For most of the day of Saturday, Nov. 9, the normally quiet interior of the Camp Verde Community Library was vibrant with guests of all ages. Beyond the usual books and movies that can normally be found in the library, the building hosted the first-ever Verde Valley Game Con, a celebration of board games aimed at both kids and adults.
“There’s been a lot of people who have discovered the world of board games that exist beyond Monopoly,” Josh Fohrman, who runs the board game shop Game On in Prescott Valley, said.
Fohrman came to the event with a slew of board games from his store, which attendees were able to borrow to try out. He also sold board games at the event, and saw the day as an opportunity to get people interested in some of the more complex games that have recently come out.
Late in the day, Fohrman sat at a table upstairs playing Skull, a bluffing game with the goal of “getting your opponent to bid higher than they should.” Players passed around beautiful, intricately designed circular cards, a testament to the board game industry’s increased focus on aesthetics and its complex mechanics.
“I’m glad that something like this is being done in the Verde Valley, because there’s been a dearth of this kind of thing,” one of Fohrman’s competitors, Jared Taylor from Clarkdale, said. “I hope there can be more.”
Education was a major component of the convention. Downstairs, volunteers — mostly friends of Game Con organizer and CVCL Teen Services Librarian Zack Garcia — taught children as young as 8 years old how to play the complex fantastical trading card game Magic: The Gathering. In another room, kids from the library’s Youth Advisory Committee led participants in epic one- off quests of Dungeons & Dragons, letting attendees role-play as warlocks, paladins and bards as they went off on adventures to storm a castle or slay a dragon.
“It’s great to just get people together to play D&D and celebrate nerd culture,” said Aiden Robertson, a YAC member who served as Dungeon Master for a campaign that dealt with a quest to defeat enemies garrisoned in a castle by lighting the place on fire. Robertson has been playing D&D for five years and holds D&D games for local teens at the library. He hopes that the Game Con will blossom into a vibrant annual tradition in Camp Verde.
A pair of Nintendo Switches upstairs hosted a tournament of the video game Super Smash Bros., and elsewhere the library’s 3D printer allowed those interested to play around at making things out of plastic. But beyond just nerd culture and kids playing new styles of games, the expo attracted other members of the community interested in just having some old-fashioned fun.
“I’m doing the really really old school stuff,” Jan Hopper, a Camp Verde resident playing Chinese Checkers against her friend Sue Kusar, who came with her grandson, said. “This board is from 1938.”
“As far as I’m concerned it was an overwhelming success,” Garcia, who runs the YAC at the library, said. Proceeds from the event went to pay for future YAC events, and attendees were encouraged to bring canned goods to donate to local soup kitchens, the Old Town Mission in Cottonwood and Bread of Life in Camp Verde.
As the first event like it, Garcia saw the Game Con as an experiment, and was looking forward to the event as a trial for what could be accomplished in years to come. He modeled the event partially on the Verde Valley Comic Expo that the Cottonwood Public Library has held for the past few years. Jan Quisumbing, teen librarian for the CPL and organizer of the comic convention, joined the event, providing comic book drawings for fans at his own booth.
“I’ve never seen so many happy, smiling faces, and everyone is having a good time just being nice to each other, laughing and enjoying each other’s company,” Quisumbing said.
