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Topic: Post NWCon5 Review/Debrief (Read 130 times) |
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NWN DM
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Just wondering what everyone's experiences were this year with NWCon5.
The good, the bad; what's been learned that can be put to advantage in the future?
For my part, due to family concerns, I was unable to participate in the NWN2 events on Khalidine like I wanted.
I did run a game on Saturday night... attracted one new player. Aside from the usual hiccups involved in getting together for the first time, the session went well.
I will observe that while we have people stating interest in NWN2 campaign style games, when opportunities are posted, the takers are scarce. Either the demand isn't very high, or what I'm offering doesn't fire people's imaginations (could be both I suppose...).
Well, enough from me for now... what's everyone else think?
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Mulu
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Pretty much the same as I posted in the DM forum. I still think the cons are fun and I enjoy running a single-shot tournament game, something I probably wouldn't do otherwise, but I think we're fooling ourselves by calling this a community event anymore. Once upon a time, sure, but the last two cons it's pretty much been just us.
I'm a little worried about how few games actually went forward. It's hard to get up the energy to plan to run something if nobody shows. That's two cons in a row where the vast majority of games were cancelled. I think my prescription of "build new, plan for as few as two players" would result in a lot more games going forward, which would make it more like a gaming convention instead of just a page of blank games.
If we run another one I'll probably only list 4 slots so it doesn't look so empty. 4 of 4 looks a lot better than 4 of 8, even though it's the same number of players. For that matter 2 of 4 still looks like a valid game, versus 2 of 6 or 2 of 8. I would recommend future convention games be limited to a possible 3 or at most 4 slots so that if you only get 2 sign ups it still looks like a valid session, and so there is a greater sense of urgency in signing up to begin with. Having a bunch of games listed with only 1 or 2 sign ups out of 8 possible just looks like a graveyard. The site will list alternates, so you can still have many people sign up potentially.
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| « Last Edit: on: Nov 2, 2009, 4:24PM » |
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Mirgalen
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NWCon 5 (and NWCon 4) have been the best so far despite the probable decrease in the overall player base.
On the Plus side:
- D20 Modern
- A unique "save the Princess or not" PVP scenario
- A unique maze challenge (not sure if anyone made it alive)
- mix of nwn and nwn2
On the Minus side:
- Player not showing or not informing fellow DM that they cannot make it is not good but I had not seen so far a DM do that. Let's hope that it was an isolated incident.
Final Note:
Long Live NWCon and looking forward to NWCon 6.
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karvon
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Here are some random facts, thoughts and observations about this year's NWCon 5.
1. Initial announcements and attempts to organize the con were about the same in lead time as last year relative to the actual date.
2. We didn't have as much admin support for the con as last year. Those who offered to take charge of PR and Chats went AWOL. I posted notices at Bioware and the Vault and updated those several times, as I did last year, but did not have the time to blanket various gaming sites or contact potential sponsors.
3. While the NWNVault approved the Community News item I submitted almost immediately, they never displayed the banner item I submitted. No mention was ever made of the con by the Vault in their own focus/news comments nor were Bioware forum posts about the con ever highlighted on the page, as is frequently done with other Bioware forum topics deemed of community interest.
3. Interest and responses in Bioware forums for NWN1 were minimal, we had 300 viewings and no responses or comments. No moderator comments were made about the con.
4. On the other hand, we had around 1200 or so viewings and about 5 pages of comments and feedback in the NWN2 forums at Bioware. The moderator strongly encouraged readers to get involved. At least one NWN2 event was added because of the posting. Feedback there indicates there is an interest in MP/DM'd games for NWN2, though I expect it will mostly be met thru existing PWs.
5. Some hosts posted their individual events in Bioware forums as well. The number of views of those seemed about on par with those of the con's general announcement.
