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Hello everyone.
I'd like to thank all of you who attended Gen Con and joined us for PFS in the Sagamore. The players are why we're all there, so your opinions and feedback are important to us. If you attended and played games, please take a few minutes to provide any feedback you have about how things were organized and how the HQ team can make the experience better.
Thanks,
Jon Cary
Gen Con PFS HQ Lead
Venture-Lieutenant, Washington—Pullman
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Every Con I've been to used Warhorn. I've heard it said that GenCon is too large, but I don't see why that matters.
1000+ people per game slot. I've got about 20-80 regular players in my area, depending on the time of year, and getting them to sign up for a game 10 minutes before a slot starts is sometimes a challenge.
Mustering at Gencon gets better every year.
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Pretty good job by the Paizo volunteers and employees overall. Some mustering confusion when they had a 1-5 mustering area and a 3-7 mustering area (and my 3-4 level group was sent to the other one by each station rep) for the Thursday night special, but that was easy to fix.
I really liked the organizational setup for the Pathfinder room (Sagamore Room?) at this Con, I could tell they had put a lot of thought into it.
The only criticism that I would levy (and this is a tricky one) is the quality of the GMs. Paizo needs to get serious and weed out some of the sub-standard GMs they have. I came really close to lodging an official complaint against the GM I had for the Friday night Special. He was completely incompetent and slow as hell. It was also extremely obvious he didn't prep for the Special. Awful GM, just glad I had a table of good players. He was the only really bad one, but I heard some horror stories from other people, so it would be interesting to see if it was just a small group of crappy GMs or a more widespread issue. Having said that, I had some really good GMs, including the New Jersey VC who GMed my session of "True Dragons of Absalom", he was outstanding and by far the best GM I saw at GenCon 2015.
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GenCon 2015 Feedback:
First things first, a huge thanks and shout-out to the GMs, volunteers, staff, and Paizo for the support they provided for play over the course of the weekend.
That being said, a few noteworthy things DID crop up.
1. The GM of my Thursday evening slot had a health issue he had to attend to on a regular basis. Mad props to him for soldiering through, but it did slow down play a little bit. Also, going out and getting the maps printed professionally was a huge time-saver and helped mitigate the first issue.
2. The GM of my Friday special slot appeared to have been 'jumped up' a tier or two -- he appeared to have a general gist and idea of what was going on, but had to do a bit more research into the module during play than one might expect. Again, given the shenanigans our table was performing, admirable job.
3. Huge thanks to the table and to the GM of the Saturday evening slot -- I had worn myself out looking for something to eat between the second slot of the day and the third slot, and failed to find anything caffeinated so I was drifting in and out. Many apologies to both the GM and the table for that.
4. A point of concern for Sunday morning's special was the length. Even with some actions streamlined, it felt like there was too much scenario for too short of a time table.
Overall, comparing this year's experience with last year's Pathfinder experience, the general feeling was that there were so many specials that by the Sunday one came about everyone was suffering from the Fatigued condition, with some attendees having failed their Fort check and suffering the Exhausted condition.
As feedback should always come with recommendations on how to improve an experience... would it be possible to trim the specials back down to two or possibly three events? It would take the burden off of all parties, and would also give GMs less work they have to do to prepare.
Edit: In retrospect and in addition, would it be possible to factor in some 'prep-time' for modules that have pregenerated characters in the future so players can figure them out? Or, alternatively, release them a couple of weeks in advance so players can get their tactics down? On both Saturday evening and Sunday morning it took a while to get everyone 'comfortable' with the characters they were using and the table chemistry was a bit 'off' until that happened.
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Warhorn please?
I've never needed a ticket to play at a Con, and from the one game I played I struggled to even find a group.
Every Con I've been to used Warhorn. I've heard it said that GenCon is too large, but I don't see why that matters.
Those tickets are how paizo gets credit from gencon I believe, (or serve as proof of purchase to ensure the people that paid for their spot actually get in). Since every event at Gencon I've been to pretty much requires a ticket, its safe to say that its GenCon policy. Even free events, such as the seminars, encourage tickets as a means to prove to Gencon that people are attending these events.
As for other Cons, that depends on what the policy of that Con is as to the use of Warhorn being allowed or not. Not every Con is comfortable allowing a third party site outside their control with their own rules and policy to utilize signups.
As for finding a group, you can always try a sign I guess. I remember being confused the first time I did PFS at Gencon 2013, but afterwards I found it easier once you are familiar. This year I brought a small marker board to help find groups with but after the first day I left it behind since I felt it wasn't needed.
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A huge thanks to everyone who spent time organizing, mustering and running the event. I had a lot of fun, and this was easily, all things considered, my favourite Gen Con yet.
Negative Feedback
We had issues - but they were primarily with individual GMs.
Our GM for the Thursday night special greeted us at the table by asking us to "choose the form of the destructor" and pick his dice, then responded with "Oh, those haven't tasted blood yet." No one laughed. Moments later, he flashed his GM stars - all four of them.
It was a strange and pointedly hostile start, but we rolled with it. He had an overall solid knowledge of rules, which was good. About two hours into the slot he said aloud, to the entire table, "I just want this to be over." He said he was tired and had started hallucinating.
Things basically got worse from there. We all wanted to play the slot, but playing the slot was also a lot more painful than it should have been. We powered through and left politely at the end of the session, but it was a real grind that could have been entirely mitigated by the GM adopting a more positive attitude.
If you can't even bring yourself to pretend to want to be there, then you probably shouldn't be there. And this was on Thursday: the first day of the con. If this had been a new player's introduction to PFS, they would never have come back.
For the Saturday evening special: I just felt that, given when the GMs got the scenarios, it would have been difficult to prep the middle section of the module with the amount of time it really needed. That section dragged heavily and made it so that the GM had to rush through the end of the scenario (the actual interesting part) with little to no description. I have no doubt that this scenario would be gold with the right amount of prep time, but given that the GMs received the scenarios the Friday prior (from what I heard), I'm not certain this one really got the love it deserved.
