Someone asked, and that’s all the excuse I need for some unrestrained bag nerdery. The topic of what to carry at a convention and how to carry is is one that I have given utterly unreasonable amounts of thought to, and I share some of the fruits of it here. If you’re about to go to a convention (like, say, Origins) and are considering what you’re going to carry around, then hopefully this might help.

The first question to ask yourself is whether you need a bag at all. If you don’t intend to run any games (including pickup ones) and you don’t intend to buy anything, then the reality is you probably won’t need to. Stick a notebook, pen & Pencil, phone and maybe a few dice in your pocket and you’re good to go. If you can get one of those cool badge holders with pockets (they might have them with the Origins Merchandise, they might not) then that can even make it easier. This is, honestly a nice way to go if you can pull it off.

One tip that may help at Gencon but not at Origins – if you can get one of the pay-lockers on site, that can allow you to get by with a very minimal carry since you can drop your purchases off at a locker rather than tote them around.

Ok, for the rest of us, there tend to be two big reasons to carry a bag: to be prepared, and to shop.

Shopping is the simpler scenario. For all that a bag may feel awkward, I promise you it feels worlds better than a cheap plastic grocery bag carrying a heavy load of books or boardgames, especially given the certainty that a sharp corner is going to poke through sooner or later. If you’ve always got a bag, life gets much easier, though there are alternatives. If you plan your shopping (for example, knowing you’ll only shop on the first or last day of the convention) then you might be able to forgo the bag except on that day.

You’ll want to pick a bag that matches your shopping interests. If you’re just looking for CCGs and maybe a book or two, as small bag will be fine. If you’re looking for boardgames or planning to make a lot of purchases, then plan for something bigger. More on that in a minute.

Being prepared is a much fuzzier thing, and I will wager that most of us carrying bags are doing it for this reason.

Now, first and foremost, if you have a fixed kit, then you already know what you need. If you’re going to be running a game, then you need certain supplies. If you absolutely must have your iPad, you need a bag that can handle it. If you have needs you explicitly must meet, then those obviously supersede any advice I can give.

But for those of you with a less fixed set of needs, let me run through some options.

First off, try to use as small a bag as you can get away with. Big bags a great, but they get heavy as you spend your time walking around. If you’re packing several games “just in case” then you might want to consider packing only one or two, and rotating them out on a daily basis.

To my mind, the perfect con bag is vertical satchel style, just big enough to hold a D&D book. Something like the Ducti Utility Messenger, the Duluth Field Bag, or the Tom Bihn Cafe Bag or Risretto. They’re big enough to hold the essentials for a game, but small enough that even if you stuff them to the gills, they’ll only get so full. However, there is a problem.

One of the advantages of a bag like that is that it can be hung at the shoulder or cross body. This is very important if you’re going to walk around a lot – a cross-body carry means that you’re not constantly readjusting the strap. The problem is that this simply won’t work for everyone. Specifically, large men (like myself) and many women will encounter issues with the strap going across the chest. Even if it’s comfortable, it can look very awkward. Now, you can mitigate this by getting a bag with a “grippy” shoulder strap (the Redoxx Gator is fantastic for this) so you can have a stable one-shoulder carry, but it’s not quite the same.

Now, I should also add that I’m biased in favor of the vertical bags because they hang better, and for the guys, they are less likely to look like a purse (a silly but very real concern). Horizontal bags can work just fine, but they tend to be bigger, and that can be an issue.

There are definitely some great messenger style bags – I’d be remiss not to mention the entire Timbuk2 line, and the remarkably spacious Bag of Holding – but I can’t recommend them as con bags in good conscience.

I can hear some protests there, so let me step back a minute. These are great bags. I have several and I love them, and part of what I love is how much crap they can hold. The danger with any such bag is that it’s really easy to overload yourself. Even carried messenger style, they get really heavy over the course of a day. If you’re confident that you can maintain bag discipline or that you REALLY need the space, then go for it, but otherwise, I’d steer clear unless you want days full of back pain.

