Gen Con 2013 reaction and suggestion


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Enjoyed my PFS experience at Gencon this year....

Minor suggestion.... Write the level range of a given scenerio on the boards outside. Random people with Generics who wanted to play had trouble finding a game in their level range. This includes me. Just come simple like "G01 Against the Giants (lvl 3-7)" would of been real helpful.

Bonekeep was real confusing in this area. I heard several people frustrated as they thought "Bonekeep 1" meant lvl 1 Characters.

I would suggest suspending the PFS GM rules at Gencon in terms of rewards/xp. I have not volunteered to run at Gencon as I don't want to invest the time to really prep for multiple different adventures. If you gave me one or two to run multiple times I would do that if the rewards were extended. Although it did not seem like you were short GM's in most cases.

I beleive this would gove a much better experience for the players. Maybe open that up on a voluntary basis?

Maybe open the GM options up to a volunteer basis for people who want to run low level/beginner adventures for new players? I knwo I would be happy to do that. I want people to like PF and keep playing so I try and help/encourage new people as much as possible.

I would suggest more lower level games. I played all my games in the 1-5 range and there were always people looking.

Liberty's Edge 4/5 5/55/5 **

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On the shirts and not being able to distinguish musters from everyone else. One thing that might have helped was to have all those musteres who had their own volunteer shirts from another con actually wear the purple one like they were supposed too.

Another thing I would love to see is to keep the purple shirts for the HQ/musters only and get a different shirt with a different color for the GMs that says they are PFS GMs on the back. Those purple shirts are horrendous ;).

Shadow Lodge 4/5 5/55/55/55/5 **** Venture-Captain, California—San Francisco Bay Area North & East

Andrew Christian wrote:
Bruce Higa wrote:

I thought that this is the best organized GenCon that I've been to. While I was only on the receiving end of the mustering, it seemed to have gone off extremely well. Most of my tables were seated within 10 minutes after the hour. Runners distributing water is a hold over from last year, but I still appreciate the effort that the staff has gone to make sure that the volunteers are being properly cared for. I do have a couple of thoughts to make next year's GenCon even better:

GM check-in:
Next year could we possibly have 3 or 4 lines (preferably sorted by last name,) and have pre-made swag bags attached to the badges, so that we don't have to check in, then go to a line to get your swag, and another line to get you GM boon?

Special GenCon Chronicles:
Since GenCon is such a premier event it seems that we should be able to make the chronicles a bit more special (watermark, boarders, etc.)
If we can't do this for every scenario, could it be done for the specials?

I printed my own chronicles Bruce on a nice scroll looking letterhead. Yeah, cost me about $15 to do so, plus the cost of the ink to print.

But I wanted to do something special for the players at my tables.

Were you the judge I had for secrets stones keep on friday morning? I got a fancy chronicle but can't read the handwriting.


Pathfinder Maps Subscriber

I want to Nth the "need more tier 1-5". While I have played PFS not in a convention setting, I do primarily play at GenCon. This means I have a 3rd level character, a 2nd level character and I've played the first level pregen Gunslinger (once).

As for generic tickets, I wouldn't have even tried to get into the special with one. I was fortunate enough to purchase a real ticket for it at the con, despite the web app claiming it was sold out. However, for one of the afternoon slots, I went to the ticket purchase counter with an event number and an alternative, but both were sold out. Without the time to spend hunting in the program for a third alternative, I just bought generics and told the helpful marshaller (who was probably helpful because I waited patiently) that I would play in any available scenario that could accept a 2nd level monk. The table I was seated at almost fell apart when some of the players discovered that they'd already played that one before, but a quick substitution with a couple of other generic ticket holders solved that.

I don't mind attempting to marshal myself into a group for the regular sessions, but in the zoo that was the start of the special I just couldn't move around enough nor read the quickly handmade signs people were holding up. And who advertises for a support bard anyway ? Maybe they were using Jedi mind tricks on me ("You're not the party member we're looking for, go about your business.") It all worked out in the end. And the party I ended up with got to find out how the flag-bearer feat doesn't have a "rounds per day" limit.

Liberty's Edge 5/5

thistledown wrote:
Andrew Christian wrote:
Bruce Higa wrote:

I thought that this is the best organized GenCon that I've been to. While I was only on the receiving end of the mustering, it seemed to have gone off extremely well. Most of my tables were seated within 10 minutes after the hour. Runners distributing water is a hold over from last year, but I still appreciate the effort that the staff has gone to make sure that the volunteers are being properly cared for. I do have a couple of thoughts to make next year's GenCon even better:

GM check-in:
Next year could we possibly have 3 or 4 lines (preferably sorted by last name,) and have pre-made swag bags attached to the badges, so that we don't have to check in, then go to a line to get your swag, and another line to get you GM boon?

Special GenCon Chronicles:
Since GenCon is such a premier event it seems that we should be able to make the chronicles a bit more special (watermark, boarders, etc.)
If we can't do this for every scenario, could it be done for the specials?

