Dundracon 2011: T minus 3 days and counting!

After a hard weekend of moving all my family's worldly belongings, I'm really looking forward to the con! Not only because of the Rogue Trader tournament, but because this is a convention I go to every year.



IIIRC, I first attended Dundracon in 1991 with a bunch of friends who had been attending every year. We crammed ourselves into a Days Inn across the road and - for some unknowable reason - cleared out the liquor store next door of all their 40s. That first night was grim, the morning even grimmer as we trudged, headachy and nauseous, into the open gaming room to set up for a marathon D&D game that lasted until the wee hours of the morning.

Over the years our con-attending group has grown and shrunk in size, from as little as 6 to as many 12 people, with one giant D&D game forming the core of the weekend, while other smaller games take place around it or people attend other events. I first entered the Rogue Trader tournament there in 2001, where I had my first run-in with Ork Speed Freeks and Necrons.

My tournament experiences have been hit or miss; three years in a row the hotel lost our reservations, we've had critical players bail from attending at the last minute, major interpersonal blowouts not related to gaming at all, and uncountable hours of fever-sweat-inducing fun.

Dundracon was not my first con, that being the 1990 visit we paid to Gen Con when it was still one convention and held in the Milwaukee convention center, but it's the one I return to every year. I've also attended KublaCon a couple times now and I really like the way KC is run.

Every year at this time I know I can look forward to Dundracon. Not the biggest, perhaps not the best, but certainly steeped in my own personal history.

What do you look for in a convention? What is the "flavor" of con you look for?