Mepacon 43: Putting the MEPA back in Mepacon

My local convention is Mepacon, a small, well-organized affair that's resided in Northeastern Pennsylvania for a number of years.  I've always done my best to attend them, but with kids and life I've managed about half, most recently being a Sunday last year.

Its short run at the Mountain Laurel Resort was terminated by the closing of the facility for a third round of renovations in the past five years.  A quick available alternative site returned Mepacon 43 near its roots, with the  Sure Stay Plus (by Best Western) in Bethlehem, PA.

The con's name is derived from the fact that the early iterations were the Mid-Eastern Pennsylvania Convention, a name that never evolved as they moved north for over 15 years.  The Lehigh Valley is about as Mepa as one can get.  

I had not gotten much details, but as I perused the game registrations, I saw names of folks I hadn't seen in decades, so I decided to take the girls down for a trip on Saturday.  

By dinner time Friday,  reports of the place already jumping confirmed everyone's desires for a real convention in the area, with number of folks still driving down from Scranton.

Okay, it's a picture I took of the main board game room on Saturday, but it was reportedly this busy on Friday.

The only delay we had to attend was the internet.  No, we weren't attending virtually, but I woke up Friday morning to zero internet in the house.   All the regular attempts at resetting were futile, and after a day of calls, reports of outages, and promises of a tech coming out, I got a confirmation of one finally arriving.  

Saturday morning between 8:30am and 10:30am.   Plans for an early breakfast with the girls were shot out of the window, and plans for both girls attended were changed with Millie's friend and basketball teammate throwing a sleepover birthday party over the entire weekend.  

The technician showed up by 9:40, did a lot of diagnostic tests, replaced alot of the coaxial hook-ups to no avail, and finally ventured into the woods behind our house to check the box to the main line.  

This apparently, is an ancient artifact, the source of our big problem, and the source of everyone else's intermittent issues.

Bad news, he couldn't replace the box, the source of our issues, but he did put in a request for a maintenance team to replace most items for the afternoon.  Best news of all, no one needed to be home when they showed up, so Maja and I jumped in the car and made the 70-minute drive in about 55. 

I'm quite familiar with the Sure Stay (a long time Holiday Inn before a series of name changes) and it's ubiquitous "Bar With No Name."  It's directly off of US 22 at PA 512, and there are plenty of eating establishments and a Wegman's grocery store a short drive (or decent walk) away.  Three things surprised me. The Bar with No Name was closed to hosts the LARPs, and the other on-site  bar/restaurant didn't open until 5pm each day, and the con didn't get use of their giant ballroom.  A wedding rehearsal and a Marine Corps function took up that space, relegating the con to series of mid-sized and conference rooms for it's functions.  

While no where near as bad as the HMGS cons in King of Prussia, the winding hallways added a small sense of confusion, which the staff tried to alleviate with floor arrows leading folks to the LARP, the dealers, the organized play rooms.  

Getting their late, we missed the 1pm timeslots, and in our navigation of the hotel, most of the cool sessions had filled up for 2pm, so we wrote out our items slips for the con auction, then ventured to the back of a hotel, where a food truck had been invited for a convenient on-site food option for lunchtime.  

I do have an oncoming rant, but first the pros.    The Cheesesteak I ordered was probably the best I've eaten in years, and Maja probably did not fully appreciate the high quality melted cheese on her fries, but the two I stole were phenomenal, but the knowing after the fact that the thirty minute waits would evolve into forty for two pretty stock food truck items (after they were already out of ]our first two options), I could have navigated to one of the four Wawas within ten minutes for average, tasty cuisine and come back. 

Multiple sessions of Battletech, some 40k, and a Gaslands game diversified the RPG/Board game dominance.

After eating, we searched for a garbage can to dispose of our trash and got commandeered into a quick game of Hive Mind, a fun party game we tried to match lists on various topics (Name 3 cute animals).  The more people who had like answers, the more points they got, while the folks with the odder answers were slowly pushed out of the hive.  We didn't get to play the full game, as Maja had signed up for a session of Usurp the King by DHP Games, while I watched some Battletech and caught up with old friends.  Maja had midling response after the game was over, her only positive was, "I should have poisoned more people."

