Bring your computer
I know this sounds obvious, but you need to remember to bring something to game on. If you forget this,
you are in for a long, boring and potentially expensive party. I, personally haven’t seen anyone forget
their computer yet, so this point may be moot, but don’t let it be said that I never helped anyone out.
Bring your cables/hardware
If you are bringing your computer, you are going to need to bring your hardware and all the connections
you will need. So you will need to bring, at minimum, two power cords, having a computer and
no power cords is just as bad as having no computer at all. You’ll also need to bring a power strip. Most
parties that I’ve been to will only give you one outlet to plug your stuff into. I won’t go into the math here,
but of you have two devices that you need to plug in and one outlet to do it, you are going to have a bit of
trouble jamming them both in there.
Ethernet cable, you need to have Category 5 (5e, 6, any of those are fine) cable to connect to the network
provided. If you get to a LAN party and can’t connect to any part of the LAN, you’ve essentially just
moved your computer across town (state, etc) to play Solitaire. Not so fun.
Bring a mouse pad. This isn’t so essential with the newer breeds of optical mice, since they do so much
better on surfaces with regular patterns (eg wood grain), and in a pinch, you can use a sheet of paper to
substitute for a mouse pad, but nothing beats a real mouse pad. If I had to guess, I’d say that mouse pads are the most frequently forgotten item at a LAN party.
Now I don’t understand it, but at almost every LAN party that I’ve ever been to, someone at some point
needs a 3.25” disk. I don’t know why, and I really am having trouble coming up with a good reason to even
need one, but the need will arise. So, while not *technically* required to enjoy yourself at the party…
unless you are the one that needs it for whatever reason.
Drivers
No matter how well your computer works at home, odds are good that it will magically, and of it’s own
accord, stop working in some way. No matter how trivial you think the drivers are, you need to bring them.
You need to to *at minimum* bring drivers for all the hardware you will be using at the event. So you need
drivers for your video card, network card, sound card driver (although you can do without sound, having
no sound in games really really sucks), and misc drivers for your motherboard (especially important if your operating system of choice doesn’t provide drivers for your hardware). Other drivers you can live without,
at least for the duration of the LAN. Once you get home, you can worry about getting your stuff going
properly.
The easiest thing to do is to put all your drivers for your hardware on a CDR and keep that in your LAN
bag. You don’t want to necessarily put it on a CDRW because, if you have to reinstall all your stuff, you
won’t be able to get anything off your CDRW disc, unless you fixate your disk. CDRs are cheap enough
that you can stand to put all your updated drivers on one. Besides, if using a sub-dollar disc will save your
day/evening/weekend/whatever of gaming, then I think it’s an excellent investment, especially if you had
to go out of town/state to go to the party.
Prizes
Now here’s where I need to get on my soapbox for a minute. You should not go to a LAN party expecting
to win a prize. Even if it is advertised that there will be some awesome swag given away at the thing, that
shouldn’t be the sole reason you go. Yeah, it’s cool to win some of that really neat gear, but there are so
many other reasons to go that the prizes should really take a back seat to them. Right… Prizes… If you are
at one of these LAN parties where something really cool is given out (like the new Whizbang 3300 video
card) please fight the temptation to install it at the LAN. If your system is working, don’t do anything to make
it not want to work (like changing out the hardware). The minute you start messing with hardware, that’s the
minute that your system will decide to take a big dump all over your fun. Hope you brought toilet paper.
Money for Food
This varies from event to event, but you should generally remember to bring money to get food at the
event you are going to. Sometimes (very rarely I might add) the food will be provided, but that certainly is
the exception to the rule. You could also go out and buy food outside of the event, but that is another
source of income for the proprietors of the event. If you are thinking to yourself (and I know a few of you
are), “They make enough money off of me by charging to get into the event, why should I buy food from
them?” The short answer: nobody starts/runs a LAN party with the intention of getting rich (at least none
that I’ve been to), and the food is a way to help them break even. If you don’t believe that, then go ahead
and start pricing out what it would cost to put on an event of any size, and you’ll start to see pretty fast that it costs a lot more than you might think to get a decent sized party off the ground.
And that’s it! That’s all the essential things that you need to have a fun time at a LAN party. There are other things that would be helpful to have, but you don’t *have* to have them, such as: a coat (some of those
venues get fairly frigid when the computers start turning off in the middle of the night), something to sleep
on like a blanket/pillow/etc., and (I know this sounds corny) a good attitude. If you can keep these tips in
mind, you’ll have a good time at the LAN party you choose to go to guaranteed*.
*Not guaranteed.