[Forge Midwest] New thread!

[Clyde L. Rhoer]

Food pages are back up. I'll likely add a few more local diamonds to the local suggestions page, unfortunately I don't get to the side of town where the hotel is very often. Is there anything I can do to make these better, or more useful?

I'm bringing Matthijs' Society of Dreamers Playtest. I'd love to do Mouseguard again.

[Nev the Deranged]

Same as last year, let me just put my 2 coppers worth of "I know everyone wants to try the new hotness / playtest their upcoming stuff, but I still have five years worth of the old hotness I haven't really played yet, and I bet I'm not the only one." into the hat.

[buzz]

I recently ran a semi-successful game of 44 at ENWorld Gameday. I can certainly come prepared to run that. Mouse Guard is also possible; hopefully I can muster better GM'ing than last time.

[buzz]

Okay, I have my room reserved. I'll be there Saturday morning. Woo!

[Nev the Deranged]

I am working on some new geeky name tags to bring, too. At least a couple pages of new ones.

[woodelf]

Any further thoughts on some sort of loose scheduling of the games themselves? In the previous thread, there had been talk of having a "morning slot", "afternoon slot", and "evening slot", or something like that, and telling people to try to keep their games within these timeframes--i.e., if it starts in the morning slot, it's over before the afternoon slot begins, etc.

Are we gonna try to do that? If so, someone should choose some times, and publicize them. I'm assuming this would be a strictly-voluntary sort of thing, but it would be really helpful to have some sort of rough timeframe, just so that my friends and I don't show up 15min after everything starts and need to either play our own game (which is a little silly--we can do that at home), or sit around and chat for several hours until people free up.

I know that was my only frustration last time: a lot of sitting around waiting for a game to happen, or waiting for so-and-so to get done with a game--at an indeterminate time--so that you could start another game with them, and so on. I think having such an expectation would help on all fronts. Even if i want to start a game "late", I can then decide to choose a short game (or a short story with an RPG, or whatever), in order to wrap up when everyone else is wrapping up, and try something else.

----
As for games: I'll be prepared to run Four Colors al Fresco and Dread, and if i get a chance this week to do some prepping, Bunnies & Burrows and/or Everway.

I'd be particularly interested in playing Enemy Gods, Polaris, Capes, or Giants, but in all cases I'd be figuring them out, so it would probably be smoother if at least one other person had played them before. I'm not sure I'm ready to run any of those (well, except to the degree that the GMing duties are round-robin for Polaris).  Oh, and some day I intend to play a game of Sorcerer run by Ron, but it probably won't be this convention, for various reasons.

-Nat

[Ron Edwards]

I'm thinking that we should all commit to writing what we play, while we're setting up for it, on the white board. This would apply to planned stuff as well as off-the-cuff. We could also dedicate a particular space for "will 'run' Game X, talk to me" announcements.

All that said, it's also important to remember this is a grassroots event in every way, and that organization is not intended to replace simple and straightforward personal interactions, in terms of getting games going. That means a couple of things that we should probably announce and discuss during the weekend.

1. When you organize a game (I used "run" in the broadest sense above), be open to including someone who's either new to the con, or you don't know, or both. I try to make it a point to look around for that very purpose when I get something going. We should avoid organizing games based on real-life or internet cliques.

2. And conversely but equally importantly, everyone should be wary of over-stuffing a game. It's better to have five or six games running with smaller groups than two big ones, especially if the big ones got big because they kept adding "just one more person" over and over. We should all work both on our personal skills of saying "We are full" in a decent way, and of accepting that a group is big enough without it being an emotional issue.

Best, Ron

[Larry L.]

Here are games I will attempt to "run" at the drop of a hat:

• Ghost Echo and Lady Blackbird
• D&D (either the unpublished I-am-pulling-it-out-of-my-ass edition, or Supplement V: Carcosa)

If someone believes they understand Shock: really well, they should find me and attempt to start a game. I will bring nice paperwork for such.

Nat, I'm interested in Dread, please find me.

[Nev the Deranged]

I printed a few extra sheets of "Hi, My Name Is ___________, I Want to Run/Play _________" nametags. Not enough for everybody, or every day, but enough for those who want them, probably.

[woodelf]

1. When you organize a game (I used "run" in the broadest sense above), be open to including someone who's either new to the con, or you don't know, or both. I try to make it a point to look around for that very purpose when I get something going. We should avoid organizing games based on real-life or internet cliques.

2. And conversely but equally importantly, everyone should be wary of over-stuffing a game.

I second these points. Anybody want to suggest some approx. times to shoot for? In particular, I'm wondering when the day starts on Saturday, lest we all arrive half an hour after everyone else has just started a game, and have no one to play with but ourselves.

-Nat

[Nev the Deranged]

Nat, in my experience, unlike some mini-cons, there are generally enough people at loose ends at FMW to ensure short wait times for games. Finding persons who want to play something you want to play might be an issue, but finding people who want to play *something* shouldn't. Especially on Saturday, since many folks will be arriving that day, (and/or waking up) at various times.

Also, I will be bringing a number of games appropriate for "interstitial" play between major games. Dominion, Falling, Pictaphone, Jungle Speed, all these are excellent time killers on the off chance that you need to hold out for a half hour or so while something finishes up or gets organized.

[buzz]

Okay, it's been a busy couple of weeks, so I won't be running any Mouse Guard (previous FMW was the last time I even looked at the book). Sorry, Clyde! I will be available to run 44: A Game of Automatic Fear and will also try to have Lady Blackbird ready. I have rune the former once, the latter, never. I could also bring Diaspora, though that's a bigger time commitment.

To Ron's point of non-clique-iness, I'd really like to play a game or two with Willow and my fellow Bard alumnus Justice (Justus? Sorry, man.) I've been to two FNWs and have yet to game with either of them.

I'm hoping to arrive by 10am or so on Saturday, but we'll see.