NSR Camp 2 and 3
I am way late on writing this up; I meant to write stuff after NSR camp 2, and write some stuff about playtesting, and now I largely have forgotten what I was going to say. I figure I should probably publish what I have before I forget everything, though.
Previous History with Online Conventions
NSR camp is not a convention, but it makes sense to talk about it in the context of online conventions.
I've really enjoyed the online conventions I've been to. Typically at online conventions, as at regular conventions, I mostly take the opportunity to play a lot of games, especially games I otherwise wouldn't get to play.
I've been to two - an RPGSEA one, and an Exalted Funeral one. Both were fairly early in the pandemic, but the idea kind of died off. I imagine they are a lot of work to put on, and that people started preferring to put that effort into meeting people IRL.
For me, it's a lot easier for me to justify going to an online convention over a physical one. There is basically just one in my area, despite living in a big city, and it has shut down at least for now. While I can afford to travel to a convention, I find it hard to justify that as well as taking time off work given that I'm not a big name author nor do I plan to be. I'm trying to limit the amount of flying I do. I often feel more comfortable playing with strangers online as I feel it's easier to make sure that I'm playing with a group I'm comfortable playing with (please don't yell at me about this one, this apparently makes some people pretty angry).
There are also things I particularly liked about the online conventions. I find they tended to attract more people who are not big names, by their nature they tend to be more indie, they tend to better reflect the parts of the scene that interest me. I talked to people in countries I would be unlikely to normally meet.
I could of course just schedule a bunch of online games, but scheduling is hard and committing the time is hard. Having a one off event makes me more inclined to make an effort to clear my calendar of lower priority things, or things that can be rescheduled.
What I Did at NSR Camp
This is specifically not quite a convention. It's just a weekend to play games. There are no panels, no vending sessions, etc. It's kept as simple as possible.
I've managed to play one game and run one game the last two NSR camps (the first one, I had family in town so I missed it.) I've wanted to play more - I could definitely do 3-4 games in a weekend and did significantly more at Big Bad Con - but life has gotten in the way.
For running games, I have mostly looked through my bookshelf of unplayed games, using this as an opportunity to try new things. The first time was Knights of the Road, which I basically wrote and playtested an adventure for. The adventure went really well, I think, and let me regain a fair bit of confidence GMing and writing adventures that I'd lost after the past year or so had left me with no time to keep up with that. I will eventually publish it, but probably not until late this year.
The second time I didn't have the energy to prep so I did the Stygian Library, which I've now promised to run again in the future.
I also got to play Lancer, which was pretty cool: that is one I've wanted to try for quite a while. I also played another one of the Borgs, which I'd fallen out of playing the last year or so.
This also lead me to realize that 9-10 AM is a pretty good time to run a game. You have the whole rest of the day ahead of you, and you get people who usually can't make it because of time zones.
General Thoughts on NSR Camp
A decent number of people who have never played any kind of indie RPG end up showing up to these. I think it's a fairly non-intimidating way to get started. I also find games advertised online are rarely one-shots: scheduling something is a fair bit of work so I think people find it to be not worth it unless there are several sessions. So this is a good opportunity to try new things without a multi session commitment.
It's also more accessible than an actual convention: it's free, you don't have to travel, etc. You don't get quite as much of the spontaneous conversation, but they have a channel open for general discussion. It was only active when I was online for one of the camps, though. This is still a relatively small event.
I hope it can maintain a critical mass to keep going. A problem we often have is not having enough players for many of the games people want to play. A lot of games end up being scheduled at roughly the same time, likely due to certain time zones being better represented than others. A bigger group would also make it easier for people to run less mainstream or more experimental games - these often don't fill up. My hope is that this grows over time, but I worry it might instead shrink.