A Tale of Two Origins

By S. Craig Taylor, Jr.
July 2, 2003

Over many years, I have attended over 300 shows and conventions and have the flat, sore feet to prove it. An aspect of conventions is that everyone sees them differently, as filtered through the lenses of their own interests and experiences. Because of these differences, any memories of a convention are mutually exclusive, so that the only descriptions possible are those based on one’s own unique perceptions. And yes, your worst fears are about to be realized; because ole Craig is about to wax nostalgic.

For those of you with a sense of history, the first ORIGINS national gaming convention was held on July 25 through 27, 1975. There were some small gaming conventions prior to that, including a couple Spartan club gatherings aboard the battleship U. S. S. Massachusetts and an interesting get-together where I was one of 52 attendees at the Anthony Wayne High School in Paoli, Pennsylvania in 1967. Even GEN CON was sparsely attended in those pre-DUNGEONS & DRAGONS days.

ORIGINS marked the first time a truly national convention was seriously attempted and no one had any idea how it would turn out. Those who have attended ORIGINS in the last couple of decades and take it for granted may be surprised to learn that the first one was considered quite a gamble at the time. The organizational work was done by a local gaming club, Interest Group Baltimore, with the support of the Avalon Hill Game Company. Much of the planning and organizing involved getting as many publishers on board as possible and having those companies help get out the word to their customers. Although the venue secured at Johns Hopkins University seemed large and expensive at the time, it would be considered suitable for only a few small events at a more recent ORIGINS. Even though most of the publishers of the day were coming, there was always the possibility that the dealers would spend four days in largely empty rooms communing with the convention organizers. I have been to other poorly organized conventions since then where that was exactly what happened.

At the time, I was, along with Steve Peek, one of the two principals of Battleline Games, an unpaid (we didn’t plan it that way, that’s just how it was) labor of love that we ran in addition to holding full-time “real” jobs that we hated. We sent in the $50 or $100 dollars (I forget the exact amount) to secure a booth and took vacations from our day jobs to attend so we would not lose all that money. We drove up from our base in Douglasville, Georgia in late July with a sampling of our total inventory at the time—the last 20 unsold copies of SEVEN DAYS BATTLES, a dozen boxes of WOODEN SHIPS & IRON MEN and a copy of the box, board and unit counters of SHENANDOAH , which was still in play test and had no printed rules or game cards.

We found our booth, brought in our games, put up a placard, placed some open copies on the table and wandered around the dealer area to meet an interesting assortment of people whose games we had seen and played but whom we had never met. There was Don Greenwood, Tom Shaw, Mick Uhl, Richard Hamblen and the others from Avalon Hill, Marc Miller, Frank Chadwick and the GDW crew, Gary Gygax and TSR the year before D & D started its phenomenal growth, Lou Zocchi with his Gamescience games, puppet, musical saw and card tricks, Jim Dunnigan with a mob of teenaged game designers from SPI and many others. It was a great opportunity to finally connect names to faces and more than a few friendships were forged among the various dealers, vicious cutthroat competitors though we were, as we talked, looked over each other’s products and helped each other set up.

Almost every booth at ORIGINS 1 (Program Cover Illustration shown) featured historical board games, with just a smattering of science fiction and fantasy titles, a few miniatures rulebooks, a booth with 54mm figures and, if my memory serves, no card games. The dealers, although not exactly an afterthought, were primarily intended to be a convenience for the attendees. The convention’s focus was to be on gaming tournaments and seminars and these were important. I ran an extremely hard-fought WOODEN SHIPS & IRON MEN tournament for 64 players. Many other tournaments, panel discussions and seminars were filled up, as were the numerous impromptu talks that organized themselves in the Johns Hopkins beer hall, where mass quantities of adult beverages were consumed amid raucous laughter.

To the relief of the organizers, an unprecedented 1200 people attended. One mild shock was the popularity of the auction; one man’s trash is indeed another man’s treasure. Even though few attendees had brought much loose cash and few dealers had brought much stock, the most shocking insight of that long-ago lost weekend was that over-the-counter, direct-to-consumer sales could be large and profitable! Wow, who’d a’ thunk it? There was nothing like the celebrated “feeding frenzy” the following year at the opening of ORIGINS 2, when gamers literally tossed money over the heads of those between them and a desirable booth, and the dealers threw games back to them, but sales were encouragingly steady throughout the show. Like Sally Field at the Oscar ceremony, we got the feeling that they liked us, they really liked us!

