Talk:PrinceCon

I'm new around here, so I'm trying to learn the guidelines. I am aware that "vanity" articles are discouraged. I thought perhaps that this was not, for a few reasons: (1) the age of the convention, which distinguishes it, and (2) there was an open link under the Gaming Conventions article, and a number of other conventions appeared to have entries. It seems to me that open links like this should be removed if an article on the subject in question is not desired, so that newbies like me won't get confused and waste their effort. :-)

Anyway, if there is a consensus that this topic is too specialized, I won't argue, but it didn't seem clear to me. Constructive feedback to me would be appreciated if you care to provide it. Thanks.

That said, I just read the notability guidelines, and have to admit that there is nothing there that seems to apply directly. So please consider this a humble request for a second opinion.


 * Welcome here once more, as you cna see your request for a second opion has already been granted. Moreover, you've hit right on some important points. One of them is that the importance of a topic is more difficult to assess when there is only a redlink, than when it is actually written about and may be accessible to people like myself. Thsi holds even more true for simple lists that tend to expand. So it works the other way round: If this article was deleted the adminstrator should also check for pages linking here. Tikiwont 20:13, 26 January 2007 (UTC)

Although it is no longer among the largest conventions, PrinceCon is fairly notable from a historical perspective. It was one of the very first public RPG events, and it first introduced the super-dungeon, "campaign in a weekend" format that has been widely imitated since. --Meara 19:19, 26 January 2007 (UTC)
 * Ok, but how do you know? Having been there would not count WP:NOR and the website is only a firts answer. Tikiwont 20:04, 26 January 2007 (UTC)
 * I don't follow. The WP:NOR page you reference states "Primary sources are documents or people very close to the situation you are writing about. An eyewitness account of a traffic accident is a primary source."  Wouldn't the written contributions of "having been there" be an eyewitness account of PrinceCon I, or XVI, or XXXI?  If not, what would be considered a reliable source?  Alex.reutter 02:41, 28 January 2007 (UTC)
 * Never mind. I see the text "This January 2007 needs sources or references that appear in credible, third-party publications" at the top of the article.  I see the general point in this, but it seems a difficult requirement to fulfill for a topic whose history is largely oral -- perhaps we could provide scans of the original convention books if Bob West still has copies, but no role-playing convention's early years are going to attract reporters, and only the largest (GenCon, et al) are likely to attract them in any year. Alex.reutter 02:54, 28 January 2007 (UTC)
 * Is this page notable? Has this Con received notice in publications not involved with it? Septentrionalis PMAnderson 00:14, 30 March 2007 (UTC)


 * I believe that there was some publication of early PrinceCon events (lists of awards, etc) in the mid/late 1970s vintage Quick Quincy Gazette publication, although since the QQG's publisher (Howard Mahler) was an early Con Director, there was clearly an affiliation between the QQG and PrinceCon. I'm fairly sure that there were some announcements in some "APA-DUD" newsletters, although this may have also been problemmatic in avoiding any affiliation, since IIRC the way (only way?) that one was able to receive an APA-DUD subscription was to contribute to it, so by definition, all subscribers were also writer affiliates.  In general, there's a Catch-22 in that (particularly during its formative origins), the community simply was too small to not have affiliation with itself, and for today, because unlike GenCon, its not a Commercial enterprise, so it doesn't have significant marketing resources, media plans, etc, with which to generate 3rd Party Publications.  Thus, its notoriety has been 3+ decades of a FRP Convention run by volunteers, which has probably made it the longest of its type that's been run by volunteers, and the second longest overall (behind GenCon).  -hh (talk) 21:56, 24 March 2008 (UTC)

I've added a bit of game mechanics history; will need to scan a few pages from the relevant historical Conbooks in order to attribute properly. Short list items are:

PrinceCon III Conbook: MU Spell Point; Clerical Prayer Point. Check for percentile-based Hits & Saving Throws

PrinceCon VI Conbook: nothing specific; maybe "Convention Play" configuration of packs? This also might have been when money disappeared.

PrinceCon VIII: Nothing specific; first Conbook in the new format? Elimination of Allignment? Elimination of Thieves/Intro Scouts?

PrinceCon IX: Intro of Clerical Religions. May have also been first Meta-Theme year?

-hh (talk) 15:10, 29 August 2008 (UTC)