MACE 2016 Personal Report

Well, the 20th anniversary is over and done with.  As I said in my JustUs Productions review, there was a lot of anticipation and anxiety building up to this.  In my case, that tends to create mistakes.  I made a few that I need to make note of here so I can remember them next time.  Additionally, more modification is needed to OGRe to make these mistakes less impactful.

(1) PLAYER TICKET/SCHEDULES:  I did not stress to the players enough that they need to print out their own tickets.  At the same time, they don’t remember their own password into OGRe.  So there needs to be an easier way to get tickets.  In that vein, I am designing a more versatile onsite aspect to OGRe, where I think all they will need is their ID (which we can look up) and an onsite password (visible ONLY from a specific IP that I will enter into the config).  It will download their tickets from there.

(2) GMs AND THEIR PLAYERS:  I need to stress to all GMs that they need to print out their player list as well.  At the same time, I can do the above same thing for GMs.

(3) COMMUNICATION ON ALL LEVELS: Too many people did not realize we were having a live auction.  The word apparently did not spread well enough despite posting it on the web site,  Facebook and Twitter, mailing lists and anywhere else we could post it.  I am not sure if that is a lesson of our demographic or just the effectiveness of our social media and marketing.  Either way, signage will be important.

What I realize is that the more mistakes I make, the more I get tired of doing this.  It has nothing to do with the people, the games, or JustUs.  It has everything to do with the non-stop work I put into this only to discover I am not done. All my efforts to supply the players with the What, Where and When of a game so they all can sit and play is never enough.  There is always something else I have to do.  And things are closely approaching burnout levels here.

So this sometimes has lead me to ask… 20 years… how much longer?  I still enjoy it, but I just wonder how much longer will I?  I ran 4 games (3 different systems) this time, more than I have in a long time, perhaps ever.  That might have been too much.  I really enjoyed them though.  I guess the frustrating part is that OGRe is not at the point where I can just leave it in the player’s hands yet and I have worked hard to get to that point.  It is just frustrating that all my hand holding and coddling I have done for the past 15 years, I can’t seem to get people to do their own thing.