If you had an experience - great or, um, "not so great" :p - at DDXP over the weekend please post your insights, thoughts, or stories here! Gotta share the story so we can hit 1500 tables at GenCon this year!
As for myself...
I was set to run the LFR Special 4 times over the course of the convention. However, due to some fancy finagling on the part of our intrepid marshals I bowed out after running it on Thursday and ran a crapton of open gaming LFR slots, as well as filling in as the 4th person at 3 tables. I got to meet a ton of awesome players including Shenzi and Captain Jack'l.
Things I saw:
- One group of players played the LFR Special twice. Twice! They were noticed by pretty much all of the marshals and DMs for this - and they are a classy group to boot.
- One particular fighter that had the misfortune of being on the receiving end of every possible immobile effect during one of my adventures... and never - NEVER - being able to save against it.
- A certain combat that opened with 8 immobile effects and 4 critical breath weapons... on the first round... before the players acted... low initiative makes it rough, kids!
Finally... I was offered a chance to dry-run a pair of related adventures: CORE1-4 and CORE1-7... and holy bejesus it was the best experience of the 'con for me! My players marshaled through and had no idea that it was a dry run
Share the stories, all - I look forward to hearing about your experiences!
Location:
I know the Midwest is RPGA (and D&D's) traditional powerbase... but cripes. Incidental reports from judges I know indicated that there were -tons- of releases because registration was really high - a record, in fact- but actual attendance was brutalized because of the ice storm. I heard 30 percent of registrations didn't show. (again, incidentally)
I know it's been rehashed again and again (no judges in the South, closer to resources, etc.) but here's yet another call to put DDXP in a region that's not quite so subject to the vagaries of winter. Several places in the Carolinas and Nashville have decent enough playerbases to pull some judges from, and they're still driveable from the Midwest. Maybe even StL. In addition, attendance might be boosted from Florida and Atlanta, which both have solid play.
Mod Selection:
Again, I know the purpose of DDXP is for the fanatics, but having a few 1-4 and 4-7 slots would have been helpful for bringing in some more folks. I know I felt a -lot- of pressure to get my 'main' to 7th. 7-10s are new and hot, but I think the predictions that it would cause problems came true.
Mod Timing and Delves:
It seems like most if not all the slots I played ran long, something of a theme among all the 7-10 mods. This isn't great by itself, but it's compounded by the Delve. I know we don't *have* to play all the slots, but one main purpose for DDXP for a lot of attendees is to play the mods before they take them back to their RPGA enclaves to run for people. Keeping a tighter rein on judges as far as time goes would be nice.
As far as the interaction with the Delves go, since all ran long, I got to do very little Delving since it shut down for two hours for dinner every day and an hour for lunch. I was a little surprised that, at the least, there wasn't a rotation of judges for the Delve to keep people playing through the breaks.
Whenever you've got so many people holding wasted Delve tickets they can't use at the end of the con that you base a raffle off of them, there's a problem there. Because of this, I'm not sure I saw more than three or four tables of Delve running at any given time.
I -do- have positive feedback, I'll post it later.
-Sutro
The Delve
She got to Delve once, and I got to go twice. It was our first time doing this, and we had a blast! Mingling with other players and judges for an hour was a great way to meet lots of people. Looking back, I would have signed up for fewer full slots and left more time to delve.
The tables I was at had great judges, awesome maps, and appropriate minis. Our judges were all very well prepared, and the encounters were engaging. On a 10-point scale, the Delves we experienced were a solid 9.Beyond the Door
This was a great little adventure. We were fortunate to get a table with other players with a similar playing style to our own, and a judge who really liked the mod. His excitement spread, and it was a great way to wrap-up on Sunday morning before going home. My only complaint is that we didn't have longer to experience the adventure. It seemed like there was enough content for a double-time slot. I gave this an 8, only because there was not enough time to "fully" experience the mod in a 4-hour slot.
Judging
I did judge one table and had a blast doing it! (Quick shout-out to the guys from Indy who played IMPI1-3 in Slot-9!) Everyone at the table seemed to have fun, so I mark this one down as a success. I'm looking forward to my next chance to judge at a con!
General Slots
The rest of our time was spent playing at 7-10 level tables. It was great meeting people with all sorts of different backgrounds and styles of play. Of the eight slots we played, we had 3 fantastic tables (great judge, good group of players), 3 good tables (enjoyable, but not memorable), and 2 "un-fun" tables (players/judges with a very different play-style than ours). Overall, a solid 7 on the fun-meter, and about what one can expect when going to a large convention with so many different styles of play.
