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We need your feedback to know what is working and what isn't in order to continue to approve. Please drop your comments here. I will try to answer any questions about the logistical operations, and will record all your feedback into a comprehensive report for Tonya to review. The decisions we make to improve your experience at furniture Gen Con comes from your reported experiences.
Since not everyone follows all three Organized Play forums! I will mirror this thread in all three.
NOTE: if your comments are directed at a specific scenario, feedback is better submitted in the form of a review of that scenario on its product page where the developers/authors can see your comments and use them the improve the products they produce.
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Elaborating a bit on my post from the existing thread:
I wasn't able to play in the Open this year due to being a single in a slot that (like most of the slots) didn't fill. While yes, it'd be nice if I could have come in a team of four, not all of us have groups that attend and are willing to set aside the time. Congrats to the two pairs of folks who teamed up in the same slot and apparently advanced. (Also, I'm sure Gen Con enjoyed my $6. :(
Over the course of the weekend I played the ACG a couple of times just to kill time. However, I wouldn't normally choose to play the card game at Gen Con outside of special events like the Open. Our local group runs the card game side of the Specials, so I do those at home to help with attendance. Otherwise I'd probably do the card game side at Gen Con and do the RPG side locally.
Mustering seemed a bit spotty, but I couldn't tell if it was more players not knowing what they wanted to do (or even the difference between options) or the volunteers getting things sorted out.
A card game boon would be nice for folks who don't play the RPG.
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Thursday:
Played in the Starfinder special, which honestly wasn't very special at all. Felt more like a scenario amd no one seemed to be working together towards some goal. However, the GM we had for it (Natalie from Boston) was quite possibly the best GM I have had in the past 10 years of playing Paizo stuff. She made the scenario. Thanks Natalie! Just remember to actually eat something before drinking bourbon :D
The Starfinder quests were exactly what I expected them to be, a teaching tool and it worked pretty well.
Paizo running out of books on the first day was rather annoying. I mean great for Paizo, but since I did the quests in the 8am slot I missed out on getting the Starfinder AP. Selling out in less then 3 hours? Really? That's not acceptable. I was lucky enough to grab a Rulebook and Pawn set before they disappeared.
Friday:
The PFS special, Assault on Absalom was a lot of fun, though the delays because of our GM not knowing when to start screwed us over on getting some boons. Missed the Scarab Sage boon by 10 hp before it was called. Twice having the higher ups talk also ate up the time we had to complete stuff.
Played Tyranny of Winds pt 1 this day also and randomly ended up with our local Venture Captain as the GM, which was fun.
Saturday:
The end of season 8 special. Oh where to begin. I am somewhat confused as to what this had to do with the theme of the season. It also seemed way, way to long. And of course when we sat down. our GM informed us that she had killed 6 PC's so far this Gen Con and we were free to find another table if we were scared. Sorry, bragging about that is a dickish move and if we ever have her as a GM again, we will be requesting a new GM. And yes, she gleefully got her 7th kill on one of the players at my table. Awesome.
Tyranny of Winds part 2 was also played, and while fun, seemed to have little to do with with parts 1 and 3
Starfinder scenario (The Commencement) had no ship to ship combat was about the most boring thing I did this Gen Con.
Sunday:
Finished Gen Con with Tyranny of Winds part 3, which was fun.
Overall I enjoyed Gen Con and playing paizo stuff. And I didn't have to sit under the movie screen for the specials this year. Huge bonus!
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Paizo running out of books on the first day was rather annoying. I mean great for Paizo, but since I did the quests in the 8am slot I missed out on getting the Starfinder AP. Selling out in less then 3 hours? Really? That's not acceptable. I was lucky enough to grab a Rulebook and Pawn set before they disappeared
In case you were not aware, Paizo brought 50% more Starfinder Core Rulebooks than any book they ever had at past Gen Cons. They seem to have done what they could have to prepare for the extreme demand. Even still, they cannot control our voracious appetite for cool games. Sometimes demand is just soo high that the product sells out and more need to be produced. Which is what I expect to happen in this case.
