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Trenloe
October 17th, 2016, 17:02
Well, the 9th FG Con is over... :(

Damned, IanMWard, Mask_of_Winter and I are always looking for constructive feedback on how the convention went for you and any ideas you might have for future conventions.

If you'd like to give feedback, please do so in this thread or PM damned or me if you'd like to keep it private.

Onward to the next FG Con (the 10th), April 2017! :)

Teufelhunde87
October 17th, 2016, 17:31
Had a great time and managed to still stay married despite 20+ game hours over the weekend. The DMs were great and my first online FG experience was awesome. I MUST follow it up by finding a regular game group!
Greg

LordEntrails
October 17th, 2016, 17:47
First, excellent job guys. Five Star performance.

Here's my experience as a GM running three games;
- Process is pretty simple and straightforward. But, there are a couple of things that might be able to be simplified or enhanced;
- - Game waitlists. Currently once the max number of players is accepted, no new registrations can be done. An automated waitlist would be great for both DM's and players.
- - Registration/Application/Booking order. Right now, only the automated emails can tell a GM what the order of registered players is. It would be nice if the FGCon/Wordpress site had someway to tell us what order people signed up in. That way, if we do get two or three bookings for the last game slot, it's easier for us to know who to accept (and how to order the waitlist).
- - Something like an "email all players" link. It's not too hard right now to go in and check the profile of each player and add their email to an email, but a link to do this (and maybe filter based upon accepted/pending/waitlisted) would be sweet.

I found the email reminders you sent out to be very helpful. I knew to do those things and usually had them done before your reminder. But the are great reminders for all of us and invaluable to a first time GM.

Once more, thank you. It's a great service you do for the gaming community and the FG one specifically.

LordEntrails
October 17th, 2016, 17:55
Reading the Con review thread one more idea, how about a few of us put together a document AND a session on how to GM for FG Con? We could have a resource link and then also do a Twitch stream or a web conference format where we show how to GM on FG.

This would help people feel comfortable volunteering to run a game and also would probably help all of us increase our knowledge.

Thoughts and other willing to work with me on this?

Mask_of_winter
October 17th, 2016, 17:59
Reading the Con review thread one more idea, how about a few of us put together a document AND a session on how to GM for FG Con? We could have a resource link and then also do a Twitch stream or a web conference format where we show how to GM on FG.

This would help people feel comfortable volunteering to run a game and also would probably help all of us increase our knowledge.

Thoughts and other willing to work with me on this?
I think it would be particularly helpful for PFS and ALO games.

Trenloe
October 17th, 2016, 18:03
Thanks for the feedback - always welcome.

- - Game waitlists. Currently once the max number of players is accepted, no new registrations can be done. An automated waitlist would be great for both DM's and players.
We keep looking into this and we haven't found a good way to do it. We'll look again before the next con, but don't expect anything. Sorry.


- - Registration/Application/Booking order. Right now, only the automated emails can tell a GM what the order of registered players is. It would be nice if the FGCon/Wordpress site had someway to tell us what order people signed up in. That way, if we do get two or three bookings for the last game slot, it's easier for us to know who to accept (and how to order the waitlist)..
This is available now - the bookings link that the notification email contains takes you to the bookings list for your events, there is a "Booking Date" column in the table that shows the date and time the booking was mode.


- - Something like an "email all players" link. It's not too hard right now to go in and check the profile of each player and add their email to an email, but a link to do this (and maybe filter based upon accepted/pending/waitlisted) would be sweet.
This would be very hard to do - due to email security restrictions. You would want the email to come from your email address and we can't send emails from your own email address. Maybe we could do it from a "do not reply" FG Con email address, include the GM's email address, and hope that the players would read the email and not just click "Reply".

We'll certainly keep looking at ways to improve - especially around communication...

Zacchaeus
October 17th, 2016, 18:26
Guys, it's hard I think to improve on what you are doing now. The main problem I have is players not turning up or even bothering to tell me that they won't turn up or even apologising at a later date for not turning up but there's not a great deal that you can do about that sort of behaviour.

The whole Con went off extremely well except when I dropped in to have a chat with Trenloe on Teamspeak and he was obviously off doing something else instead of paying attention :)

Trenloe
October 17th, 2016, 18:28
The whole Con went off extremely well except when I dropped in to have a chat with Trenloe on Teamspeak and he was obviously off doing something else instead of paying attention :)
Oh, sorry I missed you... :(

Litvyak
October 17th, 2016, 19:22
I had a great time! Thanks to everybody who made this happen!

