Paid Convention Games?

[Reynard]

If you run through tabletop.events, the site itself charges a fee.

Not to the ticket purchaser.

 

[Maxperson]

Yeah, if it's like 2-4 bucks, just symbolically as a guarantee, I'm okay with that. But not 10-15-30

Just out of curiosity, would you be okay with $30 and a refund of $25 at the conclusion of the event? $2-$4 isn't enough to guarantee diddly. Anyone who can afford to go to Gen Con isn't going to be worried about losing a few bucks if something more interesting comes up.

 

[Retreater]

Let's break down the cost of attending a convention game.

It's been a couple years since I attended, but let's consider that the cost to attend GenCon (including tickets, badges, meals, hotels, etc.) is around $2000.

I recall having 3 slots available for gaming on most days (9-1, 2-6, 7-11). So if you have the opportunity for 3 games on Thursday, 3 on Friday, 3 on Saturday, and 2 on Sunday (because it closes early).

If you do nothing but attend events, that means that you have 11 opportunities for games. The cost for that is around $182 per game. (Higher if you don't spend 9 a.m. - 11 p.m. gaming every day.)

If the game stinks, it's not worth wasting my time and money. I've walked out of games and met Gary Gygax (and got his autograph) - an encounter that wouldn't have happened had I stayed in a boring Arkham Horror board game session.

Those of you complaining about spending $15-20 for an event are missing the fact that you're already spending close to $200 per event just to attend the con in the first place.

 

[MGibster]

Is this a common practice these days? And who, precisely, pays an additional $12 to play a Shadowdark gauntlet or M&M game?

Not a convention, but my local gaming store now chages a $10 fee to players who wish to participate in our RPG game days. $5 of those fees go directly to store credit for the player and the other $5 goes to the GM who gets store credit. At our last event, I ended up with $25 in store credit beause my Call of Cthulhu game had 5 players.

I have mixed feelings about it. At least in our case the particpants are all getting store credit and aren't just out the full cost of admission. But then I feel a certain level of pressure as I want to help make the game as enjoyable as possible. I worry someone might walk away thinking their $10 should have been spent elsewhere.

 

[MGibster]

People paid often close to.$100 for a con badge and then hundreds of dollars for travel and housing. Do they really drop games that often.

I think there's a psychological element to feeling as though you wasted that $10 if you don't go. You put cash on the table, even a trivia amount, and you've committed. It seems silly, but it's there. In the book Freakanomics, the author talks about a hospital who encouraged its surgeons to do unimportant tasks like wash their hands and used Starbucks gift cards as an incentive. These were surgeons who made good money, so you wouldn't think they'd be motivated by $5 gift cards to Starbucks but it worked.

Creeps who put in blatantly offensive content.

Wait, did I run a game for you?

Those of you complaining about spending $15-20 for an event are missing the fact that you're already spending close to $200 per event just to attend the con in the first place.

At some point it starts feeling like an insult though. It's like being a Warhammer 40k player, you feel like you're just being nickle & dimed. You already spent $800 and spent hundreds of hours putting together your army. What's about $50 for this new codex and a $15 subscription fee for the Warhammer App?

 

[Retreater]

Wait, did I run a game for you?

I doubt it. Unless you were running a "teen+" WEG Star Wars game

Spoiler: grotesque details

that required us to kill pregnant women to keep their babies from being born shortly after my friend's wife had a miscarriage.

The GM wouldn't adapt even after I pulled him aside and explained the situation.

 

[Retreater]

At some point it starts feeling like an insult though. It's like being a Warhammer 40k player, you feel like you're just being nickle & dimed. You already spent $800 and spent hundreds of hours putting together your army. What's about $50 for this new codex and a $15 subscription fee for the Warhammer App?

Yeah. It's better to just quit Warhammer at that point. I gave up after the constant cycle of rules changes got to be too much.

 

[Wofano Wotanto]

Not a convention, but my local gaming store now chages a $10 fee to players who wish to participate in our RPG game days. $5 of those fees go directly to store credit for the player and the other $5 goes to the GM who gets store credit. At our last event, I ended up with $25 in store credit beause my Call of Cthulhu game had 5 players.

I have mixed feelings about it. At least in our case the particpants are all getting store credit and aren't just out the full cost of admission. But then I feel a certain level of pressure as I want to help make the game as enjoyable as possible. I worry someone might walk away thinking their $10 should have been spent elsewhere.

That's an interesting approach to charging a table fee, with the store effectively profiting by close 50% of that $10 a head fee. The store credit will mostly be used on stuff that they should be getting ~40% of on from the distributors, with some credit inevitably going unused (there's always someone who forgets/doesn't bother/moves out of the area with it unused/etc.) and some of it being spent on things the store got at a much better rate - often used games/books/cards/comics or swaps with other stores if the owner networks competently. So overall they probably wind up ahead by about $5 per player while also sweetening the deal for gamerunners and feeling a bit less grabby to players than just flat-out taking $5 in cash to sign up for would.

Setting it at $10 is steep enough that I wonder if they settled on it as a number to help deal with excess demand they couldn't meet anyway. A store only has just so much room for tables, time for events, and extra staff/security to deal with a packed shop and the accompanying risks of shrinkage. Have to play a balancing act.

Not a bad income stream if you have enough volume and aren't having problems getting in stock (insert my usual complaint about ungodly incompetent US distributors here) that make store credit less attractive to people.

 

[Celebrim]

Those of you complaining about spending $15-20 for an event are missing the fact that you're already spending close to $200 per event just to attend the con in the first place.

I mean, maybe you are. I live in Columbus. It costs me $95 plus parking fee of about $20 a day plus the cost of driving to downtown and eating out that aren't really any different than I would do a couple of times a week anyway.

 

[Celebrim]

I doubt it. Unless you were running a "teen+" WEG Star Wars game

Spoiler: grotesque details

that required us to kill pregnant women to keep their babies from being born shortly after my friend's wife had a miscarriage.

The GM wouldn't adapt even after I pulled him aside and explained the situation.

WTH? Why is it always the worst sort of freaks that end up running games at conventions. We really need some sort of national rating system in place for convention GMs.