About this project
"MoatCon is first and foremost a tabletop game convention. We focus on board games, card games, role-playing games and miniature games. MoatCon is targeted on creating a safe and welcoming space for promoting the tabletop games hobby, supporting diversity in gaming, and building a community of both novice and experienced game players."
That's what we said last year in our Kickstarter to introduce MoatCon. Those words still ring true.
Last year was successful for an introductory year. Since then we have grown from almost a one man show to a real honest to goodness staff. The convention last year illustrated that the central NC gamer community does want a local game convention. Some of our ideas were hits while others sort of fizzled out. The successes will come back this year to be joined by some new ideas. Positive growth means introducing new things to the event and keeping the successes. It also means reaching a larger portion of the gamer community in the region and encouraging them to choose MoatCon as their final game convention of the year.
Last year we occupied the Youngsville, NC National Guard Armory.
Now here's the problem we're facing. This will very likely be the last year we will have access to the National Guard Armory in Youngsville. We have been informed that the Army is no longer using that facility. While short term that will give us more areas of the Armory for MoatCon but in the longer view the facility will probably be sold at some point.
We must grow MoatCon to the point that it can afford occupancy in an area hotel.
The most common feedback we received about MoatCon last year stated that the attendees preferred conventions at a local hotel. We took your feedback seriously but realized that MoatCon was still young and lacked the attendance to afford a hotel. Moving to a hotel had to be a long term goal. Now the Army has forced us to step up that goal to be a bit more urgent. We have one year to grow attendance to the numbers that can make a hotel financially possible.
To facilitate the needed growth we're pulling out all the stops this year and tightening our focus on the event, activities and the fun. Here's the plan.
We are adding some pre-convention activities for you. We've contacted game designers, authors, professionals and area game community personalities and are setting up some online games prior to MoatCon. Those attending these games will enjoy unique, exclusive activities that no one else will.The specific time, date and game system being played will be announced after the successful campaign has concluded.We are leaving all those details to the awesome guys that are offering to run them. Some have even offered us peeks at their ideas in advance. Read on.
James Doster
Minister of unholy rites at the First United Church of Cthulhu and Administrative Director at No Ordinary Gamers, comes to us from Troutman, NC.
No Ordinary Gamers is an organization dedicated to demoing and introducing new games to people across the Carolinas. They are commited to community; specifically the gaming community. They support area gaming stores and conventions, encourage local game developers and the hobby in general by supporting popular games as well as new and more obscure games!
James will be hosting a live pre-convnetion event for MoatCon. The exact location, time and date (early October) are still to be announced. The game however is etched in stone, cyclopean, non-Euclidean stone. James will come to the triangle and will run a game of Munchkin Cthulhu, Guest Artist Edition.
http://www.worldofmunchkin.com/guestartists/cthulhu-cook/
When it's all over every participant will take home a copy of the game wand a Kill-O-Meter.
Nicholas Moll
Dr. Nicholas William Moll, aka Nic, is an Australian game designer and the mind behind Frankenstein Atomic Frontier and Big Damn Dryden . Building games with along a minimalist philosophy, Nic strives for game play that is evocative over exhaustive. Aside from game design, Nic is also an academic, lecturing and researching at Federation University Australia.
He authored rule systems and setting include Artificial Exotics, Big Damn Sci-Fi and Frankenstein Atomic Frontier, all published by Owlman Press.
He also has authored the rules systems for Big Damn Dryden, and Bloodsword Chronicles by various publishers.
Nic has offered to run a Skum of the Stars.
Setting Brief: The Blood Empire has fallen! After two thousand years of expanding boarders and imposing Pax Sanguinis amongst the stars, internal corruption has finally rotted the core, causing over those extended borders to fall. Now the barbarians from beyond the frontiers and the criminals within seize the imperial worlds, transforming civilized planets into freeholds of crime and villainy.
Eric Townsend
Eric Townsend is the Organizer of Raleigh Tabletop RPGs. His meetup group connects people who enjoy playing roleplaying games (RPGs) such as GURPS, Call of Cthulhu, Shadowrun, World of Darkness, Amber, Traveller, Rifts, D&D, Star Wars RPG and others.
Raleigh Tabletop RPGS (RTR) was created to facilitate meetups so game masters and players can talk shop, and recruit or find games in the Raleigh/Triangle area.
This group has over 1100 members and is very active at Triangle area game shops and private homes.
Eric is offering to run a 2d20 Conan scenario for a select group of Robert E. Howard and Conan aficionados.
