# The Gen Con RPG Event List Pains Me tags: #thoughts ![[GenCon Gaming Prices (illo).jpg]] I just caught myself looking at [the RPG event list for Gen Con this year](https://gencon.eventdb.us/category.php?EventType=RPG), and I have to be honest, I am deeply saddened on multiple levels for multiple reasons. - https://gencon.eventdb.us/category.php?EventType=RPG Firstly, and most obviously, there isn't a single _Ironsworn_ or _Starforged_ game on the list. You would think that someone would want to run one of the two in a guided mode at Gen Con just for the kicks of doing it, but no, not a single one. It's not because they are particularly obscure, either; looking at the list, there are more obscure games here. There are two sessions of _All Flesh Must Be Eaten_, eight of _Avatar Legends_, and one of _500-Year-Old Vampire_—which is a solo journaling game, so I'm not sure what's going on there,[^1] but I admit that I'm curious. There are even five games of _Titanomachy_ scheduled to occur, which is just mad. There's another reason I'm saddened looking at this list, and it's because I've clicked through to look at some of these games, their descriptions—and their prices. At the bottom end, you have slots at the table going for $4 a seat, which I suppose is okay. I would feel awkward asking for $1 an hour to run an RPG for people at a convention. Assuming you have a table of four (and most of these actually have six slots), that would be $16 raked in for a single session. I don't want to take that money from people just to play with them; that feels wrong. I get the justification. It means that if someone spends a few dollars to get a seat at the table, it improves the likelihood that they are going to show up. Totally, I understand it. I would be awkward about setting a price, but with that rationale, I could do it. The problem is that there are some games here which are not priced at $4 but considerably more. A session of _Champions Spotlight: The Legion of Superheroes_ is priced at $14 a seat. Sure, it's during a fairly prime gaming time on Friday evening at 8 p.m., but $14 a seat? For six seats? Did I mention that multiple sessions of this game are completely sold out? That's $84 a session. That's got to be some kind of madness—not just for the people playing it, but for the one running it. There are sessions of _Dungeons & Dragons_ going for $28 a seat. In fact, I see one session of _D&D_, "A Reckoning for Daniel Boone," in which you get to play with the designer of the scenario, going for $64 a seat. On the positive side, not a single slot has sold, so my faith in humanity isn't completely destroyed. Maybe I'm just too old. And maybe I'm just too old school in certain ways. I've done stand-up sessions of RPGs at conventions that ran for two slots straight, and I was happy to have people just show up for it. It didn't hurt that I ran things as drop-in/drop-out, so people could come and go as they pleased. But still… I'm glad to see that there is a fair number of indie games represented in this pile, including some I've never heard of, which is pretty good. But then there's the fact that there's only a single _Space: 1999_ game. There's one game of _Doctor Who_, which, while it's not my thing, absolutely should be some sort of a draw for part of this crowd. There are 60 sessions of _Fallen London: The RPG_, though a number of those are just demos and are going for free. I feel like this should be one of those, **"What has our world come to?"** sort of posts, and maybe it is. I'm not sure how I feel about this. Two sessions of _Worldwide Wrestling_ and not a single _Ironsworn_. Seventy-one sessions of _Zombie World_ and not a single _Starforged_. I don't know, man. I don't know. Zed's dead. [^1]: Interestingly enough, I was wrong about that in the original text. It's not a solo journaling game, though it is a hack of _Thousand Year Old Vampire_. Instead, it's a game where you actually make stuff and have little artifacts after the fact. I don't know how I feel about that. I think I'm kind of horrified. https://thousandyearoldvampire.com/products/five-hundred-year-old-vampire-by-dr-jason-cox