Smiteworks need to set up a convention team

[portential]

You guys need to set up a convention team to train DM's on how to run Fantasy Grounds. Put up two seminars, one for players and one for DM's. Have a Q&A session set up with people skilled on the tool to answer questions, one hour after said seminar. Have a discount code available for the week of the convention and the following week to give a discount. Next, later in the con, have a session where you train DM's how to create a module in Fantasy Grounds.

Garycon would have been a prime con to do this. They are all Gen X'ers who are money rich and time poor. You could harvest that wealth there easily. Gencon could be another one as well. With volunteers, give them training and buy them their badge for the con as payment. It would be the cheapest advertising campaign you ever ran potentially with the biggest bang for buck.

You need to do something, because the training on the tools, is fractured in thousands of bits, its not exactly easy to follow. I lost 2 of my 6 players switching over to Fantasy Grounds over the learning curve. it's a problem. Until you can fix your training and make it easier to understand and cohesive, the best thing to get people trained up is conventions. Once I got someone in my group who was used to Fantasy Grounds and could explain it, it went a lot better for everyone. The problem is you guys are used to your system and don't understand why people can't pick up on it. Run some focus groups of guys who haven't done VTT's before and use that feedback please in setting up a more cohesive training program.

[LordEntrails]

Have you ever looked at taking some of the (free) classes presented by Fantasy Grounds Academy?
Landing Page | Fantasy Grounds Academy (https://www.fantasygroundsacademy.com/)

[Jiminimonka]

Have you ever looked at taking some of the (free) classes presented by Fantasy Grounds Academy?
Landing Page | Fantasy Grounds Academy (https://www.fantasygroundsacademy.com/)

This.

[ddavison]

We used to do Gen Con regularly for a number of years but we decided to stop that due to the expense and the inefficiency of running in-person demo walkthroughs with only a few attendees at a time.

Paulette and Brad will be at Gary Con this year, but they are going privately and not as a company event. They both mentioned showing off some stuff there though.

[BelleMuerte]

I will be running around Gary Con in my Fantasy Grounds shirts. Come say hi.

[Camberme]

I'll be running Fantasy Grounds classes / games in Kublacon

[portential]

To me, get a seminar reserved for a con, have the con provide a projector, have the speaker do it virtually, put on a demo how to be a player first, and allow the players to ask questions. Then do a DM section and allow DM's to ask questions. Have a moderator to forward questions to presenter. Have volunteers present to help with questions in person and online. Encourage players to bring laptops and those who registered gets some code for a free 30 day trial to try it out. Just adding one DM will likely add 6 to 12 players in a year. It doesn't have to be expensive but its a start at adding new blood and building good will. If you go back a decade ago, it was really only FG getting word of mouth, now its Owl Bear, Foundry and Roll20 very seldom FG and that is going to kill the player base.

[LordEntrails]

To me, get a seminar reserved for a con, have the con provide a projector, have the speaker do it virtually, put on a demo how to be a player first, and allow the players to ask questions. Then do a DM section and allow DM's to ask questions. Have a moderator to forward questions to presenter. Have volunteers present to help with questions in person and online. Encourage players to bring laptops and those who registered gets some code for a free 30 day trial to try it out. Just adding one DM will likely add 6 to 12 players in a year. It doesn't have to be expensive but its a start at adding new blood and building good will. If you go back a decade ago, it was really only FG getting word of mouth, now its Owl Bear, Foundry and Roll20 very seldom FG and that is going to kill the player base.
It's been done. I don't think it made much of a difference.

I agree that SmiteWorks should do something. It doesn't seem they get the viral word of mouth that other VTTs get. Why? I have no idea.

[SilentRuin]

It's been done. I don't think it made much of a difference.

I agree that SmiteWorks should do something. It doesn't seem they get the viral word of mouth that other VTTs get. Why? I have no idea.

Time & Money.

Is there time to do it - is the cost worth doing it.

I'm betting based on past experiences, the equation came out to "Not worth doing".

[Laerun]

You guys need to set up a convention team to train DM's on how to run Fantasy Grounds. Put up two seminars, one for players and one for DM's. Have a Q&A session set up with people skilled on the tool to answer questions, one hour after said seminar. Have a discount code available for the week of the convention and the following week to give a discount. Next, later in the con, have a session where you train DM's how to create a module in Fantasy Grounds.

Garycon would have been a prime con to do this. They are all Gen X'ers who are money rich and time poor. You could harvest that wealth there easily. Gencon could be another one as well. With volunteers, give them training and buy them their badge for the con as payment. It would be the cheapest advertising campaign you ever ran potentially with the biggest bang for buck.

You need to do something, because the training on the tools, is fractured in thousands of bits, its not exactly easy to follow. I lost 2 of my 6 players switching over to Fantasy Grounds over the learning curve. it's a problem. Until you can fix your training and make it easier to understand and cohesive, the best thing to get people trained up is conventions. Once I got someone in my group who was used to Fantasy Grounds and could explain it, it went a lot better for everyone. The problem is you guys are used to your system and don't understand why people can't pick up on it. Run some focus groups of guys who haven't done VTT's before and use that feedback please in setting up a more cohesive training program.

I have run a few seminars at different virtual cons with limited or mixed results. Many of the challenges with demos online come from the difficulty in conveying the requirements and expectations.
Different users with varying levels of computing power, network issues, and hardware or equipment issues.
I had two sessions with 12 users signed up. Two never showed.
Two users could not connect, so with ten minutes or so of troubleshooting, one of the two was finally able to connect, the other gave up kindly for the sake of the group and had eventually admitted the issues was on his end. One user could not even log into the Smiteworks website to obtain their userid and password, so she dropped out and rather dissatisfied with her initial experience.
Another user had a Mac powerbook with no mouse and a track pad, and at the time I offered to move his token to keep the gameplay going. And finally, another user kept disconnecting from our session. So more than half of the users had issues. This is not always the case, but the randomly selected pool of players and new users in a convention type setting seemed very anticlimactic.