I'm wondering if four specials is almost too many. I loved all of them, but the late-night slots are pretty rough for those of us who love PFS and are unwilling to skip them ;)
Positive Feedback
The GMs for the other two specials were great. A huge shoutout to Keith from Minnesota who was our GM for Friday evening - he did a great job of challenging our party and providing interesting encounters for our party composition. He was everything you'd expect from an excellent GM: great roleplay, rules knowledge and pacing.
Our Sunday GM was also good, and the scenario itself was a ton of fun.
The setup for Phantom Phenomena was great. Please, please, for the future of this game, do this every year. The first year we discovered PFS, it was because we managed to get into a We Be Goblins! game with generics. This year's setup lets new players get a taste for the game without too much commitment. I managed to make time for four of the six quests, playing the new Occult pregens, and it was a ton of fun.
The overall quality of the scenarios was high. I'm hoping to see more stuff like Serpent's Rise in the future.
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Hey Jon you might want to merge this thread into official feedback, or reference it if not.
Needless to say my experience was excellent.
The Sagamore is a great room with thick carpeting at all. I'm fairly hard of hearing and had very little difficulty hearing any one. That's not my experience in some of the other rooms.
Negative Feed Back: The only complaint I have is that there is not a 1:00 AM-6:00 AM time slot. I realize that is probably not likely to happen, but one can hope.
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I will have to add that the two Pre-Gen specials (We Be Kobolds and We Be Aspis) were outstanding, I highly recommend them both. I played the Bard in the True Dragons special, love it, would definitely recommend that character for anyone. For the Aspis special, I lucked out and got 322. I'll say no more about her, but if you get the chance, play 322 in that Special, you won't be disappointed.
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...please take a few minutes to provide any feedback you have about how things were organized and how the HQ team can make the experience better...
GM feedback:
The GMs varied in quality, as usual for many cons I've been to (mostly good). Generally, I enjoyed most of my games. However, I still think an organized, clear, obvious way to give GM feedback might be a good idea (like near the information booth). Feedback after the fact may not be timely, or the DM info may not be remembered. "He was a new guy, young kid - nice, but inexperienced, etc." Perhaps a simple piece of paper to fill out, or something of the like. DMs could be told to give that as part of their intro, pointing it out (or an announcement could be made a few times over the weekend, pointing it out). Good AND bad feedback I think would be useful, particularly with a change in campaign leadership. Of course, you could also reach out to VC area leadership as well to find some of that info out ahead of time.Microphones for volunteers in the hall:
I definitely liked the volunteers with the microphones out in the hallway during the special marshaling times. They gave clear, useful advice, but I think there was so much of it constantly needing to be said, it might be a good idea when putting out signs for areas to marshal, perhaps you could include (Special XXXXXX, levels 10-11) or (Special XXXXXX, levels 7-8 Core and normal) to help those volunteers not having to constantly say, "You need to go down to that side of the hall for the lower level tables."
Thursday night woes:
I did not make the Thursday night special, but I hit all of the other specials. I am glad to hear the problems from the first night's marshaling were recognized and adjusted. The events I personally played in all seemed to be fairly clearly marked and organized.
Special Times:
I don't think the Sunday morning special was the best time for that event. By that point in the con, most people are somewhat brain dead. Giving them 7th level pregenerated characters to figure out, along with special side missions and working out possibly elaborate plans should really have been done earlier in the weekend. I understand why it needed to happen after the Thursday night special...but at the very least, it could have been switched out with the Kobolds scenario. If you're going to have a Sunday morning special, try to keep that as simple or as straightforward as possible.
Thanks for all the hard work on this, folks!
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Here is what I saw:
Mustering (better than ever): It seemed to work exceptionally well this year. Allowing groups that are able to find 6 in the hallway enter the ballroom a little early during the normal slots helped free up some walking room. Making sure there was a specific line for Generics during the specials was also a good call. There was really no point where I felt the mustering could've been done better.
Technical Setup (needs improvement): This is based almost entirely on the Fri. night special. I was WAY in the NW corner of the ballroom and I couldn't see or hear what was being said when someone spoke into the microphone. If the slideshow for the special was running as intended, it wouldn't have been such a big deal. The two combined made it difficult for me to know what was going on. I don't know if it's the convention center or paizo supplying the tech-setup, but either way, there needs to be more coordination and louder speakers if you continue to use the entire ballroom at future conventions.
Specials (good, but too many): Between Paizocon and Gencon, I was lucky enough to attend all 4 specials this year, but it did seem like the quality of the games suffered. The True Dragons was amazingly fun, but probably could've been running all weekend like any of the We Be Goblins adventures. The Friday special was plagued with issues for my group, from the above technical setup to a mostly unprepared GM. It was the worst game I had all weekend, and it was sadly the one I was trying to use to get a few of my friends into PFS by playing some level 1 pregens. They were not enthusiastic by the end, and saying that it was simply a 'momentary aberration' isn't a convincing argument when it's the season 7 opener at Gencon.
GMs (Mostly good): While I understand that you can only ask so much from volunteers, I had problems with a few of my GMs. Most seemed to stem from poor prep. I'd ask Paizo to stress to GM volunteers the benefits of reading the scenarios more than once, pre-drawing maps, and knowing hand signals for the specials. Most GMs were on point, but enough of them weren't that I feel it necessary to mention.
Other observations:
The Pregen packets were a nice touch, but I'd be worried as a GM if I had to pay for the entire packet when someone inevitably walks off with a sheet.
Stop changing the lighting - please. Find one setting and stick with it. It was super distracting.
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My feedback in short: The modules I played/run were really really busy. Loved the prep around things, getting players to my table/getting to a table were both awesome, but I went up to/over the line in every module I played/run. I ran 5 and played 4.
