Ethnography Results: Week 7

This week I was not able to observe any D&D groups. All of the groups I've been following have been members of the Sci-Fi/Fantasy organization Cepheid Variable. This weekend they ran AggieCon 42, a Sci-Fi/Fantasy convention. While I wasn't able to directly observe any tabletop games, I was able to glance in on AggieCon's gaming room. The room was massive this year, comprising one of the hotel's larger rooms. It had the longest hours of any room in the convention, opening at 10am and closing at 2am in the morning. Several of the convention's Guest of Honor were somehow related to tabletop gaming, including one of the guests being a writer for a game's setting. They all ran their own game during the convention, which had incredibly long wait lists, which filled up quickly.

Another thing I noticed was how many people were buying tabletop games. Several of the dealers sold esoteric, non-mainstream tabletop games which people bought on impulse. Despite the people knowing of the game's existence, it took the games physically being in front of them for most people to take the leap into purchasing them.