TOPIC: anxiety over the cleric class

I had no idea about the bailing of so many volunteers. I love coaching. I did two years full time, and the last two part time, mainly because my wife has come to GenCon the last two years.
I intend to do the same next year, but maybe I can get with the coordinators to let them know when I would be available to fill in as needed.

Kim Lindgren wrote: I'm surprised the hotel allowed them to do that.

That's what I said.

They went down to the front desk and told the hotel clerk they wanted to just put the room on one of their credit cards instead of having TD pay for it. The hotel didn't care because they are a private business and in no way connected with GenCon or TD. Like any business they just want to get paid for their services.

I don't fault the hotel in any way on this one.

That's really terrible. You'd think GENCON could at least revoke the 4 day Badges. I'd think banning would be appropriate, but I guess they could just get a badge under a different name in the future easily enough.

I'm not sure GenCon would care about the badges, since True Dungeon would likely had already paid for them.

Even if Jeff were to complain and GenCon did care enough to invalidate the badges, it would only bother the swindlers if they tried to buy event tickets afterwards. If they already had tickets and/or generics to get them through the con they might not even realize there was a problem with their badges. It's not like those bored ICC employees at the doors were scanning everyone's barcode, nor do event organizers check each ticket against some banned list. I suppose GenCon could find the swindlers easily enough by sending someone to a game they had bought tickets for, and confiscating badges. But I seriously doubt they'd go through that trouble.

They might be out of luck for future GenCon years however, if their entire account is banned. They might just have to have someone else buy their future badges for them. Or, if GenCon just deleted the account, the perps could just create a new account with the same name all over again and have a clean slate. Grr.

(Perhaps, in the near future, the GenCon badges will have RFID chips in them. Instead of paper tickets, event organizers will just scan the badges of everyone who arrives. This would make harassing swindlers much easier.)

Sadly, at the moment it doesn't seem worth bothering with. The easiest and most reliable thing to do is probably just keep a list of their names, check it against the volunteer applicants each year, and decline any of their future requests to volunteer. It would be too difficult to try and ban them from playing, but hopefully shame would take care of that.

As with any system, someone will always find a way to game it. And often it costs more to try to prevent everything than to let a small amount of "stuff" happen. It usually comes down to how many dollars you want to throw at your moral outrage.

Brad Mortensen wrote: It bothers me when people offer suggestions on how to improve a situation without understanding it. At best, the suggestions are ones that were considered already. At worst, they can come across as ungrateful and offensive, especially when they involve placing more demands on the time and energy of those willing to help.

If you read my comments, you would understand how far off and rude the above comment is.

Again, I did not put any onus or blame on the volunteers who give up their time to take part in true dungeon. It would be me, as a business owner with employees, blaming them when I haven't given them the resources to do the job properly. I commend the people who jumped in and tried to fill the gaps when other people didn't show up.

But let's get something straight, I'm a consumer of these goods. As a consumer, I thought I was able to point out what went wrong for me and my friends this year. Do I know the back room issues and logistics for TD? No but I see what has happened during our sessions and can compare to what we have experienced in previous years.

Sorry, we only play one session a year. If this game is not meant for a casual player like ourselves, fine. I am getting frustrated that I'm being told that if I'm "not part of the solution" I don't have a voice. Many people would just write off the TD experience and not come back. I thought that trying to open a conversation about the challenges we have had was being more constructive. My hopes is that the business owner would address the issues and make it a better environment for both the players and the volunteers.

If this is considered unreasonable, I do apologize and will stop commenting in this forum. I realize that my friends and I are only 5 people who play the game once a year so our not participating will have no effect. Perhaps there are enough people who are happy with the current situation that other groups like mine won't affect TD viability.

I wanted to play TD to have an live action RPG experience. Perhaps my expectations are not appropriate to what TD can offer with their resources.

I hope that people understand where I'm coming from. I sought out this forum not to flame TD or any of the people who invest a great deal of their time in this one event. I came hear initially to understand more about the cleric class and to get a firmer grasp on what can be expected from the game.

For everyone who has PM me and offered suggestions, thank you very much. You patience with this "newbie" has been very generous.

I wish everyone the best and hope that they consider their posts to other new people like me before they turn even more people away.

Kevin Jacobi wrote: I thought that trying to open a conversation about the challenges we have had was being more constructive. My hopes is that the business owner would address the issues and make it a better environment for both the players and the volunteers.

Which challenges are we talking about? Your general complaint seems to be that the GMs were "rough around the edges", but that isn't very helpful for directing how the volunteer training could be modified.

Can you cite some specific examples of how your GMs were, as you say, rough around the edges?

I've been playing TD since 2003 and it is an awesome experience; but, I also agree with Kevin. There are some improvements that can be made in how the rooms are DM'd. My group late Saturday night had a member in tears because of the rudeness of the DM in the tree ent room. This was an experienced TD DM that had no people skills, from the school of "Don't dare question the DM!"

Here is what I suggest. look for DMs that have actually DM'd RPGs and empower them in the TD rooms. DMs should rarely say no to a creative player solution, they should say "yes and" or "yes but". This way, a DM could say yes you can use your boots of water walking but they only work for you while another DM could say you get halfway across the river and water sprites churn the water preventing you from going further except on the planks. Both answers are fine and acknowledge the player's creativity. When an adventure becomes about saying no, it starts to lose the players. If we empower the DMs to make their own calls, without calling a Director in, what that means is fair is not equal. We have to give that up as players. One DM in a room may treat a solution differently than another. This already happens and I know people don't like it; but, if we can give up on the idea that this is a cookie cutter "haunted house" attraction giving everyone a generic experience and let the DMs make it an adventure, I think the event improves.

That's my two cents worth. Have at it.

Everyone is free to make observations on their experiences, and hearing about them gives everyone a chance to make things better.

But offering solutions without understanding the problems is presumptuous, and that was the part that offended me, not the rest.

That's all I was trying to say. And if I misread your comments or communicated anything other than that I apologize.

TD always recruits extra volunteers to account for no-shows, and this year was no exception. So how would you prefer TD handle the situation when an unexpectedly large number of scheduled volunteers fail to keep their commitments? Should they bring in substitutes who are rough around the edges, or cancel runs altogether? Because that was the situation the directors faced, and I don't see they had any other alternatives.