I played the Thursday and Friday specials: and I found them extremely rough. I played Thursday night with a bunch of casual gamers, figuring that slowing the module down a little compared to past games might make it more enjoyable: nope. GMs had to prep a TON of encounters and even those that were prepared (like our GM) were really having a hard time keeping up with things that were going on. We weren't particularly slow, but I felt like we were constantly racing, and never got time to look around and figure anything out.
I'm a lore/exploratory guy, and there was literally nothing for me to do, it seemed. No exposition, no talking, just ran from encounter to encounter.
Friday night:
Same problem, except I played with friends, and a GM I'm friends with. Same sort of problems, except we raced through things because of how badass our gunslinger was, and we still didn't get through anything.
In short:
Both specials seemed really really busy. That being said, the plots that they did have were quite creative, I just felt it was too much.
We couldn't hear a thing in the corners of the room during the specials either. Luckily we could read things, but it was hard during the announcements to catch anything.
As a GM:
I enjoyed everything I ran, people got to my tables fast, and I had a lot of great players, even when I really was not at my best (I'm looking at you, Saturday afternoon 6-22). 6-22 has a lot going on, I went right up to 4 hours 45 minutes both times with it, but we got through it.
The pregen specials were fantastic. I had mostly engaging and enthustiastic tables, and the plots had plenty of pop which allowed people to get into them easily. Most players loved them (I think I had one who didn't Sunday morning).
In short: the con staff was fantastic. This was my first year at Gen Con as a GM, and I loved it. I will do it again next year as I had a great time (maybe I'll spread out my games though, running three in a day is HARD)!
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This was my first trip to Gen Con and I had a great experience. The only game I played was PFS through 7 slots between Friday and Sunday morning. Overall, the games were overwhelming positive for me. Every GM for my tables did a great job. They were all relatively prepared and each and every one of them was enthusiastic about GMing for Society play. No game I played became bogged down and I could certainly tell that all of my GMs' goal was that their table had a good time playing PFS. Each GM certainly had their own style, but they were all fantastic in their own way.
As for the tables, I had not actually sat at a game table for nearly 25 years so I was a little nervous. Fortunately, mostly every player at my tables had a great attitude and were a joy to game with. I really liked seeing what other people were playing and how they played their characters. I also learned a ton about the game mechanics and picked up more than a few neat tricks I plan to try in the future.
Mustering was not problem for me whatsoever. I had tickets for all slots I played, and I never had a trouble getting a table.
All in all, I had a blast.
Venture-Captain, California—San Francisco Bay Area North & East
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Well, and the design of the Friday special seemed to be controlled from one table. We would get one round into each combat and the "fast table" in the room would get something solved and pushed every other table to the next thing, destroying any continuity we could have had.
Hopefully I'm not out of line for relaying this. You're talking about Sky Key Solution, correct? Are you refering to exploring the big city or to the final act - taking out the anchors?
If the former, there was no table pushing you anywhere. Access was granted by a timer from scenario start. Reported successes influenced the final result.
If the latter, you were welcome to continue at any location you were at until the end of the scenario.
The only hard point that forced tables to move on was the giant transition between acts, and again, that was triggered by the clock.
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Hey Jon you might want to merge this thread into official feedback, or reference it if not.
Needless to say my experience was excellent.
The Sagamore is a great room with thick carpeting at all. I'm fairly hard of hearing and had very little difficulty hearing any one. That's not my experience in some of the other rooms.
Negative Feed Back: The only complaint I have is that there is not a 1:00 AM-6:00 AM time slot. I realize that is probably not likely to happen, but one can hope.
I saw that thread but I wanted to have one focused on organizational issues rather than GM issues.
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Warhorn please?
I've never needed a ticket to play at a Con, and from the one game I played I struggled to even find a group.
Every Con I've been to used Warhorn. I've heard it said that GenCon is too large, but I don't see why that matters.
All games and signups have to be scheduled through Gen Con. They won't accept an alternative since they've been running the convention this way for something like 40 years.
I love Warhorn but it's not an option for Gen Con and his is completely out of our control or Paizo's.
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GM Stars might relate to Tiered table assignments, thus Tier 10-11 get 5 & 4 star GMs, Tier 5-9 get 4 & 3 star, etc... it might help with the level of rule knowledge. I don't know if you already do that....
This has actually been a topic in the past. It has some merit, but on the counter side, that means all the GMs running in low tier, where most of the new players are, would be the most inexperienced. It can be problematic either direction you go with this and it continues to be a challenge to resolve.
Orange shirts should be nearby and available to answer GM rule questions during play.
HQ volunteers (orange shirts) are devoted to transferring hand signs, delivering water and prize tokens to GMs, collecting tickets, preparing for the next slot's mustering, etc. They often do not have time to simply wander the room waiting for questions to be asked that may never come.
Also, keep in mind that HQ volunteers are not necessarily experienced GMs. Many are the significant other of a GM and just want to be part of the PFS experience even though they do not regularly play. We prefer to have our most knowledgeable GMs running tables or working the information desk where their abilities can be best utilized.
But glad to see you are brainstorming, keep it up.
Thx
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Negative Feedback
I'm wondering if four specials is almost too many.
My understanding is that the decision to have 4 Specials this year was driven by Gen Con, based on the number of seats filled in previous years. I expect we'll see multiple Specials in the future because that sells more tickets.
On the quests side, we probably won't see an increase in the number of tables, or at least not a large one. Those are unticketed. No tickets = no revenue for Gen Con.
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I said it before and I'll say it again - Having overseer text on the projectors for the specials was fantastic. It did get out of sync with the actual reading sometimes though, so that may be something we can tighten up.
One thing that might help for managing the projectors is a staging monitor that can be used to preview the next bit of content that is going to be shown on the big screens. This would prevent things like seeing the desktop when switching presentations around.
