A Call to Vol—PaizoCon 2018!

Monday, December 18, 2017

In prior years, it seemed that we had a distinctive convention season with a slower period during the winter. This model doesn't work anymore, as PAX Unplugged extended the season into mid-November, and next year pushes it further back into early December, while Martin Luther King Junior's birthday weekend is the launch of the new convention season.

The new season brings with it several Paizo-sponsored conventions with a large organized play presence. PaizoCon, Gen Con, Origins, as well as travel to other shows such as UK Games Expo, PaizoCon UK, and PaizoCon OZ. Planning for these conventions started several months ago. Over the past few months, Paizo staff worked hard on updating the Attendance policy. With it completed and releasing to the public this month (along with updates the PaizoCon area of paizo.com), tickets sales are soon to follow. One of my goals includes offering volunteer slots for Paizo-sponsored conventions before the ticket sales open. This allows volunteers to make plans with their friends before purchasing tickets. Thus, we moved the call for volunteers from its usual February timeslot to today.

We have a few big changes from last year. We hope this streamline some of the processes or bring more options for attendees at the convention.

First, we changed the nomenclature from session or slot to block. Each block is 5 hours. This unifies the terminology from the event support form used by our event organizers and keeps things consistent across the board.

Second, we ditched using the Tier system to describe how many volunteers. It is a RPGA holdover that caused confusion, as the lower number the tier, the more slots a person volunteered. Also, we have tiers for our scenarios, so having tiers for volunteers caused some confusion in our data. This year, you register for the number of 5 hour blocks you wish to volunteer.

Third change is overnight madness! Following on the success of having overnight games at Gen Con 50, we are trying it out at PaizoCon. We will schedule some tables of Pathfinder Society or Starfinder Society, but there will be a limited number of tables available on a first-come, first-served basis for attendees wishing to play other games.

Fourth, afternoon tables may be submitted to the PaizoCon event system. When Sara Marie requests submissions from third parties, feel free to submit items for Pathfinder Society or Starfinder Society. Any tables not allocated through the system by the time submissions will be available on site with first-come, first-served priority.

Finally, we are setting a 7 block maximum for volunteering. We want people to take a break and see what the convention has to offer. PaizoCon is a celebration of Paizo, its staff, and community and we want you to experience different aspects of it. Oh, and eat. We really want you to have time for food, rest, and showers.

Last year, we utilized 78 GMs, Card Guild organizers, and HQ volunteers to ensure organized play activities at PaizoCon ran smoothly. I anticipate the same needs again this year, depending on how many blocks each volunteer requests. We have a few new choices for volunteers this year. As we are running overnight games, we will need a handful of GMs to run games through the wee hours of the morning. We are also looking for two HQ volunteers for the afternoon block to man the information desk and two for the overnight block, when they would be manning the info desk but mainly focused reporting prior blocks game information. Due to the limited number of places, space fills up quickly, so I recommend signing up as soon as you know you can commit to the event.

Volunteer slots are scheduled as follows:

Block	RPG/ACG GMs	HQ
Friday Morning	7:45 AM to 1:00 PM	7:30 AM to 1:00 PM
Friday Afternoon	N/A	1:00 PM to 7:00 PM
Friday Evening	6:45 PM to Midnight	6:30 PM to Midnight
Friday Overnight	12:45 AM to 6:00 AM	1:00 AM to 7:00 AM
Saturday Morning	7:45 AM to 1:00 PM	7:30 AM to 1:00 PM
Saturday Afternoon	N/A	1:00 PM to 7:00 PM
Saturday Overnight	12:45 AM to 6:00 AM	1:00 AM to 7:00 AM
Sunday Morning	7:45 AM to 1:00 PM	7:30 AM to 1:00 PM
Sunday Afternoon	N/A	1:00 PM to 7:00 PM
Sunday Evening	6:45 PM to Midnight	6:30 PM to Midnight
Sunday Overnight	12:45 AM to 6:00 AM	1:00 AM to 7:00 AM
Monday Morning	7:45 AM to 1:00 PM	7:30 AM to 1:00 PM

The breakdown of what benefits are available for each tier are:

# of Blocks	Print Product	Badge	T-Shirts	Boon/Reward	Store Credit
7 Blocks	✔	✔	✔	Choice of 3	✔
6 Blocks	✔	✔	✔	Choice of 2	✔
5 Blocks	—	✔	✔	Choice of 1	✔
4 Blocks	—	—	✔	Choice of 1	✔
3 Blocks	—	—	—	Choice of 1	✔
2 Blocks	—	—	—	—	✔
1 Block	—	—	—	—	✔

The details of each benefit are as follows:

• Print Product—A FREE copy of one Paizo print product of your choice valued at $59.99 or less (excludes preorders or backorders).
• Badge—A free 4-Day PaizoCon 2018 badge
• T-Shirts—Limited release t-shirts given every other year.
• Boon/Reward—An PaizoCon exclusive boon for Starfinder (RPG), Pathfinder (RPG), or (ACG)
• Store Credit—Paizo.com store credit at $10 per slot

Those interested in volunteering, please complete the PaizoCon 2018 volunteer questionnaire. I will consider everyone who completes the form, but reserve the right to select volunteers who have worked at PaizoCon in prior years.

Huge thanks to everyone who gives of their time and resources to help make us the largest organized play program in the world. You rock!

See you Wednesday for an early holiday present. Until then—Explore, Report, Cooperate!

Tonya Woldridge

Organized Play Manager