The Platteville Gaming Association will be hosting the 20th PlatteCon gaming conference at the UW-Platteville Student Center March 7-9.

The convention starts at 4 p.m. Friday with different sessions being held until the conference closes at 5 p.m. on Sunday.

PlatteCon offers attendees a chance to participate in role playing games, card games, board games, video games and miniatures.

“Even if people just want to take a walk around the convention and look around that is OK. We just want people to have a good time,” Robert Struve, PGA Sergeant at Arms, said.

Some of the featured games at the conference include Dungeons and Dragons, Risk, Magic the Gathering, Star Wars Miniatures, Dungeon-year five and Shadowfist. Video games will include Rock Band, Guitar Hero and Super Smash Brothers along with other games for the Wii, Playstation 3 and Xbox consoles.

“The conference will cover a wide range of games and game culture,” Mark Krippner, PGA PlatteCon chair, said.

The role playing games are based on a fantasy style setting, like Lord of the Rings, and offer a unique chance for attendees to act out certain characters to try to accomplish tasks.

PGA is also hoping to show some Anime, a Japanese style cartoon, during the convention.

Two vendors will also be present at PlatteCon. Chimera Hobby from Appleton and an online gaming store, ChAdam based in Wausau, WI will have several games and accessories for purchase.

“A lot of people have a skewed look of gamers and we want to show that is just not the case,” Struve said.

According to the website, www.plattecon.com, the conference was started in 1988 and was the first gaming conference in this area. The members of PGA felt a need for a local convention in the tri-state area.

The PGA is an organization open to the entire community who shares similar interests in gaming of all sorts. The organization gathers every Saturday at Noon to outline what games members plan on running and the times and locations.

During the meetings members can request games they would like to see played. PGA also hosts movie nights, trips, and computer game nights with a Local Area Network (LAN) connection.

PGA is open to the public, not just UW-P students.

For more information about the conference, registration, times and locations of games visit the PlatteCon website.