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Paizo running out of books on the first day was rather annoying. I mean great for Paizo, but since I did the quests in the 8am slot I missed out on getting the Starfinder AP. Selling out in less then 3 hours? Really? That's not acceptable. I was lucky enough to grab a Rulebook and Pawn set before they disappearedIn case you were not aware, Paizo brought 50% more Starfinder Core Rulebooks than any book they ever had at past Gen Cons. They seem to have done what they could have to prepare for the extreme demand. Even still, they cannot control our voracious appetite for cool games. Sometimes demand is just soo high that the product sells out and more need to be produced. Which is what I expect to happen in this case.
I am well aware of the amount they brought. And I'm glad the demand is so high for Starfinder and that it was successful for Paizo. Still doesn't mean I'm not disappointed in missing out on getting a hard copy of the AP. I'm sure there are many, many other customers who were similarly disappointed.
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Thank you for being open to feedback! Overall Paizo's presence at Gen Con is awesome and I really appreciate the dedication by so many people to make ACG events a success. That said, there's always room for improvement, so I hope this feedback is helpful.
Gen Con event listings: Awesome to see so many events, but the gencon.com event finder is a pain to use with hundreds of listings by Paizo that all start with 'P', since you have to keep clicking "view more" and all the names are similar. Maybe a blog could be published with links to all events so we can control-F the ones we want?
Paizo Booth: so much great stuff. Thanks for the free buttons! Was cool to see the Magus Deck release at the con. The checkout line was insane the first day but reasonable the rest of the time. Plus, free minis with coupon!
Sagamore Ballroom: awesome as always. Yay for Starfinder art everywhere! The tables seemed a little more cramped, but manageable. Some sound system glitches, especially during the special, but I know people were working on it.
Boons: As others have mentioned, the complete lack of ACG boons was disappointing. I heard this was due to a timing/logistics problem, which is understandable, with so much being prepared for the con. Maybe some standard boons could be created that don't need updating each year as a fallback? I don't know a lot about boons, since the ones I got last year were pretty random, but it was disappointing to bring a bunch of tokens over and have no PACG options.
ACG Open: This was our first year doing this and we had an absolute blast. The format and story were excellent and fit very well together. Overall it was run very well for a new event, with just a few rough edges. I will try to avoid spoilers here, for the story and game format:
Good:
- Storyline awesome, super great tie-in!
- Provided decks were amazing. You know the ones I mean.
- The 3 scenarios were great. Very thematic. The 7 -> 4 -> 2 thing was brilliant, very clever way to force us to try lots of things at once, then narrow our choices and increase the difficulty. The thing where we lost things every time we encountered a thing was also very clever, that would never work in a season but it worked so well with this format and the story that we all loved it.
- Seeing Mike Selinker and Keith Richmond peek in to check on things was a real treat. I would have totally fanboy'd out if I wasn't fighting you-know-who at the you-know-where!
Bad:
- I think some of info beforehand said 6 players per table, and bring your own decks. We came with a group of 5 and spent a long time deciding on decks, so this was unfortunate.
- Some GM's were better prepared than others. But the ones in the later rounds were very good and helped with rules a lot. My favorite was "When you die, does your turn immediately end?"
- If we are going to use a base set with scourges, access to curse removal is a necessity. The dice were not kind to us. It was not pretty. (This applied to the Special also)
- An 8am start to round 2, after a very late night at the Special, was a bad surprise. Especially since the texts about it came right in the middle of the special (a timed event where you can't be fiddling with your phone).
Please note that these bad points were relatively minor. Overall we enjoyed the Open most of all over the weekend, more than the Special even.
Regarding the Special, Assault on Absalom, I have a lot of thoughts, but I will post them separately since this got really long. Thank you again for being open to feedback!
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Venture-Agent, Nebraska—Omaha
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The ACG was without a Marshall Friday afternoon when I was trying to muster, but after a bit of chaos the GMs sorted things out and I had a blast playing the first adventure of the new season. Both the GMs I played with were kind, knowledgeable, and patient with my newbie questions.
