GC II Comments and Suggestions

I loved it!

It would be nice to be able to bring food and drinks to your games. It is great to have someone selling sandwiches or hamburgers and especially the coffee. I ate way too many hamburgers over the last 3 or 4 days.

Gaming in the main room was sometimes hard to hear when it was packed, in particular Saturday afternoon. I tried to sit near the DM as someone advised before, but that is not always possible.

It would be great to have a one page sign of what is being run at a table when people are walking around looking for something to play. Maybe even a sign that says, FULL or RECRUITING followed by number needed, would be helpful. I was glad to see that some DMs (Frank being one) posted other games that they decided to run with signup. I wish more DMs did that because I heard about games that DMs ran where they needed more people that I would have loved to have played in.

 

Dibs!

 

Some other ideas I had and forgot until now:

Provide a colored flag (the taller the better) for each table. The concept being that if a GM needs/wants more players, the flag is up and players can look into each room and readily determine if there are tables needing players without walking to each table and asking. Once the game is full or has started (and adding more players would be disruptive in the GMs opinion), then the flag comes down.

Maybe somthing like those metal spring clips that you see at restaurants that bring the food to your table after you order at the counter would work.

Also, maybe it would be cool if 1" hex disposable table clothes could be found/made. Then every table would have a full size wet erase map. I'm only assuming that a standard plastic table cloth is suitable for wet erase, maybe someone out there knows.

 

30 minutes? Come on, even Gen Con only schedules 10 minutes between events, and sometimes events are 3 blocks apart! 30 minutes to walk to the next room takes too much time away from gaming.

 

After reading a few veiled and overt references to my games, I think I should respond.

A week before GaryCon2 I didn't know if I was going to be able to attend, due to family issues. I thus left my two "Falx" games in prereg but did not add any. Thus, when I finally DID show up and ran 4 slots instead of 2, I had to use signup sheets; and since attendees had no way to prereg in the two new events, I accepted anyone who wanted to play.

Apologies to any & all who felt their games (or their participation in my games) were adversely affected by this procedure.

Next year should be much cleaner on my end, and I'll be happy to limit my games to 8-10 or whatever, as long as there's adequate advance opportunity (prereg) for folks to sign up.

Frank Mentzer

 

I was unaware that this event was attempting to emulate GenCon. I seem to recall much talk about this event not moving in that direction. Allowing some time between games for people to eat, travel, and, most importantly, fraternize, would increase the personal nature it was my understanding this convention was attempting to achieve. IMHO, YMMV, etc.

 

The reason I ask for 30 minutes is that games tend to go longer than scheduled. If a game goes 10 minutes over, the player won't make it to the next one. So at least 15-20 minutes would be good.

We certainly don't need to do this like GenCon--that is far more formal and rigid.

I don't mean to ruffle any feathers by asking GMs to limit their games to those who have enrolled. Obviously, if it is a pickup game, this does not apply. I did not have a problem with my games: I had enough players. I am simply conveying what I heard from other GMs who thought players were pulled from their games, or that there were not enough players available. There were a whole bunch of canceled games on Friday and Saturday.

Increased attendance will probably correct this problem (although we don't want to see the con get too big).

 

Holding it around the time of spring break is a good thing. Given the number of gamers who go to school, having it on this weekend would help maximize the exposure of old school gaming. Besides, there's nothing like having a few days to play in the snow to kick off/end one's spring break.

 

It sounded like everyone had a great time and I'm sorry I missed the event again this year. I'm enjoying it vicariously through all of your photos and comments. I registered last summer, fully intending to come, but unfortunately it just wasn't in the cards. Entirely selfishly, and to Emperor Xan's point about the timing of the event, it's highly unlikely that I'll ever have the opportunity to attend as long as GaryCon is always held on this particular weekend. Of course it would be absurd for me to suggest varying the dates by a weekend or two just for me, but there may be others in the same boat.

 

One of the only changes that I thought was needed was the time between games and auction, as others have mentioned, for the players to be able to grab food yes, but more importantly, for the DMs running multiple events. Frank Mentzer and Paul Stormberg were like DM machines! The schedule Mark suggested is almost exactly what I was going to post. And maybe, if time allowed, the silent auction winners could be announced at the end of the regular auction.

Other than that, the only other thing that I noticed was that more volunteers were needed? Why? Only so that you could rotate folks and allow them to play more games! I felt bad for Dale last year and James this year for missing out on playing in two of the best conventions I've ever been to.

 

Frank, I am very grateful that you were able to attend and run extra games. You are a playground legend to so many. I know that every time I walked by your table I wished I had one of the seats.

Also, thanks for being kind and gracious to all of us that bugged you for autographs (me included).

