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Well, 2 would become 4. The extra boon table could be opened during periods of high demand.
Also, putting a second table in a different location in the room (like in the opposite corner) could also be helpful.
There is a saturation point where too many people working at the boon booth will cause them to trip over each other.
One of the many 'roaming tasks' I was given on Sunday's active slot was to head over and 'see how the Boon table was doing, and help out however they need it'.
They already had four people behind the counter at that point, and there was no way for a fifth to fit in there.
The boons sort of need to be in one controlled location, I think? For access and security reasons?
The 'opposite corner' this year had the ACG in it, which was still running games. The 'corner' across the hall from the Boon table had PSA in it, and the nearest corner had Demo tables running.
Where should the additional table go?
EDIT: Ninja'd by Todd and TOZ...
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Well, 2 would become 4. The extra boon table could be opened during periods of high demand.
Also, putting a second table in a different location in the room (like in the opposite corner) could also be helpful.
There is a saturation point where too many people working at the boon booth will cause them to trip over each other.
One of the many 'roaming tasks' I was given on Sunday's active slot was to head over and 'see how the Boon table was doing, and help out however they need it'.
They already had four people behind the counter at that point, and there was no way for a fifth to fit in there.
The boons sort of need to be in one controlled location, I think? For access and security reasons?
The 'opposite corner' this year had the ACG in it, which was still running games. The 'corner' across the hall from the Boon table had PSA in it, and the nearest corner had Demo tables running.
Where should the additional table go?
EDIT: Ninja'd by Todd and TOZ...
Security of the boon station is important, which I didn't mention. It's one reason we even had overnight slots this year, to have someone continuously in the room. Also the reason the overnight slots were all centered close to HQ. They told me to keep my eye on BNW :P
To be clear, BNW was a delight to watch run tables and I have nothing but the highest respect for him running all the overnight slots :)
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Security of the boon station is important, which I didn't mention. It's one reason we even had overnight slots this year, to have someone continuously in the room. Also the reason the overnight slots were all centered close to HQ. They told me to keep my eye on BNW :PTo be clear, BNW was a delight to watch run tables and I have nothing but the highest respect for him running all the overnight slots :)
I'm actually STRONGLY considering running a couple of overnight slots next year, and putting myself forward for the suggestion I brought up (not as an overseer as I don't have enough stars) of running 'smaller' specials on the overnight slot as a table GM.
Venture-Agent, Nebraska—Omaha
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I think there is room for improvement on the PFS/SFS/ACG boon choice portion. It may be feasible to have ACG boons at ACG HQ when those exist again.
As far as boon table logistics, people who need to decide which boon they want seem like a big disruption. They take up both time and space in the area. A dedicated spot along the boon table or a pair of HQ volunteers could help get them out of the way.
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I think there is room for improvement on the PFS/SFS/ACG boon choice portion. It may be feasible to have ACG boons at ACG HQ when those exist again.
Our staffing model does not currently support prize distribution outside of the official prize station. If would require additional staff that frankly we did not have available this year.
Generally speaking, the pros of having one focused prize station well outweigh the cons of having it spread out over multiple positions in the room. That being said, we will continue to look at ways to improve our distribution model to increase efficiency. At some point though we have to accept the fact that we are seating upwards of 1400 players per slot, so more than 14,000 over the course of the show. Obviously those are not all unique, but even a conservative number of 2-3000 unique players most of whom will visit the prize station during the con, usually focused during the slot break times, is going to mean lines to stand in. There is just no avoiding that.
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Maybe like the auction there could be a couple ring binders with all the boons available from rolling? So people could plan for what they would like if they crit before they roll.
I found that I never had to wait for more than a couple people in line and I went 3 times. I did even crit a boon but I looked through the options pretty quickly because I had a bit of an idea what I wanted.
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IIRC there were two packets with voided copies of the boons to look through when you scored a crit. While some will stop by during slow times to take a quick look at the boons to see what would be most interesting to them, most wait until the moment they are standing at the tables with a line behind them before them begin to review their options. We do not have control over that aspect of the process.
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Venture-Captain, Minnesota
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Our afternoon games were great. Although I was a bit disappointed in GMs- in the fact that I never had a female GM this year. Part of the disappointment lies in the fact that I brought a female friend-her first GenCon - and she never got to see a female GM in action.
We female GMs were there! We were just very much outnumbered. Some of us may have also been short and thus hard to see.