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Dedicate more resources to ACG for future RP/ACG crossover events like the Friday night interactive. Having ACG GMs covering 2-3 tables and trying to breakdown and set up scenarios while the clock is constantly ticking led to tables getting set up and then the scenario called within minutes because the story moved and then having to rush to set up the next scenario with similar results.
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The ACG Special had a few problems, which I'll see if I can get addressed. In particular: it had under 4 hours of play time, when I thought it would have 5 solid hours of play time. This time difference particularly hurt the last two scenarios.
It had GMs setting up locations when I thought players would be reading the scenarios for themselves and setting up their own locations, potentially with volunteer assistance.
It is my understanding that the first problem gravely impacted the RPG tables as well. I had friends playing on the RPG side who did not get a turn against the final boss before it was called.
On the boon side, we should have done better. I designed some boons back in March, but I didn't ensure they then moved from there into your hands. I'll attempt to rectify that ASAP.
I did hear of a couple problems with the Open, where the Gen Con system had the wrong information - that it was for 4 players who are all experienced. I don't have any control over it, but I assure you I do care and will see who I can talk to about what.
Thanks for all the responses, everyone; keeping an eye on this thread!
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For the ACG special: It would be helpful to sell tickets for specific tiers similarly to the way the RPG is sold. If that does not work for some reason, it would be helpful if the people doing the muster were very clear on what tier characters went to each tier of the game. There was some confusion at mustering.
Agree with above poster that it would be helpful to have a volunteer per table, as our volunteer with two tables was definitely stretched thin.
Good call, Eliandra.
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The ACG Special had a few problems, which I'll see if I can get addressed. In particular: it had under 4 hours of play time, when I thought it would have 5 solid hours of play time.
Note that this is not new. The Gen Con Specials always start late, always have multiple non-game-related announcements in the middle that interrupt everything in addition to the full-room events, and always have encounters that either get cut off with you doing nothing (via time limits or other tables completing things) or delay your particular table so much that you miss complete sections of the adventure. This year, for example, my RPG table was one of the ones that had one round against the final boss.
Honestly, I'd plan for 3-3.5 hours of playtime at most.
It had GMs setting up locations when I thought players would be reading the scenarios for themselves and setting up their own locations, potentially with volunteer assistance.
The GMs run everything in the other slots (at least the ones in which I played) and people new at Gen Con will have never set up a scenario before so I don't think this is a safe assumption going forwards. Hard to do much about it without more volunteer support, though. Hmm... :(
On the boon side, we should have done better. I designed some boons back in March, but I didn't ensure they then moved from there into your hands. I'll attempt to rectify that ASAP.
We'll all look forward to it for next year, along with the all-new method of boon distribution.
(I'm still not sure why retiring the older tokens is an important issue.)
I did hear of a couple problems with the Open, where the Gen Con system had the wrong information - that it was for 4 players who are all experienced.
True; the info in the system was set up for groups of 6 and had very little about experience (basically the same as a regular RPG table except for saying it's a tournament). Looking at ticket sales in the system, I'd cut it back to 2 or 3 tables per qualifier (so 8 or 12 tickets). I'm sure someone over there will have fun crunching the numbers based on actual attendance. :)
Note that this is not new. The Gen Con Specials always start late, always have multiple non-game-related announcements in the middle that interrupt everything in addition to the full-room events, and always have encounters that either get cut off with you doing nothing (via time limits or other tables completing things) or delay your particular table so much that you miss complete sections of the adventure. This year, for example, my RPG table was one of the ones that had one round against the final boss.
When it runs at other locations, does it tend to have the full time allotment? My RPG experience is limited to home games, while I focus on ACG at conventions, so this is actually new territory for me :)
I wrote to a certain specification (110 minutes for this, 110 that, 40 this, 40 that kinda thing) and if that's _mostly_ true, just probably not usually at Gen Con, I can maybe just add some guidance in the future for how to handle shortening things that still lets people see the scenarios more fully, while keeping it intact for other conventions.
I am pretty passionate about improving this experience for everyone (as a player _and_ as a designer), so it's great to know this stuff.
