From podcast to convention: the team behind Between Two Cons talks challenges and success after inaugural event

Yochai Gal believes in the capacity of conventions to forge connections and nurture communities. Gen Con 2024 was, after all, the place where the tabletop RPG designer first met Brad Kerr and Sam Mameli (also known as Skullboy), who would both join Gal as co-hosts of the popular podcast, Between Two Cairns. “At Gary Con, Arcane Con, PAX Unplugged, etc., the friendships we’ve made and the games we’ve played have strengthened our creative and personal relationships in ways none of us could have imagined,” he said in an email to Rascal. “So why wouldn’t we want to make our own con?”

And so they did. Between Two Cons, a two-day Old School Renaissance (or OSR)-focused tabletop convention, took place in Portland, Oregon on June 26 and 27. The con sold all 350 tickets by the start of June. Amidst panels, workshops, and sessions, one highlight included a live performance of Betwixt Two Piles by Tony Vasinda that satirized the Between Two Cairns podcast; a copy of the game is now available at Plus One Exp, with one review by Gal himself exclaiming, “Wait... I don’t understand. It’s a show and a game?” Attendees also enjoyed a live recording of a Between Two Cairns episode, in which they reviewed the Dungeons & Dragons module, X6: Quagmire! and conducted an actual play. There was a public zine swap session, which Gal said he loved. Then there was a tournament module, Weird Little Freaks, that was put together by Kerr and Mameli and was specially designed for and played at the convention. “We even ran a leaderboard and awarded prizes!” Community interacting through games in all their forms was the order of those two days.

An event six months in the making, the brainwave came about when one of the co-hosts (Gal divulged that they couldn’t remember who, specifically) suggested hosting a convention that would take place between Gary Con in March and Gen Con at the end of July. Then there’s the name itself, which happened to be an unintended but surprisingly appropriate pun on the podcast’s name. After that, it was simply a matter of ironing out the logistics, with the trio meeting up once or twice a week online to plan for the convention. And with zero convention organizing experience, the three hosts primarily modeled the event after Arcane Con, with Gal admiring the way its organizers, Arcane Sword Press, managed the old-school RPG event. “The organization and kindness, especially towards vendors, was a huge inspiration for how we would run things,” said Gal. “We, of course, looked at other cons we’ve been to, small or large, for other ideas.”

 There was a lot to figure out in six months — event insurance, fire code compliance, and volunteer application forms could've been more than enough to overwhelm a first-time convention organizer. “In some cases it was simply a learning curve,” said Gal. “For example, we found TableTop Events, the software platform we used, to be very hard to use. But there aren’t great alternatives at the moment, and it got the job done. Now that we know it, perhaps it’ll be easier to deal with next time.” Even with at least 30 volunteers and several friends who threw in their support throughout, the three of them found themselves having to devote more than a full day’s work to plan for the event.

Gal admitted that, while Between Two Cons wasn’t that different from other conventions on a structural level, the trio wanted to make sure that they treated vendors “in a certain way” that improved the typical relationship. “We handed out water, snacks, coffee, lozenges, etc. to our vendors to make sure everyone was comfortable,” he said. “We checked in on folks as often as possible, and some volunteers took it upon themselves to bring water bottles and donuts to folks running games!” Another aspect that Gal felt was distinct to Between Two Cons was the community; when the hosts began to publicly discuss their plans for the convention, they were delighted to learn that the reception from members of their Discord server was overwhelmingly positive. He hoped that this was a result of how the Between Two Cairns community had been built around humor, kindness, and welcoming behavior. 

This sense of camaraderie is perhaps most apparent in the resources and works that the community who attended the con crafted for each other. One community member, George Patterson who is a designer and the face of the studio, The Skull as a Complete Gentleman Company, created a newsletter called The Grotto, complete with adventures, in-jokes, and personal ads, that he distributed freely at the convention. Another fellow community member, freelance illustrator and designer Maxim Lowe, contributed an illustrated map of Portland for the same paper. A volunteer even donated a copy of the out-of-print adventure Reach of the Roach God (which is being sold on eBay for north of $500) as part of a raffle. “Almost universally we heard great things about how people were treating one another, and many new friendships were developed in real time, at least according to feedback we received,” said Gal. “Multiple vendors told us the same thing: ‘Usually at these things I have at least one run-in with someone that makes me uncomfortable, but that has simply not been the case at Between Two Cons.’ Maybe we got lucky!”

Flushed with success from the first Between Two Cons, the organizers are already planning for next year’s convention. But there is always room for improvement. For instance, Gal reckoned that future events would need a bigger venue than Portland’s Norse Hall, given the huge demand for tickets this year. At the same time, unexpected costs meant the hosts ended up spending more than was originally budgeted, and Gal believed that they could afford to charge more for merchandise to make up for the cost. He’s also a huge proponent of better accessibility for conventions, from accommodating physical needs to providing on-site childcare. “The venue wasn’t great on that front,” he said. Then there’s communicating better with attendees, vendors, and volunteers; improvement is a moving target, an ongoing project.

Nonetheless, Gal said that he really enjoyed meeting listeners of their podcasts in person. For him, this was a personal highlight of Between Two Cons, beyond the thrill of pulling off a well-attended tabletop event. “Seeing so many of our community members in the flesh has been wonderful (putting a face to a Discord handle, as it were),” he said. “It was amazing to see the outpouring of support and creativity our community put together, and the camaraderie we felt was at an extreme high. The live shows were wonderful, and the vendors were all really great.”

The response from attendees, at least online, has been effusive. On Bluesky, Matt from Knot Hollow said that Between Two Cons “was such a fabulous experience”, and was “unique among the cons” he had been to. And in his recap, Lowe wrote, “Between Two Cons fucking ruled. 10/10.”