So, a live demo might be decent, but not necessarily time and cost efficient, especially if you cannot access a big screen TV or projector at the convention. It'd be more effective on a large theater type screen as a thirty minute seminar.
To convey the best example of Fantasy Grounds can take longer than an hour. Most people want ten minutes or less. If I was at GaryCon this year, just meeting people, networking, and mentioning Fantasy Grounds and playing in a game I have never tried would be my focus. Especially not if there was no big screen or interests.

Doug and others have run events online too at Conventions.

And post Covid-19 and the OGL mess has lowered the engagement across the board. 2017-2021 was a good run though.

[Nylanfs]

So FG on an Imax? Sounds good to me.

[portential]

I have run a few seminars at different virtual cons with limited or mixed results. Many of the challenges with demos online come from the difficulty in conveying the requirements and expectations.
Different users with varying levels of computing power, network issues, and hardware or equipment issues.
I had two sessions with 12 users signed up. Two never showed.
Two users could not connect, so with ten minutes or so of troubleshooting, one of the two was finally able to connect, the other gave up kindly for the sake of the group and had eventually admitted the issues was on his end. One user could not even log into the Smiteworks website to obtain their userid and password, so she dropped out and rather dissatisfied with her initial experience.
Another user had a Mac powerbook with no mouse and a track pad, and at the time I offered to move his token to keep the gameplay going. And finally, another user kept disconnecting from our session. So more than half of the users had issues. This is not always the case, but the randomly selected pool of players and new users in a convention type setting seemed very anticlimactic.

So, a live demo might be decent, but not necessarily time and cost efficient, especially if you cannot access a big screen TV or projector at the convention. It'd be more effective on a large theater type screen as a thirty minute seminar.
To convey the best example of Fantasy Grounds can take longer than an hour. Most people want ten minutes or less. If I was at GaryCon this year, just meeting people, networking, and mentioning Fantasy Grounds and playing in a game I have never tried would be my focus. Especially not if there was no big screen or interests.

Doug and others have run events online too at Conventions.

And post Covid-19 and the OGL mess has lowered the engagement across the board. 2017-2021 was a good run though.

For a requirement, do two zoom meetings to help get people set up before hand. I gest it, I've done online training for corp America for about 4 years and I get the pain. I've had to help elderly who could not understand how to unzip a file. The main thing is to get people to install Fantasygrounds and to do a log into a premade 5E campaign. Once they can do that, they are good for the class. For Garycon, I've got a Discord channel already set up and about a week before for the sessions I'm running and I'll be opening it up to the attendees to answer any last minute questions. Lots of free things we can use now.

To point I can also see other games potentially doing well now as well. Shadowdark, Paranoia and Gamma World were all sold out quickly at Garycon, I could not get any session with them. I still think at cons with propper set up and script with volunteers to help, like 1 volunteer to 3 attendees and you can get people onboarded at least for 5E.

[Laerun]

For a requirement, do two zoom meetings to help get people set up before hand. I gest it, I've done online training for corp America for about 4 years and I get the pain. I've had to help elderly who could not understand how to unzip a file. The main thing is to get people to install Fantasygrounds and to do a log into a premade 5E campaign. Once they can do that, they are good for the class. For Garycon, I've got a Discord channel already set up and about a week before for the sessions I'm running and I'll be opening it up to the attendees to answer any last minute questions. Lots of free things we can use now.

To point I can also see other games potentially doing well now as well. Shadowdark, Paranoia and Gamma World were all sold out quickly at Garycon, I could not get any session with them. I still think at cons with propper set up and script with volunteers to help, like 1 volunteer to 3 attendees and you can get people onboarded at least for 5E.

I could not get hardly anyone to pre-register or do anything except for the day of. A couple users were signed up right at the cut off day, two days prior because the other events filled.
I had 1.5 people login and claim their PCs prior, which went well because one of them had used FG long ago. I had Pregens, instructions, intro videos, etc. I have trained 100's of newer and returning users in Character creation and other aspects of Fantasy Grounds, but most of the users were genuinely interested in learning and not just playing.
I am also used to newer users that have never used FG before. However, I cannot help lower effort or the lack of time from casual users, especially when most users state this fact if I try to get them in earlier to setup.

The past events were FREE.
I had and still do volunteer time to run events on my own time to help newer users.
I think an 'in person' event has a little more accountability than a virtual event when it comes to engagement, such as face to face eye contact and due to body language and human interaction. Everyone learns differently.
Visual, reading, or hands on.

Oh well.
Laerun

[Mytherus]

Laerun is a saint (not just his forum rank) for the efforts he has done with the academy he runs to train / teach people the ins and outs of fantasy grounds.

Everyone beat me to this thread but the FG academy is a great resource to learn about this vtt.


Problem is you can lead a horse to water but can’t make them drink.

Even with free resources made available people still ask how do I learn this vtt?

[vegaserik]

There's a Discord server called Fantasy Grounds Gaming Lounge that specializes in having one shots for players to learn how to play d&d and to learn how to use FG. There are campaigns and other systems offered there too. There's no better way to learn than to jump in a game. I promise you the gm's there are accustomed to teaching systems and FG, you won't feel out of place.

https://discord.gg/fggl