The only real "complaints" I have have already been brought up... the lack of a wait list combined with people not showing up. There were a couple games I would have loved to get into that were booked up, but which I believe ended up down a player or two at game time (at least according to Teamspeak). However, I'm not sure what a workable solution for that problem would be.

Myrdin Potter
October 17th, 2016, 19:48
I had players not show up, which was annoying, but also life. I enjoyed the two sessions I DMed.

I set more slots than what I had available and that gave me a built in wait list. So that ability is there.

For emails, all I would need is an automated list of the registered and approved emails that i could cut and paste into my email program. I had players swapping out and always worried I was not up-to-date if I replied all to an older email I sent.

Trenloe
October 17th, 2016, 19:56
For emails, all I would need is an automated list of the registered and approved emails that i could cut and paste into my email program. I had players swapping out and always worried I was not up-to-date if I replied all to an older email I sent.
As mentioned above, this is available on the website in the Events -> Bookings section.

A few GMs seem to have missed the link to this in the booking email notification. An example of the manage bookings page is shown below, you can filter the booking type (confirmed, pending, etc.), manage the booking (accept, reject, etc.) see when the player made the booking, see their name, email address (I've blurred the emails in this screenshot), etc.. This is the master list as it will display up-to-date info for your event bookings.

https://www.fantasygrounds.com/forums/attachment.php?attachmentid=15739

Talyn
October 17th, 2016, 19:57
Had a blast in the games I did manage to play. This was my first FG Con so I was extremely pleased.

Other than what was already said above, my only real "complaints" (and I'm not sure they qualify as full-blown complaints) were:

- It would be cool if the Events List, the My Bookings list, and the full color whatever it was were combined so if I'm booked on one game then there's a colored bar or something highlighting the entire block of time so that I don't accidentally book another game during that time period and have to cancel.

- Seemed like all the "best" or "coolest" (purely from what -- I -- was looking forward to playing) sessions were all running at the same time, so I had to pick and choose one over the others. And that's just the GM's saying "hey, this is my schedule and when I'm available to do this" so as the one guy on the entire FG forums with the most retarded schedule in the world, I get that. That's just me wishing I'd gotten to play more is all.

Otherwise, awesome Con and I'm looking forward to #10. Maybe I'll even get up the nerve to GM something on one of these cons someday...

Myrdin Potter
October 17th, 2016, 20:03
Sure. And then I had to manually check the last email I sent to make sure there were. I changes or cut-and-paste 6 emails each time.

If there was a report that put all approved emails into a list I could cut and paste all at once life would be easier.

As I admitted to you when creating my event, I am not the greatest at reading instructions. I did find that view, though.

You are already emailing me every approved booking or cancellation. Would it be hard to put all the email addresses at the bottom of the email for the approved players?

Trenloe
October 17th, 2016, 20:14
Would it be hard to put all the email addresses at the bottom of the email for the approved players?
Yes, it would be hard.

Plus, it could be out-of-date minutes after the email was sent. For real-time-up-to-date status of player booking go to the page I mentioned above.

Myrdin Potter
October 17th, 2016, 21:05
Yes, it would be hard.

Plus, it could be out-of-date minutes after the email was sent. For real-time-up-to-date status of player booking go to the page I mentioned above.

If hard then in April I'll just do it manually again.

Otherwise, everything else went smoothly. Teamspeak worked well and PG&E fixed my power in time. Next time I will have a backup loaded on my laptop. I have a cellular hotspot that I have run games off of.

Gwydion
October 17th, 2016, 21:39
I was fortunate in that everyone showed up to my game and they were all great. I thought the whole event was organized well and I communicated with my players quite a bit in advance through email which seemed to work well.

On a separate and probably unrelated note, I'm thinking about a short survey to send my players after my sessions. Since I've still be DM'ing less than 6 mos I'd like to get honest feedback on what I'm doing well, what they like and don't like. Thanks again to everyone who made the event possible! It was very cool to be a part of it.

Skellan
October 17th, 2016, 22:28
Thanks to everyone involved in making FG Con happen. You did a wonderful job and a lot of people got many hours of enjoyment from your work.

Perhaps there could be a mechanism where players have to reconfirm their booking about a week before the con or they lose their spot? I guess a lot of the no-shows sign up weeks before and forget about it?

