FG Con 7 - Review

Here we go with my usual summary/review of an FG Con...

July 2012 was the first time we ran FG Con. Now we're going strong, just completing our 7th convention and cementing our twice yearly slots (mid April and mid October).

I say it every time, and I have to say it again: MANY BIG THANK YOUs to damned (those of us in the "real world" know him as Damian). He (as is beginning the norm) has done by far the lion's share of the work for this convention - 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 AND running some games. Thanks so much Damian, this incredibly successful convention wouldn't have happened without you.

Also thanks so much to IanMWard and Mask_of_Winter, who are now regular members of the admin team, for their help with all of the convention stuff and also helping to get and organize product prizes from RPG companies.

Thanks so much to Zacchaeus for him trawling his contacts to get HeroLab product prizes.

There is so, 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 (mostly?) happy that I get a portion of my life back for a couple of months before we start work towards FG Con 8.

A few statistics:

45 sessions ran. Compared with 56 events at FG Con VI, 48 events at FG Con V, 39 events at FG Con IV and 23 events in FG Con III. That's a slight step backwards in terms of number of games from the previous two conventions. I think the main reason for this is that FG Con is now a little diluted - with FGDaze! game days and the recent Gamer Geekend. It's great we're getting more Fantasy Grounds based virtual conventions and this is bound to have an effect on what is the longest running and best attended Fantasy Grounds convention.
We have some organised play events for both Pathfinder Society and Dungeons and Dragons 5E Adventurers Leagues - a very welcome addition to the events at FG Con.
Pathfinder Society Organized Play had the first multi-table event (The Sky Key Solution) playing five tables at the same time, with all tables working towards the same goal and contributing to the overall success as a whole. Unfortunately, time just ran out on the tables and they missed out. Most PCs survived, but some didn't. :
240 (approx) player sessions booked. Compared with 320 at FG Con VI and 281 at FG Con V.
Over 19,000 site visits.

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 - we had a couple of GMs drop out as they weren't ready to run a game on Fantasy Grounds. 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 - VI, I hope that GMs will return for FG Con VII and more GMs will join the gang and run games.

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

Feedback

Anyone who took part in the convention could you please provide feedback at the feedback thread here: https://www.fantasygrounds.com/forum...eedback-thread

The con admins will be taking a break for a few weeks and then we'll look at exact dates for FG Con 8, but it will be April 2016, and start to get organised for that...

Thanks again everyone!