Forge Midwest 2008?

[Troy_Costisick]

Yes, we can get the big meeting room available, which has plenty of room for gaming.  (It's often used for wedding receptions.)  This is free if we book enough rooms, so we don't need to worry about charging for convention attendance.

How many rooms would it take, Willow?

Peace,

-Troy

[Matt Snyder]

Yes, how many rooms?

We've typically drawn around 40-50 people. Now, not all of those stayed in the hotel. Many were Chicago folks. And, many people shared rooms. I suspect the rates in Madison would be a bit more reasonable.

I'd hazard a REALLY fuzzy guess of around 8-10 rooms. It's really hard to tell, though. For example, we may lose many people if we get away from O'Hare. But, we might gain more Wisconsin or Minnesota folks. Who knows.

[Adam Riemenschneider]

Um, yes, interested? I'm going to try to hit every convention within reasonable driving distance of the Twin Cities (MN) this coming year. Is there any form or shape of a sign-up list or website or some such, besides this here thread?

Also, I'm so-so on the bass and can do a good job with lead vocals, but not very well at the same time. Vocal range between Jim Morrison and Trent Reznor.

[Paul's Girl]

In the tradition of proposals for hosting the Olympics, Livonia, Michigan makes the following proposal for Forge Midwest:
 
The Livonia Best Western, has a meeting room that will hold around 100 people, and we can have an option for a 2'x6' table, with 4-6 chairs which is better suited to Forge Midwest games over the ten person banquet tables we've had.

The Livonia Best Western is within a 2-block walking distance of burgers, pizza, Mexican, Chinese, Japanese and even an Irish pub.

There is no airport shuttle. But Matt "Kayfabe" Gwinn lives close to the Detroit Metro Airport. (Look for Northwest flights; it's a Northwest hub.) Plans for Friday would be for Matt's place to serve as a "marshalling yard" for folks as they arrive. Give a call when you're off the plane, and one of the locals will come by from Matt's and pick you up. When the Friday arrivals are all assembled, we'll get you to the hotel. Be prepared to mingle, Matt has a gaming friendly basement.

Meeting room are reserved at 12 or 6 hour blocks. I propose 2 options:

A: 12 hour blocks for both Saturday and Sunday, scheduled as follows:
-Three, 4 hour game sessions on Saturday, with a pizza lunch delivered so one of the slots isn't wasted by the need to go from the hotel for lunch. (The hotel doesn't have a problem with us having outside food brought in.)
-The last session on Saturday would end at 9:00. I propose a trip for dinner to La Shish, an awesome middle-eastern restaurant that's just a short walk away. But of course you're free to break up into groups for gaming in your hotel rooms if you want.
-A morning 4 hour session on Sunday. And then 2 hours where we pull the tables around to serve as product display tables and open the doors to the general public for game sales (Paul and I know the owner of a local comic book store who runs an indie comic convention every other year; I intend to talk to him about how he deals with the legal requirements of having commerce, and sales tax, and then we do the same thing), and then 2 hours for mingling and going out to lunch. And then a final 4 hour gaming session.
-Two 12-hour days would cost 35 people $22 or 50 people $15.50, hotel tax included.

B:

[Nev the Deranged]

Hm. I could probably make Madison for at least one of the days. Livonia is out of the question for me. So, if I have a vote (which I understand I may not, and that's ok), it's for Madison. I should have known it was too good to be true, having Forge Midwest pop up in my back yard for two years running, eh?

[Willow]

Ok, here's the initial setup I've been able to get-

The rooms at the Clarion would be $109 a night, Friday and Saturday.  If we book twenty rooms, the meeting room is free Friday night, Saturday, and Sunday.  (The meeting rooms are normally $100-200 per day, free with 50 guest rooms reserved.)

I'm not terribly happy with this deal, but I think it's a start to see what needs to be done better.

[Matt Snyder]

I really doubt we'd fill 20 separate rooms. But, you know, it's still not that big of a problem to pay for the meeting room. I'm sure we paid MUCH more than $200 for meetings rooms previously.

[Valamir]

I vote we do Madison AND Livonia. 

How's Detroit in June?

[Paul's Girl]

Hey Ralph,

Detroit is lovely in June but it might not be that practical being so close to Gen Con. How/who has made the location choice in the past?

-Danielle
(cool, glowy)

[Valamir]

I'm all for a "Lets have an Indie-Con every 2 months and everyone can attend as many as they can make plan"

Dreamation, Forge Midwest, Forge Midwest 2, Camp Nerdly, GenCon, JiffyCon, et.al.

The more the merrier.

[Matt Snyder]

How/who has made the location choice in the past?

Uh, I guess I did. How's that for formal?!?

So, I can make that call again, but I know Ralph and Ron want in my action! I have found that letting people make suggestions to decide usually leads to a mess. And, whatever we decide, someone will probably lose out, which sucks. But, we still gotta decide something.

So, contact me if you like. I'll confer with Ron and Ralph who both expressed interest in helping plan this year. Then, I'll shout out a decision before X-mas.

Of course, ANYONE could do the same for a similar event. Plan, do and have people show up. Hell, I might!

[Nev the Deranged]

I'm all for a "Lets have an Indie-Con every 2 months and everyone can attend as many as they can make plan"

Dreamation, Forge Midwest, Forge Midwest 2, Camp Nerdly, GenCon, JiffyCon, et.al.

The more the merrier.

While that would be totally awesome, there is probably a saturation point at which people can no longer afford the time/expense to attend multifarious minicons. Forge Midwest has a surprisingly big draw for being not quite 3 years old. Having more means potentially diluting that drawing power. Which may be worth it, I don't know. I'm just throwing it out there as something to think about.

[Valamir]

While that would be totally awesome, there is probably a saturation point at which people can no longer afford the time/expense to attend multifarious minicons. Forge Midwest has a surprisingly big draw for being not quite 3 years old. Having more means potentially diluting that drawing power. Which may be worth it, I don't know. I'm just throwing it out there as something to think about.

Well, I just spent Saturday at a 1 day boardgaming con and it was fantastic.  I can't believe I didn't do a  formal count but it was about 12-15 people. 

There was 2-3 games going on at any given time, plenty of smaller filler games to play when waiting for another table to finish, and then a bunch of ad hoc splitting into groups for the next game with very little "what do you want to play...I dunno...what do you want to play" until late in the day when fatigue was starting to set in.

I played 1 long (for a euro game) game, 2 medium euro games, and 3 different filler games of varying numbers of play...plus a ton of Jungle Speed where-in Seth and I spread the infection to a whole new group of unsuspecting innocents.  There was hardly enough down time to even grab a bite.

THAT was AWESOME.  YMMV but I'm personally coming to the conclusion that the 12-24 attendees range is more conducive to "Tons of Actual Play happening all the time" than the 30-50 attendees range is.

[Nev the Deranged]

THAT was AWESOME.  YMMV but I'm personally coming to the conclusion that the 12-24 attendees range is more conducive to "Tons of Actual Play happening all the time" than the 30-50 attendees range is.

I won't argue that. I'd add, though, that there's probably a difference in how a micro-con such as that, and a mini-con such as Forge Midwest, are planned and organized. I'd love to do one or several gaming meetups like you describe, but I'm not willing to travel as far or pay as much, or take time off work for that sort of thing, whereas I am (to a degree) for something more midrange like what we've done the last few years.

[Clyde L. Rhoer]

Hey Matt, Ron, and Ralph,

Do we have a decision on location?