LordEntrails
October 17th, 2016, 22:30
Thanks Trenloe, I missed that.

Not to bug you about this... (or at least not negatively). Could a "mailto:[email protected], [email protected], etc" link be created? That would use the GMs own email client and would just be putting the list together for us.

But, since I missed that page, I don't mind cutting and pasting at all. (Much easier than what I did, go to each persons profile etc).

Again, great job guys and no negatives from me.

Trenloe
October 17th, 2016, 22:40
Perhaps there could be a mechanism where players have to reconfirm their booking about a week before the con or they lose their spot? I guess a lot of the no-shows sign up weeks before and forget about it?
I don't think there is any specific correlation to when no-shows actually sign up. And I think that having to confirm spots would create more confusion and issues than the low level of no shows we get - and yes, it is a low level, less than 10%. This is not just an issue with FG Con - you frequently hear on these forums of people not showing up to games. It happens, sometimes for a good reason, sometimes not. All we can do is ask the GMs to directly communicate to the players (but don't spam them) and if they have any concerns to raise them to the FG Con team.

We recommend all GMs are in email contact with their players the week before - to double (and triple) check time, that FG and teamspeak are installed, give further session details and allows the players to communicate with the GM directly. This should be the main avenue for GMs to directly confirm with players and will also open communication channels so the players can directly communicate with the GM. I had two players for one of my sessions email me a few hours before the game to tell me they couldn't make it - this was possible because I'd been in touch a couple of times already with all of the registered players.

Some GMs might not be concerned with no-shows and just roll with it. Others might be more concerned. So we leave the main communication up to the GMs, but we still send generic reminder emails for the whole convention so people shouldn't forget about the convention - and then the players should be checking their "My Bookings" page to see what they've signed up to.

Teufelhunde87
October 17th, 2016, 22:46
I should thank the no shows, as that gave me the opportunity to play an extra session when I found my wife had no plans Saturday!

Skellan
October 17th, 2016, 22:49
Fair enough Trenloe, I guess it is best for the GM to manage it. To be honest I prefer smaller groups anyway.

Trenloe
October 17th, 2016, 22:50
This isn't aimed at anyone in particular - just a general comment to everyone as the usual "complaint" we get is regarding no shows: virtually everyone who signs up for these events are adults. We post many reminders, many guidelines, emails go out, newsletters go out, links are all over the place. But, if someone is disorganised, forgets, makes a decision that they're just not going to play, their usual community expects and caters for no shows, etc., then there's not much we can do about it. There is a point where reminders become spam and people just stop reading them - so things get worse because people miss important announcements as they are lost in the multitude of reminders.

We understand the frustrations.

I suppose if the main complaints we get are regarding no shows, then that means that we're pretty much doing most of the rest of the FG Con "stuff" OK and should maybe see it as a compliment. :)

We will take some ideas on board and discuss among ourselves what we can do in future. So thanks for the feedback.

Some background to the software we use: We are limited in a lot we can do based off the free website software and plugins we use. We have done some modifications, but these need to be re-applied every time there is a software update (usually we need to re-do customizations at each convention). The more customizations we do, the more the work we have to do at each convention - and the greater the chance that we break something either now or in the future. So, please keep that in mind when you think a change might be easy - maybe it is, but testing and maintaining that change for the next 10, 20, 30 FG Cons is not easy. So, we keep our changes to really important "stuff" (like time zones) and don't tinker too much with the base product for nice-to-haves.

Skellan
October 17th, 2016, 22:54
Eep - I didn't mean for it to sound like a criticism. You are right, all cons get no shows, even ones that aren't free. I would take it as a compliment that there really isn't much to improve.

Plus, people not turning up give others the chance to hop in games :)

Trenloe
October 17th, 2016, 22:56
Eep - I didn't mean for it to sound like a criticism.
We've had the feedback from many people - it's not just you! :p

OldJarhead
October 17th, 2016, 23:04
Managed to get into two games, one I signed up for way in advance, one I just tagged myself in TS Lobby as looking for a game and got invited. Enjoyed them both a great deal and learned some stuff about FG and DnD! Met some good players and people also. Even connected with another OldJarhead!!

