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Message: <blockquote data-quote="The_Baldman" data-source="post: 6771104" data-attributes="member: 15080">It may be surprising (well maybe to nobody) but I come down on the side of conventions (because that is what I do and spend a lot of time working on).I totally agree with the poster that community is formed at the store level. Been promoting that for years. What I try to do is take that one more step (as we did back in the LG days) and start connecting those store communities into region/state/and so on communities. That is part of the reason to have conventions and one of the huge reasons I started the Herald's Guild of DMs. I want to grow our pool of DM's and help connect resources to each other to make D&D better. We have lots of ideas to promote and expand that next year and we will see how many reach fruition.Doing all of that costs money. Shows cost money. Running the HG costs money. Promoting AL at Gen Con costs money (and lots of it). Running AL costs money and special events cost money. I have to look at the tools and resources I have and figure out how to turn those into fun and exciting experiences for the players that will also pay the bills. If I'm going to pay for an Admin to come to the show to run something I want to know I am going to recoup the cost of them being there. If you're a store bringing in an RC you are doing the same thing. It needs to be offset with something. Whether that is increased attendance, marketing buzz, sales, etc. Having said that I had nothing to do with these. I was told about them and said "That's a neat idea. I hope that happens and works". When I was told it was happening and WF might be a place they would want to try them out I came up with a model that worked to get all 6 admins to the show, add some cool events for the players, and not lose money doing so. Nothing really radical there. If I can leverage the 5% who can afford to travel and pay for cool things to help fund what I do for the other 95% then I will do it. Every time. Won't blink or waste time feeling bad about it. We created seven Dark Sun trilogies that are still being sent out for free. Stuff like this funded it. We have hours of Herald's Guild training seminars going into final edit for release to help DM's improve going up for free. Stuff like this funded it. BMG put thousands of dollars into both those projects and others and never charged a penny. So I get wanting the idea of AL stuff should be for everyone. It should be equal across the board. It is just not how the world and economics work. Doing all of this costs money. That money has to come from somewhere. Conventions drive the creation of cool stuff like the Epics that are then released out to other venues. Conventions drove the creation of the Trading Post which is now out and about in the wild for more people to experience. Conventions will probably drive more content creation next year which will then trickle down into the expeditions and be available for everyone.</blockquote>

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