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Thank you to all the volunteers and Paizo for running some great slots. It is clear that you value the players and want to run great events.
The main thing to detract from the experience was the room. I am not sure how Gen Con room assignment works, but a larger room with even the same number of tables would be much appreciated. At times it was very difficult to hear and equally hard to navigate between the tables. Some of us were waxing poetic on the draping of Gen Con's of yesteryear in Milwaukee. I'd pay extra for the 5 slots I played to have a better room.
That said, it was a great achievement to seat all those that wanted to play the Special. The energy in the room was invigorating. Our table had a great time under the pressure of the frenetic pace at the end.
I can't wait for next Gen Con!
T.
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Glad you enjoyed it. After all, the main goal is to have people having fun playing Pathfinder.
I had several discussions with Mark, Liz and the VCs about room size and I can tell you the Paizo and PFS teams are already considering ways to make things even better for PFS players at Gen Con last year, but we are somewhat at the mercy of what Gen Con is willing to provide in terms of location and space.
I'm not trying to put down the Gen Con staff at all, because I understand that they are juggling thousands of events, all of which want a nice, quiet room to play in with plenty of elbow room. However, I'd be very surprised if (after this year's turnout) they could justify not giving us more room to play in next year.
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Thanks for the compliments Thoth!
As someone who GMed for you ("real men wear eyeliner"), I agree that it is hard to keep up a good volume without drowning out other tables, losing your voice, or having players hear you. Still, I think Thorkull summed it up very well by saying it was a common issue and solutions are being looked at.
Maybe next year we'll get one of those huge open rooms like WotC procured! :D
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I spoke with Mark at the con and offered several bits of advice I thought could make it better. So, Paizo is listening. If you have idea, I suggest listing here as Paizo does pay attention.
As for the curtains between tables in Milwaukee, no thanks. They did nothing to stop the sound.
I would prefer they get standalone barricades to put between each table or close the partition walls, divide PFS into 4 rooms with 15 tables each, muster in the main hall, and then the walls could be opened into one large room for the special.
RPG Superstar 2008 Top 32, 2011 Top 16
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I had a great time at my PFS games as well, and while I didn't think the noise was as bad as previous years, I was surprized how packed the room was. Supposedly, with the renovations and expansion of the convention center complete, there was supposed to be more room to spread out the RPG events. Instead, they seemed just as packed in as ever (and not just PFS). This was especially surprizing since there was a lot of space in the convention center that was unused - in particular rooms 100 - 120, across from the old dealer's room exhibit hall.
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I thought it was amazing and I was so happy to finally put names with faces of so many people on the boards. I had a great time running through the gauntlet of GMing for all the folks I did! I look forward to seeing everyone again at GenCon 2012 (and maybe PaizoCon 2012 if I can muster up the resources)!
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I agree, I definitely had trouble hearing at most tables (oddly the table in the corner was the best for noise). I was leaning into the GM the entire time and missed what he was saying at times. I could only hear GMs who projected well clearly. Subtle roleplaying gestures were lost almost entirely (there's no way you could use a whisper type voice).
To make matters worse, it seemed to get noisier as the con went on. Sunday morning was actually the worst for me, in terms of background noise. Even Scotty's was better. The interactive on Friday night was fine surprisingly.
To make matters worse, the GMs were losing their voices by the end of the con and could barely speak. Maybe a solution to that is to have more GMs that do less slots. 8 slots max at least, not 10. They seemed kind of burnt out as well. I know I would be, so I can't really blame them there.
Having said that, the noise levels could have been better (and it would have been a better experience), but it was playable.
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To make matters worse, the GMs were losing their voices by the end of the con and could barely speak. Maybe a solution to that is to have more GMs that do less slots. 8 slots max at least, not 10. They seemed kind of burnt out as well. I know I would be, so I can't really blame them there.
Ideally no GM's would have to do more than 8 slots, but this year there was a shortage of GM's for some slots and in every slot at least one (sometimes several) GM's didn't show up. Many other volunteers stepped up last minute to run tables.
