You want to read a good rant? Read this by Robert G. Gruver over at Skirmisher LLC.
Want to read about "how not to run a con"? Yep, read it.
It would be amusing if it wasn't so on the money.
Here's a sample:
After tinkering with the “booth” through the day on Thursday, and Friday, ignoring a number of other responsibilities I had, I was still unhappy with the entire experience of using Roll20 as a device to sell product. At 1pm on Friday, I opened our booth to the public, and spent the next 8 hours manning our “booth”, speaking to only five potential customers. I chatted them up, and we talked about games, and life. These were good conversations, and exactly the thing I was expecting for AetherCon, there were just too few. By Friday evening, I was livid at having wasted many hours not only in the booth itself, but in creating something that would only be seen by a handful of people. This was not an uncommon problem however, as games on Friday were being canceled all day for lack of players, and in some cases lack of Gamemasters.
“I'll be honest. It is looking like while we are getting a goodly number of sign ups for Saturday and [S]unday[.] Friday is going to be pretty much a washout for gamers." Holodinksy had this to say in the “Traffic Control” IRC channel during the convention. That was not to be the case. Through the day on Saturday, I was seeing numerous complaints about the lack of players, and GM's for the various events.
I use Fantasy Grounds VTT and the community ran an online Con around 6months ago - 28 games of many different rulesets were played. It was done quite well. Scheduling and organisation of resources were the biggest headaches for the organisers but they did have a small team working together and they did allow/encourage DM/GMs to host whatever flavours of game they wanted to. I think the next one will be played early in the new year - no details available just yet... Most of the games required no purchase, they did require you to download/install Fantasy Grounds and TeamSpeak and register on the Fantasy Grounds website. Almost every game ran as scheduled.
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