VeriCon 2006 in Cambridge

[DevP]

Unlike previous years, I really have not been involved with the planning of VeriCon (being that I graduated and all). Much to my pleasant surprise, it seems like we Luke, Vincent and Jared as guests. They've been here a few times, but it's always awesome to have them by. So welcome!

Another guest will be George R. R. Martin, who's not only a big and cool author, but also has licensed his fictional world into the Game of Thrones RPG, which I find to be interesting since authors seem to have varied viewpoints on whether they'd want their stories translated into that kind of environment. This might be worth mentioning to him when bumping into him; or perhaps even a panel topic, though I'm not sure.

I'm curious to here what else any potential VeriCon guests/attenders have in mind...

[Mr Darran Sims]

Whoops I nearly thought that was Cambridge UK.

[Luke]

Well, Jared, Vincent and I are excited about our panel: Designing Games That Don't Suck.

Aside from that, I dunno. Last time, it was very disorganized. I don't know if I'm even going to bother to run games at this one. Any suggestions?

-L

[DevP]

For one thing, what things can we try to ensure to make things more tolerably organized / worthwhile / worth-running-games for? I can try a bit to make sure some thing happen. Here's some starters:

• No freakin' 9am events.
• Try to pressure for more schedule/roomspace stability.

I think one of the limitations of VeriCon has been having a critical mass of people ready-to-game. I'm not sure what best to do to get around that - although we will probably some pretty big pull with this year's guests. I do think some George R. R. Martin fans could find some appeal in BW, just maybe.

Random idea: what about a scheduled game of Executive Decision? Vincent wrote parts and such.

[Luke]

Hi Dev,
Scheduled games and events are great, but how are you going to get people to them? That was the biggest problem I saw when I was there. Plenty of space and plenty of cool events, but zero organization. If you can get a con schedule into the hands of prospective attendees, maybe that'd help. Or have the staff actively roping people into the events as they about to go off, that'd be cool, too.

-L

[Shreyas Sampat]

When we ran JohnCon at JHU, we got a lot of mileage out of handing out maps and programs, and posting big signs like BUY THINGS OVER THERE -> and GAMES AND FRIES DOWN THE HALL.

Combined with con staff that were easily identifiable and informed about what was going down, it went off well.

[Jared A. Sorensen]

Something I always thought about but never acted upon was the idea of a "live demo" -- a kind of hands-on look at how the game is run (as per a normal demo) but with an audience. It would be less about playing the game and more about showing how the game works and fielding questions (be it about rules clarifications or comments/questions in a "Why/how did you do that?" No idea if it's a good idea or if it would interest people, but there ya go.

[DevP]

Scheduled games and events are great, but how are you going to get people to them? That was the biggest problem I saw when I was there. Plenty of space and plenty of cool events, but zero organization. If you can get a con schedule into the hands of prospective attendees, maybe that'd help. Or have the staff actively roping people into the events as they about to go off, that'd be cool, too.

The thing about having people roping in passersby, is that it's probably not going to happen from the VeriCon staff. Given how the volunteers tend to be stretched, they're going to focus on whatever they're assigned to. If that's the support we needed, I'm not sure we can get it. (I'd help with the barking thing myself.) I have asked them about keeping the schedule more visible / solid. The printed schedules are already available, but we can probably come up with some better ideas for making that visible.

The live demo might be a really strong idea. More than a few times I've ran games at said con for people who'd never played an RPG before, so such people would get a lot out of that. (Also, a "live demo" arguably would be easier for people who didn't want to put down a block of time for whatever reason.)