I don't know how many female GMs there were, but it was a small percentage of the overall Paizo GMs at GenCon. Part of the reason may have been that GenCon was late this year, and overlapped the start of the school year.
For those of us that are parents, it can be tough to make it to GenCon with the date overlap.
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Of the GMs scheduled, 8.9% identified as female.
Anecdotally speaking, PFS generally has a heavy ratio of male to female. Also, since according to the Department of Education nearly 80% of non-university educators are female and Gen Con's late date left most of our regular volunteers in the field of education not able to attend, the ratio of male to female GM was higher than normal.
And not to minimize the efforts of our non-traditional volunteers, our GMs who did not identify specifically as either male or female were 2.6%, up slightly from the previous year.
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I found the pick whether to roll for Starfinder or Pathfinder ahead of time arbitrary. I would have preferred Starfinder boons, but on a crit the products I really wanted were Pathfinder.
It would seem to me that it would not be that difficult to have someone looking through the boons stand off to the side while others keep going. Perhaps a copy of the boons to look through with a void stamp on them so they are not a security risk?
When I rolled and crited, I was asked to step to one side while perusing boons, and did.
Paizo has no control over people not listening.
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Thanks for soliciting this feedback, Bob!
When I arrived in town Thursday night, all of the size medium shirts were out of stock at HQ. All that was left was one XL and a bunch of 2XL – not exactly the best fit for me : ) So I wore what I was given and tucked my tent-like shirts into my shorts and hoped I didn’t look too ridiculous. I then spent a fair amount of my off-time running around tracking down some other GMs my size who took mercy and let me borrow spare shirts for Sunday.
I don’t know what happen since I requested mediums in the advance survey. It all worked out in the end but I assume Paizo doesn’t wanting their organized play reps looking sloppy nor spending their limited off-time tracking down required apparel.
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Hoo! What a ride! GenCon was great. Is it next year yet? Thanks to all for their hard work, and to my players for putting up with me.
On to the meaty stuff: I'll start with the overnight slots, as Bob has asked about them specifically. I had a lot of fun running them; I wish my third late night slot had fired. I would definitely do overnights again. There is a certain joy in playing in a near-empty Sagamore, especially after the chaos of the specials. As a personal note: I apologize for getting stroppy with a player at one point. My feedback for myself includes taking more deep breaths next year.
I was a big fan of the little breaks during the specials. It's nice to be able to run to the Little GM's Room without feeling like I'm putting my individual table on hold.
Signage was greatly improved this year, kudos to the leadership. And I know you guys are still working on it. Would it be possible (or even helpful) to mark mustering areas with, say, colored tape on the floor? I know that you can't put up Tensabarriers, but it might be helpful to direct people to, for example, the red or blue zone. If you were feeling really crazy, and this is pure spitballing, you could even have videos looping on wall-mounted screens outside the Sag, similar to the ones used in airports to explain security procedures.
After my non-firing 2 AM slot, I got to help clean up the Sagamore. That's cool, somebody has to do it. But I was, frankly, astounded at the sloppiness of my fellow gamers. Can it be part of the GM's responsibility to make sure that they (and their players) clean up their messes before they leave? Starburst purveyors, I'm looking at you in particular. This is something that could be communicated in the GM instructions, which brings me to my next topic.
I understand the motivation behind breaking information down into a series of small chunks, sent out over several weeks. I don't know whether it worked, though I hope it did. The downside was that it made searching for any particular bit of information that I needed while at the con much more difficult. Might I suggest a single handy-dandy-can't-live-without-it GenCon GM guide sent as a single PDF in addition to all of the other messages? It could go out whenever, but would warehouse all the policies and procedures in a single place that would be easier to navigate.
Judging by the AAR, it seems that some GMs were caught flat-footed by tables of new players, or players playing at unfamiliar level ranges for which they (the players) were unprepared. I agree with Tonya that this is ultimately a GM training issue. I don't think a structural solution (e.g. mustering new players only to certain tables or GMs) is practical or called for. But I do think that the solution begins with a friendly warning, early in the GM email packets, that these sorts of situations can and will crop up and directing them to helpful resources.
I guess what I'm suggesting is language like this:
"At GenCon, you may run into some unfamiliar, challenging situations, such as:
- groups of brand new players
- people playing pregens in unfamiliar level ranges
- larger table sizes than you're used to
- other things that I can't remember
If any of these possibilities make you nervous, have a chat with your local Venture Officers, they're sure to have some helpful tips. Or check out this (LINK) here."
