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My wife smuggled not one, not two, but THREE growlers full of the Ram's fines brew into the event. Add that to the scotch our Calistran Cleric brought and it was a great time to be had!
I had a similar experience.
Me: Did you bring Margaritas with you?
Them: "Why yes we did". *Looking slyly around * "And we brought you a glass."
I wish I had written down that recipe too.
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While I'm probably in the minority here, I would rather see multiple rooms than one larger one, even for the Special.
I think the noise and space requirements would be much more easily controlled in smaller rooms. And, as fun as it was to have 51 tables playing the same game this year, having a couple of rooms running with different Overseers would greatly aid in everyone being able to hear and understand what is going on.
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For next year, I've been thinking about a really weird, lo-tech system of speaking tubes built out of PVP.!Sorry,Tim. PvP isn't allowed in Pathfinder Society.
Oh, wait. I'm being told ...
Um, never mind.
Tell's you where my head's at huh? That should be PVC.
(except that I'm re-skinning it as a PVP- Pernicious Varisian Pig)|
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While I'm probably in the minority here, I would rather see multiple rooms than one larger one, even for the Special.
I think the noise and space requirements would be much more easily controlled in smaller rooms. And, as fun as it was to have 51 tables playing the same game this year, having a couple of rooms running with different Overseers would greatly aid in everyone being able to hear and understand what is going on.
I'm actually in favor of the concept of multiple rooms as well- sound wise and intimacy wise.
However (having attempted multiple room events in the past) its an organizational nightmare for the people at HQ and you need a much bigger staff (one for each room).
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While I'm probably in the minority here, I would rather see multiple rooms than one larger one, even for the Special.
I think the noise and space requirements would be much more easily controlled in smaller rooms. And, as fun as it was to have 51 tables playing the same game this year, having a couple of rooms running with different Overseers would greatly aid in everyone being able to hear and understand what is going on.
I'm actually in favor of the concept of multiple rooms as well- sound wise and intimacy wise.
However (having attempted multiple room events in the past) its an organizational nightmare for the people at HQ and you need a much bigger staff (one for each room).
I agree that it requires a bigger staff; I was one of the Room Captains a couple of years ago when we had the 3 rooms of PFS (09?). And it presents different organizational challenges: do you put the same scenario in a room (easier to organize, less good for table separation), or do you divide scenarios among the rooms (a pain to muster)??
That said, I think we all know that more HQ staff are needed regardless, as well as more GMs, if we are seriously looking at a significant increase in tables.
Edit: BTW, I nominate Mike Griffin-Wade, with his FM Radio voice, as an appropriate alternate Overseer :)
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While I'm probably in the minority here, I would rather see multiple rooms than one larger one, even for the Special.
I think the noise and space requirements would be much more easily controlled in smaller rooms. And, as fun as it was to have 51 tables playing the same game this year, having a couple of rooms running with different Overseers would greatly aid in everyone being able to hear and understand what is going on.
I'm actually in favor of the concept of multiple rooms as well- sound wise and intimacy wise.
However (having attempted multiple room events in the past) its an organizational nightmare for the people at HQ and you need a much bigger staff (one for each room).
I agree that it requires a bigger staff; I was one of the Room Captains a couple of years ago when we had the 3 rooms of PFS (09?). And it presents different organizational challenges: do you put the same scenario in a room (easier to organize, less good for table separation), or do you divide scenarios among the rooms (a pain to muster)??
That said, I think we all know that more HQ staff are needed regardless, as well as more GMs, if we are seriously looking at a significant increase in tables.
Edit: BTW, I nominate Mike Griffin-Wade, with his FM Radio voice, as an appropriate alternate Overseer :)
And now you know why I go by the alias of Herald.
By the way I'm available for birthdays, weddings and bar mitzvahs, conventions....
My wife smuggled not one, not two, but THREE growlers full of the Ram's fines brew into the event. Add that to the scotch our Calistran Cleric brought and it was a great time to be had!
And there is my suggestion to improve the PFS GenCon experience: more RAM brews!
