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Just curious which Adventure Card Game forum regulars are planning to be at PAX Unplugged this weekend. While there is no official card guild play, I'd still love to just meet some people and say hi face to face. If nothing else, it helps combat that pesky AI rumor.
So, who all is planning on being there and for what time?
I'm planning on being there all 3 days personally.
I'm there! :)
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The Lone Shark creative team's Chad, Liz, Keith, Skylar, and I are all here, in addition to Lone Shark's own Marie and Shane. Let's hang.
FYI, this is my schedule of talks:
FR 10:30AM solo talk on How We Got Here (Dragon Theater)
FR 8:30PM Digital Board Games panel (Dire Rat Theater)
SA 6:00PM Thornwatch panel (Dragon Theater)
SU 12:00PM Why Your Game Is Better & Worse Than You Think (Kickstarter booth)
I'm really jealous of y'all. Logistics made this impossible for me.
Have a blast! Please tell us your stories on your return.
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We played a little bit of PACG. Not enough.
The place was super crowded. On Saturday especially it was difficult to find anything to do - there wasn't even space at the big bunch of tables to sit and play. Even getting a game out of the library to play had a 20 minute line. The event list gave the illusion that there was all this stuff there to do, but most of it (especially RPG stuff) involved boring lines - There were nowhere near enough events, tables, just overall capacity. Hawkmoon and I mostly went from place to place trying out different games: Celestia, Big Trouble in Little China, Biblios, Dice something (cartmanbeck was salivating over that game, but I forget the name), some others.
Friday and Sunday were better days. Played Thornwatch and Numenera (sp?). Did not get to play Apocrypha. But Thornwatch was awesome.
One thing that struck me was how little attention was given even to last year's hits. I played this Dice Forge game at this smaller local convention a month ago - they had that, but no one was demoing it. Similar for Mummy's Mask - no one seemed to want to play the demo they had out. I dunno; I guess the fleeting nature of some of these games surprised me.
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I definitely had fun. It was indeed very crowded on Saturday. Got to play a game or two with Keith. And for to meet Keith, Mike, and Chad from Lone Shark, Tonya and Erik from Paizo, and First World Bard from the forums, along with his wife. Unfortunately I didn't get a chance to play with First World Bard. We'll definitely need to remedy that. The lack of dedicated space for card guild play made that difficult.
Got to play a few games with CartmanBeck and Theryon Stormrune.
It was fun. Super convienent geographically. Here's hoping next year is better and that any bugs can be ironed out. Plus more organized play.
We played a little bit of PACG. Not enough.
The place was super crowded. On Saturday especially it was difficult to find anything to do - there wasn't even space at the big bunch of tables to sit and play. Even getting a game out of the library to play had a 20 minute line. The event list gave the illusion that there was all this stuff there to do, but most of it (especially RPG stuff) involved boring lines - There were nowhere near enough events, tables, just overall capacity. Hawkmoon and I mostly went from place to place trying out different games: Celestia, Big Trouble in Little China, Biblios, Dice something (cartmanbeck was salivating over that game, but I forget the name), some others.
Friday and Sunday were better days. Played Thornwatch and Numenera (sp?). Did not get to play Apocrypha. But Thornwatch was awesome.
One thing that struck me was how little attention was given even to last year's hits. I played this Dice Forge game at this smaller local convention a month ago - they had that, but no one was demoing it. Similar for Mummy's Mask - no one seemed to want to play the demo they had out. I dunno; I guess the fleeting nature of some of these games surprised me.
I joke about PAX being LineCon for this reason, simply due to the nature of the way things are set up - the alternative is a ticketing system like GenCon in which you have to stay up at 4am just to get tickets to anything hot. There would be some people who would be pissed off no matter what system you had though.
It's a little odd Dice Forge wasn't available though - I played it at PAX West and Asmodee is the largest board game publisher aside from Hasbro, so that seems very odd.
D'oh! And Liz! I met Liz too! Man, I'm tired. Time to get some sleep.
RPG Superstar 2014 Top 16
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I had a ton of fun at PAX Unplugged! It was so great to meet all of the Lone Sharks, play both Apocrypha and Thornwatch, and try out SO MANY new games!
I think the highlight for me though was right at the end of the convention, when I got to sit down at a Thornwatch session with Mike Selinker playing as the judge. We players played way too aggressively at the beginning, and he had given over 30 wounds to us in the first two turns... then somehow we won with just TWO wounds left in the deck. Apparently we were able to have 11 player turns in a row though great strategic play, which was even more amazing given that Mike's big baddie had four momentum trackers!
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One thing that struck me was how little attention was given even to last year's hits. I played this Dice Forge game at this smaller local convention a month ago - they had that, but no one was demoing it. Similar for Mummy's Mask - no one seemed to want to play the demo they had out. I dunno; I guess the fleeting nature of some of these games surprised me.
Hey! I ran a Mummy's Mask demo on Saturday!
But seriously, there were so many people who wanted Starfinder demos that we spent the vast majority of our time running those. I was looking for the base set that was in the PAX library Saturday night, but it looked like someone else had already taken it out.
One thing that struck me was how little attention was given even to last year's hits. I played this Dice Forge game at this smaller local convention a month ago - they had that, but no one was demoing it. Similar for Mummy's Mask - no one seemed to want to play the demo they had out. I dunno; I guess the fleeting nature of some of these games surprised me.Hey! I ran a Mummy's Mask demo on Saturday!