I look forward in seeing you next year- and we have already been discussing how to run pre-reg better and smoother.

 

Frank will be back next year...Hooty Hoo!

 

That's a GM problem, not a Gary Con problem. If you give GMs like that 30 more minutes, they'll take 40.

I'd rather not have gaming time disappearing from the schedule because some people can't stand up to a misbehaving gamemaster.

 

Huge thanks to the organizers, staff and VP's for putting the con together!

I've wanted to visit Lake Geneva and attend a gaming convention there since I started gaming at 10 years old (now 40), and GC 2 was truly a phenomenal event.

The hotel in particular was a pleasant surprise - I've attended a number of smaller gaming cons and usually the hotel is shall we say on the discount end of the spectrum. The Lodge was a really fine hotel at a reasonable price. Don't know who made the arrangements, but huge kudos there.

Besides the location, venue and the chance to meet the "Old Guard", I was really impressed by the broad range of games available. Roleplaying, minis, you name it - even though GaryCon wasn't huge, it had more variety than I have seen at some larger cons.

Kudos also for: the onsite snack bar; well organized prereg system and game schedule; special events (auction, the GC poker game and cards).

My suggestions for improvement are similar to what has already been mentioned:
- 30 minutes between game slots. Mainly to allow for some time to use the latrine, grab a snack, browse the vendors, and generally hobnob. The only thing I really missed was more time to generally hang out and talk to people; I actually skipped a couple of events I wanted to play in to get some free time in.
- More room for gaming. During peak times, some extra room (especially if next year's con gets bigger) would definitely be a good idea.
- Better marking of tables. Especially once players started sitting down and DM's started putting maps out, it was often hard to see what number a table was.
- An old school (physical) bulletin board, with one section for DM's running scheduled events to advert for more players, and one section to post notes about open gaming and general messages. Folks have cell phones these days, but a bulletin board is still an effective way to disseminate info at a small event.
- Time in the schedule for special events. I missed the auction since I was in a game at the time, and would have liked to have been there. That may have been a blessing in disguise though, since I suspect I might have gotten in a bidding war with Luke for the original edition Titan box set <g>
- A box at the registration table or a table itself for donations to the memorial fund.

Those are small quibbles though - the con was great in every way and I had a *blast* : )

Andy

 

I believe Luke tracked that down, though he or whoever may certainly correct me if I'm mistaken.
But yes - the hotel was a very nice venue, and very convenient to have the con in the same place you're staying. Quite nice.

 

Frank, your game was the best that I played in all weekend. I also heard others tell me how much they enjoyed playing in your games. I thought that it was great that you ran 4 games! That gave everyone an opportunity to play with Frank Mentzer. You were humble and gracious and willing to give some time or autographs to anyone. And I know that we all enjoyed hearing some of the tidbits about Gary, the development of the game, or TSR.

I remember you saying something like, "If you don't do much I will send monsters at you." You made it a point to tell everyone to be active and involved. In the Falx game that I was in, the party separated. That was not your fault, nor was it Falx's fault. I can think of important and needed things that lots of the different players did: clerics, monks, rangers, mages, thieves, and paladins. Thieves checking for traps, monks grabbing scroll cases with great speed, clerics turning undead and healing, rangers fighting and tracking, mages casting spells to overcome the wererats, and paladins destroying the wights and opening doors were just a few of my favorite things.

Thank you. Now I just wish that you were going to NTRPG Con. Oh well, I will wait until next year.

 

Well, there's also the problem that the con's just TOO DAMN GOOD.

I mean, yeah, I played in Tim Kask's game and Jim Ward's game and Jeff Talanian's game and managed to standby my way into Jeff Grohe's game and sign up for Joe Goodman's game, but that was all the tickets I had so I had to miss Rob Kuntz's game and Frank Mentzer's game. And because I was so busy roleplaying I never really had the time to try to sit down and get into one of Tom Wham's boardgames!

I did plan to run a pickup Gamma World/Mutant Future game (it's called Bring Me The Head Of Frank Sinatra! and I may submit it as a proposed scheduled session for next year if I can carve out a tournament-sized chunk of it), but Carlos Vigil offered to run a session to bat around some ideas of his, and, well, that looked like fun, and then there was no time for me to run anything because I needed to head home.

So clearly GaryCon needs to STOP ATTRACTING SUCH AWESOME PEOPLE.

Wait. That's probably not the conclusion I wanted to reach. And if it were much longer I'd've died of exhaustion. So, my only recourse is to hope that Kuntz, Mentzer, and Wham are all back next year and for me to try again, with a slightly-differently-ordered list of games I want to get into.