I printed my own chronicles Bruce on a nice scroll looking letterhead. Yeah, cost me about $15 to do so, plus the cost of the ink to print.

But I wanted to do something special for the players at my tables.

Were you the judge I had for secrets stones keep on friday morning? I got a fancy chronicle but can't read the handwriting.

If it looked like a scroll and I used metallic ink, and the signature looks like a demented smiley face, that was me.

Sovereign Court 5/5 5/5 RPG Superstar 2010 Top 16, 2011 Top 32

Jonathan Cary wrote:
I hear cough drops are good for helping with that. Logistically we can't really provide hot drinks. Honestly, Paizo's already being extremely generous to provide all that water -- other conventions and companies don't even do that.

Good idea! Next year, if I'm fortunate enough to be allowed to GM again, I will definitely have an ample supply.

Grand Lodge 4/5

Scrogz wrote:

Enjoyed my PFS experience at Gencon this year....

Minor suggestion.... Write the level range of a given scenerio on the boards outside. Random people with Generics who wanted to play had trouble finding a game in their level range. This includes me. Just come simple like "G01 Against the Giants (lvl 3-7)" would of been real helpful.

Noted and we'll have to remember to get it set up properly next year. If you guys hadn't noticed, I'm all about getting as much information to the players as possible. Self-service options for players means that we can do more with fewer people at HQ, which gets back into the mustering your own table of 6 players discussion.

Scrogz wrote:


I would suggest suspending the PFS GM rules at Gencon in terms of rewards/xp.

Honestly, I don't see that happening. It would create to much confusion during in record-keeping to have different campaign rules for one event. We'll stick with the standard campaign rules for GMs and players at Gen Con.

Scrogz wrote:
I would suggest more lower level games. I played all my games in the 1-5 range and there were always people looking.

That's definitely the plan. We'll also have fewer scenarios overall next year so there should be less confusion about what to play.

Grand Lodge 4/5

Dragnmoon wrote:

On the shirts and not being able to distinguish musters from everyone else. One thing that might have helped was to have all those musteres who had their own volunteer shirts from another con actually wear the purple one like they were supposed too.

Another thing I would love to see is to keep the purple shirts for the HQ/musters only and get a different shirt with a different color for the GMs that says they are PFS GMs on the back. Those purple shirts are horrendous ;).

I like the purple, but other than that I agree that we need different shirts for HQ, Marshals, and GMs.

Maybe we can get stoles for the HQ staff. Gold for Mike, silver for me and Wes, and copper for everyone else...

Then, instead of dunce caps for the Marshals, we can put them in miters!

Silver Crusade 1/5 RPG Superstar 2014 Top 16

Jonathan Cary wrote:
Dragnmoon wrote:

On the shirts and not being able to distinguish musters from everyone else. One thing that might have helped was to have all those musteres who had their own volunteer shirts from another con actually wear the purple one like they were supposed too.

Another thing I would love to see is to keep the purple shirts for the HQ/musters only and get a different shirt with a different color for the GMs that says they are PFS GMs on the back. Those purple shirts are horrendous ;).

I like the purple, but other than that I agree that we need different shirts for HQ, Marshals, and GMs.

Maybe we can get stoles for the HQ staff. Gold for Mike, silver for me and Wes, and copper for everyone else...

Then, instead of dunce caps for the Marshals, we can put them in miters!

Perhaps a nice tabard?

Liberty's Edge 5/5

Jonathan Cary wrote:
Jester Deren wrote:
I overheard from someone that the HQ staff didnt get tokens or boons for helping out. If this is true, could we maybe look into fixing that? While not running scenarios they are filling in important roles for this entire thing to move much smoother.

I've addressed your other points in previous posts, so I'll stick to this one. We did, indeed, forget to give out tokens or boons to the HQ staff. This was an oversight and not a policy issue. HQ staff are entitled to the same rewards as GMs of the same tier, including the GM boon. Honestly, I would have forgotten my GM boon if Wes hadn't grabbed one for me.

We (mostly Wes) are in the process of reaching out to our excellent staff members and getting them some boons, so that problem should be rectified soon.

As far as I know, I've emailed all the full time HQ volunteers about this. If you worked HQ part time and haven't received an email, drop me a line off the boards please and I'll get you squared away. My email is wes<at>netspeed.com.au

Liberty's Edge 5/5

Jonathan Cary wrote:
Fromper wrote:
3. What does Jon Cary look like? I was actually sent to see him about something at one point, but I had no idea who he was, so I ended up wandering aimlessly for over 5 minutes. I eventually went back to the HQ table in frustration and luckily ran into him, nowhere near where I'd been told he was. I even asked some of the other table GMs if they could point him out to me, and they had no idea who he was. If there's a single point of contact for important stuff, then being able to find him needs to be much easier than it was. I would have been fine with being told to wait up by HQ until he got back, or someone else showed up who could help with my problem, but being sent to go find someone in the crowd without knowing what he looks like is kinda silly.
Maybe I'll wear the big yellow dunce cap next year...