Regarding the burn-out, I experienced that first hand playing PFS in '09. I had a horrible experience Sunday morning by someone who is regarded as a fun and good GM. So when I volunteered for 10 slots last year, I made myself a promise that for the Sunday morning slot I would give it everything I had, even if it killed me.
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I think the best thing players can do to help the GM is to not try and talk over them while they are giving you scenario information. I know everyone is excited and there to have fun, but to remember that the GM has a long weekend of trying to talk over 300 other people so they can give you a good game experience goes a long way as well.
I had one table this weekend where one of the players said something to the rest of the table that was talking over me... it was nice to be remembered as being human by another pfser
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I think the best thing players can do to help the GM is to not try and talk over them while they are giving you scenario information.
I was surprised at this too this weekend. Maybe it was the luck of the draw, but I often found myself stopping what I was saying and waiting for players to finish conversations.
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I was surprised at this too this weekend. Maybe it was the luck of the draw, but I often found myself stopping what I was saying and waiting for players to finish conversations.
I think it's because many GMs read descriptions directly from the box text. Reading box text is not very interactive and conversations are interactive by nature. That's why you get interupted, because players want conversations, not speeches.
In my office, if I give instructions to an employee and he doesn't ask me any questions or waits until the end, it probably means he/she doesn't know what he's doing. That's been my experience as a manager. I think it translates to PFS and I noticed in many scenarios, many players didn't know NPC names or even what they were doing.
When I GM, I never read box text, I always paraphrase and expect questions before I'm done. You can just do a lot better job of roleplaying if you use your own words, you can bring an NPC to life. If the PCs aren't asking questions before I'm finished a 3 minute monologue, I get worried. PCs should ask questions or roleplay with interesting NPCs, sometimes before a 3 minute monologue is done. YMMV.
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I played the PFS Special on Fri night, and 2 PFS games on Saturday. I had a fabulous time, particularly on Friday. I completely agree that the energy and enthusiasm on Friday was palpable! Yes, it was noisy. How can you expect it not to be when you are in a room with over 300 people?!
Might I suggest that if you want to play with less noise, don't get a bigger room. Space between tables is not the problem. Instead, get a whole row of 10 rooms (at the JW Marriott, for example) and wire them up for sound so the MC can talk to all the rooms at once. With only 30 people in each room, you could even try something cool like having each room compete with the other rooms on quests and such.
Just some thoughts.
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I agree with the noise being the biggest problem with what was otherwise an event where I had a ton of fun. To add to the noise problem my voice started to go out starting with the special on Friday (being the sixth straight slot I was running). If it wasn’t for the water Paizo was handing out I’m not sure my throat would have survived to Sunday. For the last slot on Saturday I asked one of my players to do the reading for a particularly long bit of text for the scenario I was running. I know at least some of my players were having trouble hearing me, and I could not really strain my voice much more without just killing it.
I ended up running 9 slots because someone wanted me to run a scenario for them to help them out. I am kind of sad I did not get an opportunity to play given there was a vastly greater demand for GMs then players at Gen Con. But that’s what happens when you volunteer to GM at the biggest gaming convention of the year with the hottest system around.
I for one did not suffer the problem with players interrupting me during the initial VC spiel. If anything I had a lack of reaction with the VC for the missions. I followed Kyle’s advice to print out the initial mission handout to help players understand what I was saying. Though that did lead to a lack of player interaction with the VC. Though I did have a lot of new player/all pregen tables, so that might have kept the interacting down given they did not know how this went. A couple of times I had players at least a bit confused about what their mission was, and I’m not sure it is because they weren’t hearing me, they did not ask questions, they were just inexperienced with PFS player, or whatever other reason.
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I hope Mark Kept a Naughty List of GMs who bailed without warning or Notices.
I'm sure he has a very solid idea of who didn't show up for their slots and if they let us know or not, and I did hear him mention repercussions for those who didn't fulfill their obligations.
Getting back to the whole noise and confusion aspect, I did get feedback from one group of players at the special that, while they could hear Tim just fine, they felt like their GM was confused about what was going on.