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Microphones for volunteers in the hall:
I definitely liked the volunteers with the microphones out in the hallway during the special marshaling times. They gave clear, useful advice, but I think there was so much of it constantly needing to be said, it might be a good idea when putting out signs for areas to marshal, perhaps you could include (Special XXXXXX, levels 10-11) or (Special XXXXXX, levels 7-8 Core and normal) to help those volunteers not having to constantly say, "You need to go down to that side of the hall for the lower level tables."
If you recall, we did that last year. We should have done it this year, but I forgot to get it done. My bad, will do my best to see it gets done next year.
Special Times:
I don't think the Sunday morning special was the best time for that event. By that point in the con, most people are somewhat brain dead. Giving...
Gen Con wanted us to run a Special every day.
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Venture-Captain, California—San Francisco Bay Area North & East
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I said it before and I'll say it again - Having overseer text on the projectors for the specials was fantastic. It did get out of sync with the actual reading sometimes though, so that may be something we can tighten up.
One thing that might help for managing the projectors is a staging monitor that can be used to preview the next bit of content that is going to be shown on the big screens. This would prevent things like seeing the desktop when switching presentations around.
On that idea, would it be possible to get a screen or two on the opposite wall? For those groups in the blue corner, the screens were pretty much impossible to see.
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On that idea, would it be possible to get a screen or two on the opposite wall? For those groups in the blue corner, the screens were pretty much impossible to see.I said it before and I'll say it again - Having overseer text on the projectors for the specials was fantastic. It did get out of sync with the actual reading sometimes though, so that may be something we can tighten up.
One thing that might help for managing the projectors is a staging monitor that can be used to preview the next bit of content that is going to be shown on the big screens. This would prevent things like seeing the desktop when switching presentations around.
I think projector placement at the top of the ballroom makes that not an option, but instead of a back wall maybe some portable projectors/screens set up along the edges of the room?
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Here is what I saw:
Technical Setup (needs improvement): This is based almost entirely on the Fri. night special. I was WAY in the NW corner of the ballroom and I couldn't see or hear what was being said when someone spoke into the microphone. If the slideshow for the special was running as intended, it wouldn't have been such a big deal. The two combined made it difficult for me to know what was going on. I don't know if it's the convention center or paizo supplying the tech-setup, but either way, there needs to be more coordination and louder speakers if you continue to use the entire ballroom at future conventions.
Deafeaning players near the speakers isn't any good, either. Maybe more speakers along the back would help, I don't know. I'm not a sound engineer and I think that's what we need to make the announcements audible to the entire room and not painful to those nearest the speakers. It may be an unsolvable problem given the venue and the resources available.
Specials (good, but too many): Between Paizocon and Gencon, I was lucky enough to attend all 4 specials this year, but it did seem like the quality of the games suffered. The True Dragons was amazingly fun, but probably could've been running all weekend like any of the We Be Goblins adventures.
I addressed the technical issues with audio above. Having four Specials was a request from Gen Con.
GMs (Mostly good): While I understand that you can only ask so much from volunteers, I had problems with a few of my GMs. Most seemed to stem from poor prep. I'd ask Paizo to stress to GM volunteers the benefits of reading the scenarios more than once, pre-drawing maps, and knowing hand signals for the specials. Most GMs were on point, but enough of them weren't that I feel it necessary to mention.
If you have feedback regarding specific GMs, please email myself or one of the other Leads, or the new Campaign Coordinator with the specifics.
Other observations:
The Pregen packets were a nice touch, but I'd be worried as a GM if I had to pay for the entire packet when someone inevitably walks off with a sheet.
Stop changing the lighting - please. Find one setting and stick with it. It was super distracting.
ICCLOS had a power problem at one point that killed all the lights in some of the gaming halls downstairs. When they fixed it, they also turned on the sodium lights in the Sagamore that had been intentionally left off to provide softer lighting and because they aren't dimmable. We got it fixed later, but that's why the lighting levels changed a few times.
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My feedback in short: The modules I played/run were really really busy. Loved the prep around things, getting players to my table/getting to a table were both awesome, but I went up to/over the line in every module I played/run. I ran 5 and played 4.
I'm glad the organization worked well. If you have feedback about the scenarios, please write a review for it so that the PFS developers can see it. They're not looking here for comments about the design of the scenarios, that's what the reviews and the scenario-specific threads are about on the product pages.
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While GenCon was wonderful, as usual, I found it very challenging to muster Core tables.
It would be helpful to write in LARGE letters of bright ink the scenario names, so that the weak eyed and aged [like myself] do not need to squint at the mustering boards.
If one area could be designated Core and another Normal, it would facilitate mustering. I had at least two people buy Core tickets, get mustered in Core tables, and then grow upset that they could not play their non-Core characters.
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GM Stars might relate to Tiered table assignments, thus Tier 10-11 get 5 & 4 star GMs, Tier 5-9 get 4 & 3 star, etc... it might help with the level of rule knowledge. I don't know if you already do that....This has actually been a topic in the past. It has some merit, but on the counter side, that means all the GMs running in low tier, where most of the new players are, would be the most inexperienced. It can be problematic either direction you go with this and it continues to be a challenge to resolve.
But glad to see you are brainstorming, keep it up.
Thx
When I do GenCon I tend to prefer the low level tables to GM. I love low level play and with the Chaos that is GenCon I like to reduce stress / prep / workload when I run 8+ sessions and I HATE running out of time which is harder to do at the lower two tiers.
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GM Stars might relate to Tiered table assignments, thus Tier 10-11 get 5 & 4 star GMs, Tier 5-9 get 4 & 3 star, etc... it might help with the level of rule knowledge. I don't know if you already do that....This has actually been a topic in the past. It has some merit, but on the counter side, that means all the GMs running in low tier, where most of the new players are, would be the most inexperienced. It can be problematic either direction you go with this and it continues to be a challenge to resolve.
This ^ I GM'd Confirmation as many times as I could, and honestly I prefer lower tier scenarios for the chance to interact with the new people and hopefully keep them interested in PFS.