We need two of them. As long as we ban Kyle Elliott's camera from the room

Liberty's Edge 5/5

Jonathan Cary wrote:
evilaustintom wrote:
4. IDing Important People - I noticed at least one person saying they didn't know who Jon Cary was (or another important person at HQ). This one may not be a big deal. Would it be worth including his picture in the one-page handout for volunteers? Would Jon or Wes want their profiles floating around like that? Perhaps not...but it's worth considering. I will warn you - I might consider cutting out Jon's picture, and making a new Pathfinder character out of it. <grin> "Time for a new table tent!"

Other suggestions I've addressed, won't repeat myself. In answer to this one:

No! Bad Tom! Go TPK someone to get your aggression out!

I'm so ugly I tend to crack camera lenses.

Liberty's Edge 5/5

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Generally speaking I would prefer to have root canal without anaesthetic than post on the boards. But, I can’t leave Jon to field all the questions/comments alone, so here goes. All in one long post cos that’s how I roll.

So, marshalling had a few issues this year. And those issues were 100% down to me, not the marshals.
I wrote the marshalling instructions, and kept them to one page. For most slots I had a group of folks from South Carolina doing the job, and as they do it for their own cons I figured they didn’t need a blow by blow description. I assumed they were all Pathfinder savvy, and did not check with their leader whether that was the case. That’s totally on me – nobody else. Lesson learned.
That said, the SCARAB folk were fast learners and did an outstanding job seating between 800 and 1000 people per slot. They have my undying gratitude for doing what is essentially a thankless task. For the marshals who came from the ranks of the PFS GM base, you have my undying gratitude for doing your job without complaint, and for helping smooth things over where it was needed. I’m more than happy to have every one of them back next year if they want to subject themselves to the chaos

One issue was the proximity of the banners. That’s down to the convention center. They did not set up as we asked them to. I won’t post what they told Mike Brock when he asked them to move a couple of banners. Suffice to say they weren’t into customer service. For next year, my plan is to make sure at least one of Mike, Jon, or myself are present when the banners get hung. With some more space and some insistence on getting them hung right this problem should go away

Finding your marshal. Generally speaking, the person with the clipboard was who you needed to find. In the mob surrounding the marshals, that could be difficult at times. Mike, Jon, and myself are looking at options to fix that. There have been some excellent suggestions on this thread, and while we won’t be able to take them all onboard we will certainly look at them and go for what we think will work best

Marshals’ job. It is NOT the marshals job to put players into groups of six. While they can assist with this for new players, their primary role is to get tables of six players sent to a table where a GM is waiting. There were poster boards around the ballroom explaining how to self muster into groups. Those people who read the boards and did a bit of self help got seated quickly and efficiently. The boards were the same size as the iconic boards in the hallway. If people couldn’t see these boards, I’m not sure what more we could have done other than flashing neon signs.

The marshalling boards in the hall. These boards were designed for slots 1 to 10, with a reasonable number of events on them. We had 63 different events, and it was not possible to list them against the respective slots. For next year, we should have a smaller number of events and the marshalling boards can be used as they were designed to be used.

Marshalling in the hallways. Yes, we wanted to do that. Gen Con would not allow us to do it. Not sure if we can work on that for next year. We will try again but if Gen Con dig in there’s not much we can about it

Seating generic ticket holders. Unless we use more volunteers to check tickets while the marshals are doing their thing, there’s no easy way to prevent generic ticket holders from slipping through sometimes. Using more volunteers takes them away from other roles, like GMing. It’s something we can look at, but unless someone wants to post a resource light solution we’re going to have to live with this.

Back to the original point. All the marshals were out-freaking-standing. If you want to criticise someone for the bits that you weren’t satisfied with, pick me. If you want to raise specific issues, my email address is wes<at>netspeed.com.au and I will respond to all emails that aren’t abusive. Maybe not right away, but I will respond.

Liberty's Edge 3/5

Jonathan Cary wrote:
S. Werner wrote:
The emphasis on seating 6 person tables before anyone else was a bit of a problem. I was with 4 other friends for 2 of the specials and we found it a frustrating having to hunt down that last person. There was also one occasion where 5 of us (who all showed up individually) with actual tickets waited around while other mustered groups of 6 were seated, only to be told that there were no tables left. Part of this was on the person doing the mustering as she apparently didn't check to make sure that the 6 person tables she seated didn't have generics mixed in, but I think the emphasis to get full tables seated first didn't help. As far as I know all of us did end up in a game.

I've waxed poetic elsewhere about the challenges of mustering less than full tables in the time we have available. At some point it has to become the player's responsibility to find a table. To your point, if there were 5 of you standing around with real tickets, why didn't you form up a table with 1 generic and get seated?

