TOPIC: anxiety over the cleric class

Hi all,

I just wanted to thank everyone who helped be get over the anxiety of playing the cleric. It is very much appreciated!

I did pretty well as I missed 1 out of 8 challenges.

It was pretty hard this year. Last year, the GM would ask me to chose from 3 beads. This year, all but one of them handed me the bead string and asked me to pick out the bead! Crazy!

I appreciate all the people who volunteer but it really felt disorganized this year. The room GMs were pretty rough around the edges and the people at the end of the adventure were having issues with the experience computer (my entire party didn't get their experience put in).

I will never go again on the Thursday - it was just too haphazard.

There were a lot of first-time DMs this year, the computer system failed and a lot of people decided at the last minute to back out, leaving a lot of people scrambling. I know at least one DM was drafted, who had never even played, with 15 minutes notice because there simply wasnt anyone else to do it. To a large extent the problems you saw were not caused by the volunteers you could see. In fact, a lot of them were heroically keeping things from being much worse, yet were catching all the anger for a situation outside their control.

Kevin Jacobi wrote: Hi all,

I just wanted to thank everyone who helped be get over the anxiety of playing the cleric. It is very much appreciated!

I did pretty well as I missed 1 out of 8 challenges.

It was pretty hard this year. Last year, the GM would ask me to chose from 3 beads. This year, all but one of them handed me the bead string and asked me to pick out the bead! Crazy!

I appreciate all the people who volunteer but it really felt disorganized this year. The room GMs were pretty rough around the edges and the people at the end of the adventure were having issues with the experience computer (my entire party didn't get their experience put in).

I will never go again on the Thursday - it was just too haphazard.

Generally there are two ways to handle this. "Show me X" or pick a bead and ask "What bead is this?" Both are acceptable, but generally "Show me X" is the norm. I've never seen a DM narrow it to 3, nor should they.

cmdrworf wrote:

Kevin Jacobi wrote: Hi all,

I just wanted to thank everyone who helped be get over the anxiety of playing the cleric. It is very much appreciated!

I did pretty well as I missed 1 out of 8 challenges.

It was pretty hard this year. Last year, the GM would ask me to chose from 3 beads. This year, all but one of them handed me the bead string and asked me to pick out the bead! Crazy!

I appreciate all the people who volunteer but it really felt disorganized this year. The room GMs were pretty rough around the edges and the people at the end of the adventure were having issues with the experience computer (my entire party didn't get their experience put in).

I will never go again on the Thursday - it was just too haphazard.

Generally there are two ways to handle this. "Show me X" or pick a bead and ask "What bead is this?" Both are acceptable, but generally "Show me X" is the norm. I've never seen a DM narrow it to 3, nor should they.

Hmmm... that's weird. This is my 3rd time playing the cleric and my experience from previous years was that the person held up 3 beads and asked "show me...". Only one DM did it that way this year. Regardless, it is much harder than any of the other spell casting classes due to the jumbled view you get of the beads compared to your study chart. Reducing the number of choices puts it closer to par with the other tests.

Anyway, I'm happy with how I did. It wasn't a stellar time due to the challenges with DMs who didn't know what they were doing but we made the best of it.

Also, please don't get me wrong. I really do appreciate the volunteers and realize that it isn't their fault that they were put into this situation. I believe that the organizers need to reflect on the challenges this year and figure out what the solution is. If they don't have the resources to run the amount of events they are trying to do, they have two choices. Run them and have people question whether it is worth the money or reduce the number of events so that people get an experience worth the price.

If it stays the same, I'm pretty sure that my group won't be participating next year.

Anyway

Or you could go to the home page, click on the volunteer button and become part of the solution.

Kevin Jacobi wrote: If they don't have the resources to run the amount of events they are trying to do, they have two choices. Run them and have people question whether it is worth the money or reduce the number of events so that people get an experience worth the price.

Reducing the number of runs may not be a real option. Especially considering the current contract with GenCon, it may be that True Dungeon has to bring in a certain minimum dollar amount to pay its commitments.

But there are other options available. It was very convenient having the villain in Golembane speak to the party. That likely helped extend the life of the DMs' voices and reduced problems with inconsistency. The puzzle/challenge rooms are less demanding to run, so an effort can be made to place the more exhausted and/or less experienced volunteers in such areas. As the years progress and the token design process becomes ever more consistent, there will be fewer instances of wildcard tokens catching the DMs by surprise and slowing things down. I'm sure there's more, but it's early and I haven't had my coffee yet.

To some extent, I've come to realize that I should be very grateful for the good DMs and passively put up with the medicore ones. Since I travel thousands of miles to come to GenCon I haven't been able to justify spending the time to volunteer...but if I get that job in Indianapolis perhaps I can help become part of the solution.

Garrison wrote:

Kevin Jacobi wrote: To some extent, I've come to realize that I should be very grateful for the good DMs and passively put up with the medicore ones. Since I travel thousands of miles to come to GenCon I haven't been able to justify spending the time to volunteer...but if I get that job in Indianapolis perhaps I can help become part of the solution.

I hear you on traveling thousands of miles, I travel long distance to get to GENCON myself. I have volunteered for 3 years in a row now, this year was last minute since TD had volunteers back out at the last minute. For me it's just the fun of volunteering, I get my own room and since I'm a VIG I pay for that every year! So I'm a cheap labor! LOL

Kudos for putting forth the effort! I may have to try that regardless of whether I am living in Indy next year or not. The friends I meet up with at the Con might not like my absence from other activities they want to do...but maybe I'll just have to convince them to volunteer as well!

Kevin Jacobi wrote:
or reduce the number of events so that people get an experience worth the price.

Anyway

Be careful what you ask for. It's hard enough to get the runs you want as it is.

I appreciate people who volunteer for the event but it is not something I'm interested in doing. GenCon is a special time for me and my friends. We have only been doing it for 3 years now (I've only been to 4) and we are not at the point where we want to give up our time. For a few of us, it is the big vacation for the summer. We may balance volunteer and work at home but we don't want to pay to go on vacation to volunteer at this point. I'm sure that we may get there some day, just not now.

However, just because we don't give up our time shouldn't mean that we can't comment on challenges with the product we paid for. If they scale back a bit and spend some time with the volunteers, perhaps the product will go back to the quality it was in previous years. Otherwise you will lose a lot of the fringe players like myself who play once each year and will be left with the people who are more hardcore and play multiple sessions over the weekend.

I guess, like anything in life, it is hard to please everyone when there is such a variety of wants in the community.

Sometimes they have enough volunteers, but those people have issues getting to their shift or drop out entirely. No business has 100% attendance 100% of the time. Combine this with an expansion of the number of volunteers needed and there are bound to be issues.

I have gotten to experience TD for 3 years now, and volunteered to help build twice. I even got to spend a shift this last year as an NPC, and I apologize if I drooled on anyone. I would highly recommend anyone that can afford to 'work' for a single shift and you might have a different viewpoint.

Oh, I haven't played Cleric yet, but I can see where the 'test' can be considered tough. I kind of wish that we could buy a string of beads to study at home, but to keep it from getting to easy, maybe swap a few new beads in each year

Observing opportunities to improve is one thing. Suggesting things that ask even more time time or effort from volunteers (additional training time, etc) is something else, especially if you're not willing to be part of the solution.