TOPIC: Idea Feedback Needed ASAP - Linked Runs

Jeff Martin wrote: I was thinking of setting up all the runs in the 9am and 7pm hours as special tournament events. That makes 10 slots of 10 tickets each day -- so that 100 people could take advantage of this idea. The cost would be 3 X $78 or $234. With this ticket you would have a space reserved for you each day at the same exact time. So if you bought a ticket at 9:12am for "Astral Journey to the Bliss" you would report Thursday, Friday and Saturday each day at 9:12 am to play with the same folks. We'd be taking a gamble that someone might refund the ticket at the last second, but I guess I'm willing to take the risk since it sounds like a good idea of passionate fans.

It would NOT involve any tickets for Into the Viper's Pit.

I want to do this because we are taking great pains to tie the 3 modules together, and I like it if folks could play it in order. It also might make for a better experience having it at the same time each day -- and we might be able to do some special things during those slots because we know the same folks are running the same time each day.

What are your thoughts? This would affect basically 300 tickets out of 6,000 -- or 5% of tickets.

This is for Gen Con only at this time, but we might consider it for Gamehole Con if we do the ticket selling. That is still up in the air.

Jeff, if you do something special, I agree with others that it shouldn't be anything material like XP or buttons or completion tokens. And even if it's something small, I wouldn't announce it ahead of time, but just let it be a nice surprise.

Jeff Martin wrote: I was thinking of setting up all the runs in the 9am and 7pm hours as special tournament events. That makes 10 slots of 10 tickets each day -- so that 100 people could take advantage of this idea. The cost would be 3 X $78 or $234. With this ticket you would have a space reserved for you each day at the same exact time. So if you bought a ticket at 9:12am for "Astral Journey to the Bliss" you would report Thursday, Friday and Saturday each day at 9:12 am to play with the same folks. We'd be taking a gamble that someone might refund the ticket at the last second, but I guess I'm willing to take the risk since it sounds like a good idea of passionate fans.

What are your thoughts? This would affect basically 300 tickets out of 6,000 -- or 5% of tickets.

This is for Gen Con only at this time, but we might consider it for Gamehole Con if we do the ticket selling. That is still up in the air.

The two most important days of the year for me are Gen Con hotel registration and Gen Con event registration. The latter has gotten far better with wish lists and I pretty much get into what I want to, but, where I got into everything I tried to get into last year, a friend of mine got into nothing they tried to get into last year.

Gen Con event planning is a mess as it's only four days of scheduled gaming. I only see this exacerbating existing problems. (Which, btw, is why Sunday TD was so much better for us.)

Before the three dungeon model came up, we were going to look to do back to back runs in one of the "11" slots and back to back runs in another of the "11" slots. With the three dungeon model, we would look to do back to back runs in one of the "11" slots and the third run some other time to leave as many slots open as possible.

"11" slots: There's more going on at Gen Con than True Dungeon. While others approach the con differently, my priority is scheduling my RPG or pseudo-RPG events in such a way to maximize number of events as there's always more to be done than what can be scheduled. So, while a long, long time ago, Gen Con might have been a 8-12, 12-4, 4-8, 8-12 schedule, since Indy, it's essentially a 8-2, 2-7, 7+ schedule each day, with Sunday being 8-12, 12-4.

Point being, the more start restricting event registration, the more events that become irrelevant to folks like our group.

For example, we have two events that always happen on Saturday, that might be all day, might be until night, might leave the morning open - don't know until the schedule comes out. It's impossible for us to be locked into some Saturday thing until it's known what the remainder of the schedule is. I realize that's not true of everyone, but consider anyone who plays tournaments of other things that are multiday or who have things like volunteer schedules or whatever.

Then, we don't plan on buying out runs. Unless the total runs are guaranteed to go to one person, I echo other people's concerns. And, if they were guaranteed to go to one person, which I don't think is possible with the software, then that creates its own problems of restricting supply.

So many ideas seemed aimed at a very specific portion of the player base. In my mind, the way to reward those people with special runs is to make use of cons with less going on, like GHC or WYC, rather than mess around with the masses who aren't advantaged by the ideas because Origins and GC are more than just opportunities to play TD.

Jeff, another thought is to push even harder into linked runs.

Maybe offer a couple of hours a day for individual tickets for linked runs, and a couple of hours a day for full slots buys for linked runs. Make enough of them so that anyone that wants to do one has a reasonable shot at getting one (as reasonable as any True Dungeon ticket, since they sell out so quickly).

Then, maybe you do say there will be an extra little something special to reward those that buy these tickets for the full 3 run adventure. Incentivize people for committing to doing all three Dungeons. It will help TD assure a sellout, and give a little reward to those willing to sign up for the full set of Dungeons. Nothing like XP, but maybe something like a special completion button, or something in-Dungeon.

Love the idea of a "tournament" and running with the same crew through the whole story arc. It's a structured way to do what we do here on the boards.

As others have said, I like being able to buy a complete story arc and minimizing interaction with the ticket buying system. The "special things" is also appealing.

That said, many of the hardcore TD players who will be scooping-up these limited tickets will probably already have played Bliss at Origins and I was going to skip Bliss at Gen Con because of that. But if this ends-up coming to fruition, I will definitely be vying for a spot.