One aside about this – a lot of “messenger bags” are really just laptop cases. That’s fine day to day, but really think about whether you need your laptop on the convention floor, and if you don’t, that might be a good excuse to trim down your bag.

Now, this is where I have to admit something – one reason people choose messenger bags is that they just look cooler than backpacks or rolling carts. I can’t argue with that. That timbuk2 slung across your back suggests your about to jaunt off on your mountain bike to jump off a cliff while pounding an energy drink. The backpack suggests you packed a lunch.

If this is really your hangup, then you really have two options. Option 1: just embrace it, and use a bag you think is awesome. Your back may hurt, but it’s a fair trade. Option 2: just get over it and accept this is a convention, not a fashion show.

Now, I’m going to steer you away from rollers in general. I recognize they’re necessary sometimes, either for physical reasons or because you’re carrying miniature armies, but otherwise they’re problematic. They’re hard to handle on stairs and escalators, they’re problematic if you need to leave the convention floor. Only do it if you must.

For the rest of us, the boring, reliable backpack is often the best choice. It doesn’t get in your way when walking, you need to be a little mindful of it in crowds, but not too much so, and if you foolishly overfill it, it’s not going to suck as much as it would to be carrying it any other way.

Lot of comments there, so let me boil it down. Use the smallest bag you can get away with and still comfortably carry, but if you need to have a more-than-small bag, I strongly suggest using a backpack.

Given that I hit the road tomorrow, I think I may follow this up with a bit of a discussion of what’s worth putting in that bag. But in the meantime, what’s your con bag? I’m not worried if it contradicts my suggestion – I know a well loved bag trumps all – but I’m curious what works well for people.

I only just looked at the Calendar and discovered that Origins has snuck up on me.

I love the summer conventions, but since the birth of my son, it’s been simply impractical to try to go to both Origins and Gencon. Each one represents a week away form my wife and kid, and what’s more, a week of extra parenting duty for my wife. So far as I’m concerned, she’s a saint to put up with it for one convention, and she already put up with it for PAX-East. So, given that, I face the annual decision of Gencon vs. Origins, and I almost always choose Origins.

This is a fairly idiosyncratic choice. Gencon is absolutely bigger and more important. If you’ve got a product to launch, Gencon is the place to sell it. If you need to professionally network or see things you’ll see nowhere else, Gencon is the place. Origins is simply not as big a deal (though it’s still a pretty big deal), but that’s part of the appeal for me, and that’s doubly true this year. This Origins, I’ve got nothing to sell. No new releases to promote, no booth to man – I’ll be going as a civilian.

Now, I could talk about a lot of fine differences in culture between the two conventions, or wax rhapsodic about the food available at Origins, but the reality is much simpler for me. At Gencon, I do a lot of stuff and see a lot of people, but at Origins, I actually get to talk to people. That’s huge. Other things like playing games or seminars are a lot of fun, and I’ll seek them out, but the heart of any convention for me is any time I get to sit down in a circle with a handful of people who are passionate about games and just shoot the breeze.

So, anyway, I’ll be there. I’d tell you to look or me, but I’m an overweight white guy with a beard and glasses, so I tend to blend in like a ninja in this highly specialized environment. But if you do happen to find me, say hi. I am not hard to get talking.

Anyway, that means I need to go into this weekend with thoughts of packing. I put an unreasonable amount of thought into my choice of bag for the convention floor, but dammit, a man must have priorities!

Ok, so in my universe there are only so many important convention. First, since I’m on the East Coast of the US, the cons on the west coast are pretty much right out. This is a shame because my favorite convention in the universe – Ambercon Northwest – takes place outside of Portland, and it also means the various Endgame minicons are of the table. So it goes.

There are also some smaller cons that I make a priority of, notably Dexcon and Dreamation up in New Jersey. I like the atmosphere, I like the people, and they’re an opportunity to play, so they go in their own bucket.

But beyond those are the big deal cons, and historically they’ve been Origins, Gencon and Dragoncon. The classic advice is that you go to Origins to play (or to see people), Gencon to sell and Dragoncon to drink. That might be a bit of an exaggeration, but I’ve found it holds up.

