I Love You GenCon. Please Stop Hitting Me.

As some of you may know, this year marks the second time our gaming group, The Viking National Guard, will be attending GenCon. In fact, last year was the first time any of us had ever made the trip to attend the convention, and we all had a blast. Labyrinthian has talked about some of the things that we did or saw last year, and if you stick around for long enough, eventually we’ll start telling you about the Lost GenCon Tales. But despite the great times I had last year, there was a darker side to the trip. Something that happened over a month before the actual trip that managed to cast a shadow over the entire ordeal: I never got my badge.

If you've never been to GenCon, the way registration works is that you order your badge sometime before May. You can get a couple bucks off if you do so in January, but I think last year we didn’t actually register for our badges until March. Sometime at the end of April or the very beginning of May you can start buying your tickets for the events you’d like to attend, be they seminars, table-top games, board games, or a number of other offerings. They start sending out badges in June and continue to send them out until mid-July. Last year I happen to know that they sent out the last shipment of badges on July 15th, because when I sent an e-mail to their customer service department on July 19th, that was the response I got. When I still hadn’t received my badge on July 24th, I sent them another e-mail, and was told that I had opted for USPS delivery, and since the USPS doesn’t offer tracking numbers on packages sent through them, there was nothing they could do about tracking the shipment, so they have to assume that everything they sent out was received successfully. They pointed out that since the badges aren’t personalized, any badge they print out will be active, and this prevents people from getting multiple badges sent to them and bringing their friends for free. They went on to say that I could buy a brand new badge for another $80 when I get to the Con, but there was nothing else they could do for me.

Now, I understand that they don’t want people to get into the Con for free. I can respect any decision that’s made for business reasons, but the fact of the matter is that this still doesn't excuse shitty business practices. Because I’m not the first person this happened to this year, and, in fact, it’s something that’s been happening for years. Years. If this was an unavoidable situation, I wouldn’t be angry about it, but it’s not. After finding out about the situation, I figured out a solution in about thirty-six seconds. Because the USPS actually DOES offer tracking number, it just costs $.75 per package. I’m going to say that again in a different way, just so everyone can be sure they read it correctly. The USPS will give you a tracking number for your package if you give them seventy-five cents. I had to pay over 100 times that amount just because GenCon couldn’t pony up three freaking quarters to make sure nobody has this problem!? And you know what? I’m more than willing to accept the cost of my badge going up a buck just to avoid the one in a thousand chance this doesn’t happen to me again, and I’m willing to bet just about everyone else feels the same.

By this point, you’re probably wondering why it took me almost a full year to complain about this. And that’s a valid question, but the truth is that I really did have a blast last year. I got to hang out with some of my close friends for a few days away from the daily grind, I got to meet some cool people, play some cool games, and just had the best vacation of my life. I was pissed going into the Con, but coming out I was more than willing to let the whole thing slide. So what happened between then and now to bring all of my bad feelings back to the surface? GenCon Event Registration 2011. Every year on the same day, thousands of people log onto the GenCon servers at the same to register for events. The way it worked last year was that everyone could manually register for each event individually, and if you could get your tickets into your shopping cart first, those tickets were reserved for you until you checked out. So if someone was running a Ghostbusters d6 game (a game that’s very underrated, but also extremely rare to find someone actually running), the person who got the tickets was the person who managed to get to them first. Kind of like shopping on Black Friday, only instead of 100 units of one item, there are often only six.

This year things worked a little differently. Instead of registering manually, you built up a “Wish List” containing all of the events you’d like to attend. When you set up your list you did so in order of priority, so the first item on your list was the event you most wanted to attend. It seemed like a great system until registration opened at noon this last Sunday. Our group had a meeting on Friday night that lasted almost six hours, figuring out how our Wish List should look, and when it was finally set up in a way that everyone was happy with we nominated The Professor to be the one to process it on Sunday. There was a grayed out box that said “process list” under our Wish List, and all he had to do was press that button at exactly 12 p.m. on Sunday morning. The problem came about when he actually pushed the button, because despite the fact that it was exactly noon when he set our Wish List to processing he was greeted with a message saying our list was 1269th in line. At first I assumed that they were going to go through and process the highest priority on each person’s list one by one before going back to the beginning and doing the same with the second highest item, but that wasn’t the case. Instead, they processed #1’s entire list before moving on to #2, then #3, then #4, and so on, until they got to all of the lists in the queue. I’ve heard that there were over 3000 lists in the queue at one point, but all I know for sure is that of all the events we tried to sign up for, we got almost none of them, and only one that was in our top ten. There was a guy on the GenCon forums who said out of the 50 events he signed up for, he only got into three.

