TOPIC: Thank you to players to and fellow volunteers for a great con

Thanks for letting us locals volunteer. I had an absolutely amazing time being a night time DM for the puzzle rooms, and I really hope I get the chance to join in for Origins next year and PAX a full year from now. I'm truly looking forward to it.

Yancey wrote:

Matt wrote:

Beertram wrote: ....

The most common question I got was how many HP's does the monster have. I expect that is from video gamers expecting to have that knowledge (health bar above the monster's head), while the D&D players know they wouldn't know that.

It was a lot of fun DMing, but also a challenge with so many new players. Many casters thought they had to have a token to cast a spell or thought for reason they could only cast the 0-level spells. I'm not sure where that came from but I heard it over and over. Many casters also thought they had to slide an empty puck after casting a skill-check spell. I know we had good trainers and coaches, so maybe new players need something more than the 12 minutes of training? Maybe a warm-up room after training?

Never had I felt like I was cutting it close on time before like this con. I agree that i finally chalked it up to a different mentality of players. Ie mostly video gamers who are used to stat bars and being guided down a predetermined path in a marketing demo vs TD where one more or less controls their own fate and much more hands on. A concept I've never had to really cover is to remind players that yes these tokens are yours to keep, we seriously mean that. Several times word got back to us about players trying to turn in tokens at Epilogue.

For this crowd i'd suggest moving/putting a tv covering class mechanics a little more in the coaching rooms vs training. Need to think a little better as the video need to be well lit and quick worded and more simple for when i can hit play on say a caster/combat/general play video to get someone up to speed while i'm working with others.

I loved the crowd at this con but it was definitely different compared to GHC/Origins/Gen Con.

The PAX conventionists are a different breed in general. My dude and I went to the first PAX East in Boston and got a chance to BS with a group of Enforcers the last day of the Con. There were many discussions, but the one that sticks out most to me was the “lost and found” guy. He told us that he works a lot of conventions and was blown away by the PAX crowd. You see, the thing that shocked him, was that he had a 100% return rate. So, 100% of the people that came up to him and asked “did someone find a phone/gameboy/laptop/etc.?”, he told “why yes, it’s right here”.

100%

I’m still in awe.

That is really heartening:)