So one of my night owl GMs has asked after running games in the 1 am - 5 am hours...

I know when I first started going to cons back in 19<mumblemumble> I would go for days without sleep to play in games at all hours, but now that I'm old and tired, I can barely make it past midnight ;)

But there are a ton of people with a lot more energy that I have left in me, so...

Is there any interest in wee hours gaming?

Sue Grau
Infinite Imaginations
Event Coordinator

Paizo ran a bunch of PFS & SFS games overnight (mostly 2am-7am), and a fair number of them sold out.  Three must be some crazy people out there :-)

I made a thread about this shortly after the convention ended.  I kind of want to, but I get the feeling that I'd probably be too cranky to learn a new game.  Now, if you're talking about a nice 3 AM game of chess, Monopoly, Life, or pretty much anything by Milton Bradley, I'm game.  Maybe I will observe.  Or maybe sacrificing sleep just to experience GenCon in the wee hours of the morning is a little silly.

RPGA used to run an eight hour overnight 'special' I would ALWAYS sign up for and it always seemed full. I am sad that it went away.

They did have the same thing during the day too but I preferred the night. You could EASILY hear everything.

Are You a Werewolf doesn't even start until night.

No chance.  Playing something like 1:00 AM - 5:00 AM would guarantee that I would sleep in late, mess with normal sleeping schedule and mess up any opportunity for a normal next day.  I'm sure there are some youngsters that would love something like this, but not me, I'm too old.  Now please excuse me while I tell these darn kids to get off my lawn.

I'd love to see more choices for middle of the night. I'm normally a night owl and would come to games 

I don't know about the wee hours, but more later games slots would be appreciated.  I played a couple board games this year at 10:00 and 11:00 pm because they were the only slots I had open for them. 

Is there a way to encourage game companies to have later events?  I think the smaller/new companies would benefit the most since the larger, established companies have a bit of a lock on the "prime time" slots (day-early evening).

I'm still pushing for my "Campout - the LARP" idea.  11pm-7am.  Bring sleeping bags.  We'll be simulating a night camping in the great outdoors.  Sleep under simulated stars!

Keep in mind I'm not saying this should be avoided... I would totally watch that. :D

As a GM, I prefer running games during the day and sleeping from 1am to 6am. If someone in my gaming group wanted to run something in that time frame I'd be all for it, but I'll be sleeping.

Also, games run during the day have a chance to fill no shows with generics. Although possible at night, I would guess the chances would be lower. Then again, with the limited number of late games, maybe they would stand a better chance of generics for the no shows.

It would be interesting to see the event fill data for overnight games to see if there is a real demand there.

I've been going to GenCon since it moved from Milwaukee to Indianapolis, and the one thing that I can say has definitely changed in the last 15 years for RPG's, is how few there are after exhibit hall hours or overnight anymore. And I don't mean they need to run all night, I mean just even starting at 9 or 10pm til 1 or 2am.

Back when we were first coming to the con, the day time was primarily for the exhibit hall and maybe some workshops or symposium type events. When the hall closed the next 8 or so hours was pretty much all gaming all the time. Now I see very few RPG events that start after 7pm anymore. It's become a competition of my time between the events and the dealers hall, and it probably hurts both of them in total overall. I have to pick one over the other based on how important the things are, and I probably spend less overall on both because of it.

Other than PFS, which I don't participate in at GenCon, and don't have a local store to really do so back home either, there just aren't many games. I wonder for the independent GM's what drives their schedule and when the decide to run events?

Infinite Imaginations still uses the old time-block system from days of yore.  Our RPG slots are 8 am til noon, noon til 4 pm, 5 pm til 9 pm, and 9 pm til 1 am.  Hopefully we'll have something you'll like in those time slots next year, or that others might follow suit and run events in the later hours!  I didn't realize others had cut back, so maybe we can add a few 9 pm events in 2019!

Sue Grau
Infinite Imaginations
Event Coordinator

The D&D game I played in this year from Baldman started at 9pm, but Catalyst's Shadowrun's latest start time is 8pm. I believe this is because they usually host a 'party' room for gm's to wind down in after the last event. Since the first game slot in the morning starts at 8am, any later than an 8pm-12 slot would, I believe, result in some absent gm's. :D

That said, I do think an all-nighter shadowrun might be fun. Or that Cthulhu by candlelight. Just not sure my 52-year-old self is up to it, even though I used to always play in the D&D all nighter.

Maybe some youngun's? There certainly was no shortage of werewolf players! All the tables seemed full, to me.

I think Braewe hit upon the reason so few late night organized events/games - The age of the GM's . We are all getting older and need our sleep then coffee and hot shower on the morning !

And also our GM's like to unwind with bourbon ,wine etc... after our 7pm games are done (usually around 12pm) 

Aren't most of the  werewolf.etc at night just pickup games -meaning non-ticketed ?

I would love for there to be more overnight options for anything.  I know this year I happened to go to the con solo, and I ended up just trying to hit up the game library Friday night in the overnight slot.  It was fairly busy until about 2, when there was seemingly a mass exodus out. I did catch on with one group and we played Colt Express, but I was left with basically no one in the library to play with at 3:30 AM, and I was ready to keep going.  (And I'm 39)

So I will definitely be on the lookout for any game in the overnight slots, because I don't come to Indy to sleep, and I don't generally game in the mornings until like 11AM ever.  So even if a game goes until 5AM, I can still go and get 3 hours of sleep pretty easily. 

I participated in an overnight event every night.  took about 8 hours.  But it was a solo event.  

I recommend it, though, to everyone.