I'm not sure where the problem in that lies, as I didn't get to read the mod or sit at the table, but there it is.
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I hope Mark Kept a Naughty List of GMs who bailed without warning or Notices.
One of the other confusion causing issues was the two schedules that were sent out. I admit I was on the Tim Hitchcock S*** list because after looking at the first excel sheet and saw I got what I requested (Friday Night off and Sunday Morning off) I didn't check again before the con as I thought all was good.
I got the phone call that I was supposed to run the special about 5 minutes before it started from one of my friends who was also a GM and put me on the phone with Liz.
I felt horrible about it even though I thought I was in the clear. I would have been a bad GM though as I never read the special nor did I have a printed copy with me.
Also I just paid 40$ to go play in the Battlepods just down the hall and they didn't do refunds but I did run my 8 slots and most of the players lived and all had fun it seemed.
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I think it's because many GMs read descriptions directly from the box text. Reading box text is not very interactive and conversations are interactive by nature. That's why you get interupted, because players want conversations, not speeches.
Box text is a necessary evil as the author has all the needed info in the text but after I get a feel for it I tend to paraphrase it.
This allows for more stage time for the players and less for the GM also because after 3-4 slots into GENCON my voice needs rest after running the same scenario 4 times in a row you get a feel what works and I try to added a "lessons learned" in my "box text" that might have caused confusion in the other games such as..some examples ;-)
1. You must bring the Venture captain back alive. Having a hand and forcing us to cast resurrection doesn't count.
2. Don't start a major fire in the at the Cathedral center of the Capital City of Andoren (Almas) and expect to be happy.
3.
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We are going to push for considerably more space next year. A lot of the problem this year had to do with figuring out the new space. I think we could run twice the number of tables next year, but that is going to take a TON of volunteer GMs.
Maybe you could take over the area that other game company had. I heard that they could get barely half their room filled from the times my friends walked by them.
/They had nice carpeting and HIGH ceilings, which really would help out on the noise.
//Dangit!
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Darius
I thought I add my experience as a partial reply to yours. I had a great time - even if I couldn't spend a lot of time with the PFS folks.
I only booked flight tickets from the UK 2 weeks ahead of the CON. PFS wasn't the reason to come (this time) and it felt weird as PFS was the reason I now go around different CONs here in the UK.
So with other commitments as the reason to go and my ticket purchased Thursday morning at 8 am I showed up approx. 3 hours later to have a look and maybe to chat to one or the other PFS game master.
With everyone playing poor Mark Moreland had to endure me as one of the first GMs not at the tables. I asked what I could do to help - and being available during mustering seemed a good idea.
So I arrived half an hour early - not to be needed. Which actually is good if there are enough helpers.
Forward 15 minutes and you understand why I write this as reply to Darius. One GM hadn't shown up. While this was awkward for the organizers - for me it was an opportunity.
No - I hadn't GMed the Frostfur Captives before. I didn't have anything with me apart of diceback and Core Rulebook. Actually the reason to carry the book was less to have it around but rather to add Jason and Lisa to Eric (Dragonmeet 2009) and Josh (PaizoCon UK 2010) to sign it.
So there was a need - some players who wanted to play. I never had run a scenario cold. I don't think I felt comfortable - but Mark was left not much choice - and this was likely my sole opportunity to GM at GenCon.
10 minutes ahead of the game - and I had the scenario in my hands. I think I got up to Act 2 by the time my players showed up. Tim Hitchcock (?) offered his own personal, newly bought battle map. Thanks !!
With the first players showing up I explained the situation. Luckily a tier 1-2. Three experienced players who knew each other. 2 new players - thanks to the GM who did the mustering for my table for organizing 2 pregens for them. And one player who played his second game. I even had some spare PFS numbers with me to hand out to all three - at least something.
I had one of the experienced players to describe the different factions to the two new players. Enough time to read up to Act 3.
Box texts - they can be so helpful if you run without proper preperation. I did sprinkle in a few details I got from the introduction of all the players - but the box texts gave me a life line to start the adventure.