Skellan
October 17th, 2016, 23:05
Perhaps we should just take the Jay and Silent Bob approach

15740

Meliath1742
October 17th, 2016, 23:22
My first FG-Con...no complaints. Big thanks to everyone showing up and for Mask_of_winter for running Badabing, Badaboom! Can't wait for the next Con��

Trenloe
October 17th, 2016, 23:31
one I just tagged myself in TS Lobby as looking for a game and got invited.
This is one area where I think we can improve - getting last minute replacements into games at the time of the game. It might work for some systems but less so for others (AL and PFS players usually need their PC ready - unless they can play a pregen and the GM is prepared for that).

We'll discuss over the coming months...

Seya
October 18th, 2016, 01:02
I had a blast. I had to cancel one of the games I was signed up to but did so with an email five days in advance. Got into a late game Sunday night by using LFG. Overall I had a blast. I hate it when people don't say then they cancel. Happens all the time.

LordEntrails
October 18th, 2016, 02:03
I should thank the no shows, as that gave me the opportunity to play an extra session when I found my wife had no plans Saturday!
And I'm glad she did! It was great having you join us!

I agree with Trenloe on this. I don't think any type of reconfirming would be beneficial to the vast majority. No shows are annoying, I had 3 (out of 17), but was able to replace 2 of them. I don't take it personally, given the positive feedback of the events, I suspect it is there loss. But life happens and i don't hold it against them.

dulux-oz
October 18th, 2016, 02:46
Someone else sort of covered this, but how's this for an idea - you set up a "Waiting To Play (Standby)" TS Channel and when GM's hava no-show they can drop into the channel and say "I've got a spot right now - who want's in?"

Sort of like an Airline Standby ticket where you only fly if there is a seat available.

The Con Organizers advertise this "system" and then let GMs and potential players use it if they want or not. It cost nobody nothing and provides a pool of players to fill in for those no-shows

I found myself with some time to spare over the weekend and I would have loved to "standby" a spot in a game - any game - so I would have used such a system if it was in place. Instead, I played 6 hours of Neverwinter Nights instead

Just a thought :)

Cheers

Trenloe
October 18th, 2016, 02:52
Someone else sort of covered this, but how's this for an idea - you set up a "Waiting To Play (Standby)" TS Channel and when GM's hava no-show they can drop into the channel and say "I've got a spot right now - who want's in?"
There's a LFG channel in the TeamSpeak server and quite a few people found games at FG Con that way this weekend.

Talyn
October 18th, 2016, 03:26
Oh, I just thought of a suggestion for GMs. In the Deadlands game I played in, we had a standby player though the actual player ended up giving his slot to the standby guy so that he could just listen in and learn Savage Worlds. Unfortunately with a full table, the "spectator" player didn't have a character sheet to learn what's what while the GM was explaining stuff so maybe for the games using pregens go ahead and whip up a few more than you actually intend on using? Even if they're only built as "demo characters" not as a real playable pregen?

Just a thought, to try to be prepared in case you get a spectator or two who'd like to learn while listening.

damned
October 18th, 2016, 04:58
Ive just read all the posts up to now so my replies will be a little all over the place:

1. We absolutely want to learn from what works for you all and learn from what doesnt work.

2. We do use some off the shelf software to manage the bookings. I tested a lot of products (bearing cost in mind) before choosing this one. One of the main reasons I chose this one was that we could modify it to handle most of the TimeZone issues - it doesnt handle us modifying the GM input side so that does still lead to some frustration and a few errors. Timing issues this Con were way down on FG Con 8.

3. Email communications and Confirmations. I send out a bunch of newsletters - up to 4 in the last week (plus re-sending to smaller groups as we get more new user registrations leading up to the start). So thats 4 emails from FG Con if you are a GM straight off the top and at least 2 if you have registered an account and not unsubscribed). Then if you sign up to event you get an email confirming receipt of your request and then a confirmation email when the GM actions your request. So thats at least two more emails. Then I email each and every GM about 5 days out with a complete booking list for their games (This is a very manual process sadly which is why I do it once and once only). Then the GM is responsible for all future emails including sending out the specific details of the event and requesting that the player confirms their attendance. I think that this is enough emails and any more from the system would be too many for a lot of people.
I would like to see it be a little easier for GMs to access the emails more quickly but it isnt a simple modification and maintaining multiple modifications does get harder over time.

4. We do have a GM Guidelines document (and a players one) and Im sure they can be improved. If anyone has the time please feel free to review those documents and make additions/suggestions. They are a couple of Cons old now so they may also be less accurate than when they were first prepared. There are also PFS and ALO documents/guides.