6. Here are some numbers from last year and this year. They may not be fully accurate, especially for PW events, as some folks joined events without ever signing up thru NWC. In addition, there's no way to view events after the deadline to sign up has passed, so it's possible an additional person or two may have signed up for event and I missed them, since I wasn't able to monitor these 24/7 
NWC4-NWC5
Games 45-26
Seminars 8-3
Events 53-28
Sponsors 5-1
Thursday 2-NA
Friday 18-6
Saturday 30-9
Sunday 14-10
Monday NA-1
Hosts 46-15
Players 58-22
Participants 81-32
7. Obviously, the con was much smaller this year. I think this is more due to the decline in activity and participation on NWC rather than poor PR though, as most of our hosts come from NWC - and we only had a third of what we had last year. The same is true for players, the majority, both years, being NWC regulars of sorts.
8. Cancellations due to lack of players seemed about as common this year as last. We had far more events than players both years.
9. My own Ork Raider competition drew 2 players last year and 3 this year, so about the same. I had one cancellation out of 3 sessions I ran this year, the same as last year.
10. It's possible running on Halloween weekend cost us some participation, and given how small our base apparently is, any distractions are probably bad at this point.
11. A more confusing problem was likely the time change which kicked in at differing times, depending on which part of the world folks live. This would be a stronger reason for running the end of Sept, before such confusion kicks in, like we did last year.
12. As mentioned by others, designing scenarios which could be completed by 2-4 is probably wiser than 4-8, given the number of signups.
13. New and unique scenarios probably are going to draw more than dusting off some of the standard one shots, though very popular ones - such as the Light vs Dark PVP usually draw well. Single session stories are probably going to get more than multi-round tourney events.
14. Games requiring a lot of haks and/or premailed bic (mod d20) are going to draw fewer and lose any last minute walkons. I think if I were running a mod d20 game, I'd consider using prerolled PCs to eliminate that problem, in part, and insure a balanced group for the scenario.
15. Perhaps it might prove enlightening to survey players both here and bioware forums and see what sorts of events might attract the most interest at future cons.
16. I certainly think we have enough interest to continue staging the con in the future, we just need to temper our expectations and try match what players are looking for.
I want to thank all who organized events and participated in the con. Without you, it would never have happened.
I especially want to thank Venture for all his work and support in getting our Con web page up and working, and Tarridus for his fabulous artwork used for our logo again this year.
Regards
Karvon
NWCon 5 Coordinator
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Mulu
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An excellent analysis Karvon, and a sobering one. I think we can look at the differences between the two cons as an accurate bellwether of the site as a whole. We probably are a little less than half as active as we were a year ago overall, and can probably expect to be half as active in a year as we are now. Our population seems to be diminishing like a radioactive element, with a 1 year half-life.
Then again we did take a big hit in the intervening year. One of the reasons we have lower numbers now is folks still running stable NWN campaigns but no longer using NWC. I know of at least 3 long term NWN campaigns that no longer use this site at all - Forrestwolf's comes to mind - and instead use various internet forums like Google. I'm sure there are many more that I'm not aware of. I suspect we lost a lot of people when the site was attacked by hackers and became non-functional for over a month. I had to transfer my campaign to the Bioware Guild system, others went with Venture's site, and many others found their own solutions. A lot of those people, having found stable alternative hosting for their campaigns, never came back apparently, and no longer participate in the community having developed into what we used to call a "dining room campaign" in PnP, where you have the same players showing up for years. Nothing we can do about that, but it does factor in the numbers. If the site goes down for a prolonged period again, we'd probably lose critical mass. We'll lose it eventually anyway, of course, it would just hasten the demise.