If the Marshal was seating generics before slot time, then there's a communication issue we'll have to stress more heavily next year. If they were seating full tables with a mix of reals and generics after slot start time, then they were following procedure. After slot start time, we prioritized tables with the highest number of real tickets in an effort to seat all the real ticket holders.

The tables that were seated first were groups that had 4+ players and were sort of taking their pick of the litter to fill out their group. To be honest it kind of felt like P.E. from my school days all over again. Players would filter in and get picked off, while some of us who didn't put ourselves out there as aggressively waited for others to join (and yes, we have no one to blame but ourselves for that).

We did eventually all get together to form a table, but after being sent to two different tables that were already full, we were told that there were no more tables for that scenario. After that we ended up getting broken up and sent to fill in tables here and there that our characters could play.

Our musterer did her very best to accommodate all of us. She was kind and patient and very, very tired. A mistake was made somewhere but she made sure everyone got into a game. Everything worked out in the end but I wanted to make sure I let you know about our little hiccup.

Grand Lodge 4/5

S. Werner wrote:
The tables that were seated first were groups that had 4+ players and were sort of taking their pick of the litter to fill out their group. To be honest it kind of felt like P.E. from my school days all over again. Players would filter in and get picked off, while some of us who didn't put ourselves out there as aggressively waited for others to join (and yes, we have no one to blame but ourselves for that).

I'll admit it's something of an acquired skill. The first few times I went through the process as a player I was a bit lost, but eventually you learn how to handle it. Experienced players (not characters) will be looking to put together balanced parties with other players that they know from experience or reputation. You can't stop that, and honestly the marshals are not there to police these things -- as Wes said, they're there to get tables of six players sat down with a GM as quickly as possible.

S. Werner wrote:
We did eventually all get together to form a table, but after being sent to two different tables that were already full, we were told that there were no more tables for that scenario. After that we ended up getting broken up and sent to fill in tables here and there that our characters could play.

That seems to indicate a problem with the table assignments. I know that on Sunday there was at least one overlap of tables assigned to marshals. We'll do a better job of allocating tables to marshals next year ahead of time to minimize the probability this sort of thing will happen. One of the key bits to doing that is to have overflow GMs clearly marked for each slot.

A key to that is minimizing the number of last-minute cancelations of GMs. We had several Tier 1 GMs cancel in the 4 days before the Con. Needless to say, it's a hard scramble to fill those slots at that point and it seriously messes with our planning and data. There's some things we can do in terms of data management to make ourselves more flexible in the last few days before the convention hits, so I'll be working on that for next year along with everything else.

1/5 **

I didn't go to GenCon this year, but have been several times before, and I much prefer running the same scenario repeatedly. I'm better prepared, and by the later slots, better practiced. I think it leads to the best possible player experience. YMMV.

Dark Archive 4/5

To be honest, for those people saying that it's too time consuming for a Marshall to check ticket's. It really isn't. Just self muster into six, send one person up with everyone's ticket, and go forward.

What it sounds like was happening, was that over the course of the Con the marshall's tired out, and that caused some crash and burns.

Now, I'm going to steal what the guy who taught me how to Marshall for the RPGA for what used to be their big three would do.

Jay Babcock, and Annie Erbacher did, was as Head Marshall's knowing their Marshalling staff would be at HQ, twenty-five to thirty minutes ahead of time, they would take orders for food, and drink so that you didnt have marshalls tiring themselves out by not eating / drinking.

Just an idea, as Jay is one of the best organized people I know, and if you rub his head the right way, you can, well - see into the future. Anyway!

Access was a paramount thing, you need to have space to get to the doors, because if anyone had been serious about their disabilities, and willing to complain about them, having wheel chair access to only the main hall way would be a hazard. So next year would be advised to clear out at least to the side doors near the paint and takes.

Anyway, great con, great people. Nani Pratt seemed to be an awesome GM even though she didnt kill my crew in the Waking Rune. Ben was awesome, and then terrified of my guys fire power for Bonekeep, and than I am sad to say the VC who ran me for the special, who was a fantastic judge, who gave me perhaps one of the very best tables I have ever had deserves a sixth star for the sheer cloak of awesome he wore about himself. Im just sorry I forgot your name good sir!

Grand Lodge 4/5

bugleyman wrote:
I didn't go to GenCon this year, but have been several times before, and I much prefer running the same scenario repeatedly. I'm better prepared, and by the later slots, better practiced. I think it leads to the best possible player experience. YMMV.

I find that's the case, too. Every time I run a scenario I get better at it. I remember things I missed or made mistakes on the previous time, I have more time to roleplay the NPCs because I'm not looking things up as much. I've come up with ways to deal with some of the unexpected character actions that happen.

All that makes the game more enjoyable for me to run, to be honest, because I know I'm providing a better experience for the players and the whole thing just feels smoother to me.