5. Some GMs add more tickets than they are willing to run for as a sort of wait list. Im in two minds on this. Ive seen it work really well but it also sucks when you are person #7 on the tickets and you do schedule the time and you do turn up and you dont get to game. Im thinking we may suggest two methods of ticket creation to GMs and they use the one that works for them - if using this method really good clear communication is vital to minimise/avoid disappointment.

6. We do get more no shows than what I would like to see but for most games it doesnt have a big impact. We also saw the ALO trend of booking yourself into the one adventure on 3 or 4 or more sessions and just turning up to one. Im definitely not a fan of this - I know thats how its often done for ALO but Id really like to see people book and turn up to the session they booked. We will work with the ALO co-ordinator some more on this (welcome Brynnan).

7. Looking for Game, Standby Room. We do have this but I will spend some time before FG Con 10 making the GMs more aware of the room and suggesting the value of using it to shore up numbers. Its a win-win in most cases - unless people get lazy about booking and just hope to jump in on games at the last minute. I spent quite a lot of time massaging bookings between cancelled events. Brynnan also found a replacement GM for an ALO session. Id love to see more of this happening organically.

8. As a community we need to do a lot more to advertise this event to others outside, others who dont frequent the forums. We need to advertise on Publisher forums, Gaming forums and social media. And we need to bump and plus and like and forward and comment on other peoples posts when we see them. I dont see a lot of other advertising going on. I can make another 50 posts across the places I frequent but 50 people making one extra post each has a much bigger impact and gets noticed much more. Ill make graphics in any dimensions you need for your particular advertising requirements.

9. There is always a FG Con high that lingers for a little while. Savour that feeling as you look forward to participating in FG Con 10. Id love to see even more new faces behind the GM screens and crack 100 game sessions being run!

Im sure Ive forgotten a few things that I wanted to say... oh yeah...

Thank you to all the players, GMs and organisers. This is a community event and this is one of the best online communities Ive been a part of. Thanks to SmiteWorks and the other publishers who supported the event as well.

Keep having fun!



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FG Con 9 – Fantasy Grounds Online RPG Convention - October 14-16 2016
Register at www.fg-con.com (https://www.fg-con.com/) for all the latest info.

corwynn
October 18th, 2016, 06:15
I think that people no-show for a ton of different reasons. I missed one session out of nine I signed up for because I flat out slept through my alarm. There's no way for the organizers to account for that. All I could do was send an apology email to the GM after the fact and move on with my other sessions.

The best way to deal is likely to put an emphasis on building awareness of (for both players and GMs) the looking for group channel. (Not sure if it seems logical to anyone else, but the way I'd do it is just have people in the channel put a number one higher than the highest in channel when they join after their name, and the lowest number in channel gets first right of refusal on any game being offered, and so on from there.)

As for the community, I think it'd be great if people who have the ability to potentially run a game started to think about it now. (I'm pondering the possibility. We'll see how far I get with my ideas.) Maybe some of those thoughts don't pan out, but if some of them do then it's a great way to continue to grow the event list.

LordEntrails
October 18th, 2016, 06:40
One thing I do when I send out my emails to the sign-up players is to not only include the time in my time zone, but several cities around the globe. I plan to change the references (adding Sydney) for next one, but the ones I used in the past are; New York, Tokyo, & London.

I think it helps people make sure they have the time and day correct because odds are, one of those cities is familiar to them. So, if they don't set their time in their profile, or they do and they think the game is on Sunday rather than Saturday, etc....

damned
October 18th, 2016, 07:43
Oh, I just thought of a suggestion for GMs. In the Deadlands game I played in, we had a standby player though the actual player ended up giving his slot to the standby guy so that he could just listen in and learn Savage Worlds. Unfortunately with a full table, the "spectator" player didn't have a character sheet to learn what's what while the GM was explaining stuff so maybe for the games using pregens go ahead and whip up a few more than you actually intend on using? Even if they're only built as "demo characters" not as a real playable pregen?

Just a thought, to try to be prepared in case you get a spectator or two who'd like to learn while listening.

You can always go into Characters and Export a character and reimport it and then give it a new name.
I personally find building characters for one shots one of the hardest parts!

damned
October 18th, 2016, 08:52
One thing I do when I send out my emails to the sign-up players is to not only include the time in my time zone, but several cities around the globe. I plan to change the references (adding Sydney) for next one, but the ones I used in the past are; New York, Tokyo, & London.