So, I don't know if we actually lost people to the Halloween weekend or not, given the much more damaging issue of the site being down for so long. Hard to say. I suppose we could run it the weekend before Halloween, and still have a Halloween theme. I like the theme.
| 14. Games requiring a lot of haks and/or premailed bic (mod d20) are going to draw fewer and lose any last minute walkons. I think if I were running a mod d20 game, I'd consider using prerolled PCs to eliminate that problem, in part, and insure a balanced group for the scenario. |
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Most players hate DM pregenerated characters. So although it would make things easier, you'd probably lose as many players to the idea of not being able to roll up their own PC as you would save from eliminating the hassle of pre-rolling, I suspect. And statistically speaking, the d20 Modern games did better overall. I suspect so did the NWN2 games, but in both cases because there were fewer of them offered to begin with.
Oh, and I definitely like the idea of a survey, or even just a forum post on NWN and NWN2 forums at Bioware asking "How can we make this better for you in the future?"
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| « Last Edit: on: Nov 3, 2009, 4:34PM » |
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NWN DM
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on Nov 3, 2009, 6:44 AM, karvon wrote:Here are some random facts, thoughts and observations about this year's NWCon 5.
3. Interest and responses in Bioware forums for NWN1 were minimal, we had 300 viewings and no responses or comments. No moderator comments were made about the con.
4. On the other hand, we had around 1200 or so viewings and about 5 pages of comments and feedback in the NWN2 forums at Bioware. The moderator strongly encouraged readers to get involved. At least one NWN2 event was added because of the posting. Feedback there indicates there is an interest in MP/DM'd games for NWN2, though I expect it will mostly be met thru existing PWs. |
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It is somewhat surprising to me, the lack of response or attention to the event on the NWN boards. Especially when we all keep hearing that MP is still going strong in NWN (I'm trying to revive a campaign myself).
This leads me to agree quite strongly that most of those MP games have likely turned into the same (stable) group coming back time after time, meaning no need for continual recruiting, and the person(s) running the game not necessarily using NWC anymore (I know I stopped for a while myself when the site got hacked).
On the NWN2 side, I think you are demonstrably correct; the MP interest is there, and it's largely being met by existing PWs, so the vast majority of players have no reason to go looking for something new.
Perhaps this should not be surprising to anyone, given the evolution of NWN2 in a MP setting up to the most recent 1.23 patch with the ADL.
Personally, it makes me sit back and think about the time I've been putting into building my campaign module, when the stated interest doesn't materialize into more than three sign-ups for a game posted two weeks in advance, and then no-shows drop that number even more.
If this is the case with NWN2, I'd say if/when the next con is planned, we need to make an effort to go out and recruit PW leaders from NWN2 servers that aren't already really successful (no good/nice way to say that), and would really notice an infusion of a handful of new players.
Personally, I would have thought that with the ADL, the "dedicated DM/builder with a returning group of players every week or 2nd week" type of game would become popular. That does not appear to be the case at this time.
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| « Last Edit: on: Nov 3, 2009, 5:33PM » |
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Mulu
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The ADL doesn't help the builder, and the sad fact remains that the NWN2 toolset is much more time consuming overall. That's fine for a PW where you are reusing your exteriors, but fatal to a weekly campaign where you are building new areas for every campaign. A few can pull it off, but they do so by reusing exteriors and relying on pre-fabs, which narrows the campaign's potential substantially. It's ultimately a fishbowl, but that can work too.
I would say PW's are supplying most of the MP play in NWN as well. If you read the Bioware forums, it's all pretty much PW players and some SP only players, very few campaign players like us. I never would have thunk it back in 2003, but PW's have obviously won the MP market probably due to ease of use and on demand MP play, versus a weekly campaign that requires consistent attendance on someone else's schedule. I get bored on PW's very quickly myself, and I've tried lots of them, but obviously most folks prefer the on demand action over a scheduled campaign.
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karvon
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I believe the decline in NWC participation has a bit of the chicken or the egg element to it; we need events to attract players, but can we draw enough players to hold events?
Given the number of players which have turned up for new campaigns I've joined over the past year, I suspect if more interesting events were offered during prime times, more players would sign up.
In terms of a multi-session campaign, I realize it can be hard to build up a group initially. When I ran my first campaign I only had a couple of players consistently - so that's what I built and planned for, and gradually expanded as more folks joined in.