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If the convention center allows it, I would vote for partially sectioning the rooms off during regular play and then opening them up for the Special. I know there's a worry about headache for the HQ table, but it might actually relieve the stress, as I know there were a lot of musterers who kept coming up (I was one of them) when HQ wasn't quite ready to let generics in. Sectioning would probably help keep the musterers in their own little area until they're called on by the high and mighty folks at HQ.
That aside, I'm also down with Tim's crazy idea of making some form of PVC tubing apparatus. Perhaps each player has one tube over their ear and one over their mouth, and it connects everyone together so they can hear and talk, but just among the group?
Ok... maybe I shouldn't encourage Tim!
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If the convention center allows it, I would vote for partially sectioning the rooms off during regular play and then opening them up for the Special. I know there's a worry about headache for the HQ table, but it might actually relieve the stress, as I know there were a lot of musterers who kept coming up (I was one of them) when HQ wasn't quite ready to let generics in. Sectioning would probably help keep the musterers in their own little area until they're called on by the high and mighty folks at HQ.
That aside, I'm also down with Tim's crazy idea of making some form of PVC tubing apparatus. Perhaps each player has one tube over their ear and one over their mouth, and it connects everyone together so they can hear and talk, but just among the group?
Ok... maybe I shouldn't encourage Tim!
That's exactly what I was thinking!!! I need to seriously put a design team on it.
When school starts, that'll be a design project for my students... Build a device that allows for closed conversatio... oh wait. I don't really want my students getting their hands on a "whisper behind the teacher's back" machine...Anyway, I'm going to build one.
That said, I'm all for partitions. If we could get a room with sliding wall partitions, that'd be pretty cool.
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I was thinking about this some more.
with a few used phones, a few wires, a 300v resistor and a 9 volt battery, you get a pretty good closed intercom system.
cone of silence should do the trick... oh wait... never mind...
I would think the easiest and cheapest sound dampening system would be cloth. Some simple stands with cloth strung between them could partition sections of the hall, to reduce noise levels. It is not hung on the walls, so allowed, not hung from the ceiling so cheap. It can be erected and removed rather easily as needed for announcements and traffic flow. In fact it could be used to make it easier to find your table. Red cloth surrounds the red tables, Blue cloth for blue tables, etc. So go to Red 5, and you go to Blue 2, you... we don't like your kind, no droids allowed (iPhones are okay... sorry couldn't resist) lol
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I was thinking about this some more.
with a few used phones, a few wires, a 300v resistor and a 9 volt battery, you get a pretty good closed intercom system.
How about a drive-in movie speaker system?
"let's all go to the lobby, let's all go to the lobby, Let's all go to the lobby and get ourselves a crit!"
"Yes folks the PFS smack bar has all the things your looking for, Tiefling and Assimar boons, Eastern Weapon boons, if your looking for the think that makes your PFS game pop, we've got it."
"let's all go to the lobby, let's all go to the lobby, Let's all go to the lobby and get ourselves a crit!"
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I was thinking about this some more.
with a few used phones, a few wires, a 300v resistor and a 9 volt battery, you get a pretty good closed intercom system.
How about a drive-in movie speaker system?
"let's all go to the lobby, let's all go to the lobby, Let's all go to the lobby and get ourselves a crit!"
"Yes folks the PFS smack bar has all the things your looking for, Tiefling and Assimar boons, Eastern Weapon boons, if your looking for the think that makes your PFS game pop, we've got it."
"let's all go to the lobby, let's all go to the lobby, Let's all go to the lobby and get ourselves a crit!"
That'd work for the special!
I'm still working on a low fi solution for at the table though.Oh and +1 to Krome's suggestion for free standing baffling. It works pretty well, the color coordination is pretty cool too!
Basically, any partitioning helps.
Unfortunately, you run into problems here with fire code violation.
That's a lot of what the money is about fro suspending things (especially blankest and stuff)
There are tons of weird safety things that go on in what is essentially rented space.
I mean, ya'll think I'm joking about a low fi system (preferably with sans-electronic components), but I'm officially hell bent on figuring something out. There is no reason anyone should lose their voice at a Con. There has to be a simple solution.