Also on that note, our Confirmation / Wounded Wisp GMs seem to have been well prepared and ready for new players, so props to those people.
Maybe something like... proof of attending a GM 101 - 201 wouldn't be a bad idea to ensure quality GMing :P
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While GenCon was wonderful, as usual, I found it very challenging to muster Core tables.
It would be helpful to write in LARGE letters of bright ink the scenario names, so that the weak eyed and aged [like myself] do not need to squint at the mustering boards.
If one area could be designated Core and another Normal, it would facilitate mustering. I had at least two people buy Core tickets, get mustered in Core tables, and then grow upset that they could not play their non-Core characters.
Also... I am not sure if this was just me, but I got sent a few Core tables when I am pretty sure I was supposed to be Normal. Not a big deal for me, but I got in the habit of asking my players when they got there. Maybe expanding on the idea above by having NORMAL or CORE printed at the top of the tracking sheets for GMs would be a good idea.
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Print dual duty signs (print on both sides) for easels.
I like the idea of dual-sided signs, but I'm not sure if we can get the foam boards printed that way. I'll bring it up with the new Campaign Coordinator when we get into prep for next year.
In large type print the name of the scenario on a cover page (so it shows through the back of a clear clipboard or put it on the front and hold it up/ tape it to the back) so the marshall just has to hold it up for "#8-02: Don't Tread On Me" so the players can see it - oh this is my game. Visual and audio cues.
I like it. It means new clipboards but that's cheap.
Marshals in premuster should ask the GMs on their tables if they prefer to run Core. Mark those tables as Core so you can direct the core player groups to them. Everyone's happy! (though they may not get a core player group, you tried).
When marshals are mustering, ask to see NAMED tickets for that group (most players will be in groups). Read at least one. Ask GenCon to run a color marker across NAMED tickets or to use colored tickets for named games. Generics should be black and white only. GenCon should have some sort of easy visual discriminator between the two. Use the nomenclature "Named" and "Generic".
The nomenclature "Real" and "Generic" goes back about 40 years in Gen Con tradition, I doubt you'll get everyone on the convention staff and all the attendees who have been coming to the con to change nomenclature for something like that at this point, and it's not a big enough deal to fight the kind of battle it would take.
Also unlikely to get Gen Con to change their tickets for our convenience. We can ask, but the shape, size, and format of the tickets haven't changed in 22 years that I've been attending. I doubt they're looking to change them anytime soon. It's a good idea, but we don't have much control over what Gen Con does.
Tell the players Blue tables are tier 7-11, Black are generally 5-9... etc.
I don't see how that adds value to the mustering process. The players don't gain anything from knowing that most of the blue table are 7-11, they gain value from knowing that if they want to play a 7-11 scenario they need to muster under the Sajan (randomly selected Iconic name) banner.
it went pretty smoothly but the process could be improved... you could handle GM steps early rather than a 3 step (Muster & seat, Ticket & token, Water) (as needed GM Info booth runs for Iconics and PFS cards) after mustering. Populate tables with report sheets, boons, Iconic handbook, PFS cards, GM water before mustering and verify GMs are at tables or have GMs pick up their packs with Iconics at INFO booth (GM sign in so HQ has GM headcount early, GMs get Iconics and spare PFS Numbers up front eliminating the Info Booth run). Muster & seat - Direct players to tables. Verify GMs & tables (reporting anomalies) Hand in table tablets. Marshals handle table issues, switch any unhappy players, direct unused GMs to prepare backup scenarios based on HQ instructions/HQ starts to handle overflow(players and GMs). GM writes table number on top ticket. Ticket & token - Marshals collect tickets & hand out tokens, again, verifying a happy GM & table...
We tried having GMs check in with Marshals at the start of the slot. The feedback was overwhelmingly negative. The feedback from GMs on our current method has been overwhelmingly positive. They love having their tables pre-assigned and for the rare instances where a GM is a no-show, we get the players re-directed to an available GM quickly when they go back to their Marshal and report the problem. We don't lay out the GM packets at the start because that's a lot more time consuming than having the players carry it, and that way we make sure the GM gets the packet they need for the game they're running. GMs get repurposed and we'd have to have them return their packet and get a new one, plus when a table doesn't make we'd have to have the packet collected and add tracking for all that. I don't see that we gain anything by doing that.
On the pregens, most tables don't need it so for the ones that do it shouldn't be a huge deal to walk to the info desk and collect it. it's a huge improvement over the stacks/bins of paper pregens that we used in previous years and the mob of players trying to look at it, or when we handed out the pregens to the players at the info desk last year and it took forever because the people manning the info desk had to have a conversation with each player that needed a pregen about which one they wanted and make recommendations. This way worked much better and I'm inclined to leave it the way it is.
For signalling at specials, use colored 8.5x11 110# stock cut in half (with the word of the color on it) which get stuck in the table stands (making a paddle) to be held up by the GM. Thus replacing hand signals or paddles with what you have on hand. Super simple and easy. You could just use the table sign.
That's a thought, but most GMs move the stand off the table to make room. Getting the signs in and out of the ring stands is quite fiddly and I'm not sure that having the GMs have to mess with it mid-game probably is more hassle than it's worth. Colored paper might work as long as we avoid color combinations that cause problems for the color blind.
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My two biggest complaints are pretty much the same as in past years:
1. As others have noted above, GMs were frequently unprepared for the specials. Don't blame the GMs on that one.
When you don't get the special to read until 3 days before the convention, most people won't have time to prep well. This is why I swore I'd never GM a special at GenCon again, after doing it once in the past. I work weekdays, and had to deal with packing, travel, etc. So even if I did have the special the Friday before GenCon, that would still only leave the weekend to prep what's already an extra long scenario to read. And that's best case scenario: Paizo is frequently later than that in delivering final versions of the specials to GMs.