Thanks Keith for helping put all this together. The story for the special (& the mechanics in general), were fantastic! We had a lot of fun, and I hope that all of our suggestions are taken in that context.
I definitely agree that having one volunteer per table for the special would be ideal. I also strongly encourage pre-building all location decks. I do understand that the boxes used for the special are also used for regular games throughout the day, but I'm sure the players at each table wouldn't mind shuffling boons & setting up a ton of location decks when they first sit down, so the volunteer can just add henchmen/villains as needed, which still leaves the players with the element of surprise. I know that it isn't always feasible to have so many volunteers, but I'm pretty sure that some of the tables with more experienced players would be willing to read & set up their own scenarios, allowing the volunteers to be more focused on tables with less experienced players.
Eliandra's suggestion of selling tier-based tickets is excellent. At the very least, I would sort the muster area into 3 groups: tier 1-3, tier 4-6, and "I'll go where you need me", to make table grouping faster. I do realize that getting the ACG side seated more quickly is unlikely to have an impact on start time, considering that there are ~8x more RPG tables to seat, but it does increase the likelihood of each ACG table being ready to flip the top card of the blessings deck as soon as the event starts, which will help a little.
And as Wikwocket mentioned, the inability to remove curses was frustrating. I had less of an issue with it during the open (in part because I expected that to be harder, but also because I could justify it within the story of the open), but when you end up with a curse that essentially cuts your hand size down to 2 or 3 for the rest of the scenario, it turns what should be a fun game into an exercise in frustration. I'm pretty sure our Alain got at least one curse every scenario within her first 2 turns (except the last scenario, but she also didn't get to finish her first turn on that one). I love the curse mechanic in general, but it didn't make a lot of sense within the story that there was no way to get rid of them. Maybe that would have been a good thing to have on the reinforcements?
I loved the idea of flipping back & forth between the first 2 scenarios to get different rewards each time. My table didn't have enough time to finish our second scenario, so we didn't actually experience that mechanic, but I think it's an excellent way to keep people who get super lucky & close locations on the first few turns busy without making them feel like they're doing busy work (yes, I'm thinking of last year's never-ending collapsing bridges...). I loved the reinforcements idea, I just wish they'd been a little more interactive. I think the timing issues meant that they all moved at once, instead of shifting randomly throughout the game period. Having them move more frequently than just at a scenario's end would have been fun.
The open was spectacular, aside from the ticket system suggesting 6 players & showing up to find it's only 4. I think that & the 8 am post-special thing that Wikwocket mentioned are my only complaints. Without a doubt, the open was the highlight of my GenCon.
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When it runs at other locations, does it tend to have the full time allotment? My RPG experience is limited to home games, while I focus on ACG at conventions, so this is actually new territory for me :)
Away from Gen Con they tend to start closer to on time, have less non-game-related interruptions, and may be more flexible with time slots but may still be up against a hard stop time. (That was an issue in previous years at Gen Con.) You'll still have the in-game cutoffs (if nothing else, it's a timed event) and various tables will stall. There's also a GM prep/scenario organization issue where the GMs have to go looking after an announcement to see if they're supposed to play out the current part or fast-forward when things happen in the middle of an encounter. (I've seen that a few times, including this year.)
These are my own experiences which are a very small sample size, so take it for whatever it's worth. :)
My table didn't have enough time to finish our second scenario, so we didn't actually experience that mechanic, but I think it's an excellent way to keep people who get super lucky & close locations on the first few turns busy without making them feel like they're doing busy work (yes, I'm thinking of last year's never-ending collapsing bridges...).
Heh. When I played the ACG side of that Special locally last year there was a point at which none of the decks had any boons, so both tables just stopped until the timer kicked us forward.
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I wrote to a certain specification (110 minutes for this, 110 that, 40 this, 40 that kinda thing) and if that's _mostly_ true, just probably not usually at Gen Con, I can maybe just add some guidance in the future for how to handle shortening things that still lets people see the scenarios more fully, while keeping it intact for other conventions.
I am pretty passionate about improving this experience for everyone (as a player _and_ as a designer), so it's great to know this stuff.
