Russ, Craig, and I are in talks with the organizers of Indy PopCon (http://indypopcon.com/)to have a SotM presence at Indy PopCon May 30 - Jun 1st.
Who is interested in running games of SotM? There is a chance, though by no means a certainty, that we may be able to get badges for some volunteers.
We are short on details at this point -- we don't know the hours of the con/gaming room or even if it will be free form gaming, scheduled gaming slots, ticketed but free gaming slots, or possibly even ticketed gaming slots that cost extra (unlikely).
SO, at this point I just want to raise your awareness that this is a possibility and get an initial sense of who might be interested. My guess is that to get a badge you'll need to commit to at least eight hours of running games, but that is just a guess.
This is the inaugural year of Indy PopCon and with GenCon, InConJunction, Who's Yer Con, and Indiana ComicCon, one wonders how PopCon differs and how many people will bother to attend. Well, GenCon is gaming, InConJunction is modest/local and SciFi, Who's Yer Con is modest/local and gaming, and Indiana ComicCon is comics and fairly modest. PopCon is broad, rather than focused on gaming/comics/scifi or something lese, looks to be bringing in some pretty big names, and is staking out a very large space in the Convention Center. I've had a chance to talk to a couple of the organizers and got the sense that they have some real competence and a large visions.
Hi. My name's Andy. Feel free to call me Andy, since, ya know, that's my name. (he/him/his)
If I am not for myself, who will be for me? If not now, when? If I am for myself alone, what am I? -- Hillel
There's a small but non-zero chance I might be able to contribute some time on one of the days. Indy's only a couple hours for me, and it's possible my wife might take the kids to the Children's Museum, with or without meeting my sister there. It's about 2 hours for each of us.
OK, realistically if she went, she'd just be taking the Munchkin since the Grasshopper would almost certainly be wanting to join me. He plays AZ reasonably competently most of the time, although he's not ready to tackle AA (as much as he keeps trying to persuade me to let him).
Sorry for the late reply. I may be available for one of those days, but it depends on if I can get off of work during the Con. If I am there, you know I can stay as long as I need, just give me the head's up.
Edit: One or more, if they give me that Saturday off.
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“Heh, pow. Sound effects are the best.” –The Idealist
I'm planning to be at PopCon, and would definitely be glad to lend a hand, but I need to check the programming and schedule before committing to blocks of time. Have my own ticket anyway from the kickstarter.
If there's any gruntwork/prep needed though (helping carry tables to set up, or something), I could lend a couple hands with that.
(Where "Russ" = "Rabit" and "Craig" = "imprimis5"
)
"See, this is another sign of your tragic space dementia, all paranoid and crotchety. Breaks the heart." - Mal
Unicode U+24BD gets us Ⓗ. (Thanks, Godai!)
Just posting to say that this is still in the works, but we don't know any details yet.
There will almost certainly be _something_, but what hours, how many simultaneous games/tables, whether or not gaming events will require tickets, and whether or not we can get badges for doing it are all TBD.
Hi. My name's Andy. Feel free to call me Andy, since, ya know, that's my name. (he/him/his)
If I am not for myself, who will be for me? If not now, when? If I am for myself alone, what am I? -- Hillel
Wow - surprised there are that many open questions at this point.
Ah, well. I'm in. Let us know details when they are available.
"See, this is another sign of your tragic space dementia, all paranoid and crotchety. Breaks the heart." - Mal
Unicode U+24BD gets us Ⓗ. (Thanks, Godai!)
Unfortunately, my wife has had some work travel come up for around that same time, meaning the "small but non-zero chance" I referred to above has, in fact, dropped to zero.
I live in Indy. I could probably do some hours on the weekend as I work on Friday. Especially if Volunteer badges are involved. Although I have to do some thinking to plan that far ahead. I've never heard of Pop Con and may just go anyways ^.^
Thanks! No further word on details from the PopCon folks, yet, unfortunately.
PopCon, for those who don't know, is new in Indy this year.
Hi. My name's Andy. Feel free to call me Andy, since, ya know, that's my name. (he/him/his)
If I am not for myself, who will be for me? If not now, when? If I am for myself alone, what am I? -- Hillel
Since it looks like I haven't updated this - some new travel on my wife's end now makes the chance that I'd be able to go zero rather than non-zero.
I learned I have a family gathering that Saturday afternoon. I'll work with you on shifts, I just have to miss a few hours that day.
"See, this is another sign of your tragic space dementia, all paranoid and crotchety. Breaks the heart." - Mal
Unicode U+24BD gets us Ⓗ. (Thanks, Godai!)
