TOPIC: More LFM Groups this year this late?

Grind saw a lot of open spots last year as well. I "think" some of that is due to the sealed-pack intro dungeon being better billed as the starting point.

I've had the same feeling as the rest of you guys over the last few days.

I wouldn't be at all surprised if it was at least in part due to costs combined with cheaper tickets available at other more cons then ever. I have definitely lost some of my more casual group mates (and am supplementing ticket costs for some others). Personally I've scaled back my runs, still spending the same as ever but doing less. Grind unfortunately was where I made the cut since it was harder to sell to my group.

I know for me especially it feels like fewer folks. In my case, i was delayed getting the notices up, so I'm thinking that the most active folks already found their slots. I know I'm running fewer this year because of the prices, because PAX South is in my backyard and the shift from four lanes (we would do both combat and puzzle) to three. Better experience overall but in my handful of years doing this, these last three or so just seem to get packed faster. My first year we were picking up stray runs from the event system day of (always for pairs of tickets), but also to be fair, we found slots on the boards day-before as well. Though I think that was someone finding a pack of 10 to buy out while Con was running.... (*shrug*)

Well, I just had one player drop out of Guildy McGuildface’s three runs, so I am about to add to the LFM lists. (They went from LFM(1) to Full to LFM(1) again.) Wish us luck in filling them!

Fred K wrote: I suspect there is a bit more of it this year. I still have 3 runs where I have extra tickets (1 for E3 on Fri morning at 10, 1 for Odin Redux Friday 1215p, and 2 for Grind on Saturday at 3pm.)

We're definitely seeing grind play out differently than other years. It seems like people did one of the following:
1. Planning big groups well in advance - bought out whole runs and had them full immediately;
2. They tried to cobble together groups from as many forumites as they could but couldn't guarantee new players wouldn't just show up leaving the remaining open tickets less desirable; or
3. Or Grind just wasn't that much of a draw this year (maybe from losing the mid-day runs)?

My guess is 3 is unlikely. Maybe there were more overall runs than last year this time. I congratulate anyone who pulled off #1 - it was really hard this year. Most of us are in group 2 - we were able to find 6 or 7 forum players and are providing additional tokens to help equip them for harder difficulty levels. Even so, my run has 2 unaccounted for tickets (plus 2 I haven't found players for yet) so it's an unknown as to what we'll get.

Fred

For DDA, i think most of our last minute tickets are because one person bought the run but they ended up on a different run and didnt realize they had unsold tickets left.

As for grind, my personal experience was that this year it was MUCH more difficult to get regular dungeon tickets at times i wanted than ever before...which is flipped with grind from previous years. I had multiple grind runs in my cart until our group could sort out which time was best for us. Past years it was often that we could only get one grind and had to base the rest of our schedules around it. But this change means that lots of people bought the only dungeon tickets they could before even considering grind, then an hour later, many of us dumped grind tickets out of our carts after the initial rush was over. And this is more likely with grind than dungeons because only back-to-back grinds conflict, it takes 11 dungeon events before you start to double cart. For example, when i decide friday afternoon is a good time for grind, once my wishlist and my wifes process, it is guaranteed that no grind tickets are left uncarted for friday afternoon.

Fiddy wrote: Grind saw a lot of open spots last year as well. I "think" some of that is due to the sealed-pack intro dungeon being better billed as the starting point.

Grind is NOT a good starter point for TD

I just signed up for one run (Thursday) to play E3. That rounds out my year for XP and the "story."

That said, I may pick up a run or two later in the week, make use of some of these tokens I just bought.

Arcanist Kolixela wrote:

Fiddy wrote: Grind saw a lot of open spots last year as well. I "think" some of that is due to the sealed-pack intro dungeon being better billed as the starting point.

Grind is NOT a good starter point for TD

Grind is absolutely NOT a good starter point for TD (and it even explicitly says so). But prior to last year, I frequently ran into Grind PUGs where people bought Grind tickets because they were available and the tickets were cheaper than the main dungeon, even if they'd never played before and owned zero tokens. Last year, I didn't run into any PUGs like that. I know that is just anecdote, not data, and could just be from my small sample size. But I got the feel from others that they had seen similar patterns.

Perhaps drifting from the main topic a bit, but while I've had a lot of fun at grind, it ended up not being worth the expense to keep doing for me.

A big part of the fun of grind for me is the DMs making the experience unique with individual interaction and a kind of crazy fast-paced story. That sort of fun is available at normal RPG sessions at $3-$4 per hour per person rather than $20-$30 per person per hour. I couldn't justify the cost when the difference is basically an easel, flipchart, 12-18 sliding boards, 14 pucks, and generic con furniture (tables, cloth divider walls, etc.)

I think probably it would be hard to drop the price without having too many people sign up thinking it was the least expensive way to get the TD experience, but it's going to be hard to sell it out at $30 too.

Andrew Knoll wrote: When I shut the index down last year, there were six dungeon runs still LFM, with a total of eight spots open. Grind was a bit more open - seven LFM runs with a total of 24 tickets. There were no tickets available directly from Gen Con, grind or otherwise.

As of this moment there are 14 Grind runs with tickets unsold through GenCon.

Team Synergy got two full Grinds, returned one, and has been unable to fill the second one.