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Trenloe
October 20th, 2014, 06:01
Well, that's it. FG Con V is nearly over... From what I've heard everyone has had a great time.

I firstly want to say MANY BIG THANK YOUs to damned. He has done by far the lion's share of the work for this conventions - 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, then finding time to run 3 player and GM intro sessions, AND running a Castles & Crusades game. Thanks so much Damian, this very successful convention wouldn't have happened without you.

There is 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 happy that I get a portion of my life back for a couple of months before we start work towards FG Con VI.

A few statistics:

48 sessions, compared with 39 events at FG Con IV and 23 events in FG Con III. That's a 23% increase from IV to V - which is really good and makes for sustained growth at future conventions :) At one point we actually had nearly 60 events registered, but some of those didn't go ahead due to low player booking or other not-to-be-forseen issues.
First FG Con to have games ran in a language other than English - we had German and Swedish. Fantastic!
The number of Pathfinder Society (PFS) sessions increased by 3 from 15 to 18 (15 is the minimum we need for product support from Paizo). This is encouraging as it shows that we keep increasing the non PFS games at the convention - no Pathfinder Society saturation here! But, it is still an integral part of FG Con and the PFS events are usually the first to fill up.
281 (approx) player sessions booked. Compared with 183 at FG Con IV and 120 at FG Con III. A 50% increase from FG Con IV to V.
Over 20,000 site visits, very similar to FG Con IV - double that of FG Con III. But, in FG Con IV we had a massive spike as Fantasy Grounds appeared on Steam for the first time at the same time as FG Con IV.

The following is a screenshot of the weekly hits (FG Con IV s on the far left) - the stats for this large week in April are skewed because we got lots and lots of hits from visitors from Steam when FG first hit Steam.

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/39085830/Screenshots/Fantasy%20Grounds/FG%20Con%20V/Site%20Hits.JPG

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 I - V, I hope that GMs will return for FG Con VI and more GMs will join the gang and run games.

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

A few GM details:

First event - damned with a player intro session. (This is identical to FG Con IV).
Last event - Blackfoot's Pathfinder Society scenario "The Traitor's Lodge". (Blackfoot was also last to run at FG Con IV with a playtest of his Champions ruleset).
Most events - damned - 4. (Same as FG Con IV).
Joint second: Mask_of_Winter - 3, Skellan - 3, Valarian- 3, rhythmist- 3, Blackfoot - 3
Joint seventh: Fizban -2, jshauber - 2, lachancery - 2, LordKavos - 2.
21 other GMs.

31 GMs in total! This is great as it shows that we're spreading the load and not relying too much on the same people (except the usual suspects in the list above).

Feedback

Anyone who took part in the convention could you please provide feedback at the feedback thread here: https://www.fantasygrounds.com/forums/showthread.php?22362-FG-Con-V-Feedback-thread

Damned and I will be taking a break for a few weeks and then we'll look at dates for FG Con VI and start to get organised for that...

Thanks again everyone!

ddavison
October 20th, 2014, 06:12
You guys and gals rock! Great job.

I'm hoping that the weekend's networking issues didn't cause to many troubles for people, but I fear that it may have.

Valarian
October 20th, 2014, 06:38
Echo the thanks to damned for organising this, and to trenloe as well.

cmdisc
October 20th, 2014, 12:29
I'd like to offer my thanks to everyone as well. You guys that put this together and make it possible are just awesome!

I was one of those affected by the networking issues and wasn't able to get into my first game as a player. I had run a session just prior to this with no issues and arrived early to try to work out any bugs before game time, but nothing I could figure seemed to be working. Everyone else in the session was present and accounted for and didn't seem to be having any issues, but none of my computers that ran FG could get into the game. Then Trenloe hopped in to give me an assist and we worked out the issue. Once I knew using the IP address directly worked, I had no problem connecting to games. From that point on, I just let the GMs know to give me those instead of their Alias and it was smooth sailing from there on.

Thanks Trenloe!

And thanks again, guys!

Hector Trelane
October 20th, 2014, 17:05
Thanks for the organizing work Trenloe and Damned. I have done organizing and I have some idea about very large amount of work that went into this... We are all benefiting from your dedication.

As a new GM I found things worked very well. Instructions were clear and effective. No complaints at all.

To share some of the promotional workload, perhaps next time a checklist of steps to follow to make a sexy graphic and post to likely websites could be provided to GM so they can do some of this on their own? This time I relied on Damned but next time I'd be willing to at least get the ball rolling to advertise my own sessions.