Frostfur captives - I hadn't run this before. But I had run the Goblin adventure which helped me a lot to roleplay these little critters.
I like to use Initiative boards - but you have to improvise if you don't have one. The cronicle sheet has a blank back and I have now a GM chronicle with the initiative and HP from the whole adventure - makes it special.
Some still shrink wrapped map packs arrived just before the first encounter. Great - now I had some proper maps. Faction missions ? I had one printed copy - two sided. But I made my save - no factions with missions on the opposite side.
The adventure went pretty smooth and we had some great roleplay. Fantastic - every encounter solved in a diplomatic fashion without a fight kept me from firing up my Bestiary on the iPad.
All in all it went very smooth. There was a delay ahead of the last encounter as I hadn't managed to read that far ahead and that wasn't an encounter to do cold. I hope it didn't took me too long to read it up - it felt awkward to pause while I had to understand what was going on.
A thank you to the players for their understanding as well as for the way they played. If any of you didn't enjoy it - well - then your bluff skill must be a lot higher as my sense motive.
For me this was a great experience and I can claim - I GMed at GenCon. Three week ago I didn't even knew I would be at GenCon. It was the feeling of community and to belong despite just having arrived and being unable to commit more time that made it special for me.
Thod
PS: I also should mention a special thanks to Neil Shackelton. Boarding your plane three times and knowing you miss your connection back to London felt less awkward when you know at least one other person on the plane. I hope you made it home safely the next morning.
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Sound levels are a problem at all conventions. A bigger room would have helped some but not all of the problem. I know at one time GenCon was experimenting with a divider system for RPG rooms. Even simple curtain dividers would help a great deal. I know costs are already difficult to deal with but Paizo may consider renting curtain dividers in the future.
Please remember that some GMs run a lot of slots for hotel reimbursement. They couldn't afford the con otherwise.
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I had an awesome "first" gencon. Part of that awesomeness for me was seeing an entire room of excited players having fun, curtains/dividers would have detracted from that for me .. and while they might have helped a smidge towards my not sounding like a frog Sunday morning, I was ok with not having them.
Some of the GMs were faced with picking up a slot and scenario that they weren't prepped for so a GM reading the mod right before the slot started was undestandable.
I'm happy my players were ok with me being distracted at times and asking them to repeat what they said... thought I tried to spend a lot of time leaning in on the table so that we could all hear eachother and so I didn't lose my voice as fast
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I think the best thing players can do to help the GM is to not try and talk over them while they are giving you scenario information.I was surprised at this too this weekend. Maybe it was the luck of the draw, but I often found myself stopping what I was saying and waiting for players to finish conversations.
This has also happened to me, but now I bring a cattle prod with me to games. Odd how, after only a single zap, everyone gives me their undivided attention.
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We are going to push for considerably more space next year. A lot of the problem this year had to do with figuring out the new space. I think we could run twice the number of tables next year, but that is going to take a TON of volunteer GMs.
I noticed there was an awefull lot of empty, unused space in the old sections of the convention center. Perhaps they can try to utilize it? I would'nt mind the walk.
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We are going to push for considerably more space next year. A lot of the problem this year had to do with figuring out the new space. I think we could run twice the number of tables next year, but that is going to take a TON of volunteer GMs.
It would be advisable to get a room(s) that have carpet (like the one we had this year) if we go to a larger location next year. Some of those large rooms on the first floor don't have carpet and that results in a louder noise level.
I also wanted to say that I GMed and played this year and had the best time ever at Gen Con. Thank you to all the other GMs and the Pazio staff for doing a fantastic job!!!
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Darius
I thought I add my experience as a partial reply to yours. I had a great time - even if I couldn't spend a lot of time with the PFS folks.
I only booked flight tickets from the UK 2 weeks ahead of the CON. PFS wasn't the reason to come (this time) and it felt weird as PFS was the reason I now go around different CONs here in the UK.
So with other commitments as the reason to go and my ticket purchased Thursday morning at 8 am I showed up approx. 3 hours later to have a look and maybe to chat to one or the other PFS game master.