When PAX (now PAX Prime) showed up, it didn’t really shake things up too much. From my perspective as a tabletop gamer, it was mostly in a different sphere, absorbing the debris of E3. People came back from it with reports of an excellent convention and a broad range of nerdery, and that was nice, but didn’t move my needle much. Even if it became a bigger hub for tabletop, its position on the West Coast put it out of my sphere.

But then came PAX East, and things got upended. People came back with stories of a geek mecca, full of video games and technology, yes, but also hours of fun for other members of the geek tribe. And Luke Crane and the Burning Wheel guys reported sales numbers in the Gencon range. I was super curious, as was Fred, so our trip up this year was sort of dual purpose. First, we wanted to go and have an awesome time (we did!) but we also wanted to know if this was something we might want to look at from a business perspective, maybe doing a booth or the like.

As a company, Evil Hat hasn’t yet made any decisions, so don’t read this as me speaking for that, but I definitely have some personal impressions.

When I can only go to one summer con, I will generally choose Origins. This is not much of a business decision. Origins sales are anemic and it’s not a great place for a new release. It is, however, a wonderful convention for seeing people and enjoying their company along with excellent food and atmosphere. Gencon is more work – it’s bigger and it’s a better sales opportunity, but I find the time to sit and talk needs to be taken in stolen moments and out of the way corners. If I had a big new release, Gencon is probably the right choice for it, but otherwise…

Don’t get me wrong. Gencon is a great experience. It’s the biggest collection of the tabletop tribes I know of, and if you’re willing to put in the work to deal with scheduling, then it can be an incredibly full convention of basically non-stop activity. It’s got a great seminar track (maybe the best in gaming) and it’s the place that gaming companies are likely to make releases and announcements. But it is very much the meeting of the tribes.

PAX East (and I presume PAX Prime) is a different beast. It’s the convention of the broader geek nation, and that means less uniformity, but it also means fewer dividing lines. The people who come to Gencon and buy your stuff because they know it’s going to be there. The people at PAX buy your stuff because they _don’t_. They are open to the idea of your game, but not married to a lot of the baggage around it.

To me, that’s pretty freaking fantastic. And it’s a reason that, as a publisher, I definitely want to have some sort of presence at PAX, even if it’s just one among many at the IPR booth. For all that it’s a sales avenue, it is an even more powerful marketing avenue. We like to talk about growing the hobby and reaching new people, and I genuinely am unsure if there’s a better way to do it.

But that’s also scary. Thinking about showing games at PAX reminds me of exactly how much we take for granted when we sell within the established community. There’s a lot you don’t need to do when you are selling to the converted. And as such, there’s a reasons that did well are the ones with a rock-solid demo-centric ethos (most notably Steve Jackson Games and the Burning Wheel folks). PAX is a con that gives you the chance to show that your game is awesome, but isn’t going to take your word for it.

But all that’s through the lens of a publisher. As a player and a nerd, I can’t imagine skipping the next PAX. The fun is just there, lying on the ground, waiting to be picked up. At Gencon (and even Origins) I feel like I miss out on a lot of stuff because I’m not in the right place at the right time. PAX felt like all places and times were right.

Bottom line -PAX isn’t going to replace Gencon anytime soon. The cons have different priorities and needs, and frankly, I think it would be utterly toxic to PAX to try to absorb too much tabletop. But PAX is raising the bar for Gencon and other big conventions, especially in terms of quality of experience, and it is shaping up as a critical marketing opportunity for game companies. Even if it doesn’t go on your calendar, it’s going to be the con to watch.

Given the number of wonderful things I’ve had to say, I should probably give a little bit of airtime to the problems with PAX. There weren’t many, but they are worth mentioning.

