Mike and I had a great demo of the e-ticket process today and I can say that both of us are feeling really positive about what we saw!
As in years past, we will have four host/hostess lines (one per adventure). So, if you have tickets for N1, you will go to the N1 line. The host/hostess will have the next hour or so of N1 runs pulled up. You will tell him/her your time slot and with a click the host/hostess can see the tickets.
If you have a single ticket, TD scans your badge, takes your waiver, gives you a wristband and a pack of tokens, and off you go to your coaching room.
If you bought tickets for you and three friends and did NOT transfer the tickets to them, we will first scan the ticket purchaser's badge and then scan your three friends badges, collect waivers, give you the tokens and wristbands, and off you go to coaching!
If you bought tickets for the entire group of 10 and transferred the tickets to the other players using the Friends/Family function through gencon.com. You arrive 30 minutes early, we scan your badge and you go into coaching. One of the people you transferred to has back to back runs, so he/she comes running from epilogue to check in, we scan his/her badge, do the whole waiver, wristband, token thingy and off that player goes into coaching.
Here's a couple UNIQUE situations. Let's say you want to TRANSFER a ticket to someone who already has something on their schedule at the same time as the TD ticket you're wanting to transfer. The system will see the conflict and you will get an error and be unable to transfer.
BUT, if you come to the host/hostess with your friend who has decided to skip the conflicting event for the TD run, we scan the purchaser's badge and then the guest's badge and the system realizes that since the person is there, they understand the conflict and have made the choice to attend this event vs. the other. No issue, conflict doesn't stop anything and in you go.
Here's what you've all been waiting for. I'm going to tell you a GHOST story!
Eight friends have been playing TD together for years and they enjoy their group of 8 SO much that they do NOT want 2 unknown people joining their party, so they buy 10 tickets and GHOST the 2 unused tickets. Read through the forums...everyone has figured out that the new e-ticketing system is going to totally mess this story up.
'Tis not the case, adventurers!!! Gen Con has planned for this instance and your Ghost Story will be able to continue. The TD host/hostesses will have the ability to scan a badge that marks tickets as intentionally left open so we will know to NOT fill from the wait list and to not count those tickets as no-shows. We will recognize them as Ghost Tickets and they will be counted toward tickets redeemed. WE will have the special badges to scan for the intentionally left open tickets so you need to do nothing, but let us know that you have GHOST tickets in the slot and how many.
Again, I cannot stress this enough....The Gen Con team gave us a demo today and Mike and I were really impressed. The system has the ability to grow and improve, but right now it does some great things that we were hoping they'd have ready. I think this will be a learning year for all of us, but I really feel like eticketing is going to streamline a lot of our efforts and make things much more efficient. I'm really happy with what I saw. I had a list of questions and the GC team was able to easily answer them or consider alternatives and got back to me with ways to fix the challenges that our unique event brings to the eticketing processes.
What I ask of you is patience. Thursday is always hectic and crazy as we all try to find our "groove" as things start up. We will also be implementing a new system, which will add it's own set of challenges. We'll have all hands on deck Thursday morning and Gen Con has offered help as well. I think that if everyone stays calm and has patience we'll find our groove quickly and be thankful that paper tickets are a thing of the past for TD!
Lori
Lori
Lori Martin
True Dungeon Exec. Director
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