Who doesn’t like to play games? Well, if you’re in Covington, you may soon be able to celebrate the joys of gaming – whether that’s table top games, board games, RPGs or card games – with friends.
Enter: CONington, a “weekend of games, creators, cosplay and chaos,” slated for next April, according to the event organizers’ website.
Shaun Smith, one of the convention’s primary organizers, said that she didn’t really get into gaming until about three years ago, when her husband invited her to play.
“I didn’t know anything about it before then,” Smith said. “I fell in love: the storytelling, the creativity, just the being able to be something completely opposite of what you are normally if you want to be.”
The convention will take place at the Leapin Lizard in Covington’s Mainstrasse neighborhood. The organizers have started a crowdfunding campaign to finance the convention, and they hope to have live music, an improv performance, vendors and even an interactive “scavenger hunt, riddle thing, where you have to go to different businesses, hopefully, to gain your clue to get to the next thing,” Smith said.
“This is going to be remarkably awesome, hopefully from the outset,” said Michael Roark, another organizer. “We are going to figure out, obviously, what our shortcomings are in this first year, but the idea is to keep it a little bit small for that, and then we can grow from there.”
The event will also feature a special guest appearance by Erica Lowe, indie RPG author of the game RagnaBorg, who will lead special sessions of the game for attendees.
Smith and Roark said they hoped to distinguish this convention from other gaming conventions by making it smaller and more personal. They used Gen Con, one of the country’s largest gaming conventions, as a foil for what they were going for. They also said they wanted to highlight the uniqueness of Covington as a city.
“Covington is like no other place I’ve ever lived in my entire life,” Smith said, “and I just love it.”
“80,000 people are in Indianapolis right now going to Gen Con for absolutely nothing, as far as the city of Indianapolis is concerned,” Roark said. “Nobody’s there because they care about Indianapolis.”
“I love the two things and just want to create a fun, very indie-focused convention that will never be huge like other ones,” Smith said.
The organizers touted gaming as a way to build lasting connections with other people and encouraged anyone who was interested to plan on attending.
“The guys that we game with are now absolute family,” Smith said.
“Come check out this awesome, awesome city and these awesome people and this awesome hobby and this community of found family that we can all assemble together,” Roarke.
You can learn more about CONington at conington.org.