OSRCon 2013 Update

If you've been tracking the latest updates over at the OSRCon blog, you already know that due to various administrative and facilities problems, it seemed for awhile like OSRCon 2013 would not happen. Wrote OSRCon Director Chris Cunnington:

I’ll have a $1000 bill to use the [Lillian H. Smith Library] basement. I’ll have no way to collect money. And I’ll have four times the publicity/marketing burden than I did last year.

I’m stopping this before I take anybody’s money, before I’m committed. This started two years ago as a fun experiment. It’s time to get outta Dodge.

On the one hand, of course I was sad about this. I had a great time at both OSRCon 2011 and OSRCon 2012 and will miss playing RPGs in the basement of that beautiful library. However, a very good friend of mine is getting married in early August so there may be scheduling conflicts for me this year in any case. And in a way, I am happy for Chris because I know that putting on the full-blown Con each year is a LOT of work and stress and strain for him. It is my hope that scaling the Con back this year will give Chris and others an opportunity to regroup and think of a new way to go about this that is lower-key and less stressful.

In a more recent post, Chris announces that the Con is still on, but in a different location:

This year OSRCon will be over the August 3/4th weekend on the Saturday and Sunday. It’ll be at the Manulife Centre in the Party Room, thirty-one floors above Bay Bloor Radio. I live here so its easy to set up.

The Party Room is capacity sixty, well appointed, used for corporate meetings, has couches, a kitchen, and floor to ceiling glass windows. The view is fantastic. When people think of the Toronto skyline, they think of this.

So I urge you to attend OSRCon 2013; it sounds like the venue will be top-notch, and hopefully we can keep the momentum going from the first two years. Even if I cannot make it this year due to that wedding, I have my wonderful memories of the first two years, and want to publicly thank Chris for all he has done to make these engaging events happen in the first place. Hopefully this year's scaled-down event will help make OSRCon 2014 a possibility!