Who's interested in running demos at Who's Yer Con 2017
March 31 - April 2
Register at: http://whosyergamers.org/
Russ and I are considering creating a slate of Events as well as posting people in the free-play area. GtG have offered possible demo games/promos/prizes (TBD).
If you're interested, share which games you would like to demo, whether it's a game you already know how to demo or not, whether or not you have a copy to use, and how many demos of each you'd like to run.
For example, for me:
- SotM (5+), know how to demo, have a copy, but would prefer to get some of the expansions to make a complete demo copy rather than use my personal set.
- Tactics (1-2), know how to demo, have a copy
- New Bedford (1-2), kinda know how to demo, have a copy
- Spirit Island (1-2), have played, don't really know how to demo, don't have a copy
- Fate of the Elder Gods (1-2), have played, don't really know how to demo, don't have a copy
- Bottom of the Ninth (1-2), have played, don't really know how to demo, have a copy
- Deck Building (1-2), have played, know how to demo, have enough for six players
- Traitor Mechanic, (1-2), have not played, have a copy
- Trick-Taking (1-2), have not played, have a copy
- Time Management (1-2), have not played, have a copy
I wouldn't want to do _ALL_ of the above, and I'm not sure which of the above I'm most interested in.
Once we have a better idea of who wants to do what, we can organize who will actually do what, when, and where and then I'll work w/ GtG on possibly getting demo games, promos, prizes.
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
I'm interested!
I'm not quite sure what your numbers mean, but I'm totally prepared to demo Spirit Island, SotM, and New Bedford. I hope and expect to have the official version of Spirit Island by then, but in any case I have the copy I've been using for playtesting (which I also used at GenCon). I also have Brew Crafters and know how to demo it, altohugh a little less confidently. And I'm also happy to demo all the smaller games.
Looking forward to it!
I initially thought Andy's numbers were how comfortable he was with demoing it (on a scale of 1-5). I finally realized it was how many times he would be willing to demo it.
"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!)
Need to see how time with kids will work out after my new job kicks in week after next. (Good bye 90-minute commute each way; hello having a life again). Definitely willing to come over Friday night & stay through end of day Saturday if it works out.
Might consider coming if the kids are with me, but at that point we'll be standard attendees and I won't be available for demoing. (My kids are 11 and 7; not comfortable leaving them unattended on the kids' track. He might be OK; she definitely wouldn't be.)
I would love to come down but at this point it's pretty unlikely! If I did, I'd happily demo New Bedford. My boyfriend and I were playing that nightly for a while; it's such a solid little game.
I also have Tactics wave 2 stuff that I could playtest, which I feel is subtly different to demoing. ;)
Australian living in Toronto. I make a lot of games. http://about.peterchayward.com
Thanks, y'all.
What are your thoughts on what we should do? I'm vaguely thinking:
How much time should we schedule for each game? I'm thinking 90 minutes for Tactics, New Bedford, and Spirit Island. Maybe 2 hours for Fate of the Elder Gods. No idea for Brew Crafters and Compounded.
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
I can also run demos of Compounded, I did that at GenCon too (and narrowly avoided giving a demo to Jeff there).
Agree on 90 minutes for Spirit Island. That allows for a full introductory game, unlike what we did at GenCon.
Brew Crafters would be 2 hours if we want a full game, I think? At Gen Con we ended up stopping part way through; that was actually fine, since it gave players a good taste of strategies, while recognizing that it's hard to play well on your first game.
I'll look up how long was scheduled for each of those games when I get a chance.
Spirit Island will be the only one of those that will be just released at that point. I'm happy to run as many demos as there is demand for.
It looks like all the events were scheduled for 60 minutes at Gen Con. I think Compounded fits within that time (perhaps with a slightly shortened game). Brew Crafters, New Bedford, Spirit Island, and Tactics definitely run longer. I have less experience with Fate of the Elder Gods.
I looked at the State of GTG post from Paul, and was reminded that Lazer Ryderz and Exoplanets are "in mass production", thus likely to be ready with printed copies by then. Nobody has mentioned those yet. I'm comfortable running demos of Lazer Ryderz. I'll be getting a copy of Exoplanets as well; I haven't actually played it, but could doubtless learn it well enough to run demos.