I have details!
Please email me (arenson@spatzel.net) if you would like to run games and I will put together a schedule. If you can volunteer for at least eight hours, I may be able to give you a badge -- IndyPopCon is willing to give us up to six of them.
IndyPopCon will run from noon on Fri May 30th to 5pm on Sun Jun 1st. Table gaming, like Sentinels, will be available at all hours while IndyPopCon is running, so if we want to run games at 3am we can, though I'm not expecting that we will.
IndyPopCon will be advertising events that run at specific times. I envision us advertising Sentinels in 2-hour blocks of time starting on even-numbered hours. The core hours I am most looking to fill are:
If we have enough volunteers, we may schedule two or more games at a time. We have two demo copies of Sentinels that you may use to run games, or you are welcome to use your own copy. One of the demo copies has everything except Vengeance and the promo cards. I'm not sure what's in the other demo copy.
We have promo cards that >G have given us to give to players. We will be running full games. We don't know yet whether attendees will be signing up for games/getting tickets for particular events, or just walking by, or possibly a mixture of both. You may find yourself teaching the game to people who've never heard of it before or playing with people who know the game very well. If you're looking for suggestions on how to teach the game, we'll make sure you get them.
Hi. My name's Andy. Feel free to call me Andy, since, ya know, that's my name. (he/him/his)
If I am not for myself, who will be for me? If not now, when? If I am for myself alone, what am I? -- Hillel
It has everything except Vengeance, Miss Information, and promo cards.
"See, this is another sign of your tragic space dementia, all paranoid and crotchety. Breaks the heart." - Mal
Unicode U+24BD gets us Ⓗ. (Thanks, Godai!)
Bad news, work scheduled me after all, so I won't be able to make it that weekend. Sorry, I had hoped to have it off to be able to help.
BuddaBuddaBuddaBuddaBuddaBuddaBudda
“Heh, pow. Sound effects are the best.” –The Idealist
Not seeing any takers. Anyone else out there interested?
Hi. My name's Andy. Feel free to call me Andy, since, ya know, that's my name. (he/him/his)
If I am not for myself, who will be for me? If not now, when? If I am for myself alone, what am I? -- Hillel
Sorry, I'm out of town that weekend!
I should be able to do this! I should be moving in to my new apartment May 17th so that will mean I will be available to do stuff at PopCon.
Great! Will you send me an email at so we can work out details?
Hi. My name's Andy. Feel free to call me Andy, since, ya know, that's my name. (he/him/his)
If I am not for myself, who will be for me? If not now, when? If I am for myself alone, what am I? -- Hillel
In case anyone's interested, we'll be running Sentinels at Indy PopCon during the following times:
Fri May 30, noon-10pm
Sat May 31, 10am-10pm
Sun Jun 1, 10am-5pm
If anyone who's not contacted me already is interested in being involved ... contact me.
Hi. My name's Andy. Feel free to call me Andy, since, ya know, that's my name. (he/him/his)
If I am not for myself, who will be for me? If not now, when? If I am for myself alone, what am I? -- Hillel
My thanks to Friday's volunteers and looking forward to another good day today.
The con seems to be quite well organized. It's startlingly large for a first year con with some great entertainment (Paul & Storm, Harp Twins) and celebrities (Nicholas Brendan, Ron Glass, Joel Hodgson), but attendance was low compared to the space so everything looked really sparsely attended. When you've got a space holding 2,500 seats, the few hundred people sitting in there look lonely.
The tabletop gaming area was great -- row upon row of long or circular tables with padded seats. Who's Yer Gamers have brought their library. The gaming area is open 24x7 and games are free to check out. The only thing that's needed is more players!
We had a steady stream of interest to play Sentinels in the afternoon, but it was often the same people over and over. I had fun running games and it's great to get the variety you get when experienced players want to play again. I'm not sure how many people were playing in the evening when I was off having fun with the panels and concerts.
I'm very interested to see how much attendance picks up today. It's usually Saturday that's the most well attended of any con.
Hi. My name's Andy. Feel free to call me Andy, since, ya know, that's my name. (he/him/his)
If I am not for myself, who will be for me? If not now, when? If I am for myself alone, what am I? -- Hillel
Wondering who the Harp Twins are? I'd not heard of them before, but they were fantastic: http://www.harptwins.com/
Hi. My name's Andy. Feel free to call me Andy, since, ya know, that's my name. (he/him/his)
If I am not for myself, who will be for me? If not now, when? If I am for myself alone, what am I? -- Hillel
Well ... the con was quite nice today, but traffic in the gaming room was virtually nil. Still got in a few fun games.
