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Trenloe
November 4th, 2013, 06:02
Well, the third FG Con is over. A few statistics:

23 events ran (compared with 21 events in FG Con 2) - over 30 events were posted coming into the con, but a few were canceled due to lack of sign-ups. Plenty of the events were fully booked a few days before the convention.
Approx 120 player sessions over the whole convention.
Over 10,500 individual page views on the website (9000+ for FG Con 2).

Now the thanks...

First and foremost I have to thank damned - he helped a lot with advertising the event, organised hosting of the fg-con website, sending out reminder emails to GMs, putting the survey together, giving me pep talks when all of the con admin was getting on top of me - thanks damned!
Mellock - for providing the TeamSpeak server for use of the con (and for providing it on an ongoing basis for the community). Also for providing expanded capacity for the convention.
The rest of the convention team (in no particular order): Blackfoot, wbcreighton, damned and others that have helped out over the last few months.
Shockbolt for providing artwork for the site and banners.
Smiteworks - Doug and JPG for sending out the FG-Con newsletter, posting on various sites, for providing the full-to-ultimate upgrade for the week of the con (awesome), for the GM incentive and for holding off releasing FG 3.0 just before the con (that would have caused all sorts of issues). Thanks a lot guys!
Anyone who mentioned the con on any external website/forum/webpage out there.
All the GMs for running games - I had a blast playing my usual convention system of Savage Worlds (Jingo's "The Fall of Burly Pete" and grapper's "Animal Day"), and getting to play the final part in a PFS scenario series where I played parts I and II as my first ever PFS games 2.5 years ago - thanks lachancery!
All the players for making it another successful FG Con. It was cool hanging out in the TeamSpeak open chat channel with you.
Paizo for providing product support for the PFS games.

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. 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 1-3, I hope that GMs will return for FG Con 4 and more GMs will join the gang and run games.

Activity on the website (views on each day):
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/39085830/Screenshots/FG%20Con%203/FG%20Con%203%20-%20Views.jpg
This quite clearly shows that despite advertising the convention from a month in advance that the big volume of people only start viewing the site one week before the convention. The previous increase in activity (October 15th) is when we first started advertising seriously - and damned started "spamming" threads! :) But, even despite advertising ahead of time, spamming and other items - we had players hanging around on the TeamSpeak server looking for games and saying they only found out about it this weekend. In the end, no matter how hard you advertise, for how long, people are always going to hear about the event too late or miss out entirely... But, We'll be advertising FG Con 4 even earlier and see if that makes any difference.

On to FG Con 4 next year! Not on a weekend where daylight savings changes...

Talen
November 4th, 2013, 11:23
Thanks for a great com guys! I'm amazed with everything you accomplished from an online only presence and want to specifically thank the organizers I had the pleasure to interact with - Trenloe, Blockfoot, Damned and Mellock. I think this event you have put together is the single biggest driver in bringing new blood to our area of the hobby. I know 1st hand the fact that it went off so smoothly has resulted in at least 3 players from my games indicating they were either going to purchase the system or become more involved. Thanks again guys, I had a great time.

damned
November 4th, 2013, 13:03
Here are a few quick stats from the survey. We had 120 player slots attended - a few more were booked and game got cancelled or a player didnt make it and from that we have 72 survey responses in so far.

5372 5373 5374

I guess its time to get a new signature now...

jshauber
November 4th, 2013, 14:32
I've been using FGII for a few months now and have to say the FGCON idea is awesome!!!

I got a chance to play in 4 games.

Thanks to Valarian for the One Ring game and to Lachancery for Shades of Ice games.

It was both fun and informative for me to see how games are run and how players can be ready with effects, etc to make things run smoother.

I learned alot and am planning on stepping up to run a game or two at FGCON IV assuming it falls on as good a weekend as this one did for me.

Thanks to all who put time and effort into the planning, organizing and creation of the website to handle bookings.

And, thanks to the developers for creating a very nice system.

Trenloe
November 4th, 2013, 16:27
Vote here for the dates of the next FG Con: https://www.fantasygrounds.com/forums/showthread.php?19827-FG-Con-4-dates

Valarian
November 4th, 2013, 18:01
I'll echo the thanks and appreciation to all the admins/organisers. I didn't manage more than one game this time, but hope to be back for FGCon4.

wbcreighton
November 4th, 2013, 19:58
Well, the third FG Con is over.
we had players hanging around on the TeamSpeak server looking for games and saying they only found out about it this weekend. In the end, no matter how hard you advertise, for how long, people are always going to hear about the event too late or miss out entirely...


Do you think we should encourage GMs not to cancel games ( even if there are no sign ups ) until right before the session ? I would say that GMs should be encouraged to have a backup game that works for 1 or 2 players. If there were players looking to play, then a GM would be able to just grab them into a quick session.

Myrddin
November 4th, 2013, 20:59
A big thank you to all those who organised the con and the individual games. I played in two games and "met" some great people, had a fantastic time and learned some more FG functionality. All in all, a brilliant weekend!

I hope to run a game at the next con and, indeed, before then.

jshauber
November 4th, 2013, 22:36
Do you think we should encourage GMs not to cancel games ( even if there are no sign ups ) until right before the session ? I would say that GMs should be encouraged to have a backup game that works for 1 or 2 players. If there were players looking to play, then a GM would be able to just grab them into a quick session.

What about allowing players to play more than one character. I know this can take away little from the game, but better than cancelling completely. Just have a few pre-gens handy to use if needed.

Trenloe
November 4th, 2013, 23:11
Certainly we can ask them to not cancel and have other options available or take the chance of getting players off the "open chat" channel (or perhaps a "pick up game" channel) in TeamSpeak. But, some people may prefer to cancel and go and do something else rather than waste their time hoping they'll get a party together. But, in the end it is up to the individual GM whether they cancel or not.

damned
November 5th, 2013, 01:00
Do you think we should encourage GMs not to cancel games ( even if there are no sign ups ) until right before the session ? I would say that GMs should be encouraged to have a backup game that works for 1 or 2 players. If there were players looking to play, then a GM would be able to just grab them into a quick session.

That does mean twice as much work for the GM though.
Its a tough situation - Id like to know in advance that the game wasnt running but Id also be hanging out in the hope that it might.
Player feedback from a last minute withdrawn game was that they preferred it to be given as much chance as possible.