GoblinLatte Con welcomes adventurers, gamers, collectors
Joey Croner, owner of Dice Latte and co-organizer of GoblinLatte Con, holds his English and Korean copies of the Dungeons & Dragons playbooks. / Korea Times photo by Jon Dunbar
By Jon Dunbar
Adventurers of all character classes and alignments will gather on the foot of Mount Nam in central Seoul this weekend for
, a gaming convention for role-playing games (RPGs), miniatures, board games, collectible card games and more.
The convention is a collaboration between two gaming cafes:
, located near Hongik University Station in western Seoul, and
, found near Hoegi Station in northeastern Seoul. Both are known for offering RPG content that's rare in Korea, while Dice Latte is foreign-owned and Laughing Goblin has a slightly more Korean-language community.
“This is two gaming communities coming together on a large scale for the first time,” Joey Croner, owner of Dice Latte and one of the event organizers, told The Korea Times. “This is a comprehensive type of gaming convention. Since we're not publishers we're focused more on playing than promotion and sales.”
The convention offers various gaming events not normally seen in Korea.
There will be a Dungeons & Dragons (D&D) Epic Adventure, in which players sit at one of eight tables to participate in a massive multiplayer offline game campaign, all coordinated by dungeon masters (DMs) who serve as sort of referees and storytellers. Some tables will offer English while others are in Korean, and the two will likely come together in interesting and surprising ways.
The GoblinLatte Cup offers a unique kind of competitive RPG, based on the National Society of Crazed Gamers (NASCRAG) at GEN CON events. Different teams play the same adventure, and are graded on humor, skill, adventure and achievements. The teams that do best advance to the next round. This is the first time such an event is held in Korea.
“It's silly, weird, that's what makes it fun,” Croner said. “Make your DM laugh a lot for high grades. It's an inside joke that they accept bribes.”
There is also a Key Forge tournament, as well as events for game designers. Board game designers Gary Kim and Hope S. Hwang will be play-testing “Dungeon Basic,” an RPG of their own design intended for players new to RPGs.
Gaming items will be on sale, including miniatures. There will be miniature painting tutorials and a speedpainting competition, with entries judged by convention attendees.
The gaming community has blown up worldwide in the last few years, Croner says.
“When I first opened Dice Latte I could buy every big release that came out, but starting last year it got to where it was impossible to keep up,” he said. “There's a lot of creativity going into stuff.”
The event runs May 4 and 5 at
. Croner says they plan a much larger convention in August, and this event will be a good way to get experience in before that.
“
so there's not a brawl for getting a seat,” Croner suggested.