My next thought is: how about a feedback form for players to provide feedback to their GM's? It would be helpful to get info back from players on what worked well in a game session and what could've been improved. Likewise as a player I would be happy to provide this feedback to the GM. This has more to do with individual game sessions than convention organization, but building that in using a standard Google form (for example) could improve player and GM experience. I could take a crack at drafting the questions if you think worthwhile.

borusa32
October 20th, 2014, 19:37
I would also like to record my thanks for all the hard work that clearly went into organising another successful FG Con.

darrenan
October 20th, 2014, 21:14
As a GM, I unfortunately didn't see Damned's hands in things much more that correcting my bad session entry on the FG-CON site, but thanks for that, and for everything else that Trenloe mentioned.
Huge kudos to Trenloe for doing all the PFS organizing. This was my first time GMing at FG-CON, and my first time GMing PFS scenarios, and it went really smoothly. Secondary kudos to Blackfoot for putting together the PFS session tracking spreadsheet on google docs, which was invaluable to me for keeping all three of my sessions organized.

I also just want to call out a personal first (and I suspect a first for all the players involved as well), in my Library of the Lion scenario the players went through with ZERO combat encounters!!! This was entirely due to the players being smart, efficient and quick in progressing through the goals of the scenario. I'm sure that was disappointing to some of the players (looking at you Ulfgar!), but I thought it was a really interesting scenario and everyone said they enjoyed it.

Question for Trenloe and Damned, are you shooting for the April-May timeframe for FG CON VI?

damned
October 20th, 2014, 22:32
Question for Trenloe and Damned, are you shooting for the April-May timeframe for FG CON VI?

the long and the short answer is... havent given FG Con 6 any concrete thought just yet - but it is most likely to run that window.

ianmward
October 21st, 2014, 00:32
Thanks again to damned and Trenloe, there is no doubt that these events, not only make a fun filled weekend for the regulars, but also help to bring in new players. I know how hard you guys worked to make this works and it is definitely appreciated.
While it is true that there were a few networking issues, including a few TeamSpeak drop outs, but generally the games got played and a good time was had.

Lord Kavos
October 21st, 2014, 05:41
As a GM, I unfortunately didn't see Damned's hands in things much more that correcting my bad session entry on the FG-CON site, but thanks for that, and for everything else that Trenloe mentioned.
Huge kudos to Trenloe for doing all the PFS organizing. This was my first time GMing at FG-CON, and my first time GMing PFS scenarios, and it went really smoothly. Secondary kudos to Blackfoot for putting together the PFS session tracking spreadsheet on google docs, which was invaluable to me for keeping all three of my sessions organized.

I also just want to call out a personal first (and I suspect a first for all the players involved as well), in my Library of the Lion scenario the players went through with ZERO combat encounters!!! This was entirely due to the players being smart, efficient and quick in progressing through the goals of the scenario. I'm sure that was disappointing to some of the players (looking at you Ulfgar!), but I thought it was a really interesting scenario and everyone said they enjoyed it.

Question for Trenloe and Damned, are you shooting for the April-May timeframe for FG CON VI?

Ulfgar was happy to just keep drinking and following the others round the library...If he didnt have anything on him to drink it would have been another matter...

And further kudos to Trenloe, Damned and all others who helped make the con work. That includes GMs and players - FGCon would be screwed without either lol

El Condoro
October 21st, 2014, 12:59
A very enjoyable way to spend an early (6am) Sunday morning - trawling through a goblin dungeon! Thanks to our DM, OneSidedDie/Scott for the game, but especially to damned and Trenloe for organising the event. As I said, it was a lot of fun and I'm looking forward to FG CON VI (when you have caught up on your rest!)

damned
October 21st, 2014, 13:01
I really want to thank OneSidedDie here too - he took over a session when the original GM couldnt make it - which was much appreciated by all.

ShotGun Jolly
October 21st, 2014, 22:25
This was a blast. This being my first con, I loved it! Thanks to Mask of Winter and Damned for convincing me to try it out.
Hosted a game, played in a few, watched a few sessions.. yeah.. I can not wait for next time!

Hector Trelane
October 24th, 2014, 21:51
ShotGun,

I was interested in playing your Cthulu session but couldn't make it--would you consider running it again in the future?

As Sunspoticus knows, I'm hoping he'll run his Red Sands of Mars session, and I'd love to try out a Serenity session, too.

As with non-virtual cons, too many games, too little time!


This was a blast. This being my first con, I loved it! Thanks to Mask of Winter and Damned for convincing me to try it out.
Hosted a game, played in a few, watched a few sessions.. yeah.. I can not wait for next time!

ShotGun Jolly
October 26th, 2014, 22:19
ShotGun,

I was interested in playing your Cthulu session but couldn't make it--would you consider running it again in the future?

As Sunspoticus knows, I'm hoping he'll run his Red Sands of Mars session, and I'd love to try out a Serenity session, too.

As with non-virtual cons, too many games, too little time!

Sure, I would :) I just need 3-5 squad leaders brave enough to storm the beach. :)