It’s a new week, so time for a new installment! This week we will be talking about another slightly smaller convention. It was my pleasure recently to attend Who’s Yer Con for the first time. As always, the following description is true about the iteration of the convention I attended in 2019 and may change over time!
Size: 2 of 5
Offerings: 2 of 5
Timeframe: 3 days
Cost: Free with add-ons of varying costs
Type: Table Top Gaming/Vendor
Who’s Yer Con is a fantastic smaller-sized game convention that occurs annually in Indianapolis, Indiana. It was my first time attending this Con, but many of my friends have attended over the years and their descriptions intrigued me. Most people who think of Indianapolis conventions might think of the convention center downtown, but due to the size of this Con and its intent, a venue of that size is not necessary. This year’s event was held at the Wyndham Indianapolis West – a very nice hotel on the west side of the city.
The layout of the Hotel really lent itself to a modest sized Con, and allowed for enough space to have several different areas that were unique in purpose and feel. In fact there were 17 distinct areas anyone wander to and have fun with.
The size of this Con is not overwhelming. If I had to guess, there looked to be several hundred people in attendance while I was there. There was plenty of room to move about and not feel claustrophobic, yet there were plenty of new people to meet and interact with!
Although It runs for three days, depending on your personal preferences, it is a Con that can still be enjoyed for a single day if that is all you have to spare. This convention is primarily concerned with gaming, so it is important to keep that in mind when looking to see what there is to offer, but I will get back to that in a bit.
There were rooms for role playing gaming both scheduled and open, a decent sized room for scheduled board and strategy gaming, a gaming library where you could borrow one of several hundred games and just pop off to one of the two open tabletop gaming rooms to try it. They even had signs that you could take that indicated that you were looking for another player for the game. There was a room with a starship simulator game, which to my knowledge was the only computer based gaming going on. There was an escape room – an activity which seems to be surging in popularity recently. There was a kids gaming area and there was a stage for performance related events. There was even a vendor hall. Though it was smaller, and with fewer booths than other Cons I have attended, those that were present had wares of excellent quality. There was some very nice woodworking, hand stitched clothing, geeky glassware and some game vendors. A key attraction was a silent auction that generated proceeds for a charitable cause.
If you just want to wander around, a day is probably all you will need, but the real meat of this convention lies with the scheduled events. For those not familiar, game conventions thrive on scheduled events. Over the course of the three days of the Con there were over 500 scheduled events. They, like the Con, were free (at least all the ones I saw were). If you plan it right, this is a weekend of gaming goodness for the cost of some gas and food if you are local, with the cost of the room at a discounted rate if not. Either way, it is a bargain and everyone I interacted with was fantastic. The staff was organized and seemed really happy to be there, all of the attendees were fresh faced and happy.
Really there is almost no down side to Who’s Yer Con. If I had to nitpick, and it is nitpicking, the parking situation wasn’t great. I think they are about to outgrow the hotel. In addition, if you don’t like hotel kitchen food, you will have to leave the hotel to eat and you can’t bring anything in with you. I didn’t have any issues with it; the staff was nice and the food was good if a little overpriced.
All in all, I think this is a convention that I could see going to regularly. I can’t wait to see how they deal with the growth they are experiencing.
Next week in Prose and Cons, I will talk about a past convention experience at a different gaming convention!