A look at the updates/comments on the Fate of the Elder Gods Kickstarter doesn't make me optimistic that it will be released by then. (GTG was saying they want to be sure to have it ready for release at Gen Con.) We could do demos off play-testing copies, but it might be better to hold off.
You can absolutely play a New Bedford in an hour, in my experience!
Australian living in Toronto. I make a lot of games. http://about.peterchayward.com
Depending on the player count, I'd say yes! I suppose if you're teaching people who have never played a worker placement game it'd be a bit harder, but if they have some modern game literacy you should be fine.
Australian living in Toronto. I make a lot of games. http://about.peterchayward.com
If I remember correctly, the New Bedford demos we did at Gen Con weren't full games, running only 6 turns instead of 12. It was plenty of time to give everyone an idea of how the game works but short enough to ensure it didn't take too long. Those demos generally ran around an hour.
"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!)
That's how they played it at PAX when I played a demo. The short game worked really well; got a good handle for the game, and got me to pick it up! :D
There are various natural ways of shortening all of these games, mentioned above. These make a lot of sense for a demo. (For Brew Crafters, I'd play through 2 years rather than 3 years. I think that would fit in an hour.)
The question is what players at Whosyercon are likely to want. Will people be looking for demos or complete games? Maybe we can decide based on who shows up to a particular event. For demos with the shortenings mentioned, 60 minutes generally makes sense, I think.
In general, I envision running full games and being conservative on scheduling -- I'd rather have more time and not use it than run out, both so I don't feel rushed in trying to finish (or cheated in failing to finish) and so there are some built-in breaks between games to rest/recover and find players, if needed.
I have no problem running pre-release versions of games that might still change, assuming GtG doesn't have a problem with it and (of course) we can get ahold of a version that looks at least halfway decent.
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
I have playtesting copies of Spirit Island and Fate of the Elder Gods that I'd be happy to contribute (presuming GtG gives permission). They look fine, except that the glorious sculpts for both games will look much more pedestrian.
Andy, do you have the information you need to start submitting events?
My next step will be to propose a schedule and see if y'all are on board.
It would be helpful to know _when_ people want to run games. For instance, I don't really want to run games Fri afternoon or Sunday.
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
I likely won't be able to be there until after dinner Friday, but should be available the rest of the weekend.
"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!)
- Do you agree with the timeslots chosen (both number of slots and length of slots)?
- Do you agree with the distribution of which games got more slots?
- Are you happy with the times/games you've been assigned?
I've heard rumor that the event space may fill, so I'm keen to decide sooner rather than later what events we're running when and get those submitted.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
One more time on that formatting:
Fri
Sat
Sun
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
Unfortunately, there's a colloquium here in Bloomington that Friday for which I know the speaker, so I won't be able to be there early on Friday. I could run an event starting at 7:00.
Should work for me, although I'll want to borrow your New Bedford sometime before then, Andy, to refresh myself on the rules. I'll _definitely_ have to refresh myself on Spirit Island, as it's been quite a while since I played...
"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!)
New proposal. I've cut the times down to 7, cutting out Fri afternoon (I'm the only one who could be there) and Sunday (Jeff will be gone and by then I think we might be out of steam). I've cut out Tactics and Brewcrafters from the scheduled events. I can see us doing Tactics demos in the free space area. I think it's more important for us to have fun then to worry about demoing everything. In fact, we might want to simply have everyone demo whatever they most want to run during their scheduled slot.
Fri
Sat
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
I'm totally happy with this!
How will the games in the Free Play area work? There's a bunch of games we'll want to be able to offer, right? (SotM, Tactics, meta-games, ...) Where will they go when nobody's in charge of that area?
I think we'll need to make sure that there's always someone there. I was vaguely thinking that during gaps the two people on either side of the gap would split the time.
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
Let's go a step further. If you are next to a gap, you are responsible for being in the free space area during the gap. We'll have at least two people during those times.
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
Could we get a big storage tub for the games so we can easily put it in a car if we need to? That way the people on either side of the gap can coordinate. We just need to be sure it's in a correct car (so that we have access when needed).
