What you say is true in a general sense...but is anything coming across in the OP as being an "all about me" attitude? I certainly consider myself to be extremely helpful, cooperative, and patient, both as a player and a DM. But I believe this experience was way beyond any point where me being even more adaptive or accommodating would have helped.
Just had an awful AL con weekend
What you say is true in a general sense...but is anything coming across in the OP as being an "all about me" attitude? I certainly consider myself to be extremely helpful, cooperative, and patient, both as a player and a DM. But I believe this experience was way beyond any point where me being even more adaptive or accommodating would have helped.
Eltab
Lord of the Hidden Layer
I went back and re-read your OP.
I'm not sure what to advise; nothing raised a red flag for self-inflicted unhappiness.
The organizers do need to know the name of the TPK-happy DM. Hopefully they can put him at the bottom of the list of people to turn to - or maybe let him fall off the list entirely.
Did you talk to any other players about their experience? How did their day go? If equally bad, encourage them too to contact the organizers. If the site has some rooms with carpet and padded walls instead of concrete, that would be a preferred venue (absorbs random sounds from faraway tables). The organizers will have to handle that, but it never hurts to give them the idea.
I'm slightly hard-of-hearing (too much loud rock music in headphones during the mis-spent days of my youth), so I always sit right next to the DM to give myself the best chance to hear him. Clearly hearing the other players is a little more iffy...
MNblockhead
A Title Much Cooler Than Anything on the Old Site
My experience with AL at Con of the North was both good and bad. I liked both DMs. One of them even had to jump in to accommodate higher than expected number of players and still pulled it off.
But GM jumping in to accommodate higher numbers of players hints at what irked me.
The AL team organizes things completely apart from the Con. Having tickets for an AL event means nothing. Printed schedules mean nothing. If they would start at scheduled times and turn away people without tickets, then you would wouldn't need GMs to jump in at the last minute. If some want to do that to accommodate non-ticket holders, hey great. But seat the ticket holders at the planned-for tables first. Of course that is hard to do, because the schedule is completely different than the printed schedule. It screws up attendees' plans for other games so you don't know how many will actually come to your game. Also, you may sign up to play module A, but because the schedule is useless, you will likely be playing something else.
Part of the issue seems to be that many of the AL players come to the Con to ONLY play AL. They are there from morning until evening every day. So the failure to adhere to the published schedule or honor tickets doesn't affect them. After complaining, I was told that they used Warhorn (mentioned above). How is a non-AL regular supposed to know about this obscure site that is not mentioned anywhere on the Conventions website or printed material?
While I enjoyed the both AL games I got to play in and especially loved the Epic, I'll probably skip AL events at Conventions and use the conventions to play new games or games I'm not often able to play.
But GM jumping in to accommodate higher numbers of players hints at what irked me.
The AL team organizes things completely apart from the Con. Having tickets for an AL event means nothing. Printed schedules mean nothing. If they would start at scheduled times and turn away people without tickets, then you would wouldn't need GMs to jump in at the last minute. If some want to do that to accommodate non-ticket holders, hey great. But seat the ticket holders at the planned-for tables first. Of course that is hard to do, because the schedule is completely different than the printed schedule. It screws up attendees' plans for other games so you don't know how many will actually come to your game. Also, you may sign up to play module A, but because the schedule is useless, you will likely be playing something else.
Part of the issue seems to be that many of the AL players come to the Con to ONLY play AL. They are there from morning until evening every day. So the failure to adhere to the published schedule or honor tickets doesn't affect them. After complaining, I was told that they used Warhorn (mentioned above). How is a non-AL regular supposed to know about this obscure site that is not mentioned anywhere on the Conventions website or printed material?
While I enjoyed the both AL games I got to play in and especially loved the Epic, I'll probably skip AL events at Conventions and use the conventions to play new games or games I'm not often able to play.
Anthraxus
Explorer
I think part of the problem is because CotN's registration/ticket system does not mesh well with trying to find out how many players/dms you need for AL, and the general disconnect this causes. I tried helping out with the Warhorn side of things, which is a pretty good way of figuring out what you need for DMs/Modules. Since both systems were used, it had to be handled at the tables when ticketed/warhorn players showed up. I, myself, kicked a good friend of mine off my table because he had neither gotten a CotN ticket, nor signed up on Warhorn, so I seated those people first.
CotN is also weird because you need to have the events punched in like 6 months ahead of time, I believe.
I'm not sure what is planned for next year, but I will probably help out again and try to get it working a little better.
Did you play the Friday night 'Bad Business in Parnast' off in the side room? That would have been me as your DM. : )
I think your criticisms of the process are spot-on; as Anthraxus notes, the powers-that-be did hear the complaints, and while my understanding is that they'll try harder next year to better align the con scheduling and the Warhorn scheduling, it's something to be aware of and to pass along to anyone else you know who might be thinking of trying out AL at Con of the North. The only way to know is to pass along info and receive info in return. Sharing is caring!
And I've come to a similar conclusion as you regarding AL play at big conventions; in my case, GenCon. I'll participate in AL play, hopefully even enjoy it, but I won't expect to do nothing but AL play at a big con; there's enough other stuff going on that I can still get my AL fix and also try out new stuff that I wouldn't get to do at my local FLGS (like, say, the new Delta Green game by Arc Dream Publishing).
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Pauper
Horus gives a lot of good info in his post -- all I'll add is that you should plan for at least one if not more of your players to be new or relatively new to D&D in general or 5e in particular, and be ready to help out in explaining basic things like how to calculate attack bonuses or do skill rolls. In my experience, it's better for the DM to do this than for other players to do it, because other players often incorporate wrinkles they pick up from their own tables that you may not do or even like; it's better for the new player to get both the info that they need and the expectation of how that info will be used in the game from you.