I’ve mentioned that food was a little rough. There were actually decent options if you wanted to leave the convention hall, but who would want to do that? Most of the choices were expensive and of dubious quality, but the funniest bit was in the extra food court. I think there had been a last minute attempt to bring in more food options, setting up a new food court down at the lower levels in another of the huge rooms. It was a good idea, but I would guess that the available options were limited, as the food trucks they’d rolled in were all basically carnival food. Thus, we gained $5 pizza slices, fried dough and ice cream. I’m hoping that next year they’ll have more time to plan and maybe bring in some real food trucks, assuming Boston _has_ food trucks. I don’t actually know if it does.

It is also a convention of lines. Lines for events, and lines on the expo floor. If you want to see something, you are going to wait in line. If you’re in one of these lines, especially towards the back, this kind of sucks. The problem is that I’m really not sure what the alternative is. Every model of pre-scheduling or smart-ticketing I can think of has exploitable loopholes, and this is exactly the crowd to exploit them.

Booth babes. I had not been expecting to see any booth babes on the floor based on what I’d read about the show, so I was a little surprised to see some. That said, they were mostly inoffensive. The ones selling hardware seemed knowledgeable and weren’t too overdone. The costumed ones handing out bags were in high-quality, in theme, non-skimpy costumes. The Duke Nukem ones were kind of shameless, but I can only complain so much – it’s Duke Nukem, the FPS with full functioning urinals. I’m not expecting a lot of class. Also, frankly, you had to wait through a hell of a line to get anywhere near the Duke Nukem booth babes, so all in all, fine. I think my sole objection were the ones mixing drinks at one large open booth, in large part because the announcer was REALLY pushing the booth babe-ness (“Talk to our girls! It’s not like real life! They WANT to talk to you!”). So, points off for that, but only so many. It’s worth some credit that it was so obnoxious because it was so anomalous.

Lastly, Boston wasn’t ready for the crowd. One thing I dig about Gencon is that all the surrounding businesses know that they’re getting an influx of nerds. We’re mostly well behaved, but we want to do strange things like play games in bars. Indianapolis knows there’s money in this, and is very friendly towards is. Boston was taken by surprise, but given the size of the convention, I hope they adapt quickly. This year, I felt like we were seen as a disruption to the business travelers, and that’s never much fun.

OK, so there are the complaints. All in all, they come to a very small pile compared to the awesome, but I felt like it would be unfair not to vent a little bit.

While I had a fantastic time, there are a few things I need to think about in terms of handling differently.

• I envy the hair. Fred’s very blue hair made him easily identifiable and findable, and had I not been paired with him, I suspect it would have been much harder to hook up with people. Being an overweight guy with a beard and glasses is not quite the camouflage it is at Gencon, but it’s still not much of a distinction. Worth putting some thought into a readily identifiable flag of some sort.
• I need a lighter kit. My Leverage kit (only ran once because I had no juice beyond that) was way too heavy and large, demanding a backpack. Inconvenient, but addressable with better planning.
• Bags are ubiquitous. I’d been a little worried that carrying a bag would be inconvenient, but about three-quarters of show goers either had their own bag or were carrying one they’d picked up on the expo floor. So, no problem with that. Just need one well suited to the con. Cross-body vertical bags seem the best compromise, and I must give a nod to Logan Bonner’s enviably awesome bag in this regard.
• The lines are long, and you need to bring something along with that expectation. A portable game system (like a DS) is probably a good choice, but line-friendly games (like Zombie Dice) can work just as well or maybe better.
• If you see something on the expo floor on the first day and think “maybe” then assume it will not be there when you get back. Make your purchase or make your peace.
• This was not a cheap con to attend. Hotel and food were both non-trivial expenses, made a bit worse by the fact that the area very clearly had no idea what it was in for. However, the con was right by a T stop (Boston’s metro) and things don’t start in the morning until 10:00, which suggests that this would not be a hard con to attend remotely, probably saving a few bucks.
• I need to figure out how to pack sandwiches. Lunch was the meal of doom, since it generally meant choosing options inside the convention center, which ranged from “Overpriced and ok” to “Disturbing” to “Carnie Food”. Breakfast and dinner were fine, but lunch needs a plan.