After all, there's plenty of expertise in the PFS community; the trick is to encourage GMs to engage those resources ahead of time.
One final note on communication, and I'm very serious about this: tone is important! I found the GM newsletters abrasive and condescending. I think the writers were going for "businesslike" but ended up with "harsh." Please take more care next year.
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We believe there is something wrong with the database as the frequency with which missing data is being reported is well in excess of the occasional missed or forgotten report. Paizo is looking into that. Likewise, 9-00 and season 4 of ACG is not available to report. Both of these issues will make for a lengthy delay in reported material populating. It could be many months before it is corrected depending on Paizo's schedule and workload.
Regional Venture-Coordinator, Appalachia
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I had a wonderful time at this year's gen con as always and my major complaints have been addressed, but I will reiterate the big ones
1. Ban the personal PAs, except in the case of legitimate handicaps being involved. They were too loud, led to background noise creep and in general were just sort of annoying. I saw exactly one being used as a way for a (seemingly) deaf player to enjoy the game, but the rest needs to be killed.
2. No more syrinscape. There was really nothing wrong with John just reading the text, the silly modulated voices honestly made it harder to understand what was going on, especially considering roughly half the players are going to have to be crooning over their necks to try and read if they can't understand the voices and the two rows of tables closest to the projector screens can't really them at all. (I had an incredibly skilled GM for Assault on Absalom he absolutely struggled to even get us more than a round or two into combats before being forced to move on because he was having to explain what had even just been said by the overseer GM). The ambient noises - ESPECIALLY in Assault on Absalom were a bit too cheesy and definitely too loud.
3. Several of my boons have the stamp like no where near the signature line and in pretty light ink. I have never been audited but I fear that if I were this wouldn't really hold up. It was the same nasty HQ guy that was being complained about earlier by several others who sort of contemptuously slung the stamp down wherever and didnt seem to give a crap that he was handing me a potentially useless slip of paper.
I ran starfinder all weekend and have no real complaints about how the rollout was launched so kudos there that was a real tricky needle to thread and you all did well with it. All good tables too save one.
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Venture-Captain, Minnesota
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We believe there is something wrong with the database as the frequency with which missing data is being reported is well in excess of the occasional missed or forgotten report. Paizo is looking into that. Likewise, 9-00 and season 4 of ACG is not available to report. Both of these issues will make for a lengthy delay in reported material populating. It could be many months before it is corrected depending on Paizo's schedule and workload.
Bob, do you know if everything is reported but 9-00 and Season 4 ACG? Because I am still missing 4 tables from GenCon.
Hmm
Venture-Lieutenant, Washington—Pullman
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He was extremely rude to literally everyone, and if you didn’t take the paper from him right away he would throw it on the ground to get you out of the way. He was trying to make the line move quicker and was frustrated to be...
1. I apologize to anyone who felt slighted by our interaction. If I was rude to you, please understand it was not my intention to be rude. I have a tendency to become terse when I am highly focused on something, which could be misinterpreted as rudeness as my regular countenance is rather cantankerous.
2. The line did last for approximately 4 hours and we handled over 1400+ people in that time(which I feel is quite a lot), many of those people had multiple rolls to resolve, and we had 28 boons between the two systems.
As just an interesting side note, a conservative estimate puts me having seen over 5000 dice rolled over the course of the weekend.
3. I told many people to step aside while looking at the boon packets, but I don't remember telling anyone to “Hurry up lady, get moving.” I remember saying 'Can I get you to move to the side' and variations of that. If the person to whom I supposedly told the first phrase to reads this, please contact me if indeed those were my words, I'd like the opportunity to say sorry.
4. Please take into consideration that mannerisms between friends can on the surface appear rather rude, but can be in good fun, as I did joke with several people I'm familiar with.
5. Don't tell the rest of HQ but when I grabbed boons from the wrong boon table and people came up to inform me they'd gotten the wrong boons; I'd get them the correct boons, and rather then restock the erroneously given boon and take valuable time, I'd instead throw them towards random people that were around. I understand how this could be interpreted negatively. I don't believe anyone was upset about receiving any thrown boons.
Several of my boons have the stamp like no where near the signature line and in pretty light ink. I have never been audited but I fear that if I were this wouldn't really hold up.
Explain to a person auditing you that the Stamper was very nearly out of ink and that I was required to slam the thing onto the paper to get it to make a stamp at all. In slamming it, my accuracy was not the best. They can always contact me if they are not satisfied with your explanation and I will explain to them as well. If that is unacceptable, come speak to me at GenCon 2018 and I'll happily restamp your boon then.