Liberty's Edge 1/5

Sin of Asmodeus wrote:
Anyway, great con, great people. Nani Pratt seemed to be an awesome GM even though she didnt kill my crew in the Waking Rune.

We had her for Bonekeep 2 on Satuday night, and she was phenomenal! She knew the rules stone cold, but when posed with a corner case of sorts, she'd make a quick ruling and we'd all press on. She played the dungeon well, and I hope enjoyed us as much as we did her. Not a lot of "role playing" to be had in Bonekeep, so we didn't see that side of her, but I suspect she can do it with the best (like Andrew).

Grand Lodge 4/5

Sin of Asmodeus wrote:
Jay Babcock, and Annie Erbacher did, was as Head Marshall's knowing their Marshalling staff would be at HQ, twenty-five to thirty minutes ahead of time, they would take orders for food, and drink so that you didnt have marshalls tiring themselves out by not eating / drinking.

That's an interesting idea.

Sin of Asmodeus wrote:
Access was a paramount thing, you need to have space to get to the doors, because if anyone had been serious about their disabilities, and willing to complain about them, having wheel chair access to only the main hall way would be a hazard. So next year would be advised to clear out at least to the side doors near the paint and takes.

We'll have more room next year, and proportionally fewer tables it sounds like. It should make for better access options overall, and for wheelchairs in particular. That said, and as I've mentioned earlier, we'll be happy to move things around as needed to accommodate special access needs.

However, we can't fix what we don't know about, so if you or someone you know needs special access please let the HQ staff know as early as possible and we'll work with you to make sure needs are met.

Sin of Asmodeus wrote:
Anyway, great con, great people. Nani Pratt seemed to be an awesome GM even though she didnt kill my crew in the Waking Rune. Ben was awesome, and then terrified of my guys fire power for Bonekeep, and than I am sad to say the VC who ran me for the special, who was a fantastic judge, who gave me perhaps one of the very best tables I have ever had deserves a sixth star for the sheer cloak of awesome he wore about himself. Im just sorry I forgot your name good sir!

I'm very sorry that Nani was deprived of your tears.

Dark Archive 4/5

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Pft, it's nothing to worry about over access, just making mention. But yeah, having a HQ monkey, to ask Marshall's due to the nature of them having to spend more time than not, being on time etc - if they need food or anything would I think help a lot.

5/5

1 person marked this as a favorite.
Sin of Asmodeus wrote:

To be honest, for those people saying that it's too time consuming for a Marshall to check ticket's. It really isn't. Just self muster into six, send one person up with everyone's ticket, and go forward.

That would have been awesome, and what I think was on the How to Muster boards, but people didn't do that. And even when we'd ask if they had real tickets or generics, those with generics would tell us they had real tickets.

It turned into a no win situation for the marshals. What people need to remember is that the marshals are there to help, not hinder and that any action to overrun or overpower a marshal only hurts the whole in the end.

Dark Archive 4/5

I know... 8 ( just remember.. ill always kill for you Thea. 8p
But seriously, I'd tell people to grow up and come back with six real tickets because I'm all out of f**ks to give.

Liberty's Edge 3/5

Purple Fluffy CatBunnyGnome wrote:
That would have been awesome, and what I think was on the How to Muster boards, but people didn't do that. And even when we'd ask if they had real tickets or generics, those with generics would tell us they had real tickets.

To be honest, I played 7 slots and don't recall seeing the How to Muster boards. I'd basically check the boards outside to see where we/I was playing, step in, and look up to see where we/I had to go. Once inside we'd/I'd then stand by the marshal until our group found someone, I was picked by a group, or on the occasion of Bonekeep 1 our group was seated while I looked for a 6th player.

Feel free to say, "How could you miss something so obvious!" I was probably standing next to them the whole time. I'm not sure if my friends were aware of the inside instructions or not. If they saw and read them I don't recall them mentioning it. I guess we just automatically tried to muster like we had in previous years. We did catch on to the whole "get into groups of 6 first" thing, but I didn't realize that was official policy until I read about the How to Muster signs here on the boards after the Con.

The Exchange 2/5

Brian D. Mooney wrote:
Jonathan Cary wrote:
Brian D. Mooney wrote:
All I ask is that we consider such a thing for next year and have a plan.
Brian, we'll move tables around to accommodate special needs of any sort, but we can't guaranteed wheelchair access to every table in the room. We'd have to cut back the number of tables in the room to somewhere between 1/2 and 2/3 of what we have now. We're happy to move things around, and the layout this year had at least one or two tables of every color that were on the main aisles. We'll try to keep that arrangement next year and we'll happily work with any of our wheelchair-bound players to get them the seating arrangements they need if they let us know.

I don't think we need every table accessible, I understand that isn't feasible.

There were plenty of tables that were wheelchair accessible on the edges and on the center island. I just think we need a plan in place in case the scenario a wheelchair uses wants to play is not located at one of those tables.