In general the Friday night special almost never starts on time and it usually begins with announcements of some kind prior to the event starting. After the ENine awards, the action is paused again for those announcements.
Really, what I wanted to note is that the ACG and RPG don't run at the same pace. Especially since we have to construct and deconstruct decks. At one point after we had transitioned scenarios and rebuilt for the next we only had one round before we were tearing it down and rebuilding again.
It was mentioned earlier in the thread about having the locations for all the scenarios already built and I cannot agree with this more. Ideally, we would have two boxes at each table. One where all the locations have been built from and one for handling game interactions; as I believe having numerous locations already built would tap the resources of a single box.
I was surprised by the photocopies used for the Skulls & Shackles cards and disappointed in their quality.
The "high" tier of the Special was 5. This allowed for characters to be tier 4 or 6. The repercussion of this is that you could not complete any season of the ACG Society and then bring that character to the special. At no point was this information given out prior to being sat at a table.
On the same vein, tables were limited to four players which was also not known prior to the start of the event; this also applies to the Open Tournament. In comparison to the Tournament I would classify the above as inconveniences to how the problems the Open had.
My recommendation here is simply having this information passed along when you sign up for the event. Gen Con sends an email along with each event you sign up for that has the following: "The event organizer wanted to send you the following message." Then including the information (max tier 6, max players 4) in some fashion.
Regional Venture-Coordinator, Gulf
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Kevin and I are reading, without contributing, so we can understand what people saw.
I want to make sure that it was made clear, the photocopied cards on the table were from Kevin and me.
The photocopy use on the table was to prevent proxy sheets that would have been confusing and slow. The copies didn't look good, but there was not much time to swap cards, read a proxy sheet, and play.
We made a choice to speed play.
If you have questions for me, please PM here.
(back to your comments, we are learning a lot from you, as it should be)
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Thanks for soliciting this feedback, Bob. It was my first GenCon and truly an amazing time! I’ve listed some of my memorable observations after GMing five slots below:
Seemed to go really well…
· I thought HQ definitely seemed on their “A-Game”. Very focused and positive.
· It was great we could “sign out” the Starfinder maps/pregens/pawns!
· Thanks for the Starfinder cheat sheets.
· Volunteers working the central table area also seemed top-notch.
· Mustering for my tables went well.
· Bottled water was a life-saver.
· I appreciated Tonya’s kind words and acknowledgements of the volunteers : )
· Color coding the tables was an awesome idea.
Some potential opportunities for improvement….
· When I arrived Thursday night, HQ was out of my requested shirt size (medium) and all that was left was XL and 2XL! I made do and by Sunday was able to track down some awesome GMs who traded me shirts that fit. It eventually worked out ok but the entire incident seemed peculiar.
· Even with folks “shushing” the chatters, I could hear very little (and see nothing) during the GM conference before the Saturday night special. Another GM took pictures of the condition card explanations and passed them around for a lot of us. Perhaps next year they could be emailed ahead of time?
· As a GM at my first GenCon, I wasn’t sure why the specials started so late.
· I would also be in favor of shorter specials. My tables Friday and Saturday seemed focused but Friday never met the final boss and Saturday just managed to start the fight before time was called.
· I really enjoyed Solstice Scar but felt it was strangely organized to read and not always chronologically presented.
· Voice quality and overall audio-visual during specials seemed uneven.
Thanks again for all of your hard work and gathering this feedback to improve next year!
I actually didn't mind the photocopied locations. Sure, they were a little hard to read across the table, but I loved that they used S&S locations instead of making up something new. Obviously, having the actual location cards would have been nice, but I don't think it would be worth it for them to pull them out of however many S&S boxes for the night & have to get them put back into those boxes for people to play Season of the Shackles the next day, especially since I'm pretty sure they didn't bring as many of those as would have been needed for the special.
