Fg Con 9 - Review

[Trenloe]

Here we go with my usual summary/review of the recently ended FG Con, our 9th!

July 2012 was the first time we ran FG Con. Now we're running stronger than ever, just completing our 9th convention and continuing in our regular twice yearly slots (mid April and mid October).

I say it every time, and I have to say it again: MANY BIG THANK YOUs to damned (those of us in the "real world" know him as Damian). He has done a massive amount of the work for this convention - visiting many external forums and sites to publicise the convention, sending out GM and player updates, putting newsletters together, checking on event entries and bookings on the website, chasing GM and players to clarify details, helping to get people new games when real-life inevitably interferes AND running some games. Thanks so much Damian, this incredibly successful convention wouldn't have happened without you.

Also thanks so much to IanMWard and Mask_of_Winter, who are now regular members of the admin team, for their help with all of the convention stuff and also helping to get and organize product prizes from RPG companies.

There is so, so much work involved in the background for these conventions that I look back with mixed feelings at the end of a FG Con - partly sad that it is over, but also partly (mostly?) happy that I get a portion of my life back for a couple of months before we start work towards FG Con 10 (woo – double-digits!).

A few statistics:

• 92 sessions ran. Compared with 67 events at FG Con 8, 45 events at FG Con 7, 56 events at FG Con 6, 48 events at FG Con 5, 39 events at FG Con 4 and 23 events in FG Con 3. That's an increase of over one-third from the previous convention and out best ever!
• We have organised play events for both Pathfinder Society and Dungeons and Dragons 5E Adventurers Leagues – which are both a very welcome regular presence at FG Con. Thanks to the PFS (Pathfinder Society) guys who stepped up (cmdisc and Blackfoot) and Brynnan for D&D Adventurers League (5E)
• D&D Adventurers League ran a number of premier sessions – great that we got this scenario for the convention.
• Just short of 500 player sessions booked (491). Compared with 240 at FG Con 7, 320 at FG Con 6 and 281 at FG Con 5. That’s a great increase in player bookings.
• Over 35,000 site visits in the last three months (up from 31,000 at FG con 8, and 19,000 at FG Con 7).

Support
We get support from a number of companies, which goes straight to the GMs and Players. FG Con is organised by the community for the community, it's free to partake and the organisation is all done for free, no money/products etc. make it into the hands of the organisers.

We had some great support for this convention:

• AAW Games Provided GM and player support - free FG modules for GMs and a one month subscription for players and GMs who partook in the 5 AAW Games events ran at FG Con 9.
• Legendary Games offered free modules for GMs.
• Chaosium offered Call of Cthulhu GM support.
• Dan Harlan offered support for his - Balanced Disturbed scenario.
• Paizo support for the Pathfinder Society games.
• And last, but not least, SmiteWorks for upgrading all Standard (full) Fantasy Grounds licenses to Ultimate for the weekend of the convention - allowing any player to play for free. Thanks SmiteWorks!

Some more info on Third Party Publisher support here: https://www.fantasygrounds.com/forum...-(3PP)-support

We run FG Con for a number of reasons:

• Because we *love* playing RPGs on Fantasy Grounds!
• Because we want to allow people the opportunity to play different games (perhaps games they wouldn't usually play) or just get the chance to play a game in a fun, happy, community ran convention.
• We want to introduce Fantasy Grounds to players (and potential GMs) outside of the Fantasy Grounds community.

To do this, we rely heavily on the FG community to step up and run games. Not everyone can GM a game on FG as it requires knowledge of the application and preparation time - we had a couple of GMs drop out as they weren't ready to run a game on Fantasy Grounds. As such we have a limited number of people who can run games for FG Con and so we are always going to be limited in the total number of events we offer. Thanks to all of the GMs who have ran games at FG Con 1 - 9, I hope that GMs will return for FG Con 10 and more GMs will join the gang and run games.

Again, a BIG thanks to all GMs who ran games for this convention.

Feedback

Anyone who took part in the convention could you please provide feedback at the feedback thread here: https://www.fantasygrounds.com/forum...eedback-thread

The con admins will be taking a break for a few weeks and then we'll look at exact dates for FG Con 10, but it will be April 2017, and start to get organised for that...

Thanks again everyone!

[damned]

I would very much like to add thanks to HoloGnome and cmdisc (and the other PFS guys who supported them) for your efforts getting the 24 PFS tables going and to Brynnan who joined up closer to the event to really push through some more ALO support. 5e and PFS provided the largest number of games followed very closely by Savage Worlds. We had a much better success rate on the Savage Worlds games this FG Con which personally pleased me greatly!

[Mask_of_winter]

I don't have the exact numbers since I slept through some of the scheduled Savage Worlds games but I believe 15-16 Savage Worlds games ran. In previous FG Cons that number was usually between 8-12. I'm very pleased with that, especially since -from the personal feedback I've been getting from the GMs- I know many players in those games were totally new to the system and had a great time.

[Trenloe]

Yes, it was a great Savage Worlds turnout.

[Talyn]

I had a blast, just wish I could have played in more games than I did.

I was a little surprised that damned and Mask_of_winter didn't team up to run a Barbarians of Lemuria session to show new players (everyone?) what it's all about and hopefully generate some sales for all the work you put into the ruleset! But it was sweet that at least Cthulhu 7E got two beta sessions with unsuspecting players, even though I didn't get to be one of them.

Really looking forward to FG Con 10! I just hope it's announced soon so I can put in a vacation request for that weekend.

[Trenloe]

I just hope it's announced soon so I can put in a vacation request for that weekend.

It will be a similar weekend in April to what it was this year. But we won't confirm until January as we will need to double-check worldwide daylight-saving changes and holidays in key locations globally.

[Talyn]

I'll have to take a guess then. I think my job bids for 2017 vacation next month.

[damned]

EDIT: Sorry Talyn - I didnt confirm my facts - April 14-16 is Easter so:

Its 90% likely to be April 7-9 or 21-23 and I think the first of those is the more likely but no guarantees...
We cant give you any closer than that at this time.

[Trenloe]

Initial announcement for FG Con 10: https://www.fantasygrounds.com/forum...April-9th-2017