Good news.

1. The room block-off is now in effect, so if you haven't, please reserve now.

2. The conference room is all set! (Thanks Willow)

It looks like everything is greenlit and ready. Further questions, hassles, event suggestions, organizational suggestions, and most especially volunteerism - let's do it!

Best, Ron

I will probably be making reservations over the next couple days, as soon as I hear from my local peeps. Chances are good I will have extra room in the room no matter what, so any non-snorers who are interested in splitting the cost of a room, get in touch with me and we'll talk.

Also, re: Foamageddon plans; I recognize that there is a division between people interested in NERF battles, and people interested in not being in the same room as NERF battles. This is perfectly understandable. So, my thinking is to restrict said activity to a specific time and place, namely an hour or so in the secondary room. I'm open to suggestions for time, and am willing to throw a little cash down if reservation is necessary.

Say, what's the hotel contact info?

The Google maps page for the Best Western hotel is here:
http://j.mp/8nb2qj
It has the contact info.

Well, I finally tried to make a reservation tonight and apparently the room block expired because nobody asked for them, and they only have Queen rooms left. I couldn't get a straight answer about whether this was more expensive or what, as the person seemed to be even more confused than I was. I wanted to double check before putting money down, so please confirm that the dates are March 19, 20, and 21 (necessitating overnight stays the 19th and 20th only, obviously), and I'll just get a room and bring my airbed; or tell me the secret password I need to give them so they know what the hell I'm talking about.

Where has customer service gone, I ask you?

I had massive problems trying to find out about the block. I ended up just getting the hot-tub room, as per usual. If you have AAA you can get a slightly cheaper rate, so there's that.

Whatever problems people seem to have been having, I think they are fixed.  I just reserved my room two minutes ago.  The hotel found the room block no problem.  I did give them both Willow's name and said "Forge Midwest".  The room rate was 79 per night.

Good news. I'll try it now. Perhaps the person working the desk at 1 am was just less familiar with the system, or something. *shrug*

Excellent. You were right, Tim, smooth like butter, smooth like jam. I ended up paying the extra $10 a night for twin beds outside the block anyway, but they couldn't find those last night either, so thanks for the confirmation.

I'm excited! See you guys there!

Have fun this year, guys! Sadly, I can't make it as we needed to schedule my oldest daughter's birthday for that weekend. One of these years, schedules and MN weather willing, I'll be able to again.

Nev wrote: smooth like jam.

Motipha wrote:

Nev wrote: smooth like jam.

Smooth like jam?  You really are eating some inferior quality jam, friend.  You should love yourself more than that.

Tired of inferior jam's getting stuck in your craw? Get Nev's New Extra-smooth Eating Jam.

I had no problems with the hotel. I called them directly, not on the 800 number.

So, is there anything anyone is really hurting to play, so I can prep appropriately?

It has occurred to me that some sort of very light LARP thing (like circle of assassins) might make for a fun ongoing icebreaker.

Here are my plans for play. I'm prepping with a lot more care and purpose than I did last year.

Legendary LIves
The Exchange (Levi's Kornelsen's game in playtest) using the 1980s game Justifiers as the setting
Venus 2141
Ruby

I'll have the usual bag of my stuff if anyone wants me to play one of my games, but that'll be request-only.

Best, Ron

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.

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.

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. :)

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

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

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

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

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.

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.

Ron wrote:
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.

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.

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. :)