ConCarolinas 2018 Results

ConCarolinas 2018 Results

Things went really well at ConCarolinas 2018 Gaming – partially because I really worked hard on my attitude and partially because people are starting to understand the system.   There are a few areas I need to improve on still but for the most part, it works well.  Communication to the players continues to be my focus so they are not signing up for stuff they don’t want or need to be.  Organized play continues to be a difficult things to communicate, mostly because I am not involved with it.  But I am learning.

Overall, the traffic was light.  One thing that worked in this case was setting up In and Out boxes for tickets.  So that people can full out the ticket and leave it for me to register them later.  That worked reasonably well accept in the cases where they are left overnight.  I need to communicate better about what newbies can play and what they can’t.  I will figure out better ways to communicate, especially to newbies.

Running 3 of the four games I signed up to run was fun.  RPGs are my bread and butter and I thoroughly enjoyed running them this year.  I went a little overboard with the terrain this year but I do feel like it added something to the game.  The players were exceptional.  I even had some return players from last year.  They came back solely because I was running.  Others enjoyed what I presented in terms of story and the crafts.

I gradually got more involved with the crafts as the weekend went on.  I like to keep Call of Cthulhu simple and only used paper stand-ups and abstract maps. This was the Dead Light adventure and I still had the same struggles with it in the playtest.  Everyone had fun though.  Extra bonus is that my wife got to play.

For Star Trek Adventures, I added a few things but still kept it abstract.   This was the quickstart adventure Away Team: Signals.  The players really challenged me on this one.  I used basic terrain that displayed a rocky desert world.  But the combat system is fairly abstract making it easy to not have to worry about squares and stuff. (Forgot to take pictures of this game.)

For Savage Worlds: Flash Gordon, I went all out.  It was a simple adventure from the core rulebook, that I modified a little.  Dive of Doom had the players going after a sunken steamer ship.  While I could not find a “Flash-Gordon” style ship, I did find one in DriveThruRPG.  Thanks to Dramascapes Sunken Ship (for the sea floor) and Above Decks Volume Three: Tramp Steamer, I had the beginnings of underwater encounter.  I used Mage Knight Iron Lung minis for the underwater scenes but also custom made minis for above water.

I still had a personality clash at one point but only one.  I know who it was and I dealt with it as best I could at the time.  But it was not good enough for her.  I get it and regret that I did not have time to satisfactorily fulfill what she needed but I think she was the only complaint.  My goal was to not give anyone a reason to complain and for the most part, I was able to do that.

Unfortunately, life threw me a curve ball on Sunday and I had to leave.  Family first is what I have always said when I ran this con and in this case, they were first for me.  When my mom goes to the hospital, all this silly stuff goes to the wayside.  She is doing well and on a path to recovery.

In the end, despite what went on with the rest of the con, gaming went well.  We had a good flow of players – between 250 and 275 – and I think we had an 85% to 90% make-rate (how many games actually made out of the ones scheduled).  We had a ton of pick-ups mostly driven by the last minute play-to-win games Jeff was able to acquire.  I don’t think people quite understood it and that was in part because it was last minute.

Personal highlight – helping my son play Dungeons & Dragons for the first time.  We got him involved in a D&D AL adventure and I almost ran it myself but I finally found a guy that ran it pretty well.  I am not sure he totally enjoyed it but perhaps if I had run it, he would have enjoyed it more.  Maybe next time