When I meant old friends, I actually mean old.  We've gone from talking about new gaming supplements and chowing down on pizza and beer, to nutritional supplements for diabetics, stroke precautions, and our kids' college options.  And most of us have yet to crack 50!  

At six, the staff did a good job converting the board game room into the games auction.  Gone were the overlong raffle, but the dice guess and costume contests were announced and very bloated auction had begun.  I missed the last few auctions, but it appeared Lehigh Valley gamers had an overabundance of party games, miscellaneous licensed products, general junk, as I believe I was only one of two people putting RPGs in the auction.  I may have bid on a half-dozen items, and won nothing, but my two boxes of stuff I brought all sold well.

With a 13-year old, I finally gave in to a Gamer Dad's biggest fear:  I let Maja play the in the full LARP.    Carcosa Creations has worked with Mepacon for years developing quality LARPs, and after I dropped her off (with my parental blessing), I wandered around before jumping into a game of Dungeon Crawl Classics, with a number of folks I've known for years, but never actually role-played with.  It was a blast, with my fresh 1st level cleric fumbling every spell, angering his God, and only successfully healing the bad guy!  If I ever play again, and drag Bushwick Verybottom out, I think he'll a fighter with divine spells on the down low. 

We got done with DCC around 11:50pm, but I had to wait for Maja to come out of the LARP at 12:30!  Despite her character getting murdered by her apparent best friend in the game, she was on cloud nine, and talked about her character and the entire game from our drive to Wawa all the way to getting on the turnpike, until she passed out.

The LARP seemed pretty frenetic.

The Sure Stay Plus:  The hotel might have changed hands a few times, but it looked the same as it was when I was scouting out wedding reception location twenty years ago with a woman I did not end up marrying.  The winding hallways and assortment of spread out rooms, but still a packed boardgame room confused more than us.  The good news is the con is returning to the site for the spring, and the full ballroom will be available, with the boardgame room getting converted to miniatures and wargaming.

Food Options: The food truck was a mixed bag for us, but there are dozens of options available for takeout/delivery, plus the Wegmans and a hotel fridge is always a great long-term weekend option.

I would like to investigate the small bar/restaurant menu next time, but with full service WAWAs everywhere, my kids' needs will be fulfilled. 

Events: We are either seeing the complete takeover of boardgames for the convention, or we're nearing its apex and eventual decline.  Just too much, too much resource management, too many meeples, and too many glazed looks at the table.   Perhaps it was just their spread out locations, but the multiple organized play options seemed far watered down.  There were a perfect amount of "normal" RPGs, even if the Mutant Crawl Classics game I wanted to jump into cancelled due to lack of players.  

Even with the new Hasbro version coming out, I may resurrect my My Little Pony: Tails of Equestria games for the kids/kids at heart track.

And it was confirmed by a number of folks, even non-players, the appearance of fully attended Battletech games was a much-needed boost to the con.

Dealers:  Of course, The Portal, a long-time vendor, and now partner with the con, was in attendance with a pile of used/new RPGs and a large selection of larger boards with a "Buy One, Get the Second for 75% Off" sale.    They took a prominent spot in the space-crunched board game room, as did the DPH Games where Maja played Usurp the King, plus the all-important Quigley's Cakes (Whatever grumpiness I had with the food truck, a maple bacon cupcake solved all my worries.   The other vendors were across the hall were an interesting assortment of geek crafts/trades, 3-D printing, and small self-publishers.  Millie would have bankrupted me, but Maja just didn't seem too interested.

That's a lot of fancy dice!

Swag:  Lucky for me, my friend Gerry picked out a couple choice lots from the auction so I didn't sabotage the whole purpose of clearing out my stuff.  Besides a free copy of the DCC Quickstart rules (thanks Cyrus!), I grabbed four of the old 3rd edition mini-modules that Alderac put out (Of course, in hindsight, those items are $0.79 - $0.99 for pdfs on DriveThru, an absolute steal!)  I also pulled a stack of older Fritz Leiber paperbacks out of the auction.  My intent was to give Maja a base education in classic fantasy, but after the DCC game, I'm tempted to set up a min-book club with her. 

  

Mepacon 44 will be held back at the SureStay Plus in Bethlehem, April 14-16, 2023.  The theme is similar to "Literary Legends" which will certainly break out the Harry Potter, but I'm thinking more games like Pride & Prejudice.... & Zombies.