I only brought it up because I could tell it hadn't really been thought of in advance.

Since this seems not to have been considered, can I urge you to talk to someone familiar with the appropriate US legislation on this rather than leave it to best efforts? I'm not familiar with US law but you might find, for example, that a certain percentage of tables must be wheelchair accessible.

Horizon Hunters 4/5 5/5 *** Venture-Lieutenant, Indiana—Indianapolis

I had varying degrees of communications with the marshals. I was scheduled to GM 5 slots, 4 of which were cancelled. A couple of times, the marshals were really good about keeping me informed, letting me know I was dismissed, or that I need to go to HQ to see if anything else needed to be done, etc.

In one case, my marshal told me I couldn't be released, and then, as of 45 minutes after the start of the slot, I still had never heard back or saw that marshal again. I finally ended up going to HQ, where Wes released me.

I am not being critical - marshal's have 1,000 things to do, but what would have helped me would have been more consistent practices from the marshals. I didn't have any sort of consistent communication or information from them.

I think that's more a process/procedure issue than it is an issue with a particular marshal.

Mark

Dark Archive

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Hi, Jon, I'm Brian's wheelchair using friend. I ran disability access for a convention for several years, so I understand how hard this part of conventions is.

Access isn't all about physically making a path to where someone wants to go. As Jon said, the tables in the middle of the pile are never going to be accessible. That's completely ok, it's life. Chairs around tables isn't naturally a very friendly wheelchair situation. PFS's setup this year was actually more accessible in that regard than a family party I was invited to once - at least they weren't blocking off the only bathrooms in the place!

The most important part of access is actually information. If there is no way to make an event doable by someone with some kind of disability, the best kind of access you are going to get is communicating that to them in advance. (Not being able to participate in something rankles a lot less if you didn't spend time waiting around for the thing you can't do.) If it is doable, but has obstacles, or requires some pre-setup, communicate that. The better the communication, the better the accessibility, even if the physical situation isn't great.

As an example, we had a building we ran programming in where the elevator was broken before the con started. We obviously couldn't fix that, but we could make sure that as each person with a visible disability picked up their badge or anyone visited our disability desk they got a list of what rooms this elevator served and a description of what made it hard to get to them without it. In this case it was 5 really broad, shallow stairs. Both those for whom that was insurmountable and those for whom that was not a big deal due to curb hopping skills or well trained friends expressed gratitude for the information.

This was my first Gencon playing PFS. I didn't know what an "HQ" was, or that shouting up at this really tall black mountain was the way you were supposed to go about getting help. Even just know that approaching HQ was the first step would have been great, and accomplishable with just a blue wheelchair sign tacked on it somewhere. That would at least lead someone in my position to mill around below it where we could be noticed. A poster with information on what we needed to do to get a table we could get to would have been even better. (By this poster, I don't mean like the "how to muster" posters that were entirely blocked from view by the standing people, but up by HQ itself.) Even better would have been a post on these boards here setting up a point of contact, instructions about how early someone with a disability should show up, etc.

You guys have talked about how hard finding the musterers was. Now imagine that if you're only 4' tall! Brian's wife forged through to a few, but until we were right there, I had no idea that a musterer existed in that spot. I'm staring at leg level, t-shirts and clipboards don't particularly help someone in my situation.

Finally, if your own HQ staff is all on the same page regarding access, that shows. I got a little token with a table assignment. No one collected it ultimately, so I tried to send it back to HQ with a runner who was grabbing tickets and things, and he had no idea what it was or that it belonged to you all. I hope the musterer (if I'd found one) would have known?

Sovereign Court 4/5 *

2 people marked this as a favorite.
Pathfinder Adventure Path, Lost Omens, Maps, Rulebook Subscriber

In my opinion what is needed in the future is a customer service desk that is seperate from the main headquarters. This could be at player level and as such, would be a much better place to keep a disability access station. It should be placed right down the centre hall and would be primarily for player questions.

This should also be the place where:
- the delve is mustered and players sign up
- GMs are sent by musterers for reassignment if they are released (making an easy pool to draw from if more GMs are needed and a central place where things like # of times released are tracked)
- general questions are answered, particularly for new players
-experienced GMs who were so inclined could look over people's characters for errors if they requested such.

It could be run entirely by the overflow GMs and those assigned to the delve (Goblin Attack) and any difficult questions could be relayed to HQ.

With all that being said, this was the best run PFS experience yet, and I have been involved since season zero. Kudos to Wes and John for running a great show and to all the HQ volunteers who have a difficult and sometimes thankless task.

Shadow Lodge

Greasitty wrote:

Hi, Jon, I'm Brian's wheelchair using friend. I ran disability access for a convention for several years, so I understand how hard this part of conventions is.

