We tend to think of summer as the height of convention season, but actually quite a number of events are held throughout the rest of the year. Some of those taking place in the next 2 months include:

RinCon, October 9-11 in Tucson, Arizona — A popular regional convention for playing games of all types, RPGs, board games, miniatures, CCGs, and LARPs.

Essen Spiel, October 22-25 in Essen, Germany — The world’s largest tabletop game fair, with 150,000 or so attendees. More of an expo, where publishers from all over the world introduce their latest products.

Euro Quest, November 12-15 near Baltimore, Maryland — Lots of open gaming with a few tournaments. Focused on strategy board games. I’ll likely be there.

BoardGameGeek.Con, November 19-22 in Dallas, Texas — Another convention for playing games, focused on board games. Also a great place for playing the latest Essen releases in the United States. Yehuda will be attending this one.

Chicago Toy & Game Fair (aka CHITAG), November 21-22 — An expo for industry and the public with more focus on mass-market than hobby games. Also has events for toy and game inventors.

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It’s nearly time for the official release of A Time of War, the BattleTech RPG. But first, Catalyst Game Labs wants your help in ferreting out errors and typos. It will, however, cost $10 for the privilege of downloading the beta release. Problems can be reported through October 15th on the ClassicBattleTech forums, where you can also submit adventure seed ideas for possible publication.

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Catalyst Game Labs (publishers of the well-know RPG Shadowrun, and more) are setting up a new system called RED where retail stores can sell electronic copies of RPGs along with the hard copy. The way it works is that when you buy a book at a participating RED retailer, you give them your email address and the PDF is emailed to you. There’s also a system in place where you can get a new PDF in case you lose your initial copy.

Right now RED is in it’s alpha stage at a specific list of retailers, and I’m guessing its only available for Catalyst products. If this catches on, it would be great to see similar offerings from other publishers, giving gamers more options to support their friendly local game stores. Then again, I wonder if the people who are buying electronic copies of RPGs to begin with are the types who shop in brick and mortar stores.

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The UK Telegraph notes that Christmas spending on board games has already begun, with Monopoly and Cluedo topping the list. (source)

The Fort Myers News Press pimps board games, including the usual, but then gets in a small diss at Monopoly in favor of Blokus Trigon. (source)

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I’m inclined, like so many others, to downplay the threat of news headlining diseases, such as Swine Flu. Still, it doesn’t hurt to take general precautions. And a few extra clean gamers are always welcome.

• This year’s Penny Arcade Expo, which features both computer and tabletop gaming and had an attendance of some 60,000 (crikee!), had at least 100 confirmed cases of swine flu. (source)
• Bangkok warned that game shops and play areas with congregating gamers were major transmission points. (source)
• In Hamilton, New Zealand, one guy caught swine flu while playing Magic the Gathering and died from it two days later. (source)

We already pointed out the UK Department of Health’s swine flu prevention board game. Online games include The Great Flu, Sneeze, and Swinefighter. And, of course, there’s Pandemic.

Keep safe.

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