The 31st annual Plattecon was held this weekend at Velzy Commons to gather any and all Platteville residents with similar interests in gaming, live action role playing and anime.

Plattecon is a small-town version of larger conventions such as ComicCon. It held a total of three separate rooms, all with their own setup.

The first room was in Nohr Gallery. A multitude of tables and bookshelves were set up with items to buy ranging from handmade bookmarks and keychains to Japanese snacks, cosplay costume pieces and board games.

Cosplay involves dressing up like your favorite characters from almost any form of media. Most cosplay is based around characters from anime or video games but you can also see cosplayers dressed as live-action actor’s characters from “Game of Thrones” or even sometimes from obscure web-comics like “Homestuck”.

The local “Dungeons and Dragons” store, Deals and Dragons, also had their own table set up where they were selling many of their brand name products like Dragon Skin card sleeves and polyhedral die sets.

“Dungeons and Dragons” is a role-play board game in which the dungeon master creates an immersive world of imagination where you play as a completely customizable character that is used to travel and fight through a world. People will sometimes include a map and figures to make a more visual act of playing.

The rest of the convention was upstairs. One room was for just getting together with others and watching anime. They aired “Assassination School” Saturday afternoon, an anime about Earth being threatened by a powerful octopus-like monster that destroys 70 percent of the moon. The monster says that within a year of the moon being destroyed, Earth will also be destroyed. But he offers mankind a chance out of the seemingly inevitable fate. Resulting in him working with a teacher to educate students on the ways of assassination.

The hosts of Plattecon had a table outside of Velzy Commons, where the rest of the event was taking place, to sell shirts. The room was set up like a huge local area network party with large board games going on around each table.

A LAN party is a gathering of people who have computers or any game consoles that work together where they create a local area network connection between compatible devices, typically using a router, primarily to play multiplayer video games together.

A silent auction was held and more tables were set up on the outer walls for more homemade creations to be sold.

Plattecon also held a costume contest, encouraging visitors to cosplay in their best outfits.  Some parents even showed up dressed up with their kids.

Several board game players brought their own terrain, showing how their terrains like mountains or rocky plains, advance the game play and allow for more immersive role-playing opportunities. Some terrain brought from home was even homemade.

The attendance for all three nights was about half men and half women. The store owners took shifts to participate in the costume contest and to mingle with others who showed interest in the same subjects based off of game play and cosplay choice.

There were multiple smaller groups of role-players with games like “Betrayal at House on the Hill,” “Dungeons and Dragons” and “Pathfinder.”

Plattecon has been around since 1988 and is one of the only southwest Wisconsin gaming conventions to this day.