I refuse to deliver a sub-par performance to the players. That's why I'll never run any scenario cold, and I'll never volunteer to GM a scenario that won't be available for me to read and prep at least two weeks in advance. I really believe that not getting to play is better than a bad PFS experience for the players, especially at a big con like this that attracts lots of newbies and casual gamers. You never get a second chance to make a first impression.
This is a Paizo problem, not a problem with the GM volunteers. The problem is that Paizo considers the Friday before GenCon to be an acceptable deadline to have all scenarios distributed to the GMs. If they made the deadline two weeks earlier than that, and made sure everyone on their staff knew it 6 months in advance, then you wouldn't have nearly as many complaints about unprepared GMs.
2. Mustering for the specials. Maybe it was just Thursday (my group was a little later Friday and didn't play the other specials), but making all the players wait in the hallway until 2 minutes before the scheduled start time just caused a lot of crowded confusion. I get that you have to have a GM meeting before hand to point out last minute changes, work out hand signals, make sure everyone's on the same page, etc, but if you could find a small side room to do that instead, you could start seating players 15 minutes earlier, and the whole thing would be much smoother and get started sooner.
That's it for the complaints. Other than that, I had a great experience, though I only played 3 PFS sessions. I was just busy doing other stuff through much of the con. Like others, I'd say my GM quality varied a bit, but in my case, they varied from good to very good, with no bad ones.
I also really liked the three scenarios I played. In fact, I like 7-01 Between the Lines enough that I signed up to GM it at a local store in 2 weeks. I'm curious to see what this one's like from the other side of the GM screen. The two specials I played were a lot of fun, too.
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I had a blast this year also - the pregen specials were fantastic. I had more fun this year than any in recent memory. Mustering was the best I have seen since the old Mecca days. The sound system does need to be better though and the slide show operator needed help, but these are small things.
I'll own messing up the slide show on Friday night. I was distracted trying to do too many things and missed a couple of times when John moved on to another slide.
I did have minor issues with two GMs - one was fairly slow and though we soldiered through this it cost us a prestige point as it was contingent essentially on time/how far we got in the event (that time we lost while the GM couldn't find stat blocks, notes, had to read encounters several times, etc.)
We also lost time for announcements and awards and while I think these are definitely worth doing, it ate into the slots. Those two things combined pushed us from one encounter to another. Well, and the design of the Friday special seemed to be controlled from one table. We would get one round into each combat and the "fast table" in the room would get something solved and pushed every other table to the next thing, destroying any continuity we could have had.
The other GM issue was at the Sunday special. I enjoyed the GM initially but as the slot progressed it was obvious he had somewhere to be. Those who know the event can be as galled as I was with this -- he hand waved the final encounter.
GMs shouldn't be rushing through because they have somewhere else to be... sometimes they have to rush through because they are almost out of time in the slot. If it was definitely the former, please send me, one of the other Leads, or the new Campaign Coordinator an email with as many details as you can remember and we'll add it to the other GM feedback we've received over the convention.
I think the order of events was appropriate. If you want to play the specials and are too tired on Sunday to enjoy them, thats on you... I'd like to see more people stick around on Sunday but realize that isn't possible for some.
I have shied away from specials in past years due to the tendency of many to be resource burners but if they are going to be of this quality I will be there every chance I get.
The best place to provide feedback on the design and quality of the scenarios is to write a review on its product page. The PFS developers and scenario authors actively read the reviews to see how players and GMs feel about them
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As a GM I had a mostly good experience (given my feedback in other threads).
A few notes - the more time you could give gms to prep the specials the better. Some people work full time jobs so a week goes by very very quickly especially when a scenario has 70+ different monsters a dozen maps and many many casters or complex monsters to prep. Didn't help either that my first special I was given a 10-11 table when I had primarily prepped 5-9. I ran the parts of 10-11 I knew best to start to get a sense of the group and ran with it but it wasn't has fast as I would have liked.
This is the earliest we've gotten the Gen Con scenarios, ever. The developers provided advanced copies where the custom (not flip-mat/map pack) maps weren't ready just so GMs would have extra time to prepare. There's only so much time in advance they can provide them. We (the GMs and HQ Staff) have given John Compton (and before him, Mark Moreland) a good deal of grief over the late delivery of the scenarios in prior years. They've heard us and they got us the ones this year at the earliest opportunity. I'm not sure we can ask for a yard after they've given us a foot.
But also I had a LOT of tables of new players at this year's con. Which is great for the hobby (I ran for two people who had never played an rpg before hopefully they both will play again - one at one of my we be goblins free tables and one at my True Dragons table. ). I also handed out nearly 10 new pfs numbers to players without them (my whole we be goblins table and half of my true dragons table and some players at other games). Not quite what I expected but I ran with it.
The specials are all fun but I think also too long and too complex. I would prefer that they have fewer different monsters and maps and more chances for the players and the gms to get into things. I loved the town exploration bits of one special and the traps mechanic of the kobolds one. In fact the thing I did appreciate as a GM about the true dragons scenario is we had one map for most of the scenario - that saves a lot of time as a GM. (I had pre printed maps for all but the last room which I could draw in seconds - but just switching maps for nearly every encounter of the specials was time consuming. And audio issues made it really hard to hear the speakers.
Feedback concerning the design and quality of the scenarios should be directed to the development team via the review system on the product pages.
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My two biggest complaints are pretty much the same as in past years:
1. As others have noted above, GMs were frequently unprepared for the specials. Don't blame the GMs on that one.
When you don't get the special to read until 3 days before the convention, most people won't have time to prep well. This is why I swore I'd never GM a special at GenCon again, after doing it once in the past. I work weekdays, and had to deal with packing, travel, etc. So even if I did have the special the Friday before GenCon, that would still only leave the weekend to prep what's already an extra long scenario to read. And that's best case scenario: Paizo is frequently later than that in delivering final versions of the specials to GMs.
