RoundCon in the News From WTLX - February 19, 2011: Video available from the WLTX website. Couple Finds Love At Gaming Convention by Daniel Bonds Columbia, SC (WLTX) -- It is a forum that allows people to play different roles for a weekend, but two people say they found new roles for a lifetime. Hundreds of gamers and roleplayers are in town as part of the 25th annual RoundCon convention. Two of the visitors said they found love at a similar event. "This very attractive young lady came by and I took a picture of her with one of my Godzilla figures and as I was looking through the camera, I just stared at her and all of a sudden go oh my Lord, I'm in love," Sean McGuinness said. "I was actually dressed as a Renaissance Princess and he was at the table next to me," said Shirley McGuinness. The couple met about six years ago at a gaming convention in New York. "She moved down to be with me and we got married about a year later," Sean said. "We have been married for three years and it is all because of Godzilla." According to Shirley, the idea of finding love at a gaming and anime convention sounds more like science fiction to others. "Some people are surprised that people of different passions can get together and meet that way, but passion is passion, if you are happy with what you are and what you are doing, it is easy to find somebody else," Shirley said. "I had no idea I would ever meet anyone, who would not just tolerate my love for Godzilla," Sean said. "She is my greatest inspiration." Over 400 people from across the Southeast are expected to attend the convention. From the Columbia Free Times - February 2011: Gamers Converge Downtown for RoundCon BY TREVOR BARATKO Soda City gamers, this weekend belongs to you. RoundCon, the largest gaming and fan convention in South Carolina, commences Friday and runs through Sunday at the Columbia Marriott hotel downtown on Main Street. This year’s event will offer complete table-top gaming, board gaming, RPGs (role-playing games), and more animé than in years past, says Maria Swygert, head of RoundCon marketing. “We’ve essentially rented out the hotel,” Swygert says. “We’re expecting around 400 gamers, some of whom are there basically the entire weekend and others who are in and out for a couple hours.” This year, RoundCon’s creative track features fantasy writer Faith Hunter; Elysabeth Williams, author of Devil in a Red Kilt; gaming writer Christina Stiles; Mike Kaczmarski, editor-in-chief of rejectedgamer.com; Nerdcore hip-hop artist Tailirine Irine; and web comic artist Sean McGuiness. Included in the animé track are music video and costume contests; costuming workshops; animé-themed rave parties; various panels; and a contest called “Are you Smarter than an Otaku?” (Otaku is a pejorative term for someone obsessed with animé, manga or video games). The gaming track will feature Wii, Xbox 360 and N64 Golden Eye tournaments; role-playing, retro and war gaming; and game mastery workshops. Also available will be board games and RPGs specifically for kids ages 6-12 on Saturday and Sunday. The best comparison Swygert could give to other conventions is to say RoundCon is basically a “smaller DragonCon” — a convention held each year in Atlanta. Dealers will also be in the mix. The organizers prides themselves on showcasing excellent dealers, states the event’s website. Vendors will offer collectable cards, miniature games, animé DVDs and other collectables, costumes, board games and jewelry. The dealer room will be open on Friday from 3 p.m. to 8 p.m., Saturday from 9 a.m. to 8 p.m. and Sunday from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Participants and observers can expect a diverse crowd — from lawyers and accountants to programmers and software junkies. “And we get always get a lot of gamers from Fort Jackson, which brings people of all different backgrounds,” Swygert says. Jill Martinez, a RoundCon staffer and spouse of head organizer Sean Martinez, says that modern gaming has its roots in the rise of fantasy and science fiction in the 1960s and ‘70s. “Games like Dungeons & Dragons borrowed heavily from literature like J.R.R. Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings to create fantastical worlds where players create their own interactive stories,” Martinez says. The roots of RoundCon itself dates back to the late ‘80s, when a group of USC students founded the Round Table gaming society at the University of South Carolina. Since drawing approximately 15 gamers that first year, RoundCon has grown exponentially.  The convention has moved off campus, and a number of alumni have taken over the responsibilities of hosting RoundCon. Sean Martinez says the growth has been a pleasure to watch. “RoundCon was formed out of the USC board-and-role-playing gaming group in the 1980s.”  Martinez said, “Every year, it continues to grow and evolve … it really does offer something for everyone.” In addition to the gaming, fire performer Nick Danger Dunn will perform Friday night, and the Midlands Astronomy Club will set up observations on Saturday afternoon and evening.

