Gen Con 2021

[Matthias Maccabeus]

Good Morning,

As many of you know Raider30, Lonewolf, Orcelfarmyone (or whatever the crap his name is now), and myself are the Gencon organizers and we (or at least a variation of we) have been doing so since 2012. We have immensely enjoyed interacting with all of you at Gencon and have come to call many of you friends. I can speak for all 3.5 of us when I say you guys are by far the best gaming community that we have had the privilege of interacting with. We continue to do what we do because of you guys. Time and time again you all have shown us what it's like to be a part of an amazing community.

As all of you know COVID has been quite the pain in the butt for over the past year. It put a stop to so many things including Gencon 2020. We were very proud that this community was able to pull off online events to help the community still enjoy some aspects of Gencon despite the global pandemic last year. As the pandemic continues to ebb and flow, and hopefully continue to trend down we hope things will soon get back to some sort of normalcy. As most of you know Gencon 2021 has made several announcements about what they hope to accomplish this year. The information we have isn't super clear but we do know that they moved the dates to September, they are limiting the number of people attending in person, and are trying to do some sort of hybrid in person, online, and FLGS events. This last week Gencon sent out an e-mail to their "Elite" organizers asking if they would be interested in attending in 2021, even though they couldn't even say whether table top games would be happening for sure and if it was, it would be greatly distanced. After much discussion with the 3.5 of us we do not feel that it is appropriate for us at this time to run events at Gencon this year in 2021. I know this greatly disappoints many of you and in fact may upset many of you, as the 3.5 of us have already ran through the emotional gambit of feelings (well those of us that actually have feelings) that this decision generates.

But..Ken, why? why don't you want to run heroscape at gencon?
1. We just don't think that the "plans" they have in place are feasible for our beloved game. We don't want some watered down Diet Mountain Dew version. Gen Con heroscape is sacred and we feel that these "restrictions" (which we 100% understand why they are doing them) just don't work for our game.
2. Without knowing who can come (are they going to have a lottery system?) and not having enough space if any to build more than a handful of maps just doesn't make sense for this game.
3. With variants all over the place, it might not even be safe to try and get 20,000 people together in an enclosed space. 20,000 is a guess but that's 1/4 (ish) of what it was in 2019 and that's still a crap ton of people.
4. September is not a good time for many people (including the organizers) with school and other fall activities

Though there is some positives here. We really do have a great line up of events that we want you guys to experience. We will be waiting eagerly for Gencon 2022. Also as we understand things Gencon wants the community to be involved with "pop up" sites ala FLGS. We want to partner with you guys in this. We commit to send prize support to any of you guys who organize some of these pop up events. Here are the rules:
1. Must be advertised on heroscapers.com
2. Must have 8+ attendees
3. Must happen between the time the original Gencon dates (Aug 4) and the new Gencon dates (Sep 19).
4. PM Lonewolf and myself the link to your post about the event at least week ahead of time so we can ensure you have a prize before the event. One prize per event.

We don't know for sure what the prize will be. We are hoping dice but our guy with the laser cutter can't do it this year so we are looking into alternatives and have several other ideas in the works, but we do promise to have something. This also goes for anything the online guys some up with. We will make sure to provide support for their event(s) as well.

Thank you all for being such wonderful people. This was not an easy decision to come to but one that we feel is definitely best at this point in time. We were debating on whether to get "clearer" directions from Gencon before making this decision but those of you who have worked with Gencon know that's probably not happening any time soon and we felt that the sooner you guys knew this the better it was for all of you so you can make any decisions you need to make regarding Gencon 2021. If you have any questions please feel free to ask. Thank you so much!

Michael and I will be releasing a shortened CoV episode in the next week or so going into a bit more details about this decision. I'll post a link (or at least try to) when it's up and ready to go.