Our group is having an emergency meeting tomorrow afternoon to try and figure out a way to patch up what was looking like an amazing trip, but why is it even necessary? We didn’t get into all of the events we wanted to last year, but at least we were able to get into the ones that we really wanted. I’ve heard people say that this year’s system was less stressful, and I can see how that’s true. Last year was a frantic dash around the site, trying to gobble up tickets to the events that we wanted, and this year we just let the system do the work for us. But I would much rather take the semi-stressful, completely frantic hour from last year over the less stressful, anger inducing experience from this year. As someone on the GenCon forum put it, “The rich get richer, and the poor get poorer.”

The truth of the matter is that we’re still going to have a great time this year. Because in the end, the fun of GenCon is in the experience and memories, and everything else are just details. But as fun as the event itself is, should I be forced to get this angry and disappointed every year? I guess all I can do is fall back on the old proverb: “Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me. Fool me three times? I’m going to Origins.”

Bolstering the Ranks: Why the Hell is it so hard to find new players?!

I've played with the same group for about eight years now.  We have had many people come and go for various reasons over the years, but the core four members of the group have remain unchanged.  Recently we lost two members in quick succession and found ourselves down to just the aforementioned four players.  While it is certainly possible to play with four, and we have done it many times, it was the general preference that we add a few more members to fill out the table.  

Normally when we need new members we will invite a friend of one of the already existing members.  This is the easiest option for both the group who is getting a known quantity, and for the new player who already knows someone at the table.  However, after eight years we seem to have exhausted this option; none of us could think of a single person to invite to the game.  After a bid of head scratching we examined our options.  We do live in the information age after all, how hard could it be to reach out and pluck a prospective gamer from the orchard of the internet? 

As it turns out, pretty hard.

Now there are various ways to find new members, many of which I'm sure we weren't aware of., but of the ones we did know the three that seemed the most promising to us were message boards, Obsidian portal,  and Pen & Paper Games. 

Message boards for specific games have worked really well for people I know.  I once knew a guy who would hit the D&D boards and within a week would have a whole new group.  That man had a talent for finding people that it quickly became clear that I, and the other members of my group, lack.    The problem is that my group no longer plays just D&D anymore.  When 4e came out it became clear that the game was not for us and so we started looking elsewhere.  In the time since 4e came out we have played Hackmaster 4th Edition, Hackmaster Basic, Hackmaster Advanced, Aces & Eights, Pathfinder, Call of Cthulhu, 1st Edition D&D, 2nd Edition D&D, and D&D 3.5.  So though it was cool that the release of 4e caused us to branch out and leave our comfort zone a little bit, it no longer made it possible to hit the D&D boards looking for players.  Similarly, Paizo has prolific message boards, but by and large those players are Pathfinder players who might not be interested in switching systems should the need arise.  So in the end we didn't have much luck with message boards and decided to forgo others like ENWorld, RPGNet, and others. 

Obsidian Portal is an awesome site and a great resource for many things including finding games.  We used Obsidian Portal as kind of a passive way to look in the months leading up to our active search.  We listed the campaign we were playing along with some information on our group and tossed our line out, hoping some Gamer without a group would bite.  Alas, we had little to no luck.  We considered contacting some of the other groups in the immediate area, but many of them were playing 4e, so it was unlikely they would have been a good fit.  However, all was not lost.  Obsidian Portal partnered with Pen & Paper Games, a site dedicated to helping Gamers find Gamers.  We all figured this would be our best bet. 

It was at Pen & Paper Games that we made our last  ditch effort to find some new blood.  We threw a wide net over the area, opting for a "spray and pray" philosophy.  Rather than working our way down a long list of people one at a time, we just emailed everyone we thought might be a good fit.  So just how many was that? 

Thirty two.