TL;DR If you felt I was rude to you. It wasn't my intention, Sorry.
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Organized Play Manager
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[redacted]
- It seems from the reporting of scenarios that even when running evergreens, we only get credit for the first time running it? It was my understanding that when running evergreens, as long as only one was applied to each level 1 character, you received credit for every time.
You get credit every time you play or GM an evergreen.
The reporting system automatically puts the tag "already played" on every duplicate scenario, including the evergreens. This is in part due to evergreen not being added as a recognized exception. A fix is on my request list from tech and will hopefully come out soon. The system does add +1 ever time you report the game, duplicate or no.
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For the specials, there are two definite issues that need to be addressed. The first has been very clearly stated, the level 7 pregen issue.
The second is what to do with level 9 characters! At Assault on Absalom at Gen Con this year, I had a table that was at APL 9 (levels 8 8 9 9 9 9). I did my best to give them a good time, but it was less than ideal.
The two obvious choices would be:
1, 2-3, 4-5, 6-7, 8-9, 10-11
or
1-2, 3-4, 5-6, 7-8, 9-10, 11-12
Personally, I would prefer the latter, as it gives a good breakdown on when power levels tend to step up a bit (if only due to new spells and feats). This would also mean that level 9s have their place, and that a level 7 could not be sat at the highest tier (as it would be two sub-tiers above the others).
I know that this would be a bit more work on development, and appreciate that this could mean it just won't happen. It is, however, a simpler solution than going the path of Siege of the Diamond City, where different tiers had completely different encounter paths.
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Siege of the Diamond City is probably my favorite multitable special. I wouldn't mind a level range slide up especially with the recent games at 12-15.
I thought the specials this year were actually a bit too soft on the combats. I think neither went higher than CR 14 in the final encounters even for a 10-11 table. Certainly a bit on the low end.
We completed combats pretty quickly. I was playing a fireball wizard and someone else had a greater sunder keen falchion bloodrager doing 40+ an attack as well. One clears the small guys and the other took out anything fat. I think it was a witch or shaman who ill omen phantasmal killered a solo fight vs some sea monster too. I wouldn't have minded a CR 17 like you see in some specials with a table like that.
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The cleanest, easiest, most inexpensive solution to the level 7 is to just say they are not permitted to play in 10-11 for specials. It means an additional limitation for organizers at smaller events who have less flexibility than we do at Gen Con, but it does not create any more work for our development team nor the creation of sub-tiers that do not match the rest of our products.
IMO the 9 does not need any adjustment at all. While there might be a significant difference between 7-8 and a 9 because of the additional class features that tend to suddenly appear at 9, there is a much smaller difference between 9 and 10-11. If the encounters are sooo difficult as to be unreasonable for a 9, one more level is not going to make a significant difference and we should be looking at the encounter design not the character level. But, I do not believe that is the issue and the 9 can play just fine at 10-11 with no rule changes required.
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On tier 9-11 games with level 7 pregens.
Would it be possible to have a few folders of level 10 prefers at the info desk? This would solve the few issues from this minor problem. NPC Codex.
If you have L10 pregens, folks will want to play them all the time.
Also, having gone through the binders, that'd require something on the order of 40+ new pregen characters built at L10, if memory serves, with more on the way.
Not saying it isn't impossible, but I'd hope there'd be a better yet more inclusive fix for it than that amount of work.
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Except what happens when a smaller local convention decides to have a special?
Do they get permission to use the pregens?
What controls will there be on them?
What guarantees will there be of such control being retained?
Bringing it back to GenCon feedback, though -- while it is neat and epic to have a single Special running on a given night, has there ever been a consideration for running 'two iterations' of a given Special, or is that logistically unfeasible? If Syrinscape is not being used, and the room divided in half (roughly) could there be two Specials at one time?
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Regional Venture-Coordinator, Appalachia
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Except what happens when a smaller local convention decides to have a special?Do they get permission to use the pregens?
What controls will there be on them?
What guarantees will there be of such control being retained?
I mean I am just spitballing here, but say they legalized just Kyra, Valeros, Merisiel, and Seoni at level 10 and explicitly just for multi-table specials in the Roleplaying Guild Guide.
Then they would be legal for all cons, not just gen con, and their use still restricted and laid out in pretty clear terms.