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Date: Friday, Saturday, and Sunday
Feb. 6-8, 2015
Location:
The Bernhard Center, East Ballroom
Western Michigan University
1903 W. Michigan Ave.
Kalamazoo, Mi 49006
Slot times:
Friday
Doors Open: 2:30pm
Slot 1: 3:00pm - 7:00pm
Slot 2: 7:30pm - 11:30pm
Doors Close: 11:30pm
Saturday
Doors Open: 9:00am
Slot 3: 10:00am - 2:00pm
Slot 4: 2:30pm - 6:30pm
Slot 5: 7:00pm - 11:00pm
Doors Close: 11:30pm
Sunday
Doors Open: 10:30am
Slot 6: 11:00am - 3:00pm
Slot 7: 3:30pm - 7:30pm
Doors Close: 8:00pm
Player Cost:
All weekend: $25
Fri/Sat: $20
Sat/Sun: $20
Fri or Sun: $10
Sat: $15
Parking Fee:
Bring $5 in quarters for Slot 1 parking meter. The rest of the weekend is free parking.
Game Master Cost:
Admission is free for the days that you GM. Plus you'll get a free M-Dog T-shirt!
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This is a post-convention report for this year’s Marmalade Dog convention at Western Michigan University in Kalamazoo, MI. It took place over the weekend of February 6-8, 2015.
Boons and prize support arrived in plenty of time. Everyone who GM’d at least one table for us got a GM boon. Every person who received a chronicle sheet, GM or player, got a chance to roll for either a prize or a player boon. A roll of 16 or better on a 20-sided die won their choice of prize or boon. In addition, every table gave away one copy of the Pathfinder novel. We ended up giving away 17 player boons and 15 GM boons.
We had 39 tables of Pathfinder Society RPG play scheduled. Of those, 31 tables actually went off. In addition, we had scheduled a table of PACG to be available in each of the 7 slots, and of those, 2 actually happened. So we had a grand total of 33 tables of Pathfinder action of one sort or another. This is about on par with last year, when we had 31 tables reported. As is often the case at Marmalade Dog, Pathfinder Society was the primary draw for the convention, especially for RPG activity, though there was an increased presence for Goodman Games (DCC, Castles & Crusades, etc) over previous years.
Because we’d scheduled our games with the convention organizers by December 31st, 2014, we did not have any Core Campaign tables scheduled.
We had 58 unique players sit at our tables at some point over the weekend. We gave away 9 new PFS numbers to new players over the weekend.
The table breakdown for PFS, slot by slot, was as follows:
Friday
Slot 1: 3/4 tables, 15 players
Slot 2: 5/6 tables, 26 players
Saturday
Slot 3: 4/4 tables. 26 players
Slot 4: 6/6 tables, 30 players
Slot 5: 5/7 tables, 26 players
Sunday
Slot 6: 4/7 tables, 22 players
Slot 7: 4/5 tables, 22 players
Total: 31/39 tables, 167 players (vs. 31/50 tables, 155 players in 2014)
The tier breakdown was as follows (#tables that reported/#tables scheduled)
Tier 1-2 & 1-5: 20/21 tables
Tier 3-7: 5/8 tables
Tier 5-9: 1/3 tables
Tier 7-11: 3/4 tables
Modules: 1/2 tables
In general, our turnout was on par with last year. We did a better job predicting how many tables we would need to accommodate our demand, though we still could have probably fielded more tables in slot 3&4 if we had more GMs.
HQ workers had a smooth weekend administratively, and there were no major complaints or grievances reported by players or GMs. Results were reported to the Paizo site by Feb 12th.
In general, it looks like this convention is going to support 30-40 tables from year to year, and we shall plan accordingly. In addition, we shall continue to focus on low level scenarios to cater to a clientele that are either trying PFS for the first time, or who only play infrequently. We had initially scheduled some tables of Bonekeep and Eyes of the Ten, but we cancelled those while we were still in the planning stages. With only 4 hour slots, and with most of our players being entry level, Bonekeep would probably have been too challenging to be enjoyable in most cases. And since the M-Dog convention has no advanced sign-ups (players sign up for tables in between slots), the chances of getting a stable arc of level 12 characters for Eyes of the Ten to commit to 5 slots seemed ambitious. In retrospect, I think those were the correct decisions. This year we focused more on current season scenarios and gave less attention to older scenarios. In general, I think this worked out well, but next year I’ll probably try to offer some more unusual content, like modules and APs, so that more experienced players have more choice over the weekend.
To be honest, the Card Game campaign is new to me, and I wasn’t really sure what to expect. Fortunately I had some experienced hands who were ready to pick up the PACG ball and run with it, but we probably could have done more to highlight it. We had almost no interest over the weekend, but we also had very little to advertise that it was happening and what it was about. Next year, we should be in a better position to promote PACG now that we have some experience.
As a side note, I had difficulty reporting tables on the Paizo site this year — it seemed that if players hadn’t registered their PFS numbers or their newer characters that the system wouldn’t accept them or the whole table that they attended, so I had to leave several players unreported altogether. Some fraction of players, especially the casual gamers who try out PFS a few times a year, never report their numbers or access the website, and I imagine that was the case with most of these problem numbers, but I’m guessing that other players are going to wonder one day why their results for this convention never got input. I’m going to be saving the hard-copies of the session sheets for a few years to guard against this eventuality. I don’t know if this is a temporary glitch in the reporting system, or if this is the way it has to be from now on to avoid confusion between PFS vs Core vs PACG.