For the proxied henchmen/villains, the volunteer in charge of our table ended up ripping the "cards" out of the sheet so that once we encountered one we could pass the "card" around the table, which was extremely helpful, because there was enough going on that there was no way we were going to remember what the henchman we'd just seen in location X was when we found one in location Y. It actually would have been nice to have something on the table to see what the active bonuses were (from factions or story goals or whatever), along with the scenario text for reference, since we didn't have access to the overall adventure paperwork.
Technically, I think you can bring a character who has completed a season to the Special. A tier 6 character only needs to complete tier 6 after 6 scenarios, right? So if you've completed AD 6 of a season with fewer than 6 unique scenarios in AD 6, you could take your character to the Special. They'd become ineligible for tier advancement after a scenario or 2, but I think the guide says they can finish an adventure if they become ineligible in the middle of it, and the special is an adventure. It's worth noting that under the current guide, if your character completes all scenarios at the Special, you need to pay close attention to when your character moves from tier to tier or they may complete tier 6 prior to actually starting AD 6 of whatever season you're running them with...
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Before the Season of Plundered Tombs (i.e. before the Guide v. 4.0) characters were forced to advance when they completed an Adventure, so characters that finished an entire AP would have gone to Tier 7.
I don't mind that characters who have finished an entire Guild Season can't play in the Specials; it's just like having a level 12 PFSRPG character. (Only one of the Specials allows for higher than level 11 characters.)
A lot of the missing info about the card game events seems to have been caused by the EO using the same templates for them as the RPG events. Should be pretty easy to fix next year if someone's paying attention.
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Open Feedback:
1) Put the same cards in all of the locations. Do not simply pull from the box.
This should have been obvious - teams had wildly different experiences based on what they encountered.
2) Put the cards in the same order in all of the locations. Do not simply shuffle them to start the scenario.
Again, this should have been obvious.
In the second round, we were told the top-ranked team was 10 points ahead of 2nd place, which we can only imagine means they had lucked into top-decked (or nearly so) henchman and were done with the 6 locations in 10 turns or less.
3) Create a more dynamic scoring system and make sure it is shared with the players.
Monsters killed plus blessings left was not only bland but very clearly unbalanced.
Total levels of monsters killed might have been more dynamic (compensating for the # of turns randomness) but not necessarily more fair (because other than henchman, it is not unreasonable to see nothing but B veterans).
4) Have a player handout and a gm handout.
Some of us like or even need to read the scenario special rules in order to grok them. We need to be able to refer to them throughout the scenario to make sure we haven't forgotten anything. Etc.
5) Get the event listing right!!!
"Bring your favorite class deck" was not the same text as any other event, which meant it was written explicitly for this one - yet it was dead wrong. No correction on the blog, no response to any thread here in the forums.
Thanks for wasting everyone's pre-con prep time.
6) Keep using the newer class decks.
It was great to see the Magus and two Tales characters.
7) Keep tying the characters to the story.
Being forced to use Character X from our deck was a cool conceit.
8) Keep implementing cool mechanics.
The vampiric energy drain was a nice puzzle to have to work with and around. Kudos for keeping it balanced with the "bury that type of card to uncheck a card feat" (since that was our first thought).
I know the Open from the last two years was far more work to set up and run, but it was not only more fun, it also actually rewarded top-level play.
This year was more of a unique scenario from which random teams advanced to another unique scenario, rinse and repeat.
Special feedback:
1) I'll repeat the player handout idea, but with the caveat that you only need it if there's protected gm text on the page as well.
No matter what, consider multiple copies of the sheet, so each side of the table can have one.
2) Do not use henchman that do not allow you to close the location.
This is a timed event, with multiple scenarios to get thru as quickly as possible, and the B scenario hit us with the biggest, grindiest time-suck in the game.
I don't think there was a villain that we could have chased around - if there were, then that lowers the grind level some. Almost entirely eliminates it, if we have an idea where he starts the game.
3) Keep doing fun, interactive-style things like Reinforcements.
It was a nice boon to take advantage of, and also nice to walk over and drop it on another table.
4) Keep doing fun, special-level stuff like opening up new locations based on choice of faction (or faction successes).
It was a nice opportunity to customize the scenario to our group to be able to say "we like these guys" or "we're really good at this thing."