I refuse to deliver a sub-par performance to the players. That's why I'll never run any scenario cold, and I'll never volunteer to GM a scenario that won't be available for me to read and prep at least two weeks in advance. I really believe that not getting to play is better than a bad PFS experience for the players, especially at a big con like this that attracts lots of newbies and casual gamers. You never get a second chance to make a first impression.
This is a Paizo problem, not a problem with the GM volunteers. The problem is that Paizo considers the Friday before GenCon to be an acceptable deadline to have all scenarios distributed to the GMs. If they made the deadline two weeks earlier than that, and made sure everyone on their staff knew it 6 months in advance, then you wouldn't have nearly as many complaints about unprepared GMs.
They got the scenarios to GMs earlier this year than ever before. It's a definite improvement and I don't know that they can get them out much earlier than that without negatively impacting the release of the scenarios for the previous month.
2. Mustering for the specials. Maybe it was just Thursday (my group was a little later Friday and didn't play the other specials), but making all the players wait in the hallway until 2 minutes before the scheduled start time just caused a lot of crowded confusion. I get that you have to have a GM meeting before hand to point out last minute changes, work out hand signals, make sure everyone's on the same page, etc, but if you could find a small...
Thursday was rough. We tried something different that didn't work and we started late. We corrected that on subsequent nights and it went much more smoothly.
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While GenCon was wonderful, as usual, I found it very challenging to muster Core tables.
It would be helpful to write in LARGE letters of bright ink the scenario names, so that the weak eyed and aged [like myself] do not need to squint at the mustering boards.
If one area could be designated Core and another Normal, it would facilitate mustering. I had at least two people buy Core tickets, get mustered in Core tables, and then grow upset that they could not play their non-Core characters.
I'm not sure what we can do about this. CORE play isn't as popular as normal play based on the numbers I've seen both locally and at Gen Con. That's not scientific and someone from Paizo would have to dig up the numbers to know for sure, but my guesstimate is around 10-20% CORE and 80-90% normal overall. Your local scene may vary significantly.
If it were an even split, then we might justify splitting the mustering. Since the prep from a GM is the same regardless of whether the table is CORE or not, there's not much value to segregating them. We can probably gather feedback from the GMs on if they prefer normal or CORE overall and add that as a point on the muster sheets so GMs can better pair CORE GMs with CORE players, but unless the distribution changes, we won't be able to guarantee enough CORE players to truly dedicate GMs to it.
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Also... I am not sure if this was just me, but I got sent a few Core tables when I am pretty sure I was supposed to be Normal. Not a big deal for me, but I got in the habit of asking my players when they got there. Maybe expanding on the idea above by having NORMAL or CORE printed at the top of the tracking sheets for GMs would be a good idea.
We felt it would be easier for everyone if the GM just asked the players and then wrote what they actually ran at the top since the prep work for both modes of play is identical on the GM's side.
Regional Venture-Coordinator, Appalachia
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I found CORE/NORM mustering to mainly be an enormous pain and cause of confusion for old-time Living Greyhawkers like me who have an entirely different pavlovian reaction to the term "core".
As someone who was at gencon with more casual players we frequently had mixed bag of tickets due to some buying normal and some buying core. This caused a lot of anxiety for us because we didn't know if they would allow us to play together. I don't know how that could be addressed honestly but it was an issue our group had.
It also ended up not mattering at all whether we had normal or core tickets since the number of people playing core was so low, but it does lead me to wonder if maybe the core campaign isn't the best idea in the world since it just adds another layer of confusion for new players to negotiate as they get into PFS, especially since core players cannot play in normal scenarios.
I personally had no problems mustering for either Thursday or Friday special and felt both went very smoothly (having skipped the saturday special because I have no interest in kobolds).
Overall I had a great time and one lousy GM on saturday morning. He was a good kid but he clearly wasn't prepared to run the adventure he was running and he was far too soft spoken to be heard over the ambient noise. He also made very very little effort to roleplay the session with us, which disappointed our table greatly.
I wish I had taken down his name but I give mad props to the GM we had for the Friday special as he was expecting to run a 3-7 table and instead had to run a 10-11 table and had to run many of those monsters cold. He did a fantastic job of keeping the action moving and handling the information he hadn't prepared for admirably.
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I have two thoughts that I didn't end up getting to bring up at the post- meeting on Sunday.
The first - the gentleman who was mustering for my area/scenario (#7-02) on Friday did something I found really refreshing! He went around to the GMs and asked if anyone had preferences for Core vs Normal or for 4 vs 6 players, and also double-checked if anyone had not gotten a table in the game slot before (checking their names with ones HQ had already highlighted). Even though I got unlucky (he sent me a 6 players but they went to the wrong table - nobody noticed until almost 15 minutes into their game, so c'est la vie :P), I was still really impressed by him!
The second - this one is based 70/30 on hearsay vs. observations. I was in the same area of tables (black) most of the convention, and would often see players coming from the same direction when approaching my table. I heard (this is the 70% part) that the mustering area for our tables was nearly halfway across the room, rather than either of the two doors/marshals closest to us. I know that the logistics of mustering have a lot to deal with (i.e. I suspect we can't muster at the side-doors, only in the main hallway), but I did want to mention it.
All in all, I think HQ and the marshals did an AMAZING job this year - even better than 2014...which might be hard for some who know me to believe, since last year I said that I couldn't imagine HQ doing a better job than they did then!
Mike, Jon, Tonya, Bob, Todd, and everybody at HQ and all of the Marshals - you helped keep your GMs sanity nearly 100% intact this year. Thank you!
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For those that felt they had unprepared GMs as Jon stated we got all the specials 2 weeks prior to the convention in a format that was good enough to prep with (missing maps). That said Specials are still a grind to prep for. It took me 4 days to prep 6–97: Siege of Serpents & #7–00: The Sky Key Solution while it only took me 3-4 hours to prep #6–99: True Dragons of Absalom. And this is with the Custom maps pre-printed for me by a very helpful VC. If I had to make my own maps it would have taken me at least 2 more days!