With everyone playing poor Mark Moreland had to endure me as one of the first GMs not at the tables. I asked what I could do to help - and being available during mustering seemed a good idea.
So I arrived half an hour early - not to be needed. Which actually is good if there are enough helpers.
Forward 15 minutes and you understand why I write this as reply to Darius. One GM hadn't shown up. While this was awkward for the organizers - for me it was an opportunity.
No - I hadn't GMed the Frostfur Captives before. I didn't have anything with me apart of diceback and Core Rulebook. Actually the reason to carry the book was less to have it around but rather to add Jason and Lisa to Eric (Dragonmeet 2009) and Josh (PaizoCon UK 2010) to sign it.
So there was a need - some players who wanted to play. I never had run a scenario cold. I don't think I felt comfortable - but Mark was left not much choice - and this was likely my sole opportunity to GM at GenCon.
10 minutes ahead of the game - and I had the scenario in my hands. I think I got up to Act 2 by the time my players showed up. Tim Hitchcock (?) offered his own personal, newly bought battle map. Thanks !!
With the first players showing up I explained the situation. Luckily a tier 1-2. Three experienced players who knew each other. 2 new players - thanks to the GM who did the mustering for my table for organizing 2 pregens for them. And one player who played his second game. I even had some spare PFS...
As one of the trio of players who knew each other at your table, it was a pleasure to have you as a judge, and you did a fine job with the module. Having played, judged, and coordinated events for organized play campaigns for over a decade now, you judged Frostfur Captives wonderfully even with having to run it cold, which is something that I've experienced from both sides of the screen in the past. We were glad to help out however we could, and had no problem with the pacing - you did a great job (in fact, better than some other judges that prepped for the convention, in my opinion).
Thanks for running the module on short notice so others could play, and I hope we gave you a good experience to remember judging at GenCon with. Kudos on the goblins overall - I know how I'll be running them if and when I get a chance to run the module myself.
- One of the Brothers, who's trying to figure out how we managed so much diplomacy...
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Here are my Pics from the Con
The PFS room, Fantasy Flight area, Ptolus books ... Dragonmoon, you sir were shadowing my every move !
;)
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Well I enjoyed gming, I actually heard some bad feed back from some players. It turned out that 2 gm's made a bet to who could finish their mod first. Speaking with the players from one of the tables, the gm in their table would move creatures around taking excessive attack of oppurtunites. At the time I could not pursue the matter I was at a table. So perhaps some sort of gm judging should be in order.
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I wonder why GM's don't give the intro boxed text out as a handout (probably in addition to reading it) at more events, especially at noisy cons. I've done it a few times, once in particular when the intro boxed text was an entire page long. I has seemed to me like the times I've done that the players were more engaged because they could look back at it during the session instead of asking, "what was the name of that guy, who has that thing...what's it called...and where are we taking it again?" The names are always the hardest part. Even in a quiet room they're hardly memorable enough (and sufficiently difficult to pronounce) that it is always a barrier to immersive play. Handing out the boxed text seems to fix that problem, and would probably save a lot of GM's voices at Gen Con.
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...once in particular when the intro boxed text was an entire page long.
I recall an RPGA mod (I think it was out of Living City) that was called Lost in Love. We referred to it as Lost in Boxed Text, because most of the document was just that. I remember the most egregious page was a column and a half of boxed text followed by GM instructions that read something like:
"[NPC Name] continues:"
... and was followed by another 3/4 column of boxed text.
I ran that one enough times that I was "off book" by the end of the Con.
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We are going to push for considerably more space next year. A lot of the problem this year had to do with figuring out the new space. I think we could run twice the number of tables next year, but that is going to take a TON of volunteer GMs.
The location was great. Across from the dealer hall and right above the auction. I think the amount of table we had this year was just about right. I didn't see any 7 player tables but I did hear about a few. Only Saturday night do I remember noise being a real problem. I'm not saying it was quiet, but I only had that one slot where I remember straining to hear the GM.