I think it helps people make sure they have the time and day correct because odds are, one of those cities is familiar to them. So, if they don't set their time in their profile, or they do and they think the game is on Sunday rather than Saturday, etc....

Yeah - this is a good idea - its a little poke in a different format - if they didnt get the message the first time giving it to them in another format often works.

Corwynn there is plenty of room. You dont have to run a stack of games. Running one or two games and still getting to play as well is a great option.

Myrdin Potter
October 18th, 2016, 13:09
You can always go into Characters and Export a character and reimport it and then give it a new name.
I personally find building characters for one shots one of the hardest parts!

That is one of the reasons I am slowly converting over the standard WoTC 5e pregens so there is a pool of levels 1-10 available for all main classes and many combinations. Only helps for 5e, but that is a lot of the player base.

In terms of no shows, I almost was a no show DM because the power went out at my house (weather) and I lost a player to cleaning up after Hurricane Matthew. I only had one not show up and not warn me at all.

Kitilark
October 18th, 2016, 14:17
This was my first FG Con and I wanted to not wear myself out so I only signed up for 2 games. One was a Game of The Week Modules and one was a Homebrew both were 5e. One had pre-gen characters, and the other I had to bring a built character - which took a lot of time. (Time; I had, but apparently some of the other players did not.) Hurricane Matthew did give me some worries as to wither the power would be on in time, but as the Con's sign-up was on the web, I could always drive to the public Library to cancel if needed. For the most part the Con was really enjoyable, and I learned a lot - both DO's and DON'Ts.
Depending on how my players like my new campaign, I may have the confidence to try my hand at GMing at FG Con 10. In Truth, I didn't think the sign-up and communications would be so easy and effective. Now that I know how good they really are I plan on taking full advantage of my free time. Great work from all the good folks who make This Con and FG possible.
I Truly Thank You,
Kitty

corwynn
October 18th, 2016, 18:58
Corwynn there is plenty of room. You dont have to run a stack of games. Running one or two games and still getting to play as well is a great option.

I meant if a number of people stepped up and started planning to do one game over the weekend, that's all. :)

ShotGun Jolly
October 19th, 2016, 16:11
Im just hoping the next FG CON will be during my time off from work.. The last 2 cons I had to miss. I have some very serious Weird Wars Adventures I want to run! :)

rob2e
October 19th, 2016, 20:59
I was fortunate in that everyone showed up to my game and they were all great. I thought the whole event was organized well and I communicated with my players quite a bit in advance through email which seemed to work well.

On a separate and probably unrelated note, I'm thinking about a short survey to send my players after my sessions. Since I've still be DM'ing less than 6 mos I'd like to get honest feedback on what I'm doing well, what they like and don't like. Thanks again to everyone who made the event possible! It was very cool to be a part of it.

Surveys would be a great idea for DMs to get feedback.

Trenloe
October 19th, 2016, 21:03
Surveys would be a great idea for DMs to get feedback.
Well, each GM has all of the player emails and knows which players turned up. So, it would be easy for them to send out a few questions that they're interested in feedback on.

damned has done a generic FG Con feedback survey in the past, but it is virtually impossible for us to coordinate specific GM feedback across 90+ sessions, especially not knowing who actually took part in the sessions.

rob2e
October 19th, 2016, 21:03
This isn't aimed at anyone in particular - just a general comment to everyone as the usual "complaint" we get is regarding no shows: virtually everyone who signs up for these events are adults. We post many reminders, many guidelines, emails go out, newsletters go out, links are all over the place. But, if someone is disorganised, forgets, makes a decision that they're just not going to play, their usual community expects and caters for no shows, etc., then there's not much we can do about it. There is a point where reminders become spam and people just stop reading them - so things get worse because people miss important announcements as they are lost in the multitude of reminders.

We understand the frustrations.

I suppose if the main complaints we get are regarding no shows, then that means that we're pretty much doing most of the rest of the FG Con "stuff" OK and should maybe see it as a compliment. :)

We will take some ideas on board and discuss among ourselves what we can do in future. So thanks for the feedback.

Some background to the software we use: We are limited in a lot we can do based off the free website software and plugins we use. We have done some modifications, but these need to be re-applied every time there is a software update (usually we need to re-do customizations at each convention). The more customizations we do, the more the work we have to do at each convention - and the greater the chance that we break something either now or in the future. So, please keep that in mind when you think a change might be easy - maybe it is, but testing and maintaining that change for the next 10, 20, 30 FG Cons is not easy. So, we keep our changes to really important "stuff" (like time zones) and don't tinker too much with the base product for nice-to-haves.