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I mean, ya'll think I'm joking about a low fi system (preferably with sans-electronic components), but I'm officially hell bent on figuring something out. There is no reason anyone should lose their voice at a Con. There has to be a simple solution.
There's always cups and string, the original pseudo-telephone.
My dad has a not-so-low-tech solution, which is several necklace microphones, and a receiver that connects to his hearing aide. Only works one way, though, but it makes restaurant trips with him, and being able to include him in conversations there, possible.
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Didn't they do that on Get Smart?
That aside, I'm also down with Tim's crazy idea of making some form of PVC tubing apparatus. Perhaps each player has one tube over their ear and one over their mouth, and it connects everyone together so they can hear and talk, but just among the group?
lol yeah it was called the cone of silence lol
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We could just start collecting cardboard to duct tape on the back of everyone's chairs.
What we need is about 13k squares of acoustic foam, and something to mount them on. With that, you could build 3-sided foam-lined cubes 6 ft tall and 16 feet on a side. Put one table in each. It'd be a little crowded but that should be enough foam to build them for 45 tables.
The acoustic foam, at $8.40 a piece in bulk, comes about to about $108k, but if you build the mounting frames right it should be reusable for at least a couple of years...
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We could just start collecting cardboard to duct tape on the back of everyone's chairs.What we need is about 13k squares of acoustic foam, and something to mount them on. With that, you could build 3-sided foam-lined cubes 6 ft tall and 16 feet on a side. Put one table in each. It'd be a little crowded but that should be enough foam to build them for 45 tables.
The acoustic foam, at $8.40 a piece in bulk, comes about to about $108k, but if you build the mounting frames right it should be reusable for at least a couple of years...
But they have to factor in the cost of transporting all that foam. It seems more feasible to send the Venture Captains dumpster diving for cardboard and send the volunteers out for duct tape.
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But they have to factor in the cost of transporting all that foam. It seems more feasible to send the Venture Captains dumpster diving for cardboard and send the volunteers out for duct tape.We could just start collecting cardboard to duct tape on the back of everyone's chairs.What we need is about 13k squares of acoustic foam, and something to mount them on. With that, you could build 3-sided foam-lined cubes 6 ft tall and 16 feet on a side. Put one table in each. It'd be a little crowded but that should be enough foam to build them for 45 tables.
The acoustic foam, at $8.40 a piece in bulk, comes about to about $108k, but if you build the mounting frames right it should be reusable for at least a couple of years...
I don't like your idea Mr. Todd Morgan. No sir, not one bit. ;p
RPG Superstar 2010 Top 16
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I seriously considered bringing my own Japanese folding screens to GenCon. I was dissuaded when I realized that the room was going to be not only noisy, but crowded.
One thing I want to keep in mind through all of this: it was a blast seeing the room so fun, and so energized. If we spread out, or have some way to block off parts of the room, the level of fun in the room will probably go down, too.
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But, for the second year in a row, we got sat with a GM who had not prepared the special. Last year, there really was no excuse. This year, our GM was a last minute volunteer who did a VERY good job considering the time he was given to prep and the wacky table he had to run.
Were you at my table? Tier 11, with five players from a gaming group and a sixth player on his own?
The rub of every GM being prepared is that there will definitely be more players that want to play than are registered, and the more GMs they schedule, the more likely they need last minute replacement. The ideal would be that the last minute GMs are paired up with the unregistered players, but I can't imagine how much complication that makes orchastrating an event that is already bafflng in scope.
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But, for the second year in a row, we got sat with a GM who had not prepared the special. Last year, there really was no excuse. This year, our GM was a last minute volunteer who did a VERY good job considering the time he was given to prep and the wacky table he had to run.
Were you at my table? Tier 11, with five players from a gaming group and a sixth player on his own?
The rub of every GM being prepared is that there will definitely be more players that want to play than are registered, and the more GMs they schedule, the more likely they need last minute replacement. The ideal would be that the last minute GMs are paired up with the unregistered players, but I can't imagine how much complication that makes orchastrating an event that is already bafflng in scope.
That's it. In order to fix this problem, I'll just GM every table for the Special.