As to the sessions that were not as good, here's some constructive feedback for all judges as to what would have made these games better for our play-style.
• Judge A sat down and early-on complained about the mod. "It was poorly written / poorly edited."
FEEDBACK FOR JUDGES: No matter how bad you think the mod is, please don't share that with us! If you don't like what you're running, we won't enjoy the game much.
• Judge B spent most of the session trying to figure out how monster abilities work / flip pages back and forth / figure out what happens next. He seemed very unprepared.
FEEDBACK FOR JUDGES: First, be prepared.
Second, there are times when you cannot - for whatever reason - be prepared. If that's the case, let the players know. It's frustrating, but we understand that things happen. It's better for us to know why the game is disorganized than to wonder why you didn't bother to take the time to prepare for us. (If it's a minor detail not important to the plot, just use DME to wing an answer, rather than spending 5 minutes looking through the mod for a meaningless detail.)• Judge C used numbered scraps of paper to represent every creature in every encounter. This drained the fun out of the adventure for us (our play-style) as we kept killing "square #3." In encounters with lots of different types of creatures, this also caused confusion. This was the Core Special - and the repetitive nature of these encounters made this feel anything but "special" to us.
FEEDBACK FOR JUDGES: First, I understand that not everyone can go out and buy minis, much less the perfect mini for each encounter. However, a little more preparation (such as making a different set of "square papers" for each encounter with the creatures name / minor art / etc. to identify them) would have gone a long way to varying the encounters. Also, especially at a con, one can reach out to other judges who are not running in the same time slot. (I shared my minis/terrain with other judges who were judging the same mod at other time slots.)
Varying the representations of combatants is important to our play-style, so those who use the same minis in every encounter may want to think of ways to vary what the players see as enemies each encounter.
Overall, we gave the experience an "8," and we're looking forward to our next convention!
~ Dan and Lori Anderson
Boston, MA
Well, here's a few negative observations before I get to the "things that were good."
Location:
I know the Midwest is RPGA (and D&D's) traditional powerbase... but cripes. Incidental reports from judges I know indicated that there were -tons- of releases because registration was really high - a record, in fact- but actual attendance was brutalized because of the ice storm. I heard 30 percent of registrations didn't show. (again, incidentally)
As the guy in charge of handing out the pre-registration packets, at the end of the day on Sunday well under 10% of the packets were unclaimed. It wouldn't be my place to say how many those numbers reflect (100 of 1000? 20 of 200?) but it wasn't anywhere near 30% - unless, of course, the packets left unclaimed were for 5-10 people each.
I know it's been rehashed again and again (no judges in the South, closer to resources, etc.) but here's yet another call to put DDXP in a region that's not quite so subject to the vagaries of winter. Several places in the Carolinas and Nashville have decent enough playerbases to pull some judges from, and they're still driveable from the Midwest. Maybe even StL. In addition, attendance might be boosted from Florida and Atlanta, which both have solid play.
Emotionally - I fully agree with you. I'd love to get away from the cold for a week or so. However there are a couple flaws in the logic.
1) Weather problems will still affect those of us in the north. If I'm driving to one of the Carolinas, and I get "snowed in" so much that I can't leave - I'm still not attending that show (and neither is anyone else from my area - worse still if flights are canceled).
2) While there's more appeal to a nice climate - the goal is to be within 6 hours of as many attendees as possible (this being the amount of time most people will drive - and more people will drive to a show than fly unless/until you get to a show as big as, say, GenCon). That puts the ideal locations in the midwest.
Mod Selection:
Again, I know the purpose of DDXP is for the fanatics, but having a few 1-4 and 4-7 slots would have been helpful for bringing in some more folks. I know I felt a -lot- of pressure to get my 'main' to 7th. 7-10s are new and hot, but I think the predictions that it would cause problems came true.
I think (hope?) this will be a self-alleviating issue going forward. Take the 1-4 mods, for example. They're not all being written for the same level range. I suspect this was largely an issue with the plan for LFR being (reasonably so) to get mods out there for the entire heroic tier in the first three batches. Accordingly, I think we're going to see new mods for all levels of play in future release groups.
In other words, come DDXP2010 when we're all facing XXXX-2-3 mods they'll (hopefully) cover everything from low-heroric to mid-paragon - while all still being "new mods".
FWIW - I agree that more 1-2 mods would have been good, or at least more tickets to those mods. Mid-Heroic Tier adventures were sold out for the bulk of the show. If/when we'd get a ticket in to be exchanged for something else, it would disappear very quickly.