From the Columbia Free Times - April 2004: Heroism and Egalitarianism Gaming Convention Features Both By DAVID AXE It's late night April 16 at the Holiday Inn on Two Notch Road in Columbia. There are red-eyed, fanged vampires everywhere: five or six of them sitting in a circle in the ballroom, another at the tiki bar buying a cocktail. Today was the first day of the three-day RoundCon, an annual convention of role-playing gamers, and vampires aren't the only mystical beings in attendance. There's a man prowling around wearing a tail and claiming to be a werewolf, and several event organizers are dressed in medieval-looking, low-cut dresses. With some 200 gamers in attendance, RoundCon has "essentially rented out the hotel," says Alisha Polkowsky, the event's marketing director. There's a good explanation for the vampires, the werewolf, the medieval attire ‹ even for the lawyers and computer programmers in Star Trek T-shirts arguing over board games: RoundCon is an opportunity for fans of role-playing games to get together for what Polkowsky calls "G-rated fun, PG-13 after dark." RoundCon features traditional paper-based role-playing games like Dungeons & Dragons as well as live-action role-playing games, or LARPs, where players adopt personas of fictional characters and walk and talk the parts for hours or even days at a time ‹ hence the vampires and werewolf. They're members of a group called Columbia LARP and players in a game called Vampire: The Masquerade, which the group's brochure describes as "improvised theatre where the participants are both actor and audience." As for the medieval apparel, Polkowsky, donning a glamorous if anachronistic lacy red and black affair, says, "This is the only chance I ever get to dress up." Even so, she says, "Our con is family friendly. There are no half-naked women running around" ‹ perhaps a reference to some bigger gaming conventions. Role-playing games have been around for more than a century, according to RoundCon staffer Jill Martinez. "Jules Verne invented the first game," Martinez says in crediting the popular French science fiction writer who died in 1905. But modern gaming has its roots in the rise of fantasy and science fiction in the 1960s and '70s. Games like Dungeons & Dragons borrowed heavily from literature like J.R.R. Tolkien's Lord of the Rings to create fantastical worlds where players could create their own interactive stories. Now, according to Keith Bailey, a longtime gamer and former script doctor for TV shows like Babylon 5 who's attending RoundCon as a vendor, "There are games for everything ‹ science fiction games, fantasy games, even Bible games." Regardless of genre, all role-playing games work essentially the same way. Players create characters from templates. Often, they buy and paint figurines to represent their characters on maps. Game masters oversee missions for teams of players. "It's interactive storytelling," Bailey says. Polkowsky describes gaming as "our escape from reality." For certain gamers, conventions aren't an escape from reality. They are reality. Some gamers attend several conventions every year where they meet and mingle and have a few drinks. Sometimes they fall in love. Married couples are everywhere at RoundCon. There's even a vampire couple. For a few, gaming is business. Steve Long of Gastonia, N.C., is at RoundCon promoting his line of games. Long, a lawyer by training, got into the gaming business first as a free-lance writer for publishers of rulebooks and sourcebooks. Now he publishes his own. "It's an intriguing way to make a living," Long says. Other vendors at RoundCon sell accessories, costumes and replica swords. And no gaming convention is complete without animation screenings. Roundcon has an all-day animation exhibition room. A convention favorite is Dai Guard, a recent send-up of animation stereotypes in which a Tokyo public relations firm finds itself the city's only defense against marauding aliens. As the hero Akagi battles a giant starfish over Tokyo Bay, he laments, "We're not heroes, we're just office drones." The gamers in the audience laugh long and hard. After all, in a role-playing game and at a convention like RoundCon, anyone ‹ even an office drone or a lawyer ‹ can be a hero.