But seriously, there were so many people who wanted Starfinder demos that we spent the vast majority of our time running those. I was looking for the base set that was in the PAX library Saturday night, but it looked like someone else had already taken it out.
Ok, so first of all, I wish I'd known you were there so we could have said hi.
Second of all, approximately what time was this demo you ran? We'd dropped off Calthaer's turntable at the Paizo booth for a few hours. I'm curious if your demo was run while it was there.
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Ok, so first of all, I wish I'd known you were there so we could have said hi.
Second of all, approximately what time was this demo you ran? We'd dropped off Calthaer's turntable at the Paizo booth for a few hours. I'm curious if your demo was run while it was there.
I wish I had known about this thread on Thursday so I could've told you all that I was going to be there!
I don't remember when I did the demo, but I remember that I didn't use the turntable. (I remember seeing it though - it looked cool.)
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I joke about PAX being LineCon for this reason, simply due to the nature of the way things are set up - the alternative is a ticketing system like GenCon in which you have to stay up at 4am just to get tickets to anything hot. There would be some people who would be pissed off no matter what system you had though.
At our latest "Hawkcon," we talked about PAX Unplugged, and one of our peeps astutely commented (in response to the comment "If there's one thing PAX is good at, it's lines") that "I feel being 'good at lines' isn't necessarily a good thing."
You are probably right that, no matter what system you put in place, people will find an excuse to be irritated. I hesitate to use the irascible demeanor of the unwashed masses as an excuse for the whole deficiency in the system, though. Convention attendees are paying ~$20+ per day (not including travel / parking, hotels, food, etc.) for an experience, and if they're not getting what they'd hoped, it's understandable that they would be somewhat dissatisfied with their purchase.
I'm also not certain that pay-to-play ticketing is the only alternative - why is capacity for any given event a fixed thing set in stone? I can understand that it's not easy to create more specific board game components out of thin air for people to play with...but an RPG faces a lot fewer hurdles to opening up new tables to play - unless there isn't space / room...in which case my question is: why is the convention assigning space before ever getting a signal (tickets, sign-ups, surveys, itineraries, etc.) about how much interest there's going to be? So I don't quite get why there was a 30-minute (or longer) line to do the D&D Adventurer's League.
Above all, the most flexible (and least-planning-intensive) thing for the convention should be the "library" where people can just check out a game and go find a table to play it - no leader, nothing. It's a default option when there's nothing else available. If you can't even do that without a 20-minute line, then that's fairly serious problem that should be addressed. There should always be games available to play, and always tables available upon which to play them - it might not be the exact game you want to play, but there should be something to do. On Saturday at PAX Unplugged, it was pretty difficult to find something to do.
Part of it is because they wasted a large portion of the convention hall with the "theater" that was in use only a small part of the time, but they might just not have planned on having that many people. Which, when your tickets are sold out weeks ahead of time...it feels to me that this might have been a foreseeable problem. There were definitely spaces in the convention hall that were mostly empty some or most of the time that could have been better allocated - at the very least, it would be great if they reserved "flex" spaces that they could use as overflow for the most popular options.
There is likely more to this that we are not privy to - things that make it difficult. But many, many companies that are customer-focused end up solving these sorts of problems. I got to do most of the things I wanted to do on the less-crowded days, but I'm hoping that PAX does a little better next year now that they have one of these under their belt.
While I can't speak to PAX Unplugged directly (not having attended it) I can offer opinions from years of attending, GMing at, and helping organize conventions:
I'm also not certain that pay-to-play ticketing is the only alternative - why is capacity for any given event a fixed thing set in stone?
Because people run those events, and people who wish to run events are an extremely rare resource. Those event organizers pick how many players an event can handle, and that's what the convention organizers use to assign space. It's not about player interest directly, though many individual GMs, GM group EOs, and company EOs (where applicable) pick what they run based on what they think people want to play.
Similarly, there are only so many tables available to the convention organizers during the busiest time(s) of the convention. Barring companies buying space (which I'm assuming is a good chunk of PAX cons like it is at Gen Con), those busiest times are what determine the general convention layout. If an event/group/etc. needs X number of tables at peak time and there's only one space that fits X tables, then that space will probably be used by that group or type of event for the entire convention.
...but an RPG faces a lot fewer hurdles to opening up new tables to play...
I'd say the opposite: RPGs need GMs who know the system and the adventure, while most board and card games do not require a GM. You can't just tell someone who signed up to help with the board game library that they're now running a high-level Pathfinder Society adventure.
(To be complete: miniatures events need GMs and a lot of materials; LARPs need GMs and extra space.)
ObTopic: Hope everyone had fun! The PAX conventions sound like a nightmare to me; I need to have a schedule and wouldn't wait in line to maybe play/watch/etc. an event or panel. None of them are nearby anyway, so it's not a choice I have to worry about for now. :)
ObTopic: Hope everyone had fun! The PAX conventions sound like a nightmare to me; I need to have a schedule and wouldn't wait in line to maybe play/watch/etc. an event or panel. None of them are nearby anyway, so it's not a choice I have to worry about for now. :)
Unlike the Unplugged version, PAX East is primarily a video game convention, with a little tabletop gaming on the side. I've gone to PAX East the last two years, and rarely seen any sort of a line for tabletop games. (Although, I wasn't there Saturday this past year, having missed the tickets-are-on-sale tweet.)