Anime Conventions.

[Amaranthine]

Ooh, very nice! You look quite gentlemanly. Isn't crossplay fun?

Yeah, that sounds like a lot of fun. Not only do you get to get out of the house and go shopping, but you can also put your creativity and crafting skills to work. As for that one cosplayer, that's really impressive! I should find out how to do that...

[Tianfu]

Thanks Amaranthine! I love crossplay, since I'm really too fat for most female cosplaying.

I think she was just very, very careful with the paint application. The effect was really cool. You absolutely could not tell that all of the accents on her costume were paper.

[Amaranthine]

Hehe, I kind of know what you mean. My build is a little too masculine for a lot of female cosplays, so I just stick to crossplay. Give yourself some credit, though. You look really good in that.

Gah, now I'm feeling all inspired to make some steampunk stuff. I need to start sketching a design.

[Sharij]

To Pen&Paper-Cons:

Well, P&P-RPGs are that adventures, where you sit around the table with a group, and everyone has a character sheet in front of him- or herself, that has your attributes, race, skills, let's say, everything you know about your character on it.
(some play without sheet of course, but let's make it simple)

Then there is the.... the person leading the game (sorry, missing the word), he describes the situation and knows about the rules and what will happen.
So he keeps talking, until it's up to the players to react. Just like:
"Oh, now a big black dragon appeared in front of you, what do you do."

And then a player might say "I stab him with my sword".
Now, every player of course has an inventory, and every weapon has its own attributes, just like power 1,2,x in Midorea.
The player then would pick some dice (3,4,6,8,10,12,20 or 100-sided, mostly used are 6,8,10,20 and 100 I would say) and get a random number, usually to keep it simple, the higher the better.

The leader of the game would than react like "You miss" or "You stab the dragon in his toes, but it doesn't look like he cared at all" or "Critical Fail! You break your hand while trying" or "you did it, you killed the dragon",.....

Whatever^^

So it's pretty much like let's say "Gothic", but without PC. (of course P&P can be withput any fights, there are many many categories!)

The more you play your character, the better he gets. Usually. I know a game where you could say: The longer your character survives, the more ill-minded, crazy he will get (I LOVE Cthulhu, I LOVE it xD), but that's... Forget about it xD




So, that's P&P.

P&P cons are like that:
You go to a youth centre in some village or city that is reachable by train, there you will see many extremely FAT MAN that don't look like they cared for their outer appearance.... (compare Southpark WoW episode)
Or elves. Or... Guys running around with Swords. Folk like that.
There always is a board, no matter the con's size (even the RPC with it's many thousand visitors worked like that!), on which there are sheets for every offered round, you would then a pick an adventure you'd like to play and leave your name on it. These sheets usually give time and table (like 15:00, B01-7 or something like that).
So then you meet up with the group and play the adventure. And then maybe find another group and play, and so on. P&P cons normaly take 2 days, Saturday and Sunday, and you would take a sleeping bag with you and sleep on the ground, usually. If you are extremely lucky there is a couch. But that's kinda rare. Anyway, so you spend 2 full days on that con and stay awake like almost all night and playplayplay xD

Funny about it is: There are some rules.

Rule 1: Food on the table belongs to everyone.
Rule 2: Never wake a person sleeping on the ground, even if he's in the middle of a room and everyone has to dodge him or her.


Like that. What's really nice about it is, that everyone behaves like in a big family, and so it's really extremly AWESOME and FUN!

I love P6P-Cons

[Yaranaika]

Another Anime Con 2009 was my first con.

I am planning to go this year also. There aren't really any good Cons near where I live and only know of a few.

Anime Boston, AAC, Portcon Maine, Granite State Comic Con.

All of them are small (except for Anime Boston)

[Kitten]

I went to a reeaaally small anime convention a few years ago.
It was called Halloween Minicon and it was in Dover, Delaware.
I went as Haku from Naruto.
:'3

This year, I plan on goign to Katsucon, which I believe is in DC.
Cosplaying as the new female player character from Pokémon Black and White, possibly as Kaoru from Host Club, and maybe as a Banette.
:'3

[Perish Song]

Ah, this is one of those things that I've wanted to do for a while but never had the opportunity due to lack of finances and lack of anyone to go with. There are cons that I'd be able to get to, but I haven't been able to.

I'd definitely cosplay, though I'd have to decide on who exactly I'd want to cosplay as. This is a difficult decision because I have so many ideas, and sadly will probably not have a chance to execute them. Most of them are Pokemon characters (I have ideas for a couple of gijinka Pokemon, and I'd also have fun going as Cynthia, or as Marley (who is that one character who follows you around for a while in Sinnoh and was in a recently-aired episode of the English dubbed anime... short black hair and kind of Gothic Lolita looking clothes) or if I wanted to crossplay I'd be James), although I've also been told I would make a good Izumi Curtis (from Fullmetal Alchemist), or again if I wanted to crossplay, L (from Death Note). L would be the easiest to pull off clothing-wise since I've already got jeans and a loose long-sleeved white T-shirt, but the mannerisms might be tricky.

I may have gone off on a tangent there. Oops. Anyway I hope that someday (hopefully soonish!) I will have the money and the time for the cosplay, for travel and lodging, and plenty for the con itself since I know I will want to buy things.

[Tianfu]

Perish, you might try hanging around the cons' forums. I know quite a few have threads for people looking for ride and room shares. That takes a little bit of a leap of faith, I know, but quite often it's worth it. Another option is to see if any of your friends are interested in driving to wherever the con is and rooming with you, even if they're not into anime or not interested in the con. I used to go to San Francisco with a bunch of friends. I'd go to Yaoi-Con and they'd do the tourist thing around the city.

[Perish Song]

Well, if I had the money to do it in the first place, then I'd check out the boards and such.

I do have at least one friend who I know would be interested in going to cons with me if we both had the money and the time, but sadly with the economy the way it is at the moment, trying to get the money together just isn't something I can do right now.

[tavis harts]

I love cons.

Sadly I haven't gone to one in the past few years. 6.6 I just keep missing them.

Overall I would say they are fun. You get to dress up, people will stop you to take pictures and if you are an artist you can set up a booth and sell art. It's nice having your booth pay for your con and then have a bit extra to save for a rainy day.

[Athilea Majiri]

I have not been to a convention of that sort as of yet. I would like to, one day, just to say I have been.

I love seeing people dressed up and what have you. They put so much work into their costumes. Heck, I wouldn't mind doing a cos-play myself. It's not going to happen, but it would be neat.

[Yokuutsu]

I've been to OMG-con.

It's an Anime/Manga/Video game convention.

It's in a small (compared to other places) city.

(But that city is big compared to where I live)

I might be going to Erie Anime Experience in Pensylvania-on the Edinboro University campus if you live nearby.

Both those cons to my knowledge are fairly small ones. Not those gigantic ones that every thinks of. I want to go to MTAC someday .-.

[Beff With An F]

I went to a Con in London with my friend last year. We went down on the train both days. D: It was like a 3 hour journey. But we had a blast! The second day we took cardboard pokedexes with us and took pictures with all the pokemon cosplays we could find.