RISING PHOENIX 2025

 

A couple years back, I was introduced to this Con by mutual friend and artist Ogmios. It wasn't until this year that I actually attended. Whenever I go to a con, my wife asks me how it was. My usual answer is "fun." This time around, she noted that I instead said "satisfying."

Why was that? Well, the start of my first day there, one of the organizers stopped right away and asked me if I needed any help. Which even then I thought was remarkable. It wasn't a big con, and there were some structural issues. 

But it was the vibe that was right. Everybody was friendly, enthusiastic and inclusive in their attitude. Every game or session I attended was good, but most often great. And the caliber of players, experienced or not, was pretty good. And I thoroughly enjoyed myself. Here's what I did:

Friday; Workshop on Scenario and One-Shot Design, The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy (powered by Apocalypse)

Saturday: Beowulf demo, Intro to Enclave, Spacehulk

Sunday: Workshop on Scenario and One-Shot design (repeat), Seminar on Using History in your RPG

I also ran into someone who I met previously at TotalCon, Adam, who it turns out I'm remarkably simpatico with. We plan to meet online to play Diplomacy, Dune and (hopefully) some Advanced Civilization.

Some favorable impressions:

• First and foremost, as I said, everyone was very friendly.
• The panels I attended were awesome! I learned about structuring one-shots for con games, how to prep a caper adventure, and pointers for my creating a post-apocalyptic episodic campaign. And we had a very thought-provoking conversation about how to incorporate real-world history into your fantasy world.
• RPGs: I had immense fun playing Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy (powered by the apocalypse). My experience with Enclave was more meh! than not. 
• Boardgames: Enjoyed playing Beowulf, and I had an absolute blast playing Space Hulk (as the Genestealer player, of course!).

Some less-than-favorable impressions:

• The Website: While it was visually striking and dynamic, I found the website less useful and difficult to navigate. This is not unique to Rising Phoenix -- to a lesser degree, it's a problem with Total Con, too. They should really do some quick usability study to see how users really interact with the website. One particular gripe I have is in finding the URL for where to find my schedule, which is buried in the middle of some text and is not hyperlinked! Really a simple fix, though.
• The Venue: The hotel was nice, and the food is good. But the space is really tight. No lobby to speak of, narrow hall runway, and not enough tables and chairs for free recreation.

But that's me just being a little churlish. I hope they take note of my nitpicks, but on the whole the experience was satisfying and simply awesome!