So maybe play the "these are in order of how you should play them" element down in the write-up as to not taint people's minds with the thought that these runs MUST be played in order should they not be able to obtain one of these spots.

I actually don't think there should be any extra incentive for these tickets. If you can do them cool. But if they don't fit into your schedule and you still do 3 (or more) dungeons should you also get something? My two cents.

Mike Steele wrote: Then, maybe you do say there will be an extra little something special to reward those that buy these tickets for the full 3 run adventure. Incentivize people for committing to doing all three Dungeons.

I think this is totally unnecessary. People already WANT to do all three. There is no need to offer them anything to do what they want to do anyway.

Besides, it sounds like this is just something nice you’re trying to do for people. So, if the 30-player event doesn’t sell out after a week or two, you can just cancel it and add back in three 10-ticket events.

Brad Mortensen wrote:

Mike Steele wrote: Then, maybe you do say there will be an extra little something special to reward those that buy these tickets for the full 3 run adventure. Incentivize people for committing to doing all three Dungeons.

I think this is totally unnecessary. People already WANT to do all three. There is no need to offer them anything to do what they want to do anyway.

Besides, it sounds like this is just something nice you’re trying to do for people. So, if the 30-player event doesn’t sell out after a week or two, you can just cancel it and add back in three 10-ticket events.

You may be right, but I'm not sure. Most of my friends no longer want to do all three because of the cost. I'm sure most of the hardcore fans on the forums want to do all three already, but I wouldn't be surprised if the casual player (which likely makes up the vast majority) are cutting back to just one or two (or zero) Dungeons. I'd guess the majority of players won't be doing all three Dungeons.

I'm sure Jeff is worried about the impact the big ticket price increase will have on sales, something like this that incentivizes those that might not already do 3 runs to do them could help.

I suspect the tickets will sell out again, but I'm not as sure as I've been the last few years.

Really disliking idea of any incentives, with sellouts why are we pushing even more limited goodies? If you wanted something for everyone who completed all 3 runs fine, just don't tie it to this specific event.

If you're going to restrict tickets i'd rather see a trial at Origins/Game hole con to iron out kinks and see how it is truly received by the population, not just formites.

I do like the concept of making it easier to buy all 10 tickets as a mega ticket basically. What i have left of a group is basically to point either we get the full run or we skip TD and i don't blame them. At current pricing trends i'm already avoiding pick up groups (which i'll gladly do at smaller cons because if the group doesn't gel i'm far less annoyed at costs involved).

I know as previously stated no chance of volunteer runs but that is definitely a draw for volunteers knowing they can at least get to the see the game they help with.

Jeff,

Maybe you could reduce risk on your part by saying up front that any "all 3 runs" tickets that weren't sold out by a certain time might be converted back to regular tickets. Or if you want, don't say anything about it and just hold that option in your back pocket.

Thanks,
Mike

Mike Steele wrote: Most of my friends no longer want to do all three because of the cost.

My comment was based on the assumption that it would work like today - you exchange your megaticket at the desk for a fistful of wristbands, and to whom you give them is nobody’s concern.

If there is a constraint that it has to be the same people on all three runs, then that doesn’t even seem feasible to enforce, and I can’t imagine why anyone would want to. But, that would certainly change things.

But people who balk at a $78 ticket are going to have multiple coronaries over a $234 or a $2340 ticket, and I can’t imagine any swag is going to get them over that.

Brad Mortensen wrote:

Mike Steele wrote: Most of my friends no longer want to do all three because of the cost.

My comment was based on the assumption that it would work like today - you exchange your megaticket at the desk for a fistful of wristbands, and to whom you give them is nobody’s concern.

If there is a constraint that it has to be the same people on all three runs, then that doesn’t even seem feasible to enforce, and I can’t imagine why anyone would want to. But, that would certainly change things.

But people who balk at a $78 ticket are going to have multiple coronaries over a $234 or a $2340 ticket, and I can’t imagine any swag is going to get them over that.

Brad, I agree with you that I hope it works like now, where one person can buy the tickets and hand them out to whomever. I know that isn't quite the purpose Jeff had in mind, but for my group at least we don't have 10 people that are willing to do 3 runs each (there are 5 or 6 of us so far that will do that). But it would be our group doing all three, with at least 6 of us doing all three and most of the rest doing two of three.

I am trying to convince a couple of our long-time playing True Dungeon friends (starting in 2003 and 2004) to bump up to all three Dungeons from just two, so that we can do all three Dungeons with just our group of friends. They are considering it, and if a little something extra for doing all three could help move them over the hump, I'm all for it. I'll bet they aren't alone in that line of thinking.

Mike Steele wrote:
Stuff

We want the same thing. And, you’re right, any sort of incentive could change a mind or two. My fear is that the only things that would really move the needle are a price reduction or exclusive swag - and the latter is so fraught with downside I really hope it doesn’t happen.

But something non-exclusive like an extra treasure, or free bag check, might do the trick. Who knows?

Maybe that’s something that could address the Thursday morning doldrums - an extra TC for any first-day/first-shift adventure. Might encourage a few people to play them out of order.