Cast a spell or slay a dragon. That actually happened in Plainview over the weekend.

Role players opened a portal to another world at RetCon 2, a gaming convention hosted by Long Island Role Players at the . "We started small, playing once a month," said Reeves Crowe, president of an organization which now boasts 360 members and holds events five days a week. "More and more people we ran into said, 'This was great.' We're starting to pick up some steam."

What began as a collection of die-hard board game and role-playing fans has evolved into a company with an annual convention. Plainview-based , a store which caters to the role playing community, opened three years ago and has grown along with Long Island Role Players "The fact there was so much role playing under one roof was in my opinion the biggest draw of the convention," said Pete Gaeta, who owns Ravenblood Games, one of the vendors at the convention.

No surprise, classic board game Dungeons & Dragons was a big draw at the convention. But so was a 3D version of the game Legends & Labyrinths, Dragon Age (a crossover hit that started as a video game) and A Song of Ice and Fire, which is based on a novel and the inspiration behind the HBO series Game of Thrones. The connections and the gaming drew in Michael Roberts, who lives in Massapequa and works in SEO. He has been part of the group for more than a year and helped run one of the games at the convention.

"One of the biggest highlights for me was the Dramatic Roleplay Tournaments (DRTs) run by my friend Caitlin," Roberts explained via email. "The best explanation is probably dice-less role playing meets improv acting. It makes for a lot of hilarious moments and really is a great deal of fun."

If you missed the gaming fest, you missed plenty of action. But there's still regular meetups. Ravenblood is the unofficial home for the group. Wednesday evenings are particularly popular.

You can find regular meetups on the organization's calendar. "I just want to get people together to play some games," said Crowe, who works by day in the IT department at Cold Spring Harbor Lab. "The best thing for me is to see people I don't know excited to play. People don't realize there are so many on Long Island still playing these games."