Granted I add a lot of extra prep not all of GMs do that make the game easier for me to run.
But that gives you an idea how much time it takes to prep a multi-tier Special vs a normal Scenario. And I only prepped for Tier 1-2, 3-4 and 5-6.
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I found CORE/NORM mustering to mainly be an enormous pain and cause of confusion for old-time Living Greyhawkers like me who have an entirely different pavlovian reaction to the term "core".
As someone who was at gencon with more casual players we frequently had mixed bag of tickets due to some buying normal and some buying core. This caused a lot of anxiety for us because we didn't know if they would allow us to play together. I don't know how that could be addressed honestly but it was an issue our group had.
It also ended up not mattering at all whether we had normal or core tickets since the number of people playing core was so low, but it does lead me to wonder if maybe the core campaign isn't the best idea in the world since it just adds another layer of confusion for new players to negotiate as they get into PFS, especially since core players cannot play in normal scenarios.
If the Leads have our way, we won't be selling tickets as CORE or NORM in the future. This is the first year we've had to work with that distinction and so it's a new wrinkle. The difference doesn't matter from a GM perspective other than which character gets the GM credit. We can do abetter job of pairing CORE players with CORE preferring GMs, but there's no point to selling differentiated tickets.
We're well aware that, particularly for the 1-11 Specials, players bought CORE tickets just to get into the event even though they intended to play normal mode all along, or withiut a proper understanding of what CORE meant.
I think, given the low percentage of players that are interested in CORE play, we're going to have tomshift the onus onto those players at muster time to select their tables appropriately. Maybe we can have a thread here for them to coordinate their schedules to some degree so that they can be sure they have a table of like-minded players for their sessions.
I personally had no problems mustering for either Thursday or Friday special and felt both went very smoothly (having skipped the saturday special because I have no interest in kobolds).
Overall I had a great time and one lousy GM on saturday morning. He was a good kid but he clearly wasn't prepared to run the adventure he was running and he was far too soft spoken to be heard over the ambient noise. He also made very very little effort to roleplay the session with us, which disappointed our table greatly.
I wish I had taken down his name but I give mad props to the GM we had for the Friday special as he was expecting to run a 3-7 table and instead had to run a 10-11 table and had to run many of those monsters cold. He did a fantastic job of keeping the action moving and handling the information he hadn't prepared for admirably.
I've mentioned it before, but we have issues with being able to accuratle predict the numbers of tables at each tier for the 1-11 Specials. Part of the problem is we haven't been capturing data on it, but the biggest problem is that Gen Con won't let us sell the tickets split by tier as they state it's all one event. For some reason, they did let us sell tickets as CORE vs NORM for the same event, though. Maybe it's something we can revisit once the new Campaign Coordinator has been selected.
On the data teacking side, this is the first year ever that Todd Morgan or Mike didn't ake home a stack of hundreds of reporting sheets to enter after the con. We had about 25 or so (I think) that didn't get entered for the Special on Sunday, but everything else got done on-site. This eas a huge win for us both technically and logistically, although it could be a little smoother. What that means is that we may have the bandwidth to collect additional data about the tables sat during the Specials so that we can start making educated guesses about how many tables to expect at each tier.
No matter what, some GMs will almost certainly wind up running a subtier they weren't assigned. We can try to minimize the problem but I don't think we'll ever be able to eliminate it completely. We do warn GMs that they need to be ready to run other subtiers.
Venture-Lieutenant, Indiana—Indianapolis
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So if as a GM I haven't gotten credit for a scenario I ran I should talk to someone? (I'm missing credit last I looked for True Dragons)
I'd wait a bit - while most everything was entered, something may have been missed. The rough guideline I have read from people with more experience than I is to wait a few weeks.
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One thing I would like to note is that some of the Gen Con reporting doesn't have date's attached. Which if a player or gm is looking for a session in their history means it will be at the top of the list rather then the bottom.
This could lead to a rise in people reporting missing scenarios, and will most likely generate more report an error submissions.
So we might need to stress to the data entry folks that putting a date in is important even if the GM forgot to fill it out. I understand the normal scenarios are a bit harder to guess dates, but the specials shouldn't be.
I personally had 2 scenarios that didn't have dates put in which I fixed, one was a special, and I know I entered the date on all my tracking sheets.
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Fantastic time for my first GenCon. I was the person in the GM meeting that discussed hearing people say, "What is going on in that room?" and mentioned signage changes. Thanks to whoever brought up the solution of the flippable easels, that was a very smart idea. I'd also like to suggest that Paizo inquires at costs for purchasing the step sign (between the escalators) that is on each step and viewable on the bottom, that had the Settlers of Caton advertisement on it, with a sign that has a huge arrow pointing up to Sagamore and some compelling Pathfinder art. It may be price prohibitive, but getting more people knowing what is going on upstairs would be great.
Secondly, I remember seeing some card game in the Paizo section downstairs. How about two tables of quests (one quest/person only) on the vendor floor, and then they could direct the players upstairs to finish them?
I don't know how feasible any of these suggestions are budgets and GenCon rules in consideration, but thought that I'd bring them up, just in case.
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This was definitely the best year so far.
I only skimmed through some of the comments, so I think this has pretty much been covered, but I'll throw it in again just to add in to the conversation.
The sound (i.e. the announcements/speeches done over the speakers) was horrible in the back of the hall. If it wasn't for the slides it would have been completely unintelligible. Obviously that brings me to my next point, the slides not being sync'd up killed anything we were supposed to hear. Being in the front of hall everything was fine as the speakers were right there. (by front I mean where HQ was set up and by back I mean where the entrances were).
As to the specials themselves, Aid Tokens really need to be handled better in future scenarios. Right now they're too easily exploitable. Two tables can hand them back and forth and reap the benefits while other tables will never see them (this is the first special I've ever had one actually show up at my table). I know this is more of a campaign management thing, but it's still feedback. I don't really have a suggestion about what could be done to improve this, though.