That's right, thirty two people got messages from us offering them a seat at our table.  This was not just a quick "hey you don't know us but join our game" email.  No, this was thorough.  We talked about our group, how many members, what ages, our play styles, what games we play, what times, how long we had been together, what we were looking for, what we would be playing, and a host of other things.  We added a "no pressure clause" by stating that it was just a trial to see if the person was a good fit for the group and the group a good fit for the person.  When we finished writing the email (a group effort) I was sure that we had emailed too many people and would be bombarded with responses.  This was a little worrying because the table we play at is only so big.  Turns our I shouldn't have worried.  Go ahead and guess how many responses we got.

If you guessed one and a half, you are correct.  

What do I mean by that?  Well we got one ligit response by a guy who was interested, and one quick email from a guy who said he might play if we change the day we play on.  To say we were disheartened would be an understatement. 

Now I should mention that all of the people who we emailed were not held in equal regard.  We rated each person on a 1-10 basis and only emailed the top 32 people.  So naturally where was our one response from?

If you guessed the very bottom of the list, you are correct. 

Needless to say it was more than a little disheartening, but we emailed the guy (Doodle, by handle).  Doodle seemed nice enough via email and was very prompt in his responses so we invited him to come down for the start of our Call of Cthulhu game and roll up a character with us.  When he showed up we were all pleasantly surprised, he was friendly and very normal.  Hey, don't look at me like that... it's the internet you never know what you're gonna get.  Doodle had played CoC before so he was a help with some of the rules and his sense of humor really seemed to mesh with the rest of the group, something of underrated importance in my opinion. 

As I write this we are two weeks into our CoC and things are going great.  Everyone is very happy with Doodle and he seems reasonably happy with the group.  Still when I think of the process we went through to find and recruit him I have to ask myself, why the hell is it so hard to find new players? 

If you have a story of your own trials and tribulations of finding new group members please, let's hear it!  If you have any advice on finding new members, please share that too!

Mr. Labyrinthian Goes to GenCon - Part 1: Look for Our Sign to the North

Ever since I was a little kid I've heard tales of Gen Con.  For years I've wanted to go and dreamed what it would be like, only to be disapointed time after time.  But no longer!  That's right, I have returned safley for my group's pilgramige to Indianapolis where I attended Gen Con for the very first time.

Though this was my first and only Con to this point, one of our members (Moox) had been to a few smaller conventions (like GaryCon) before.  As no one in my group has been to Gen Con before we did a great deal of research and preparation.  We found maps, lists, and articles about attending the Con that all proved useful.  We brushed up on the rules for some systems we haden't played in a while, made our hotel reservations, and of course preregistered for out events. 

The event list was nothing short of daunting at first glance.  Thousands of events to choose from made it very difficult figure out what we wanted to do.  We took time out from out weekly game to go over the event list and see what we wanted to do.  Though I know some people believe in mostly playing with strangers during conventions, we mostly wanted to play with one another.  All of us on one side of the screen was a new experience that we were all intersted in taking advange of. 

Here is a quick recap of my schedule for Gencon

Thursday:
True Dungeon 101
I6: Ravenloft (The Original Adventure that started it all!)

Friday:
The Antagonist
Pimp My Game
True Dungeon

Saturday:
Eureka! Cooking Up Adventure Plots with Gnome Stew
Worldbuilding 101
Castle of the Mad Archmage
Shadows Fall on Absalom

We didn't schedule any events for Sunday as we wanted to leave in the early afternoon and make sure we had some time in the dealer's hall for any final purchases.  Again, these are just the events we had scheduled, obviously we did other things.

The final  preparation that we made was to procure team "uniforms" for Gencon.  We went through one of the many online manufactures for the actual shirt creation, but they were designed by our very own Professor Obsecure. 

Needless to say they are amazing, and they were a huge hit at the Con.  People kept coming up to us and asking us where we got the shirts.  Here is a picture of AngryBear and ManOnFunTrip rocking their shirts.  Trip is the one with the horned Kevlar Helmet. 

The story of why we call ourselves 'The Viking National Guard' is something of a long one, which I'm sure I will relate one day.  For now I'll just explain each of us has a different color logo on the front of our shirts, and a different name and number on the back.  The names were those of various norse gods.  Here what the back looked like...

To show you the amazing detail on the logo designed by the Professor here is what mine looked like...

In part 2 I'll discuss our ride there, my initial impressions of the Convention, and our first night of gaming!