PrairieCon brings gamers back to table

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This article was published 30/05/2022 (1294 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

PrairieCon finally returned to the Wheat City over the weekend, with a sizable crowd of tabletop and board game fans taking over the Brandon Curling Club on Saturday and Sunday.

Talking to the Sun on Sunday afternoon, volunteer Christopher Hunt said this in-person event served as a “breath of fresh air,” since the Westman tabletop community hasn’t been able to gather in this capacity since the COVID-19 pandemic emerged.

“It’s been tough,” said Hunt, who was getting ready to conduct a round of the role-playing game Star Wars: Age of Rebellion.

“Online is a way to do it, but it’s not quite the same as being around the same table where you’re all laughing, joking, sharing some food and having a good time.”

Equally pleased about PrairieCon’s resurrection was fellow volunteer Richard Baker, a Brandon University political science professor who has been attending the convention since it began in 1980.

While this year’s attendance was slightly lower than average, Baker said the level of energy in the air more than makes up for it, with a brand-new venue at the curling club putting that enthusiasm on full display.

“At [Assiniboine Community College] we had lots of individual classrooms, which is good for games,” he said. “We don’t have that here, but one of the good parts of that is you get to see the totality of it all. And you’re really struck by the number of people and the level of enjoyment and the energy. So it’s been really good in that way.”

PrairieCon originally began as a pure Dungeons and Dragons tournament more than four decades ago, with co-founder Chris Baker (Richard’s cousin) getting the inspiration for this event after attending North America’s longest-running tabletop gaming convention, Gen Con, in 1979.

While PrairieCon has expanded its programming to include all manner of board and card games since then, the Dungeons and Dragons tournament remains a key part of the proceedings, with this year’s festivities being no different.

The 2022 tournament was designed by longtime attendee Perry Grosshans, who was originally given the assignment in 2019 and had to sit on his storyline for more than two years due to the pandemic.

This situation was made even more nerve-wracking by the fact that Grosshans had never put together a Dungeons and Dragons tournament before, with this short-term format requiring some additional considerations outside of the D&D campaigns that can last for extended periods of time.

“The last number of months of doing the finalization of everything was very stressful,” he said. “So it’s been exciting to see how well people have been receiving it and really enjoying it.”

As it stands, PrairieCon remains the longest-running tabletop convention in Manitoba, with organizers crediting that longevity to the sheer passion of its attendees and volunteers.

To Baker, PrairieCon XLI is a prime example of this community connectivity, since the organizing committee was able to put everything together in three months after being largely dormant since early 2020.

“Because there’s not a lot of organizations, I think, that could have a lapse of that length of time and then just hit the ground running two years later,” he said.

Moving forward, Baker hopes that the convention continues to expand in terms of its partnerships and its accessibility, with tabletop and board games being far more of a mainstream hobby today compared to when the event first started more than 40 years ago.

“Gaming has really taken a hold on society, and so now it’s all ages, from little kids to grandparents,” he said. “And that’s our goal, is to be able to hit every one of those groups. We want to have something for everybody.”

» kdarbyson@brandonsun.com

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