As far as the interaction with the Delves go, since all ran long, I got to do very little Delving since it shut down for two hours for dinner every day and an hour for lunch. I was a little surprised that, at the least, there wasn't a rotation of judges for the Delve to keep people playing through the breaks.
I'm only aware of the Delve getting a single hour-long dinner break in a given day. I'll freely admit that I wasn't doing much with the Delve (and certainly wasn't running it) but that was the plan as I understood it.
Whenever you've got so many people holding wasted Delve tickets they can't use at the end of the con that you base a raffle off of them, there's a problem there. Because of this, I'm not sure I saw more than three or four tables of Delve running at any given time.
The raffle was more a result of the "no ticket refund" policy - so that people who bought delve tickets (either for the delve, or to be used to make a "generic" ticket) could still get one last hurrah out of their ticket.
As the person who shuffled the box for Dave, I don't think there were many more than 100 (perhaps as high as 150) tickets in the box - and since people were often buying them in packs of 3 (to make a generic ticket), I'd say that's a fairly low number.
This was the first con my wife and I attended. We've been involved in home groups, RPGA, and local events for several years, and this was our first experience going to a convention.
~ Dan and Lori Anderson
Boston, MA
All GREAT feedback - I'll do my best to pass this on to Chris and Dave.
Also, please always feel free to let the HQ staff at the show(s) know your opinion on any judges that stand out (good or bad). It lets us evaluate people going forward, and even whisper in their ears if something needs to change. Sometimes it even lets us help them find minis or something else to represent monsters (different colors of dice often work well).
Glad you enjoyed the show however.
The deal with the Delve is that the judges indeed got hour-long dinner breaks. Effectively, though, that's two hours that the Delve didn't run: No new Delves started after 5 o'clock because running time would extend into the dinner break.
-Sutro
Wolf -
The deal with the Delve is that the judges indeed got hour-long dinner breaks. Effectively, though, that's two hours that the Delve didn't run: No new Delves started after 5 o'clock because running time would extend into the dinner break.
-Sutro
Ah - I get what you're saying then.
I'll mention this to HQ, see if its a change that might be made in the future. (If we get the same number of judges for future delves that we had at DDXP, this shouldn't pose a problem I'd think - but again, I'm not in charge of the delves in any way, shape, or form).
Weekend in Dyvers '06 had the greatest badge system I've ever seen. Instead of tickets, your badge had your name, your region and RPGA number on the left side. On the right side, the slots you were scheduled for were printed on it. If you wanted to change a slot, you went to registration, had them cross off the slot and they gave you tickets.
The best part? The slots on the side were printed upside down. So you only needed to flip your badge up to remember which slot and muster area you were in.
It'd be pretty neat if DDXP implemented a similar system instead of general badges. I personally was out $6 because I lost the ticket to the last slot and they refused to do replacements. :/
-Sutro
Location:
I know the Midwest is RPGA (and D&D's) traditional powerbase... but cripes. Incidental reports from judges I know indicated that there were -tons- of releases because registration was really high - a record, in fact- but actual attendance was brutalized because of the ice storm. I heard 30 percent of registrations didn't show. (again, incidentally)
I know it's been rehashed again and again (no judges in the South, closer to resources, etc.) but here's yet another call to put DDXP in a region that's not quite so subject to the vagaries of winter. Several places in the Carolinas and Nashville have decent enough playerbases to pull some judges from, and they're still driveable from the Midwest. Maybe even StL. In addition, attendance might be boosted from Florida and Atlanta, which both have solid play.
Unless things have changed, I thought future DDXPs were intended to be in the late March to early April timeframe. This would alleviate any weather related problems that could keep people from showing. (As for something a little farther south, that is a different issue. It would suck for me but I'd probably still go (as long as it isn't at the end of January!))
Gyro King across the street was a nice surprise, a pretty big variety of food, great prices and faster to walk to than the car was.
The only downside for me personally was not being able to finish SPEC1-2 and it wasn't the judges fault in any way or the players at the table.. Two tables of 6 refused to give up a player to allow the remaining 3 players to form a proper table, I was one of those 3, after much searching by the marshal (who did the best he possible could with the situation) they got us a fourth by swapping out a judge at another table and having him come play with us. The problem was that made our legal table 4 strikers, 2 rangers 2 rogues. Anyway, we decided what the heck and pressed on. We did everything we could to survive this brutal mod with 4 strikers, had to run away from 2 encounters, actually defeated all the others save the last combat. We also had 2 of our members killed during the mod at one point. We had to call it on time before the last encounter though. Probably for the best since I do believe that it would have been a TPK. So we had fun despite the fact that people refused to follow the marshal's directions and form proper groups. I suppose karma did bite them in the ass when one of the groups of six actually gave up and didn't come back for the second round.
