Over on John Kim’s RPG journal, there was a discussion in comments about the sorts of games that get run at Ambercons, and Ginger
said this:

You might want to talk to [lj user]mcurry, who’s on the con committee for The Black Road (a Boston-based regional Ambercon), about the evolution of indie gaming at TBR. Last year at TBR, I played and/or GMed Amber-themed Everway (not so indie, but still) and Amber-themed Cats. There was also Amber-themed Nobilis (again, not so indie), Mountain Witch, and a scheduled game of DitV that had to be dropped when the GM had to go to Europe instead of coming to the convention.

Over the past few years, TBR appears to have developed a minor reputation for having a more eclectic selection of games than some of the other Ambercons. We didn’t go out of our way to encourage our GMs to run these sorts of games, but we were certainly receptive to having them, which apparently was enough.

For TBR 2006 we’re going to add an indie game track where the games are explicitly not Amber-themed. Why do this? Speaking as one member of the con committee, my own interest in indie games is certainly part of the reason, but I also believe that stagnation can be an all too real danger at a small con like ours. I personally wouldn’t have much interest in devoting my energies to a con where the same people showed up and played more or less the same games year after year, so I’m trying to keep that from happening. Indie games seem like a great way to go about it.