Access isn't all about physically making a path to where someone wants to go. As Jon said, the tables in the middle of the pile are never going to be accessible. That's completely ok, it's life. Chairs around tables isn't naturally a very friendly wheelchair situation. PFS's setup this year was actually more accessible in that regard than a family party I was invited to once - at least they weren't blocking off the only bathrooms in the place!

The most important part of access is actually information. If there is no way to make an event doable by someone with some kind of disability, the best kind of access you are going to get is communicating that to them in advance. (Not being able to participate in something rankles a lot less if you didn't spend time waiting around for the thing you can't do.) If it is doable, but has obstacles, or requires some pre-setup, communicate that. The better the communication, the better the accessibility, even if the physical situation isn't great.

As an example, we had a building we ran programming in where the elevator was broken before the con started. We obviously couldn't fix that, but we could make sure that as each person with a visible disability picked up their badge or anyone visited our disability desk they got a list of what rooms this elevator served and a description of what made it hard to get to them without it. In this case it was 5 really broad, shallow stairs. Both those for whom that was insurmountable and those for whom that was not a big deal due to curb hopping skills or well trained friends expressed gratitude for the information.

This was my first Gencon playing PFS. I didn't know what an "HQ" was, or that shouting up at this really tall black mountain was the way you were supposed to go about getting help. Even just know that approaching HQ was the first step would have been great,...

I agree with you. This was my first GenCon (not first Con), and I was in a wheelchair for the show which I am not used to. I didn't know that there was help available for the those of us who needed additional time. I think a big help would be to talk to your Muster-ers and ask them to to spend 30 seconds letting those who are in need to assistance to know where it is.

I was lucky that I had someone who was able to help guide me around the obstacle courses, and people were very generous in moving their personal items out of the way.

The only other thing I would say is that having a sign on the boon area that says when "last call" is going to be. I was exhausted on Saturday so I didn't do my final turn in for my boons. I walked around the show floor on Sunday and came up to the Sagimaw room around 3 pm to pick up my final boon and it was locked tight while the show was still going on. It's ok, I plan on coming back to GenCon next year so I can redeem then. That said, if I knew when it would have closed, I would have gotten them done in time.

Thank you all for putting on such a kick ass Con. I was able to introduce my cousin to Pathfinder and now he's hooked. :)

Grand Lodge 4/5

Greasitty, the tokens were originally set up for pre-mustered tables at the Special and I personally briefed the Marshals and showed them a sample token before they were sent out to muster at the Special. I'm not sure how that wasn't handled properly but we'll work on it for next year.

I'll talk to Mike to see what we can do about a sign or other indicator for disability assistance. As I've mentioned previously, it was my intent to set up an information desk with a couple of volunteers to do nothing but answer questions. I'm not sure where we lost that along the plan, but it's still on my wishlist. I'd really like to get it out in the hallway if Gen Con and ICCLOS will permit it.

Silver Crusade 4/5

A customer service desk would be awesome. I'm sure you could get volunteers who would be willing to sit around answering questions about how to get involved in PFS, look over their PCs, help give mustering instructions, answer questions about wheelchair accessibility, point people to the bathrooms, etc. Heck, I'd volunteer to do that for a session or two, just so I could volunteer to help without having to prep so many adventures to GM. :)

As for the wheelchair accessibility issue, I'm not sure how the elevator situation was in the convention center, since I used the stairs and escalators all weekend, but I'm hoping everyone was able to get to the 2nd floor. In the playing room, it seems to me that just putting wheelchairs along the main aisle should have made it easy enough to accommodate everyone.

For the future, I'd recommend that each muster clipboard should have at least one table along the main aisle, and that the person doing the mustering knows which one it is. That way, every musterer knows where to send a group with a wheelchair if it comes up. Then, the only problem comes back to people being able to find the person with the clipboard, but that's not just a disability access issue, and it sounds like you're already on top of fixing that for next year.


Pathfinder Maps Subscriber; Pathfinder Roleplaying Game Superscriber; Starfinder Charter Superscriber

An idea for mustering and trying to remove confusion would be to have a printed sheet with the muster instructions on one side, and a map on the other side. The map being the table set up, and indicating where the muster points are for the various scenarios being played.

The sheets could be at the customer service desk (if it is in the hallway), or on tables near the muster points.

Dark Archive 5/5

Pathfinder Adventure, Adventure Path, Maps Subscriber
Benrislove wrote:
Rene Duquesnoy wrote:
thistledown wrote:
One other downside - Indianapolis smells terrible. Get a modern sewer system that doesn't make the streets smell like crap.
I blame the bikers.

I would like to see mustering start at X:30, and X:45 for generics, more likely to get everyone seated by slot start time, also should make the musterer's job easier (expanding the time frame is helpful, it's not bad if the player's beat the GM to the table)

As a GM with a significant amount of kit to haul about, and that had a 10-slot schedule. No. I believe this is a terrible idea. We need the end time / start time to be far enough apart that we can paperwork on the announcement, deliver our required paperwork to HQ, hit the head, and maybe scarf down something to fuel our next five hours' energy.

