Article:
Long Live GenCon UK!

As many of you may already know, GenCon is a name that has long been associated with some of the largest role-playing convention events in the history of the hobby. Once organised and run by TSR Inc., the original publisher of Dungeons and Dragons, the original GenCon took place every year at a massive convention centre in Milwaukee. All of the major companies in the RPG industry would stake out an entire city block and thousands of gamers would descend on them to play games, hang out and have fun. The modern successor of the event is now run every year in Indianapolis by GenCon LLC, a company run by Peter Adkinson, formerly of Wizards of the Coast.

Some of you may also know that TSR used to run a similar , smaller GenCon in the UK, which was sort of a baby brother version of the same event run in the US. Like the American version, the event was originally run at a loss and written off as a marketing excercise. Sadly, in contrast to GenCon US, which has consistently been a success over the years, GenCon UK has had a far more gloomy history.

For many years GenCon UK was held at the dreary Pontins holiday camp in Camber Sands. The event then moved to occupy Loughborough University campus-come-building-site for many years. When WIzards of the Coast bought up TSR, however, the philosphy of the event changed from appeasing the desires of the role-playing community to creating higher revenues through the organised play of collectible games. The focus was then on trying to get the event to break even, with draft and championship events of Magic: The Gathering taking centre stage.

After one promising year in Manchester, GenCon UK moved down to London Kensington Olympia. This proved to be the convention's undoing. Although well-served by public transport, the Olympia facilities were limited and local accomodation was exhorbitantly expensive. Although the turnout for collectible events was reasonable, the attendance for role-playing and LRP events was at an all-time low. GenCon was last run in London in 2002, shortly after Peter Adkinson bought the rights GenCon from WotC (now part of Hasbro) to run it independently. He chose however not to continue with the UK version of the show any further.