Written by Matt McCloud

Lexicon was a true gamer’s convention with literally tons of games to be played and hundreds of players to play with. They had board games, card games, miniature games, war games, live-action roleplaying games, and even virtual computer games. So much energy was spent making it a great gaming convention, while the extraneous “stuff” found at other conventionss is largely put to the side. There were no panels, cosplay, or much else to distract a hardcore gamer at Lexicon.

It was easy to locate the two main rooms where Lexicon’s games were being played: the open gameplay room with seating for at least 300 and a smaller room holding about 200 people for scheduled demo play. Kerry Breitenstein, of Twilight Creations, was in the demo room with a bright and cheerful face. Kerry was testing out a new carrying case for her game, Zombies, and demonstrating its many fun and creepy expansions.

She also demonstrated other games, including Jupiter Rescue in which players are robots trying to save humans on a quickly disintegrating space station before the humans all transform into “Creeps”. I thought it was an entertaining game for just two players, but may be biased as I had the best teacher: the game’s creator.

As the day went on, it quickly became standing room only in both rooms as hundreds of avid gamers came to play some of their favorite games including Kingsburg, Catan, Carcassonne, Last Night on Earth, and more. There was an enormous gaming library for free use of the most popular games including many a bingo online game around but being stuck in the corner made it a long and tedious process to check out games, especially as the crowd grew. The Dealer’s area was also stuck in the corner. It was pretty bare bones, with offerings of games from the local game stores and a few t-shirt and knick-knack dealers.

Out of the hundreds of tables full with gamers – and yes they were all full – there was a mere smattering of 10 or so RPG games run by a few game masters. Pathfinder, Shadowrun, and Dungeons & Dragons joined a few local developers bringing out their products for a test run. One local developer, Joe Meade of Mystic Forces, guided players through a few preset adventures of his making. Joe said he loved seeing all the players at the convention.

“It looked a little more board game and card heavy than RPGs,” he said. “So, I was a little more limited in the market but I was having a good time.”

He mentioned that the Lexicon people are super nice and very friendly. He said they make you feel at home here. On that, I wholeheartedly agree.

At another table, I met former Lexicon vendors Chris Chancellor, Kitty Faulhaber, and Cassandra Florence playing Kingsburg. In the course of conversation, I discovered they’d been to all three Lexicons and enjoyed coming this time strictly as gamers.

“So far, we enjoy just being here to play the games,” said Kitty. “Everyone here tends to be pretty cool. You walk up and it’s like ‘hey, what are you playing? Can I just sit here and watch for a little while?’ And usually people are totally cool with that.”

Chris said he liked seeing everyone here and how the convention has grown.

“Even (Friday) it was already packed!” he said.

Kitty said that the people in charge at the Lexicon made a good decision in a smaller venue. She said it is really helping them grow slowly and really let the people who wanted to be here to be here.

LexiCon is a great local gaming convention that knows how to pack them in. Overall, LexiCon does one thing extremely well: board games. Whether they’ll choose to expand other formats, like tabletop RPGs, is still uncertain.

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