I was scheduled to run 4 and play 6. I spent almost the entire con in the PFS room. I was scheduled to run a game Saturday morning that didn't go off. Only two players at my table and three next to me. My two lucked out and played with a 5-star VC instead of rookie me. It seemed like that HQ seated everyone that wanted to play. The lines of people with generics were long, but there were many people with real tickets that did not show.
One of my big surprises was how may people were running pregens. I really didn't expect half of the players at my high level tables (You Only Die Twice and Flesh Collector) to be pregens.
Another big surprise was how much my expectations have increased, both for myself and for the GMs at the table I play at. I've had the pleasure of playing at and learning from some of the best GMs. I was disappointed in both some of the GM style I saw and some of the basic mistakes I made. I found I just don't like GM Screens. They bug me. Also it's hard to prep three different adventures well (maps, props, and double checking tactics and spells) with just five day's notice.
That leads to my last big surprise. I'm a rookie PFS GM who hasn't even earned my first star. I signed up for 4 slots, I wanted to try out GMing at GenCon and still play a lot. For my four slots I was given three different adventures to prep. For being a rookie, I was given two high level adventures. And for the record, my low level Sewers of Absalom was the table that didn't go off. I guess I expected the PFSOP staff to look at the GM pool and try to pick appropriate adventures for the GMs. This may be too much to ask. I also heard at least one 8 slot GM complain that they were running the same two adventures over and over.
I found that even with 10 slots in the PFS room, I had plenty of time in the dealer hall. I was able to quickly spend lots of $$ at the Paizo booth after my 1st slot.
A few suggestions:
- Increase the room size by a lot (like get rooms 231-236 a 50% increase) but only increase the number of tables by some (like 25%). This will spread out the tables some.
- If you double the number of tables, you will at least triple the problem of getting good GMs.
- Plan on getting the adventures out to the GM's at least a month before GenCon. Maybe then you can get them to use 10 days before the con instead of four.
- I think at the special, every player that was elected by there table as the best role player should at least get one of the PFS boon chronicles.
- GMs in the first slot of the day should be given that day's Paizo button. This did happen for me Saturday and Sunday, but I missed out on Thursday's and Friday's buttons.
One final thought. After my Saturday morning table didn't go off, I played Flesh Collectors. The GM was great and I had fun, but not as much fun if I hadn't known all the secrets since I ran it Thursday morning. I'm not good at playing an adventure after I have run it. At least not an adventure that has lots of spoilers like Flesh Collector. I spent too much time trying to figure out what I should or shouldn't say instead of just enjoying the adventure.
All in all I had a lot of fun and I'm going to try to be back next year.
-Swiftbrook
Just My Thoughts
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I also thank all those that put in time to judge and organize. I only played one slot at GenCon, but I had a great time.
I think the crowded room was a bit problematic, as was the noise.
At the risk of sharing excessive personal information, my hearing is so bad that I recently got hearing aids (and me in my thirties still!). Hearing aids these days are pretty high-tech, and mine has a "restaurant table" setting that amplifies sounds from where you're immediately facing but reduces other peripheral sounds. It's generally intended to allow participating in a conversation at a table in a crowded restaurant without being overwhelmed by amplified ambient sound. I found it worked great in the crowded PFS room at GenCon, too!
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I'm a rookie PFS GM who hasn't even earned my first star. I signed up for 4 slots, I wanted to try out GMing at GenCon and still play a lot. For my four slots I was given three different adventures to prep.
That is the rookie stream.
I had 9 slots, 7 different scenarios (2 of which I ran "cold").They softballed you, Brook.
;)
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I only ran two slots this year, both on Saturday. Saturday afternoon, the noise was bearable; however, on Saturday night, it was so loud that it did interfere with the general enjoyment of the scenario for the first hour or so. As bad as the noise was at our Saturday night table, thankfully, we were tucked in the far corner of the room at Table 45 where the sound was less intense. Had we been in the center of the room? Yikes.
I had great players at both my tables, though I do think the expectations of some players of the utility of fast stealth cries out for some clarity on the use of stealth on the podcast when under direct observation in a featureless corridor!
