MagWeb registered as a dealer for this convention, held March 20-22, 1998 at the Sheraton Four Points Inn in Cherry Hill, NJ, near Philadelphia. Multigenre, Inc. picked a good location, just off the major I-295 interstate highway, and near a number of fast food outlets and restaurants.

Preregistration was a breeze, with everything waiting and available forus. Badges were circular buttons--our numbers were 510 and 511, and from an eye-ball view, about 800-900 gamers attended the convention. MagWeb attended from noon Friday through 6 p.m. Saturday.

Half of the attendees were there for a Magic (card game) tournament--the ballroom hosting the event was filled to capacity--see photo at right for the early birds of Friday, before the deluge of Saturday. Most of the rest were there for role-playing games of every type (including "live action roleplaying"), with a tiny minority for historical miniatures and historical boardgames.

The dealer area was very lightly visited both days (see photo at left), although the card dealers did a decent business. One vendor sold swords, daggers, and other edged weapons, another a line of shirts, a third an audio CD adventure, and the rest were retail stores with a broad mixture of miniatures, roleplaying games, cards, and other products.

At right, MagWeb's booth at GamersCon IV. Notice the "serf" (that's what the badge said) dealing with the finer aspects of tying up loose ends.

Historical Miniatures

ATAK ran a number of games of Battleground, which are skirmish-level rules to simulate WWII. The six-foot by six-foot tables contained undulating terrain with woods and buildings. On another table, some 25mm games pitted British vs. Indians ala Last of the Mohicans scenarios.

At another table, a 15mm Napoleonic game pitted French vs. Prussians and British circa 1809. If it sees a bit ahistorical, the particular hypothetical scenario postulated a British landing in the north, where a Prussian army linked up to avenge the loss of 1806.

Historical Boardgames

I saw a few: Panzergroup Guderian, Battle for Germany 1945, Civilization, and a few others. Not much action for the counter pushers.

Sci-Fi and Fantasy Roleplaying

Well, there were plenty of these around the convention--people sitting around the table immersed in one adventure or another. Some gamemasters brought props (one gave out FBI identification tags in an X-Files style game), many brought maps and such, and a few just brought the essentials and wove stories.

Live Action Role Playing

I stumbled across a Star Trek LARP game as I wandered through the halls of the Sheraton. Basically, a LARP is the same as a traditional, sit-around-a-table roleplaying game, except you move around. One fellow sported a plastic phaser, although I did not see any uniforms. A gamemaster takes the team around to various rooms that represent places in the adventure (I recall a "BioLab" being one such sign), and one player mentioned something about "letting the Klingon get to the center first" as part of the strategy. I believe, but do not know, that there was a second party wandering around as well--the gamemaster had a walkie talkie and occasionally communicated with someone at the other end. It's all a bit confusing, as players from other games as well as spectators like myself, keep interfering and wandering through the party and its locales, but the players seemed taken with the idea.

Sci-Fi Miniatures

The usual batch of Battletech and Games Workshop Warhammer (regular and 40K) games were in full force--some with miniatures on a paper map, others with more elaborate 3D terrain. One fellow handed out laminated color maps where players drew their route across the terrain--a little "fog of war" so to speak. WarZone, a 40K clone of sorts, was being demonstrated as well, plus a starship combat game I did not get a chance to get near due to the press of people around it.

I am not quite sure if it was sci-fi, brainteaser, or what, but a 10x10-foot arena maze with foot-high robots was in one room.

Card Games

There were too many to mention, although Magic was the hands-down winner. The tournament was delayed for an hour because so many people showed up to play.

Strong efforts were made to demonstrate Star Trek, Star Wars, and Dune games--I picked up a couple posters because I'm a fan of the movies/TV shows, if not a card player. I picked up a couple of packs they were distributing--colorful enough, although Star Wars was the better promo pack, with Star Trek a distance second and Dune a far distant third. How these game play, I don't know, but people were interested. I also saw a number of Babylon 5 card games in progress, plus a number of card games I didn't know.

Still, what was impressive was the number of bodies stuffed into an ancilliary ballroom--I heard one fellow mention 400 people signed up for some sealed deck tournament. I did NOT see any historical-based card games in action. Come to think of it, I did not see any for sale in the dealer area as well.

Dealer Room

As I mentioned, it was light activity throughout--when people play in a tournament, they stay in the tournament except to use a rest room. And roleplayers spend 6-8 hours at a time in a game. About 250 people stopped by the MagWeb booth long enough to see a few minutes of our demo and grab a promo ruler.

Conclusion

GamersCon IV was a well-run convention at an excellent site for 1,000 people. It is primarily a card convention, secondarily for role-playing, and thirdly, for all the rest.

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