I think most people are good about no show notifications, one of my players profusely apologized to me about 30 minutes prior to game time as he was ON HIS WAY TO THE HOSPITAL! I think that's overly considerate. It would be nice if DMs had a way of communicating more instantly with their players rather than email, but that still depends on the player's participation in such communication (text, twitter, etc.)...

Trenloe
October 19th, 2016, 21:12
It would be nice if DMs had a way of communicating more instantly with their players rather than email, but that still depends on the player's participation in such communication (text, twitter, etc.)...
To be perfectly honest, email is pretty much within a few seconds now-a-days, so I'm not sure if anything more instant than that is going to help. Even if people have their phones set to check emails every 15 minutes, you're still getting in touch with people quickly. I think sticking with emails (and the event comments section as a general public announcement) is good enough - if you add more methods of communications it just increases the chances of people missing it, unless you bombard every possible medium (even if the players give you all of their various account details) and then the GM would be spending all their time posting to a long list of social media pages etc. instead of preparing for their game, or enjoying playing in someone else's game.

Basically: K.I.S.S.

rob2e
October 19th, 2016, 21:18
To be perfectly honest, email is pretty much within a few seconds now-a-days, so I'm not sure if anything more instant than that is going to help. Even if people have their phones set to check emails every 15 minutes, you're still getting in touch with people quickly. I think sticking with emails (and the event comments section as a general public announcement) is good enough - if you add more methods of communications it just increases the chances of people missing it, unless you bombard every possible medium (even if the players give you all of their various account details) and then the GM would be spending all their time posting to a long list of social media pages etc. instead of preparing for their game, or enjoying playing in someone else's game.

Basically: K.I.S.S.

I totally agree Trenloe. But I check my email every 13 seconds. Some people once a day (OR LESS!). But if you text them, they'll get it before anything else they do regarding communicating. I guess it's personal attitude. I just wish people were more quick in their replies. I understand people have adulting to do, but quicker communication is preferred. I'm not really asking for anything so much as venting that people should be more comunicative in a more timely manner where limited slots, and alternate wait list players are concerned.

Trenloe
October 19th, 2016, 21:20
... so much as venting that people should be more comunicative in a more timely manner..
Yeah, really not interested in any more vents in this thread. Thanks.

rob2e
October 19th, 2016, 21:26
Yeah, really not interested in any more vents in this thread. Thanks.

My bad. Let me change it all to this...

I sincerely think that FGCON is VERY WELL RUN. My personal preference that people communicate better in no way reflects on how well organized and implemented FGCON is/was. As far as things that can be physically done to improve it, I think it's tip top. I should have stated that prior. Not having done that was an oversight on my part (bad communication? Rolled a one minus my negative 10 charisma modifier).

Anyway, sorry to have brought in any negativity. Not my intention and certainly do NOT condone anyone else venting. This was an improper waste of anyone's time who has bothered to read it.

Carry on while I go reevaluate my (communication) skills.

Trenloe
October 19th, 2016, 21:29
Carry on while I go reevaluate my (communication) skills.
Haha. Thanks. :)

Myrdin Potter
October 19th, 2016, 21:37
At least the vents are on minor and human nature types of things, which speaks to the fact that the event was so well run there is very little to actually complain about. And gamers like to complain and DM's are usually the worst. :-)

Gwydion
October 19th, 2016, 21:37
Well, each GM has all of the player emails and knows which players turned up. So, it would be easy for them to send out a few questions that they're interested in feedback on.

damned has done a generic FG Con feedback survey in the past, but it is virtually impossible for us to coordinate specific GM feedback across 90+ sessions, especially not knowing who actually took part in the sessions.

Totally agree, Trenloe. That's exactly what I did was to send a few questions to my players via email. I shouldn't have included the comment in this thread as now I see it might come off as me requesting something. I certainly wasn't. I loved fg-con and thought it was run great. I just personally want feedback on my skills and sending out a few questions got me the feedback I was looking for.

Trenloe
October 19th, 2016, 21:55
Totally agree, Trenloe. That's exactly what I did was to send a few questions to my players via email. I shouldn't have included the comment in this thread as now I see it might come off as me requesting something. I certainly wasn't. I loved fg-con and thought it was run great. I just personally want feedback on my skills and sending out a few questions got me the feedback I was looking for.
Cool, cool. :)