5) Tell the Syrinscape guys that they should use someone with a deep, booming voice to be their deep, booming-voiced character. The modulated-voice sounded soooo fake, it was laughable. :D
Cheers.
-Vic
Oh yeah, about the 8am semi-final...
That was listed on the Gen Con site. As was the final at noon on Sunday.
Barring text to the contrary, we made the generic assumption that the three slots on Thurs advanced to 8am and the three on Fri advanced to 11am. Since it was by score... it was more of a surprise.
These things should also be spelled out in the event listing.
"Teams that advance will play the Sat 8am semi-final."
"Teams that advance will be able to pick which semi-final slot they play in."
Heck, you may want just a single semi-final slot.
Or for teams to pick their slot at the time that they play, so they know "if we advance, we play at X time."
But once you pick a certain time for the final, you're going to have to stick with it. :D
We had an interesting moment of panic when Dominick told us (before we knew whether we advanced or not) that they were moving it to 10am from noon, because one of our players worked until noon. Well, I call it panic, but I'm sure it unintentionally came across as actual hostility. :(
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Organized Play Manager
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Open Feedback:
[redacted]
Thank you for taking the time to put your thoughts down. This is the first year running PACG without Tanis, so figuring out the integration between Lone Shark and Paizo was some trial and error. Feedback allows me to correct on errors from this year and make the experience more enjoyable for everyone!
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Organized Play Manager
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I want to thank everyone for their feedback. While I called out Iceman in the post above, because of the uniqueness of PACG issues, the leads, Org Play team, and I take each and every post here very seriously when we evaluate how we did and what changes we need to make to our processes.
Without your feedback, we don't know what areas to focus on for improvement.
Thanks, Tonya.
I want to be clear that we had a great con. And a lot of fun playing these games.
I'm just chock full of (hopefully) constructive criticism! :)
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1 - GM assignments: GMs were assigned a specific Season; most GMs ended up running many different ones. With the prep required to run ACG, I would suggest that all future GMs be expected to run any given slot as demand dictates. I personally ran scenarios from Season 0, 2, 3, and 4 with little difficulty and understand many of the other AGC GMs had similar experiences.
2 - Boons: LOTS of complaints about lack of ACG Boons, which I understand is being addressed.
3 - ACG open: Suggest a deck list to help reorganize/verify all cards get back where they go; A little extra prep time from GMs would help with the class decks (group all the cards to reduce some stress on player franticly trying to build a deck with unfamiliar cards). A standardized score card should be used with each session and verified by players. Boon for playing may be nice too.
4 - Special: I did not play/run, but hung out and helped a little. There were a lot of complaints about time required to reset boxes with a GM running multiple tables. This did not seem to be a major problem in 2016, but heard about it this year. I have no suggestion, other than encouraging players to be more active in prep/resetting boxes, as this is part of the ACG.
5 - HQ: There were many times when HQ staff did not appear to be present. Mustering was often chaotic and purple shirts were often left to sort it out themselves. The ACG section had 20 tables, and excluding the special, the majority of the tables were empty. I often counted 6 or 7 tables launching on average. Not sure how 15-20 tables could have been seated if every GM had a table to run.
6 - GMs playing at tables: My understanding is that GMs were responsible for two tables per slot, but rarely had more than one. This gave GMs the opportunity to play with the players which I have mixed feelings on. if there are a small number of players, by all means a GM should jump in to get the party size to 4, but not sure that a GM should be sitting in on a table of 6. Part of what GMs should be doing is teaching and clarifying rules. This is much easier to do observing play instead of leading play.
7 - Season of the Goblins: MANY disappointed players wondering why this was not offered.
8 - I had a blast helping out with ACG this year. ACG is a niche product. With 150+ tables running, Paizo has to best utilize their resources and gaming space where demand is needed. I would like to see a lot of effort put into improving ACG, but not at the expense of a PFS and now SFS. While it would be nice to offer everything, it may not be the best use of Paizo's resources. Was it worth offering Season of Shackles and Righteous every slot? Thanks for a great GenCon50 and looking forward to next year!