Date Suggestions

[Trenloe]

I would also say from my observations that player interest rises as we get closer to the summer months and then wanes again once fall/winter arrives. So in that regard I think that any date during summer will work.

Really? Is that just because it is con season in the northern hemisphere summer?

Because I wouldn't have thought that people are more inclined to sit in their house playing RPGs over the internet in the summer months?

Don't get me wrong, I'm happy that we're discussing July - I think that will be great. :-)

But, I don't think that we should ignore the winter months for a potential follow up con - how about HalloweenCon??? Dust off your Call of Cthulhu scenarios everyone! Perhaps I'm getting ahead of myself...

[madman]

But, I don't think that we should ignore the winter months for a potential follow up con - how about HalloweenCon??? Dust off your Call of Cthulhu scenarios everyone! Perhaps I'm getting ahead of myself...

Funny, I was looking down that same road....

If approaching the con we have some gaps then perhaps some of "the old hands" may step up to fill in the gap, or it can be advertised "GM needed for 8am GMT Sunday" for example.

I would think this could be troublesome. Five people are signed up for a game and there is no GM? Sounds disappointing for them, though it might work out it seems sketchy.

I'm also wondering (and I'm not sure how feasible this is) if it is possible to have some generic slots and players sign up for those and then GMs can see when they are needed and offer a game. It would be unfortunate if a keen GM who could run a game anytime, comes up with a couple of slots that people don't sign up to because it's 1 hour too early or something similar.

I agree. I think most people who will attend understand that they are going to need to find a time slot they can play in. But if we can make it work, then all the better.

In the end, this con can be "organised" one of 2 ways - like a usual physical location con, with delegated organisers, slots, etc.. Or, more virtual with the ownership being firmly on the GM (and players) to do what they want to do and when. Either way might work?? Whichever way it goes, we'll need a good booking system...

I Think we should have some slots at set times. Then all the GM's that are running games at odd times or +0 to +11 or maybe if someone wants to run a horror game that starts at Midnight, then they will just have their own slots. Everyone can post the times and day they want to run it.And then if there are problems , they can get worked out over the next few months.

Dracones Has the domain and the Calendar, and Scheduling Plugin.
at FGIICon.com

Chris

[bdf1992]

This sounds awesome, and it would be a great way to spread more fantasy grounds love.

Agreed that this would be good to have multiple time per year, as it doesn't require a location. and it would also be a good time to have any discounts or special features added or anything.

even having up to 4 a year sounds good because people take break from tabletops and come back so just about any time we would have enough players and dms to host.

Also agreed that it should be planned in accordance with other cons.

[Valarian]

I still have to check the dates, but the slot times look good. I agree with other posters that having the timed slots is a good plan. The timezone differences should sort out the rest, with the slots being local time equivalents. Having the set slots means that game conflict becomes minimal. Treat it as a normal convention, where the GM posts the scenarios and players sign up for slots.

As for scenarios: I'll see if I can run a few sessions of some games that don't get an airing very much. Exact times slots, I will have to think about. I think it'll be best to keep the number of scenarios to prepare down and run them a number of times so people can choose when they want to play and can shuffle the slots to suit.
1) Corporation (either a published scenario like "Grab the Cache" or a scenario for a one-shot - e.g. Office Politics - EI agents raid offices of a rival)
2) FATE (possibly a pulp or scifi setting - maybe both)
3) The One Ring

[Magnatude]

I have my C&C listed here on the Fg2 Calandar, so if anyone want to join it...
And who knows, sounds like IH might get some fixing by that time, if thats the case, I'll run a game of that too.

[phantomwhale]

Good start - did someone have a booking system in mind to setup some potential games ? Or should we use the FGII game calendar, at least ? (it's not awesome, but now that all the clock shifts have happened, the "setting up games before clock shifts" timezone bug won't sting us and it would keep all the content here).

I know some people looked at some virtual con. hosting sites, not sure what came of them.

Oh, the dates suggested seem good for me.

[VenomousFiligree]

Not sure the FG Calendar is good as you need to be registered to view it, if we're trying to get "new blood" this might be a bit of a hindrance?

What about google calendars? I believe it shows everything in your registered time zone and can be embedded in other sites?

[Dracones]

Dracones Has the domain and the Calendar, and Scheduling Plugin.
at FGIICon.com

How I have the above setup so far. This uses Wordpress with an Event plugin that handles events and bookings. You have several layers of access to the site

Admin - Can manage users, create/approve/delete events.
Editor - Can create/approve/delete events.
Author - Can create their own events.
Contributor - Can create events, but they must be approved by an Admin or Editor before they publish.
Subscriber - Users who sign up for events get this level of account.

GMs can manage their own events. Users go to an event page and can signup without any fuss. They get emailed account information so they can log in and manage their bookings. The GM for that event can approve or reject people who apply to their event. He can also download a list of the users in his event so he can email them and what not.

When a GM adds an event(or it gets approved), it automatically goes into the games list. The system is pretty flexible for how we show these.

Anyway, the way I figured it'd work is a few people here would have admin access. GMs sign up to the site and get bumped up to author or contributor access. They could then just dig into adding and managing their events. Schedule the times, schedule when the bookings for the event will be open, manage the signups themselves, etc.

When the con is over every site admin should export the Wordpress site and store it. Next year to host a con all anyone will need is a website with Wordpress. The con site with the event module can be imported in pretty easily.

[ragnaroc1011]

There is also https://warhorn.net that can be setup to schedule the con as well. The group that run that gaming convention in my town uses it. It is free, but the unfortunate part is that someone will need to get all the information from the GM such as time of games, dates, time zones and amount of players wanted and enter it in. From there everyone else will just register to the site and sign up to play. (The GM's will need to signup as GM's for their respective games as well.) It is still a nice resource all in all.

[ronnke]

I do have a question, what is the target audience for the con? Is it just us, or are we aiming at the wider gaming community?

If it's the wider community, then we must take it very seriously. A failure in organisation will reflect badly on FG and since gamers are usually fairly vocal across a number of boards, they will voice their disapproval. This can really hurt Smiteworks. On the flip side a successful con will be a great boon.

I think it's unwise to select a date until a committee has been formed that will handle the organisation of the event. When dealing with people volunteering their time on something that is entirely internet facilitated, my experience has been that things progress slower than normal. There are a lot of things that need to be organised to make this con a success, so any date has to be decided by the committee based on a timeframe in which they feel they can get everything ready.

The first thing we need to do is to identify those people willing to step up and manage this project.

If the target audience is just us, then ignore what I said, because it doesn't really matter if things don't go smoothly. We are already lovers of FG.