Assuming that scheduling works (which I'm not really going to be able to work on for a while, as my ex-wife has her craziest work month of the year coming between now and the end of February), I'm good.
Sounds great to me!
Thanks for setting all this up for us, Andy!
"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!)
Good point. Middle ground: Both people are responsible, but they can still work it out to take breaks, go get food in shifts, etc.
As for a big tub to hold the games -- not a bad idea, but I'm enamored of the idea of grabbing a prominent table or two and being a constant presence.
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
Hmmm ... I'd like to get the events in sooner rather than later. I don't think anyone else is comfortable/interested in running Compounded. Is there another game you'd like to run? We could simply run Sentinels in that slot.
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
SENTINELS!!!
"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!)
But there did seem to be some enthusiasm for Sentinels...
Either way, go ahead and submit the events.
Can someone be in charge of taking and/or posting photos?
Civilized men are more discourteous than savages because they know they can be impolite without having their skulls split, as a general thing.
-Robert E. Howard, "The Tower of the Elephant"
I'm going to go with Sentinels. Why would I disregard Russ' ALLCAPS excitement?
Re: Photos: No promises, but I like photos, so I'll see what I can do. We're going to be stretched thin.
Off to make event submissions.
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
Events have been created. Schedule changed because even submission required games to start on the hour and to last for increments of whole hours. I decided to err on the side of caution and put everything in for two hours.
ALSO, with this schedule there are only two food breaks: Lunch and dinner on Saturday. How about Russ and I, as the person handling the free space before the food break and since neither of us have commitments right after the food break, stay in the free space an extra hour.
Fri
Sat
On another note, I was contacted by one of the WYG organizers who expressed interest in us possibly running demo games of Tactics for their tween/early-teen program, because they're looking for a miniatures game. This is someone who played on the winning team in the tournament at WYC 2015. I'm following up with him for more information but haven't made any promises.
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
Works for me! The Spirit Island games won't last the full 2 hours, I don't think, so I'll have time for a break in there.
I'm driving up to Michigan through Indianapolis on Friday evening. Do you want me to drop it off then? It's not 100% up to date, but I think the modifications were things like tweaking the artifacts. But they've been sharing great new art on Kickstarter, so we might be able to snag that.
Thanks, Dylan.
Re: Tactics demo for tweens/pre-teens. For anyone who would like to run that, what time would you like to run it?
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
I'm happy to be involved. Looks like I'm pretty open between noon and 6 on Saturday, and I could probalby do something Sunday.
"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've said we can do something at 10am Sunday, because I was sure that if nothing else I could make that time. I'm reluctant to schedule this during the times we have other events scheduled because I'd like us to be able to enjoy hanging out with each other in the free play area.
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 ex and I had a brief conference with each other yesterday as we started to try to talk calendars, since the kids get to spend weeks with me again (yay!). As part of that, we were projecting calendars out roughly through the end of March, and so I'm cleared to spend the whole weekend in Indy.
I'll still work a full day Friday (it's turning out to be an important prep day, as it's one of a few days where there aren't many students in labs and so I can focus on prep & arranging for chemical waste disposal), and so will probably arrive late-dinner or so that night. (I'm done at 3:30 Central. If I do a cheat drive/bus to work, I can probably hit the road by 4 and be in the Indy area around 7 PM Eastern).
If it's not too late, feel free to put a Compounded demo on for the 8-10 on Friday night.
I'm going to add a demo for 8-10 on Friday of Compounded, per Jeff's request.
I'm going to let Matt know that Russ can run Tactics for the tweens on Sunday at 10am.
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
Event registration just opened. We've got a few people signed up already. Current counts:
http://whosyergamers.org/
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
Bwah! What? They aren't supposed to actually sign up for the events! Now what do we do?!
"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 gets worse, you're on the hook at 10am on Sunday to teach Sentinel Tactics to kids.
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
"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!)
You probably shouldn't slice your head open in front of children.
Crush your enemies, drive them before you, and laminate their women! - Guise, Prime Wardens #31
But it's a great trick...
"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!)
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