FG Con IV - Summary

Well, that's it. FG Con IV is nearly over... From what I've heard everyone has had a good time.

I firstly want 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, putting post game surveys together; 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 V.

A few statistics:

• 39 sessions, compared with 23 events at FG Con III and 21 events in FG Con II. That's a 70% increase from III to IV - pretty amazing if you ask me. :) At one point we actually had 50 events registered, but some of those didn't go ahead due to low player booking or other not-to-be-forseen issues.
• The number of Pathfinder Society (PFS) sessions stayed the same as FG Con II at 15 (the minimum we need for product support from Paizo). This is very encouraging as it shows that there has been a big increase in non-Pathfinder games - a three times increase in fact! :)
• 183 (approx) player sessions booked. Up from 120 at FG Con III.
• Over 20,000 site visits - double that of FG Con III.

The following is a screenshot of the weekly hits (FG Con III is on the far left) - the stats for this last week are skewed because we got a lot of hits from visitors from Steam:

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/...te%20Stats.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 - IV, I hope that GMs will return for FG Con V 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.
• Last event - Blackfoot's Champions playtest.
• Most events - damned - 4
• Joint second: Mask_of_Winter - 3, wyld - 3, Fizban - 3, jshauber - 3, Blackfoot - 3

Feedback

Anyone who took part in the convention should have received an email with a link to an online survey (thanks damned), please take the time to fill that out with your feedback. There is also a thread for additional feedback here: https://www.fantasygrounds.com/forum...on-IV-Feedback

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

Thanks everyone!

Id like to add a couple of things here -

This type of event relies so heavily on GMs running sessions and good communication by all parties.
Thank you to all the GMs. Thank you to all the players. Thank you for communicating and keeping things running.
Thank you to everyone who participated in any capacity - for the most part the communication was pretty good and that makes so much difference.

We encountered a small glitch with Survey so Im reworking it and havent sent it out just yet.

Some other things of interest -
We now have 372 registered players on www.fg-con.com - close to 70 of those came thru in the last 72 hours since the Steam launch.
Steam has added a whole new source of players - of course the uptake rate will be high during this first week while the sale is on - and I think this will give us some great opportunities to grow this community and to get some more games happening.

I dont want to put any pressure on the great GMs who ran games during FG Con but I do think there is an amazing window right now for GMs who need new players, GMs who dont have a group at all right now and GMs who have more niche games they want to get going. If there is interest from you please consider running a game or three and advertising it out there on Steam so that these new players can get a taste of the FG goodness and it will help keep interest in this great product running high.

Its possible we might even run some (much smaller) gaming weekends via the FG Con website specifically aimed at introducing new players and GMs in the near term.

Thanks guys for all your hard work. Looking forward to the next one, where I might GM 2 sessions instead of one.

@Ardem - sounds like a plan.

I'm up for running more games for the Steam crowd.

I am definitely in for FG Con V! No idea what I will run though.

I had a great weekend, thanks to Trenloe and Damned and anyone else who was involved in organizing it. Looking forward to the next one.

The Society of Extraordinary Gamers GMs were also out in force at this FGCON and dare I say we were a contributing factor to the rise in non-Pathfinder games at this con. Wait until FGCON V, I think we'll double down.

Oops, I forgot to thank Doug and John at Smiteworks for their assistance with the convention:

• Activating the full to ultimate license upgrade for the duration.
• Sending out numerous newsletters regarding the convention.
• Posting links to the convention on a bunch of sites.
• Keeping this awesome VTT going!

Thanks for the support guys! :)

Thanks to the organizers and developers. Lots of technical stuff happening that I don't understand, but this wouldn't be possible with out everything they do.

To any would be GMs that are new to FG...I started using FG about a year ago and played in FG CON III. Just take some time to learn the program and play in a variety of games to see how other GMs do things. ASK QUESTIONS!!! We have a great bunch of guys that are very willing to help out, use them, I DID!!!!

So in a year I went from trying out FG, to playing regularly, to GMing 3 games for a CON. If you are motiviated to learn it, it really is pretty easy....

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by jshauber

So in a year I went from trying out FG, to playing regularly, to GMing 3 games for a CON. If you are motiviated to learn it, it really is pretty easy....

---

Awesome stuff @jshauber!

I had 2 guys in my game who actually never really used FG until now.
Needless to say we had a blast.
It was actually the first time I Keeper'ed a C&C game with the new ruleset.
Lot of improvements really helped compared to the last C&C I Keeper'ed over a year ago.
My 3 hr session turned into a 4.5 hr session with the nod to my players (all of which I never gamed with)
They were excellent! I had a few laughs, we all had a great time.
I only regret that I couldn't run more games, Con falls in the midst of my kids B'days and other events (Mothers day and my Anny with the wife)

I had 2 new players too! We just had fun with the game, didn't get too bogged down in rules, even threw a few out the window to make the game more 'streamlined'. Both players said they would be buying FG, and its really tempted me into running a second weekly session. Unsure as to where I will find the time though.