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But, for the second year in a row, we got sat with a GM who had not prepared the special. Last year, there really was no excuse. This year, our GM was a last minute volunteer who did a VERY good job considering the time he was given to prep and the wacky table he had to run.
For all I know you might've been at my table... If you were thank you and I'm sorry! We were in the front of the generic line hoping to get in to play the special. I knew I should've read the module beforehand and prepped it... But I really had wanted to get a good experience without knowing what was going to happen! All things considered I hope I did a decent job while only having read 1/6 sections before we started...
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For all I know you might've been at my table... If you were thank you and I'm sorry! We were in the front of the generic line hoping to get in to play the special. I knew I should've read the module beforehand and prepped it... But I really had wanted to get a good experience without knowing what was going to happen! All things considered I hope I did a decent job while only having read 1/6 sections before we started...
I know at least 3 of the people at your table were my locals. The summoner is pretty sure you had it in for him...
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For all I know you might've been at my table... If you were thank you and I'm sorry! We were in the front of the generic line hoping to get in to play the special. I knew I should've read the module beforehand and prepped it... But I really had wanted to get a good experience without knowing what was going to happen! All things considered I hope I did a decent job while only having read 1/6 sections before we started...I know at least 3 of the people at your table were my locals. The summoner is pretty sure you had it in for him...
All Kyle's hate Summoners. ;-)
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For all I know you might've been at my table... If you were thank you and I'm sorry! We were in the front of the generic line hoping to get in to play the special. I knew I should've read the module beforehand and prepped it... But I really had wanted to get a good experience without knowing what was going to happen! All things considered I hope I did a decent job while only having read 1/6 sections before we started...I know at least 3 of the people at your table were my locals. The summoner is pretty sure you had it in for him...
I do remember targeting that summoner quite a bit... He did tend to be up front slot though. I hope he ended up having fun though. If not I owe him another game!
We could just start collecting cardboard to duct tape on the back of everyone's chairs.What we need is about 13k squares of acoustic foam, and something to mount them on. With that, you could build 3-sided foam-lined cubes 6 ft tall and 16 feet on a side. Put one table in each. It'd be a little crowded but that should be enough foam to build them for 45 tables.
The acoustic foam, at $8.40 a piece in bulk, comes about to about $108k, but if you build the mounting frames right it should be reusable for at least a couple of years...
I have a strong suspicion the convention center management would be on Paizo's case faster than you could say "fire hazard".
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Someone mentioned earlier in the thread about how True Dungeon handles it's noise issues- I am not totally sure, as I work as a DM and not as a grip behind the scenes, but I have seen large sections of cloth strung up to help break up sound between rooms. To be honest, controlling "sound spill-over" is one of the big struggles every year when putting on that event.
Speaking of TD, it made me think of the possibility of using the Marriott (which has many smaller conference rooms) as a possible location for PFS Organized Play. There are multiple other locations near the convention center that may be usable for alternates for muster/play areas. How much say does Paizo get in where they want to have the PFS events hosted?
But even when GenCon was in Milwaukee, and there were curtains seperating each long table in the roleplaying areas, it could still get quite loud.
As a DM for TD, my advise to those who are running multiple slots throughout the convention for PFS is to keep some cough drops with you... for some reason, it really does work to sooth your throat and save your voice (at least for me, it does).
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As a DM for TD, my advise to those who are running multiple slots throughout the convention for PFS is to keep some cough drops with you... for some reason, it really does work to sooth your throat and save your voice (at least for me, it does).
Or maybe its all that whiskey...and Jack you drink! ;-)
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Duhtroll,
I'm sure that hall mustering is being considered. PFS did it in the past, and it may be necessary if we're in multiple rooms.
Unfortunately, I'm skeptical about the self-policing on Generics. A group of 4 will show up with their 2 friends who couldn't pre-register...
I thought they did very well on squelching 7-player tables this year. I think I had more than most GMs, and I ran 3 (out of 9 slots). 1 was the Special. 1 was a mysterious case of there being people with real tickets being unable to find spaces at tables (see Generics, above). And 1 was a case of a Musterer mustering himself out of a game.
Sorry if it seems like I'm picking your post apart. I actually think it raises several good points.