Charles White
Charles is one half of the dynamic duo behind the ENnie nominated, monumental cartography company, Fabled Environments. He has been involved with gaming for over twenty years later, Charles still games on a regular basis and runs a game on occasion. Definitely not the typical gamer, Charles is a seminary graduate and holds two masters degrees, one with a focus in American Church History and the other, an advanced masters, in the area of American Religion and Culture.
Fabled Environments has a myriad of architectural floorplans in their catalog for use in role playing games as well as a whole slew of products for the Savage Worlds system. He is a prolific author, game designer and game master of unquestionable skill.
So far the specific on Charles' game are a mystery. If I know him ,and I do, it will be something Savage. We will announce it as soon as we have more detail. For now it must remain a surprise.
These games will only be experienced by those that choose the backer tiers for them. Once the seats are filled that option is off the table.
We are curating a fantastic collection of Special Guest GMs for you. So far we have...
Randy Richards
Eric Townsend
John Watts
Charles White
as the list grows we'll be announcing the additions in updates.
It's becoming a bit of a tradition at MoatCon. Every year the con program cover reflects the exclusive Director's nostalgia game. Only the Kickstarter backers for the Director's Game tier will be allowed a seat for this game.
Here is a sneak peek at this year's program cover.
Last Hint: last year was a little black book. This year, it's all about the old red book. Unless you're a millennial the cover art should be a dead give-away.
Other Staff members want in on the act as well. To that end the Ops Manager and the Game's Coordinator will also be running games from backer tiers.
The Ops Manager's Game
The Ops Manager will run Justifiers an anthropomorphic sci-fi classic by Gideon, published by Starchilde Publications.
Games Coordinator's Game
Our Games Coordinator will run Trail of Cthulhu using the Gumshoe system. The Games Coordinator's Game like the others will host 6 players.
Trail of Cthulhu is an award-winning standalone game produced under license from Chaosium, set in the 1930s, now in its third print run, and produced in five languages. Trail of Cthulhu uses the GUMSHOE system, which is finely tuned for investigative play – the challenge is in interpreting clues not finding them. It supports both Pulp (for Indiana Jones, Robert E. Howard, thrilling locations sorts of games) and Purist styles of play (for intellectual horror and cosmic dread). HP Lovecraft’s work combined both, sometimes in the same story.It includes a new take on the creatures, cults and gods of the Lovecraft’s literature, and addresses their use in gaming. It adds new player backgrounds, and bulk out the GUMSHOE system to give intensive support for sanity, incorporating into the rule set the PCs desire to explore at the risk of going mad.
With the addition of the other lead staff games that covers the major the genre, fantasy, sci-fi and horror. Something for everyone.
We are once again supporting Wags4Tags. (wags4tags.org) For those that don't know their work. They unite returning veterans suffering from PTSD and Depression with dogs rescued from area kill shelters and train the dogs as support animals for the veteran. The dog's life is saved from the kill shelter and the veteran's might just be also by a now trained support dog.
The Armory has a deployed soldier care package program. This year we are supporting that effort as well. The collect comfort goods and cash donations sending the items to deployed troops over seas. cash donations are used to fund packaging and shipping. At MoatCon this year we will be accepting material and cash donations for this effort. Ther's a comprehensive list of recommended donation items on our website. (moatcon.com) As many of you know the military and gaming communities cross paths quite frequently.
In the Kickstarter backer kit there are add-ons for both Wags4Tags and Operation Active Drop. These add-ons are to make a kickstarter donations to either or both of these efforts. As soon as the campaign is finished those add-on donations will be deducted from our backer support and donated to the causes chosen by the backers.
Oh yes, the money, many of you may have noticed that this year our Kickstarter campaign is for a higher dollar figure than last year. So what is different this year? Why do we need more money this year than last year? The answer is two-fold.
First, last years attendance fell short of hopes and the event took a loss. This limited just how much monetary support we could give to Wags4Tags.
Second, we started last year with a $2000 investment on our part. That just isn't available this year.We are only able to contribute $625 this year.
We're cutting unnecessary costs and trimming back spending on features that didn't quite work out. Here's a nice pretty pie graph to illustrate the expenses.
Thank you for your support. I hope to see you all at the convention.
Risks and challenges
Let's be realistic. Unexpected things can always happen and projects can sometimes be delayed. Looking backward at our event's history I think we are building a nice consistent track record. Our dates, location and activities are already falling into place.
As this project gets ever closer to the completion we'll be posting updates and news on nearly every development. To the backers the risks associated with this project is relatively small. It comes down to a make it nor not question. All of the pieces are in place for another awesome convention. We just need the funding to make it happen.
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Funding period
- (30 days)