My highlights were probably watching Nicholas Brendan be somewhat bewildered hearing the rules for Lords of Waterdeep and going to the Q&As for Ron Glass and Sylvester McCoy.
Muchas gracias tambien to everyone who has helped out! We may not have gotten a lot of players, but we were one of only a few games being run in the game room and I think our mere presence says something about how much people like this game.
To those still running games tonight and tomorrow -- good luck! have fun!
Hi. My name's Andy. Feel free to call me Andy, since, ya know, that's my name. (he/him/his)
If I am not for myself, who will be for me? If not now, when? If I am for myself alone, what am I? -- Hillel
Final day today was not bad. We generally had games going most of the day, although the early part of the day was pretty light. Had a few new converts, but most of the games were with folks who were already fans - including one with a great Unity costume.
Many interesting games were played, though - including a brutal loss to (non-Advanced) Omnitron!
"See, this is another sign of your tragic space dementia, all paranoid and crotchety. Breaks the heart." - Mal
Unicode U+24BD gets us Ⓗ. (Thanks, Godai!)
I think Sentinels would have done better if it was in the exhibition hall. That or if we had a giant sign saying to come play here. Overall I had fun but I felt like it was a tiny gencon.
Yeah, if this had been an official GTG event, it would have been very different. SInce it was really just arenson9 coordinating a bunch of folks to come and demo the game, we were a little more limited. It also didn't help that the gaming area was so completely divided from the exhibitor hall and the rest of the con activities (something we can provide the con folks as feedback). None of the gaming folks had much attention, including a huge video gaming area that was mostly empty for the majority of the con.
Some of the things I think would help us next time we do something like this:
Definitely agree it was kinda like a tiny Gen Con, but it seemed to have more focus on artists and personalities. For example, the main stage area was used quite well to just do things, and Gen Con doesn't have anything like that. Getting Nick Brandon (Xander from Buffy the Vampire Slayer), who was there the entire Con, up onto the stage for an impromptu Q&A session Sunday was pretty shiny, and we don't get that kind of opportunity at Gen Con. Also, there were a lot of pro cosplayers, comic artists, comic writers, podcasts, and other such artists in the exhibitor hall, which we don't usually see at Gen Con. It definitely had a lot more comic-focus, also, with a lot of vendors having boxes and boxes of comics available to go through. I hope they were all able to make it worthwhile, so they return next year.
"See, this is another sign of your tragic space dementia, all paranoid and crotchety. Breaks the heart." - Mal
Unicode U+24BD gets us Ⓗ. (Thanks, Godai!)
Many thanks arenson9 for coordinating this. He did a lot to make it happen and gave a bunch of us a great opportunity to help the game and enjoy a new and interesting con!
And also thanks to GTG for donating the promo cards and - of course - making a fun game that basically sells itself.
The promo cards were really appreciated; we had a lot of folks who already had the game but didn't have the promo cards, but we also had a lot of folks we introduced to the game who fell in love in the first few minutes, and the promo cards gave them something to remind them when they left that they could look forward to enjoying.
"See, this is another sign of your tragic space dementia, all paranoid and crotchety. Breaks the heart." - Mal
Unicode U+24BD gets us Ⓗ. (Thanks, Godai!)
It was great to see several people return from day one to day two. We didn't have much success either night, losing to Plague Rat and Dawn the first and a stalemate with Skinwalker Gloomweaver. (Matriarch was the sole victory at my table, at which there was much rejoicing). I wish I had more time to enjoy the Con, but it seemed to have a better variety than ComicCon earlier this year. Thanks to arenson9 and Rabit for spearheading getting involved in this.
BuddaBuddaBuddaBuddaBuddaBuddaBudda
“Heh, pow. Sound effects are the best.” –The Idealist
Riffing on the aforementioned ideas, t would be cool if we could put together a kit that people could download to help them showcase Sentinels at a con, or maybe even better if GtG had a kit they could mail to people to do that sort of thing. Imagine if you got some business cards with a logo/url, a 1-pager listing various Sentinels products, and a tall flag/sign to put on the end of the table.
Hi. My name's Andy. Feel free to call me Andy, since, ya know, that's my name. (he/him/his)
If I am not for myself, who will be for me? If not now, when? If I am for myself alone, what am I? -- Hillel
That would be super cool. It is something I'd like for us to have, but so far there has not been time.
“Many of the truths we cling to depend greatly on our own point of view.” ~Obi-Wan Kenobi