If it turns out you have nothing but experienced players, then you've lost nothing by preparing to do basic rules explanation (and probably helped yourself out by reviewing basic rules in advance of the con; as noted, even experienced players sometimes have weird local interpretations of rules you won't agree with). But since Cuts is explicitly a Tier 1 mod, you may well end up with newbies at the table, and ideally you want their experience to be a good one.
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Pauper
Anthraxus
Explorer
One thing I thought about today, maybe having generic entries in the CotN schedule for "Adventurers League", and then something like "Schedule and sign-ups on http- warhorn.etc... for CotN games" in the book.
I actually know a guy that's planning on running at least one Delta Green game at CotN next year, Pauper. Maybe we can get in on a table of DG together.
MNblockhead
A Title Much Cooler Than Anything on the Old Site
I think this would help, though it still adds to the complexity for the event goer and I expect many registrants will miss it.
I think it would be better to NOT let anyone register for an AL event using the Con registration process. Instead, simply advertise the locations and time blocks where it will be happening and instruct people to sign up at Warhorn. For example, the Con of the North prominently advertise Fai Chen's, even though it was not something you could sign up for. Just do the same thing for ALL of AL.
Personally, I think AL is big enough, and organized enough, that it would do better to have its own AL-specific event. Something like the Pathfinder Society charity event held at Fantasy Flight's Game Center. SkålCon is a three-day PFS convention organized with War Horn. I would love to see something like that for Adventurer's League.
I hate to be write anything negative because I know the volunteers work hard to put these together. It seems that there are challenges with the way Con of the North does its registration that doesn't mesh well with AL organized play. And, unlike the OP for this thread, I've been impressed with the DMs I've had at AL events. I also have to say that the Epic I attended (the airship one), was a blast and—after the chaotic shuffling of DMs and players at the start—was exceptionally run.
Perhaps it's the project manager in me. I just get my underpants in a bunch over schedule confusion.
MNblockhead
A Title Much Cooler Than Anything on the Old Site
Yes. Actually, for that one, I was a walk-in. The AL event I registered for was an Epic. When I showed up, something was already in session and a bunch of us registrants were standing around confused until we were told to come back at a later time. I think I ended up playing in a different epic, which was fine. But the scheduling disconnect kinda messed up my afternoon.
The next day, was my "open" day where I brought my son and we just wandered without a plan. Originally, we were going to go to the board game room, but I though, well, let's stop by the AL room and find when the next session begins. We did and came back at that time and I have to say that the AL organizers and DMs were great trying to accommodate as many as they could. So that not only didn't bother me, but I really appreciated it, but that was because I came in with a "stand-by" mentality versus being a ticket holder for something I scheduled months in advance.
Well, that's kinda the issue. I'm not really plugged into the AL community. The Con of the North is the only Con I am able to get to throughout the year and work and family keep me from attending local AL events during the week. I had never heard of Warhorn and was not on any of the AL social media sites. My only interface was the Con's registration system. I really think that AL should be treated like the board game room. You don't sign up for it. They just advertise it and indicate in the schedule when it will be running and give a link to Warhorn for people to view the schedule and sign up.
Yeah, if I could go to Gen Con, I'd be focused more on trying new games, emptying my bank account in the merch hall, and attending some of the panels. What I would like to see is an AL-specific convention in the Twin Cities, similar to Pathfinder Society's SkålCon.
As I understand it, the Con won't allow that -- if you're using reserved Con space (rather than just claiming some open or 'free gaming' space), you have to use the Con's registration system. And AL is big enough that just trying to commandeer some 'open gaming' space wouldn't really work. Maybe the compromise is to use Warhorn for DM signup (since that's the biggest benefit of it, as far as I can see), and let players use the normal Con reg process to sign up for the same games.
Are you volunteering to organize it? ; )
I'm only half-joking -- probably the biggest of the 'geek-friendly' cons in the Twin Cities is CONvergence, held over the Fourth of July weekend, and last year there was exactly one game of AL run there. I know this, because I went up to the gaming floor and registered to run that game after my second straight panel where the panelists praised 5e and encouraged the attendees to try it out. (I'm not sure what the AL situation is for CONvergence this year, as I'm not attending due to other commitments.)
AL as a whole is not really that organized at a convention level -- the 'parent' groups rely on motivated regional folks to get things moving and keep them on track. It helps to have personal relationships with the admin team, but it's not like Skerritt or Travis Goodall are coming to Minneapolis to organize a convention for us. The locals who do organizing tend to keep their focus on the FLGS rather than branching out into conventions -- in this, the local PFS folks have an advantage, as their Venture-folk seem more motivated to run things at any con they can get into.
Agreed -- you don't want to feel like you're bashing the volunteers for doing what they can. At the same time, if your criticism is on-point and civil, I can't think of very many folks involved in the organizing who wouldn't want to know about it -- if they don't hear complaints, it's too easy to assume that something they assumed might be a problem actually isn't, because people would be complaining if it were.
As I understand it, CotN is run by a long-time group of volunteer organizers, and they deliberately spread the work of organizing the convention out over a long period of time to keep themselves sane. That's great for them, but it means that if you want to do something more organized than a simple one-table RPG, you've got to have it planned out well in advance to match their schedule, and our AL volunteers aren't always the best at putting together that kind of long-term plan.
If you've got project manager experience, you might be a better fit to help organize this stuff than you realize!
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Pauper
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