Gamers and publishers were not used to dealing with each other face-to-face but cautiously adapted to the situation with a minimum of bodies to bury. As I recall a story going around at the time, someone working a booth was approached by a gamer who announced that he had only enough money to buy lunch or one more game. The staffer advised him to go eat. I still remember a thoughtful fellow from California who approached our Battleline booth numerous times over the weekend, always with more questions about our upcoming SHENADOAH game. Since it was not yet ready, we were offering the $10 game at a pre-publication price of $8. Finally, on Sunday, he handed me the princely sum of $8 with the comment, “This better be good.”

Well, time went by and I attended every one of the ORIGINS after that, through the ORIGINS in 1993. After that, I retreated to my historical miniature gaming hobby and the indulgence of working in the computer gaming industry for a real living wage. I attended many other conventions and trade shows but never another ORIGINS, until this past weekend. When you attend every year, changes are gradual and slip by barely noticed. When you skip ten years, in many ways you feel a need for confidence-building signs that say “ORIGINS,” for fear that the unfamiliar sights and sounds mean that you have entered the wrong building.

The “LBG gang” (“Bored Meeting” pictured at right) journeyed from Baltimore to Columbus last week to exhibit our BATTLELINES™ card game at ORIGINS 2003 (Program cover pictured below). We secured space at GMT’s booth to vend our wares and a table in the war room area to demonstrate the game and our merry band was soon in full convention mode. But, enough said about them. Jeff and John keep me off the web site so that I can’t inadvertently erase everything if I go to correct a typo, so I’m sure that they will sneak in their own comments about ORIGINS in other parts of Lost Battalion’s web site and probably drop in some misleading photographs when they display this article. Personally, I don’t really care about their reactions to the convention and know that you don’t, either. This is my article and your humble servant is relating his impressions as distorted through the prisms of his interests and experiences and I always calls ’em like I sees ’em.

Imagine my pleasant surprise when I discovered that Lou Zocchi was in his Gamescience booth right next to ours. Gamescience is the only survivor of the original companies who participated in ORIGINS 1 and Lou deserves some sort of longevity award. There were many others I knew from days of yore like Rich Loomis at Flying Buffalo, Dana Lombardy, Frank Chadwick, Jerry Corrick and John Alsen but most of the faces and companies were new to me. Compared to ORIGINS 1, the percentage of booth space devoted to historical board games is way down. In fact, compared to ORIGINS 93, the percentage of booth space now devoted to historical board games is way down. However, compared to ORIGINS 93, the percentage of space allocated to role playing, which didn’t even exist at ORIGINS 1, is also down. ORIGINS has morphed into a convention dominated by collectible card games but there are still exhibitors making all types of games.

The 1200 hard-core historical gamers at ORIGINS 1 certainly outnumbered those with similar interests at the most recent ORIGINS but the total crowd has increased from those 1200 individuals to (I was told) more than 8500 gamers. Depending on your personal likes and dislikes, these changes can be perceived as good or bad but, realistically, they reveal a convention that has rolled with the punches and changed with the times to grow and remain in business. There are still historical board games but there are also role playing games, collectible card games, miniatures rules, miniature figures and so on. What will be the next big thing? Only time will tell.

Like many other industries, fads in gaming come and go but much of the quality stuff lingers and endures. I remember many years ago exhibiting at a Craft and Hobby Show when macram was all the rage. Nat Polk, the late owner of Polk’s Hobby Shop, a New York City landmark across from the Empire State Building for over 40 years, dismissively waved his hand at the booths across from his and remarked that there was enough macramé to hang every man, woman and child at the show. The next year, most of the macramé was gone, replaced by doll houses and miniature furniture companies, but macramé never completely disappeared.

As a favorite TV detective named Colombo would say, “Oh, one more thing.” Many people bought both of our RTP sets at the booth for about $60 (for which, many thanks) without blinking an eye or saying, “This better be good.” That is a change.

Katrina Koniev is pictured above passing out her special Origins 2003 Card.