As for the growth of the popularity of PFS at Gencon this bit of anecdotal evidence is revealing. While PFS Society Card numbers can be misleading (the reservation of blocks of ten numbers by GMs can undermine the REAL numbers of actual players being issued a card), consider the following:
In February of 2011, new Pathfinder Society Numbers were being issued around the "24,000" block. i.e, #24114, #24115, etc. That's after 2 and a half years of Pathfinder Society Organized play.
Fast forward to the week before Gencon, and the number sequence of PFS# Society cards that are now being issued is in the "34,000" block. If the progress in numbers reflects a real progression in the number of new Society players (and I have no idea if it truly is reflective) that would indicate Paizo has added 10,000 new PFS players in the past six months.
I would be inclined to dismiss this, but given that Paizo also confirms that the sales of the Core Rulebook increased in 2011 and continues to increase month to month? These numbers might very well be true and reflect the explosive growth in the popularity of Pathfinder.
Impressive, most impressive.
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PRO's For GENCON
1. More players !!!
2. Mustering. I think it was rather smooth overall and better from earlier years.
3. Water to GM's (I love you all for the free water!)
4. Location - Next to the dealer room and next to the paizo booth.
5. Liz and Mark and the VC's kept things flowing at the front table and it seemed to work VERY well.
6. I didn't have any 7 player tables!
CON's
1. Noise was the worst ever. We had the larger room but more people ade this hard to deal with. We NEED larger rooms.
2. Pregen were too common at the high tiers. I ran 8 tables and only my slot 9 Saturday night was a table of ALL PC's (granted they had to grab pregens anyways). I ran mostly high tier material and pregens performance was so sub-par it hurt the tables. Please note it wasn't the player per say but the pregen builds. Wizard and fighter pregens was fielded the most at my tables and it hurt the overall table capabilities and high tier 2-23 shadow's last stand caused the death of many players.
3. Pregen's from Ultimate combat were a bad idea for new players. The classes are not the easiest to play and understand but as the book was newly released I wasn't an expert on the material and had to stop the game twice in 8 slots and help the player. I don't know what we can do about this one but it just an observation.
4. Schedule confusion - It seemed the last minute slot change that Liz sent out caused confusion GM wise. I missed a slot that I thought I had off. The last minute change was likely a needed thing but lat minute changes to a event like this always causes a headache for someone.
5. Lastly a big issue - My last table was a level 5-4-3-1-1-1 PC's and the class balance was rather poor. This makes my tier a 3-4 tier cut and dry.
After running this module 4 times I KNEW my level one players were going to DIE in the first encounter. (Large Air Elemental) I at that point ask my level 1 players if they wouldn't mind grabbing a level 4 pregen's and told them why.
For those who haven't played 2-23 this module can be rather rough and tiering up with level 1 is suicide. I asked the table if they are OK with this as I would award the level 1 players with only tier 1-2 gold and if the pregen died so did their PC. The who table had to agree for this or I would run as is. (They all agreed)
So right there I broke the rules. Not because I wanted to cheat but I wanted the players to have a chance to survive and have fun. The musterer tried to get me a more balanced table but the other 2-23 game was 6 level 1's and I had rest so nothing he could do.
The table ran and literally death was trying to find the party. My dice were hot and the players used their heads in creative ways. (The lady playing the rouge saved the party big time) At the end of the day 2 players were knocked out and 2 other was hurt very badly. Spell casters were exhausted of spells but the players pulled a victory! The table was at the edge the whole time and jumped for joy when I said the module was over as they were terrified of one more encounter.
I handed out the sheets and everyone went to enjoy their Saturday night.
This situation came up due to the nature of CON play and I used my powers of GM to try to make the table fun and in the spirit of PFS play. I had to bend the rules greatly to do so and I would do it again if needed because I believe the it should be fun to play. Do not get me wrong as I don't mind killing PC's. My GM style is to open roll all dice so players can see what happens. I killed quite a few PC's this year at GENCON. But killing players who have no chance isn't fun to me. So I had to give them something quickly (PreGens) to help getting the footing equal.
