Friday Night Shots (Saturday Edition) – Long or Short Games at Cons?

It’s been almost a year since my last Friday Night Shots post (though yes, it is Saturday), but last weekend’s convention gave me a couple of ideas to explore.

Though sadly the bar is closed, the whiskey does keep flowing!

And producing boardgame thoughts to explore.

The first subject I wanted to talk about is conventions and long versus short games.

I know I’ve talked about game length before (in a Friday Night Shots post!), but this is specifically talking about at conventions or some other long-term gathering (not just a 6-hour game day).

I’ve mentioned in that post that my preference, even at conventions, is for shorter games.

Longer than maybe we play at our Sunday game days, but not super-long games that go on for 4+ hours.

I’ve always been a “play as many games as possible” guy rather than “play a long game that will keep us all together for hours and maybe require a dinner break” guy.

But something last weekend changed a bit, and it wasn’t by design!

There have been shades of this in the past (Dominant Species, anyone?), but for the most part, I’ve wanted to play roughly 2-hour games as a chance to get something played that doesn’t come out at our regular game days.

Or maybe something a bit more brain-burning than is usual.

The fact that it wasn’t by design is because I wasn’t planning on spending 3.5 hours on a game, or 5 hours on another one.

There was even a 3-hour game and a couple of 2.5 hour ones.

But it did happen, for various reasons.

I had wanted to try Trickerion again for quite a while, and that was long.

I wasn’t going to back out of Empire Builder: Europe even though we had been talking about Paladins of the West Kingdom before I had stepped away (and we played that later, taking 2.5 hours too).

I’m not going to be that guy (plus I would have been floundering trying to find a game).

There’s also the fact that the players involved were people who I haven’t played with in quite a while (if ever for a couple of them), so I really wanted to play with them, no matter what game was being played.

And it was worth it!

We had so much fun, there were so many laughs, even though the game took 5 hours.

Like I said, this was not the plan and it’s not something that I usually go for.

The fact is, though, and don’t tell anybody else (this will be our little secret)…

I didn’t mind it!

It was weird, but after I got home on Sunday, I looked at my BG Stats and noticed that I had played only 12 games at this convention, and 7 of those were on Friday.

And I had no problem with it.

When thinking about playing games like Here I Stand at a convention, I often talk about how intimidating it feels trying to play a 6-12 hour game.

Granted, the other reason for me not jumping into that game is because of the major negotiation aspect of the game, but maybe I should reconsider the time involved in some of these games?

I would willingly play a game of Combat Commander on the table for over 3 hours, because scenarios can vary wildly in play time (my game last weekend only took 90 minutes, but Bottoscon Winter took just over 2 hours).

That game I know and it’s amazing.

A game that I’m not familiar with?

That’s a bit more daunting.

What if I don’t like it?

Our game of Dominant Species a couple of years ago was 4+ hours, and it was amazing, but I was already at least semi-familiar with it so I knew it wouldn’t be terrible.

After last weekend, I’m a bit torn.

I still want to play as many games as possible.

I think it’s cool that last year I had 352 plays of 166 games, and many of those games were at conventions.

But now I think I’m open to a bit more length rather than breadth at the next convention.

There was a game of Battlestar Galactica set up last weekend and I was talking to the people setting it up (father and daughter, and let me just say that it was wonderful to see so many younger people at these conventions).

I mentioned that I have always wanted to play it, but the length kind of put me off.

I literally went from that to our 5-hour game.

Maybe that’s a breakthrough?

Maybe I’ll try to schedule a game that will take 4-6 hours in November.

A true wargame (or even Battlestar Galactica).

That is what Bottoscon started as, right? A wargaming convention?

I still want to play as many different games as I can.

But maybe I should loosen that up at least a little bit for a convention.

There’s nothing wrong with playing 12 games over 3 days.

I know not everybody can go to conventions (though it’s very possible your local area has something similar, where it’s just a dedicated game day, like the marathon we had in Langley in May?), but what about other dedicated game events?

Do you prefer deep and long games for those?

Or do you like to get a wide variety?

Let me know in the comments.