Thanks Bloodshroud! A shame Stunt Fox doesn’t have a regular venue in London from the looks of their website.
Time has come to leap from 2011 England into the Finnish summer 2016.
Prologue: Having had some changes in my life and with extra time in my hands, I found myself nostalgic about those old real life meetups I’ve been talking about in this thread already. Felt it’d be wonderful to have the opportunity to meet new people who share a common interest that has influenced my life so much; WoW and roleplay.
Yet, I hesitated. I’d never done something like that. Despite perhaps giving the impression of being super outgoing and appearing everywhere, I’m actually not the most social butterfly in the real world. Organizing something like that would be very much stepping out of my comfort zone.
Pondering this, I asked myself; what’s the worst that could happen versus the best that could happen? The probable worst-case scenario: only a couple of individuals turn up and our chemistry is so awkward we’d want to flee after 5 minutes. Best-case scenario: a bunch of people turn up and we have a jolly good time, with fun memories to treasure.
Decided to give it a shot, and see if there’d be interest in a meetup. Proposing it was made slightly easier with the realm having a fairly active Facebook group back then, which I was following alongside an AD art group. It felt less jarring to bring the idea up in a place where people were a bit more open about sharing real life stuff in general VS the faceless realm forums. Having organized in-game community initiatives on Argent Dawn since the dawn of time, I was quite confident though that people could trust me to make the event happen, rather than just mad goofing around with no concrete plan.
So how did it go?
Number wise, we had about 20 people come to the meetup, from Finland and visitors from other countries. That’s plenty!
I reflected on the past meetups, and as an introvert myself, tried to think of ways to help people effortlessly break the ice. Instead of just sitting people down at some pub and expecting conversations to flow nonstop between strangers, I thought it’d be better to have some casual activities people can do together while mingling.
At the outset of our Saturday gathering, we met at a bar that had a games room downstairs, including billiard, darts, football table, etc. In other words, kicking things off with PvP. 
So far so good, people are talking. Nobody has run away yet. After an hour or two, with everyone arrived, we had lunch at a nearby restaurant. Bellies filled, it was time to head to Ropecon, the big roleplay convention in Finland.
Steampunk blacksmiths outside the con area.
Not all the activities were in English, so tried to pick something that’d be easy to follow regardless, such as cosplay performances and historical weapon fighting shows. Beyond that, touring around the place and indulging in the market that had lots of interesting stalls selling a variety of stuff such as artwork/prints, fantasy crafts, clothing, costume props and comics/manga.
While it was nice to visit the con and people bought some cool stuff there, I personally felt the event wasn’t yet big enough to fill the huge convention center it had recently been moved to. Having often attended the convention in its previous, smaller but way prettier location, I missed the charm it used to have in my rose-tinted memories.
That said, I’m interested to visit the convention again, as last year they had over 7100 visitors over the weekend (4000 in 2016). It’s great to see Ropecon growing bigger and bigger after the pandemic, and being in a more central location it’s easier for people to visit. There’s delight in observing people who likely used to attend these events as oddball teens, now going there with their families and so forth. Being a non-commercial event, it’s not the same experience as, say, Blizzcon used to be with big dollar American style flashiness. But the volunteers’ passion for the RPG genre speaks volumes for the growing visitor numbers.
In the evening we returned to the city center, where I had reserved some tables for us at a pub. Drinks flowed, food was shared, and some people immersed themselves in card games.
Shuang, being the artist that he is, brought some pen and paper along so we had a table covered with sketches as well. Waiting for him to get famous so I can sell my drawing from him for millions. Hup, hup! 
The next day, half of us who were still around & up for it gathered at noon for lunch. This would become a tradition for the later meetups. Meeting in the city centre, people could come by and drop off when convenient for them to catch a plane, train or bus back home.
Adding to the sugar rush, the founder of the Argent Archives had brought me some treats. 
Another wonderful person I’ve been in touch with since Vanilla, and these days I’m part of a small DnD group that they DM for. I respect that he’s still keeping the site online out of his own pocket.
With those who had time to spare, we toured around the city in foot visiting some parks and fun shops along the way. Going through the photos, Lintian already rocked long blue dresses in this time period, looking like a real world elf against the sea breeze. 
After the meetup, we organized an in-game photoshoot, with nearly everyone able to attend. The Grizzly Hills provided a suitably Finnish pine forest backdrop!
In conclusion, the meetup was successful enough that it motivated me to organize another - on the same year even! Although some of the attendees may not be present anymore, I would like to express my sincere gratitude to all of you for attending. I know many of you stepped out of your comfort zone too, and hope the journey into the unknown was worth it. It’s entirely thanks to you that the next meetups came to happen!
Stay tuned for the 2016 Christmas special!