YMMV.

2/5 *

Jonathan Cary wrote:

I've waxed poetic elsewhere about the challenges of mustering less than full tables in the time we have available. At some point it has to become the player's responsibility to find a table. To your point, if there were 5 of you standing around with real tickets, why didn't you form up a table with 1 generic and get seated?

For all three of my regular PFS slots, the Marshals wouldn't seat you unless you had 6 real tickets. Two times we had 5 real tickets and a generic, but they'd make us wait around until 15-20 minutes after the slot started. Another time we had 5 real tickets, there was no one there to recruit, and they'd still make us wait.

With 5 real tickets, we wondered why they didn't find us a table and send people to us if needed.

And no, the mustering didn't occur late because the marshal was busy, he was waiting (for new players) like us.

We were marshaled so late that many GMs were surprised they had a table.

I'm not complaining, we still got seated in a fairly timely manner, but I thought you should know what happened in practice.

5/5

Jason it was nice to meet you, to bad you didn't land in my mustering section.

The Exchange 5/5

Pathfinder Rulebook Subscriber

suggestion for mustering next year,
under each banner / at the door outside in front of each character's board:
label the board/ banner with a number corresponding to a level.

boards:

ex:
valeros - level 1 , "pregens available" sign under the board
ezren - level 2
kyra - level 3 ,
merisiel - level 4, "pregens available" sign under the board
amiri - level 5,
lem - level 6
lini - level 7, "pregens available" sign under the board,
sajan - level 8
seelah - level 9
harsk - level 10
seoni - level 11
seltyiel - level 12 etc ( for mustering groups for the special )

each board can list the scenarios that fit in its level range, and possibly the slot if its not being run every slot.

full board example:

full_board_example:
amiri - level 5
slot 1 - Glass River Rescue, The Wardstone Patrol
slot 2 - ditto / " / up arrows. whatever.
slot 3 - Bonekeep part 1
slot 4 - Glass River Rescue, The Wardstone Patrol
slot 5 - ditto
slot 6 - Siege of the Diamond Gate
slot 7 - Glass River Rescue, The Wardstone Patrol
slot 8 - ditto
slot 9 - Bonekeep part 2
slot 10 - Glass River Rescue, The Wardstone Patrol

players can congregate and form groups by level to avoid out of tier play
scenarios will be grouped by their level range:
all the level 1-5 scenarios will occur down by valeros through amiri,
both gms and players will know what area to go to for a scenario.
New players will be able to find which games have pregens available ,
if players have generic tickets and just want to see what is running to get in on a game, they can find the games, and know their tier, and muster to level appropriate groups.

Grand Lodge 3/5

This was my 3rd year at GenCon. I thought the mustering was a dramatic improvement, as well as the acoustics in the hall. I have difficulty hearing as it is and I heard everything I needed to.

What are the chances the games could begin at 9am rather than 8am? I'm begging!

It was my first Gen Con special, too. I will certainly be doing those again.

All my GMs were great. My GM for the special, I think his name was Trevor, was great, too.

I did find it strange during the special that generics weren't allowed in but there was an entire table empty with a GM sitting there by herself...

I'm a GM at home for a group of folks, and every time I go to GenCon and play PFS I learn a new interpretation of the rules I was doing wrong. I think that's great. This year, I learned that, as a player, if the GM was not in "voice" of a character, I found it difficult to tell whether or not a character in game was speaking or whether it was the GM. I find myself slipping into my natural voice as well, so I vowed to pay attention this.

The GMs really put up with a lot. I find that at my table at home if there is more than 6 people it can get frustrating, especially when they aren't paying attention. Doing this for 8 hours is enough for me. Now skip to GenCon, when the GMs do this for 3-4 days...hats off. I would GM at GenCon, but this is the only time I get to really play a my characters, as my players never want to GM :(

Was the boon dice loaded in favor of the players? ;) I rolled 20 twice!

I played Bonekeep both nights; went in nervous the first time but we succeeded, feeling very accomplished after hearing horror stories. Second night I got stuck with a Cavalier who had to bring his horse with him...not so good. Our alchemist died but rest survived. We didn't finish. GM was great then, too. Fair and balanced (but not like Fox news).

I didn't think the generic ticket holders were a problem...we practically begged for one in Bonekeep 1 with a small group. Unless a ticketed person didn't get into an event, what's the big deal with generics?

I will say none of the games I attended began on time; this due to even split between table being filled or GM not ready. Just so much going on. No big deal unless it was for timed event like Bonekeep. Bonekeep 2 we lost maybe 30 minutes or more due to "stuff." As a GM you got to put your foot down and begin. And players, don't get to the hall at start time, get there BEFORE the ticketed start time, sheesh. And dont blame the muster folks, either. They are bombarded, literally. I'
m surprised they aren't smoking and gulping down vodka.

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