keep an eye out for announcements!
Thank you to all our participants who have been asking about the event and showing us their love, to all of our regular GMs whom we will be keeping on a list and contacting as soon as we are able, and to our regular sponsors for making curbside shopping available so we can game at home. We can’t wait to see you all in the summer of 2022!
Your PrairieCon Organizing Committee
by PrairieCon | Mar 30, 2020 | Newsfeed |
Hello PrairieCon family!
I’m going to get right to it. The organizing committee has
come to the difficult decision to cancel this year’s PrairieCon. We agree: it
sucks.
But June is so far away, you say. We agree, it is far away, but the work of organizing the Con starts July after the last one, and really gets rolling in February. Right now, we should be recruiting GMs and volunteers. We should be working with local businesses and corporate partners on prize support, vendor space, and sponsorship. We should be marvelling at the new registration system. We haven’t been able to do a lot of this, and we won’t be able to do this until the need for physical distancing has passed.
We wanted to make this decision sooner rather than later. We
know some of you arrange your vacation time to let you attend, and we want to
give you as much notice as possible to use your vacation for other things. We
didn’t want people agreeing to run games, only to cancel two weeks before and
frustrate our GMs who put a lot of time and creativity into what they do. From
my perspective as President of this motley crew, I didn’t want the members of
the organizing committee putting in all the hours that they do to organize an
event that might not run, especially when these people might have a variety of
other commitments including caring for family.
Now, for many of us, PrairieCon is our social community.
Going without it for a year means we don’t get the chance to catch up with
people we only see at the Con. We won’t get to see how much some of the wee
PrairieConners have grown since last year. We might go crazy cooped up in our
homes without the social outlet of gaming. So I’d like to encourage you to find
ways to still stay connected. There are a variety of platforms online that let
people video-conference, and I know you all have the creativity and
problem-solving capacity to find ways to make this work. I mean, we’re gamers;
it’s what we do!
I would like to take this time to thank our regular GMs,
regular volunteers, and regular sponsors. I have no doubt that all of you were
ready to sign up for this year. Believe me, we will be thinking of you for next
year! And the organizing committee is already thinking of some way for our
community to celebrate as soon as the need to socially distance from each other
is gone. It won’t be a full three-day event with all the bells and whistles,
but it will bring the family back together, whenever we can do that safely.
Stay healthy, everyone. Take care of each other and
yourselves. We look forward to reuniting as soon as possible! It might be 2020, but no one saw this coming!
Alex, President of the PrairieCon
Committee