In all honesty, the biggest killer for me over the period of time I've been here on NWC has been the disappearing DM. I can't count the number of campaigns which I've joined that have had a reasonably full slate of players, gone a handful of sessions at most, then died when the DM's dropped off the face of the earth. Sometimes it's been an unavoidable RL conflict, but more often than not it's simply been burn out or who knows what. I could easily see players newer to NWC, and only playing in one or two events a week, getting jaded by such an experience and giving up on the idea - and the site.
In my experience, campaigns which run hell or high water, as long as 3-4 show up, chug along nicely. Sometimes this means DMs must adjust the storyline on the fly, if short handed a session or two for some reason, but if events are run on a regular basis, rain or shine, they seem to thrive - more often than not.
Thus, I think...
If we held more events on a regular basis, more players would show up to play over time.
If we offered more one shot events, that'd give more variety - and attract more folks as well.
If we more consistently posted NWC events scheduled to Bioware forums, that would raise awareness of NWC as being an active place, and draw a few more folks our way.
Promoting the use of NWC to existing PWs, which run regularly scheduled events, would provide more chances for folks to get into games.
Karvon
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karvon
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We've run DMFI training seminars in the past and drawn a few new potential DMs in, though as you mentioned, the whole building/DM'ing thing can be a bit overwhelming.
The new CEP DM tools look pretty interesting from what I've read and seen thus far; not had the time to play around with them yet, and unfortunately wasn't able to catch Barry's seminar on them during NWCon 5.
Perhaps we could see about organizing some sort of once a month DM/builder seminar and invite various folks to present some of their tools and tricks?
Karvon
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Mulu
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I caught the CEP seminar, or most of it anyway. The new tools are very powerful, but they are really just for PW's. It allows a person in DM client to set a stage, but as a builder/DM you're going to do that in the toolset much, much faster. The ability to set a campsite or a house interior by manually placing objects in DM client, then save it all for use later, doesn't really have any application in our style of gaming where once you clear an area you never return to it, or if you do the DM has had ample opportunity to rebuild it in the toolset.
The ability to move placeables (well, destroy and recreate in a different location) was interesting, and I could see using it to "move" a siege engine or a ship. It's not going to change the game. DMFI is alive and well, and still very very useful. 
Anyway all you really need to learn to run a game here is already available between our manuals and the DMFI 101 mod. You could learn everything you need to know in an afternoon. We're also extremely responsive on the forums to anyone with a question. I doubt we'd get any attendance on a tutorial session.
I'm actually over the initial shock of the numbers between the two years, as the more I think about it the more I'm sure it was mostly due to losses from the site being down for so long. We obviously couldn't afford to go through that again, but otherwise I think we've settled into a steady, if slowly declining, groove.
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GM_ODA
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I think choosing and sticking to a particular date or date range for the event is critical to maintaining an audience for a convention - people can be forgetful, but if you are regular they have a better chance of attending.
We should choose the date carefully, researching to be certain it is neither a holiday or any other sort of 'awkward' date such as time change day. We need to remember that this is global and focus on the idiosyncracies of our own culture alone.
We should recruit not only persons responsible for particular critical facets of convention organization but also seconds and thirds for those positions so that the ball cannot be dropped. Redundancy in critical systems is essential.
We should FOCUS on the event and organizing at least six months in advance, have all major details locked down at that time and then promote it for the last four or five months.
A separate site, not part of NWC should be made availble, sans the 'number of the event' so that those wanting to find info about the NWC can find it there.
I think, that while the community has waned a bit, we do not have to resign this convention endeavor to similar fate. Like many things, this is what you make of it - we've all seen the arguements that nothing has come forward as a successor to this fine game, until that argument is voided, this game can and should live on.
That's my 2 cents, spend it wisely.
Be well. Game on.
GM_ODA
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