So what does the community at large think of how I handled this?
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CON's
5. Lastly a big issue - My last table was a level 5-4-3-1-1-1 PC's and the class balance was rather poor. This makes my tier a 3-4 tier cut and dry.
After running this module 4 times I KNEW my level one players were going to DIE in the first encounter. (Large Air Elemental) I at that point ask my level 1 players if they wouldn't mind grabbing a level 4 pregen's and told them why.
if you have this problem , half the table needs Pregens. Either half get 1st or 4ths.
Glad you had a good time, were all looking to improve the experience..
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RPG Superstar 2010 Top 16
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After running this module 4 times I KNEW my level one players were going to DIE in the first encounter. (Large Air Elemental) I at that point ask my level 1 players if they wouldn't mind grabbing a level 4 pregen's and told them why.
For those who haven't played 2-23 this module can be rather rough and tiering up with level 1 is suicide. I asked the table if they are OK with this as I would award the level 1 players with only tier 1-2 gold and if the pregen died so did their PC. The who table had to agree for this or I would run as is. (They all agreed)
So right there I broke the rules. Not because I wanted to cheat but I wanted the players to have a chance to survive and have fun.
I think you made a good choice, Darius. If it were me, I would have awarded the entire party the higher-tier awards (I try to make sure that rewards are commensuate with risk.) But that's second-guessing a small point in a large rules-bend.
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Please remember that some GMs run a lot of slots for hotel reimbursement. They couldn't afford the con otherwise.
This is perfectly acceptable...in fact, it's a great bonus that Paizo offers. What is not acceptable is allowing a GM to run games at GenCon when they don't even have a PFS number.
This has also happened to me, but now I bring a cattle prod with me to games. Odd how, after only a single zap, everyone gives me their undivided attention.
It's true, I have the marks to prove it....and Cape Girardeau as a whole will never be the same.....
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I thoroughly enjoyed the PFS@GenCon experience! The room was noisy and crowded, but less noisy and less crowded, IMHO, than last year despite increase in people, so trend there is good. The labeled muster points in the room were also a noticed improvement in the process. (I'd recommend naming them Aboleth, Bugbear, Carrion Crawler, etc since "Bee" can sound a lot like "Dee" over a loudspeaker...)
GM's, staff and fellow players were all great as usual. PFS was once again the highlight of GenCon. My son and I are already looking forward to next year!
Thanks to all of you who made it happen!
Tom
This was my first GenCon as well as my first foray into PFS GM'ing. I had planned well in advance to attend GenCon this year, and when I saw the initial call for PFS GMs, I leaped at the opportunity to run 8 slots. I have played (and GM'ed) PF for a while so it wasn't that much of a leap for me.
I can certainly echo some of the issues already raised, the noise level, partially losing my voice by Saturday morning. But all in all I had a great time not only meeting the Paizo staff and PFS players, but getting to interact in person with a lot of the people I see day in and day out on these boards.
I ran 4 different mods (including the special) and thought that worked out pretty well for me. Out of 8 tables ran, I can think of only 1 or 2 slightly difficult players, and even then, everyone seemed to enjoy themselves. I had one table of 7 (the Special) and it didn't cause any real issue.
Above all else this experience at GenCon has given me a much larger appreciation of the PFS players, GMs, and Paizo staff that help design and organize. I'm looking forward to being a lot more involved in my local PFS community as both a player and GM, maybe hit a few more cons in my general vicinity and then be right back next year as a volunteer for PFS.
Thanks again to all the VCs who answered my questions, and Paizo staff who made my life a bit easier!!
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I had a great time playing PFS at Gen Con this year!
A good portion of our modest little lodge managed to make it to Indy for the convention, though we all rarely managed to play together. In fact, I only made it into a handful of delves myself. We loved the boons, and the excitement of hoping our keys opened the chest. My favorite delve run was actually the first one we managed to get to - I ran a ninja. Origami caltrops!