Loved meeting lots of new people, hanging out and gaming nonstop for four days and seeing lots of new things done by players that I'd never seen or thought of before.
Unless things have changed, I thought future DDXPs were intended to be in the late March to early April timeframe. This would alleviate any weather related problems that could keep people from showing. (As for something a little farther south, that is a different issue. It would suck for me but I'd probably still go (as long as it isn't at the end of January!))
Y'know, now that you mention it, I do think Dave said something about trying to push it back to March in the future.
I guess we'll have to wait and see.
The convention badge actually says something like feb27-mar2 2008 on the graphic for DND Experience. I thought that was funny.
Yeah, those were last years dates.
And yes, we tried to get those tables of six to break up for you. If it helps even further, I noticed that both tables of six players had not come back for the second round on Sunday. We sat four tables Saturday night, and the two who didn't continue on Sunday were the tables of six.
It's a shame that that sort of thing happens, but without it... I wouldn't have played with Boggray (and in a weird way, stolen Dan's DMG without knowing - but it's all resolved now :p).
Something I would like to see in future conventions: a cold-run adventure contest for DMs. I loved the show and I really enjoyed the special, but I had the most fun cold-running CORE1-4 and 1-7. And looking back, I got better player reactions from those adventures than I did for anything else.
Nevermind that aberrations are my preferred creature type, of course. I'm sure that had nothing to do with this.
I'm fairly new to the convention circuit. Didn't there used to be a contest at GenCon along these lines?
Yeah, those were last years dates.
And yes, we tried to get those tables of six to break up for you. If it helps even further, I noticed that both tables of six players had not come back for the second round on Sunday. We sat four tables Saturday night, and the two who didn't continue on Sunday were the tables of six.
BOTH "unbreakable" tables of six caved? I knew about the one, but... wow.
BOTH "unbreakable" tables of six caved? I knew about the one, but... wow.
All I know is that they weren't in the same place on Sunday morning. Maybe they got eaten by grues. Or maybe they teleported in Undermountain.
But... there were a few new weird, adventurer-shaped stains in the Xen'drik ruins... near the vampire illithids and mummies. Bonus points if you played (and survived) that adventure!
I didn't have a problem with finding a low-level adventure at any time of day, although I did spend a lot of time at the delve the first couple days, so it's hard to say for sure what other people's experiences were.
It was nice to get a chance to preview the new classes, and the WotC employees at the event that I interacted with were universally friendly and easy to talk to.
My main gripe was having to play a warlord instead of my rogue in one of the adventures, since out of 5 people, two were swordmages, two were warlocks, and a leader was kinda requested.
Y'know, now that you mention it, I do think Dave said something about trying to push it back to March in the future.
I guess we'll have to wait and see.
Just remind him to try and leave at least one free weekend between his con and other local cons (BashCon in mid-Feb in Toledo and Who'sYerCon in mid-March in Indy are two that come to mind). First or last week in March might work... would be nice to have at least one weekend break between cons. I just did DDX backed by a Monday-Thursday tradeshow in Vegas and it just about killed me dead. I know from experience that back to back cons will suck the fun out the later event pretty durn quick. A recovery weekend to recharge between cons would certainly be welcome.
Just remind him to try and leave at least one free weekend between his con and other local cons (BashCon in mid-Feb in Toledo and Who'sYerCon in mid-March in Indy are two that come to mind). First or last week in March might work... would be nice to have at least one weekend break between cons. I just did DDX backed by a Monday-Thursday tradeshow in Vegas and it just about killed me dead. I know from experience that back to back cons will suck the fun out the later event pretty durn quick. A recovery weekend to recharge between cons would certainly be welcome.
I think it will depend, in part, on what weekend(s) the convention center has available in what year(s) - as well as what Hasbro/WotC wants to see done with the show.
As a rule of thumb, it's a good idea not to create a scheduling conflict, so I'm sure they'll try to avoid that - however it may not prove to be possible every year.
I think it will depend, in part, on what weekend(s) the convention center has available in what year(s) - as well as what Hasbro/WotC wants to see done with the show.
As a rule of thumb, it's a good idea not to create a scheduling conflict, so I'm sure they'll try to avoid that - however it may not prove to be possible every year.
Just two words: Pennsic War ;)