Rerunning convention games

[Evilhalfling]

I attend 1-2 conventions per year, GenCon and a local or just the local depending on finances...
and I normally run four games usually 1 new game and 3 recycled ones
but I see som DMs running the same game multiple times in a single Con.

DMs - you you rerun games? how often, and what are the widest results you have gotten in a single game? Do you burn out on a game playing the same adventure multiple times in a weekend?

Players - do you perfer fresh games or playtested ones?
and would you ever signup for the same game again? (this happened once)

 

[Painfully]

At larger cons, one is much more likely to see the same game running in different slots. You, yourself, said that you "recycle" 3 games. A DM who is running a familiar scenario, doesn't have to spend the extra time it takes to prepare a new one.

While I don't think anybody would want to sign-up for the same game twice, I know larger cons have many interesting games, sometimes in the same time slot. Having a game offered more than once allows players to manage their time more easily.

It's a simple matter of time management IMO, for both DMs, and players.

 

[billd91]

So you prepare one new adventure and then also run 3 recycled ones? Recycled from where, your home game? That means you're prepped to run 3 distinct adventures at a Con but no repeate?

I guess it depends on what your goals are. If you want a chance to have repeat players during one con from one session to another, then coming up with distinct sessions of stuff works.
I usually prefer to prepare less so I prep one adventure and run it multiple times. Players paying attention to the pre-reg info can easily tell it's run more than once. It also allows me to get to play with a broader range of players since nobody generally repeats (and I would discourage it if someone tried).
Sometimes, it's very interested to see how different groups respond to the same adventure. You get some very interesting results. When I ran V&V at Gen Con last July, the two groups took very different paths but reached the exact same end point. Both, very interestingly, staged a robbery of a convenience store to lure in the NPC they were trying to get. And this is after highly divergent paths of investigation. Kind of cool the way that worked.

 

[Piratecat]

There are some adventures that I've run seven or eight times. I get better at running them with each iteration - both in pacing and organization.