There has been no significant increase in either no-show rates or rates of tickets being used for other events since that was made more clear.

The net result of the rule is that more people play more games because they have the tickets to do so. And - presumably - any spots they never show up for can be filled with generics.

The alternative would be for GMs to have to tell more people they can't play because they don't have the right ticket, and it would significantly complicate many TCG (and other tightly-scheduled) tabletop programs.

This all matches up with my own anecdotal experience: players skip out on events because something comes up. They see friends, get dinner, get distracted, get tired, etc. Those things are still going to come up and they're still going to flake out. Losing $4 is going to stop them, it's just going to sour their experience a bit and maybe stop them from playing something else.

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Derek Guder
Event Manager
Gen Con LLC

This can't simply regarding no-shows or using tickets at other events.

This also isn't strictly on-topic for high-demand events, so if you want to start another thread to go over the issues you've had, I'd be happy to address them.

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Derek Guder
Event Manager
Gen Con LLC

So this coming year, if all goes according to plan, will be my 4th Gencon (3 in a row, plus 1980...).  This will also be the first year I sign up to run something.  I have been running miniatures games at east coast conventions, though, for about twenty years at this point, and I haven't ever been able to figure out a good approach to having a game fill in pre-registration.  Year in and year out, my usual experience is that only half the pre-reg players show up.  I usually just start a sign-up sheet for back-ups at the table when setting up, and just go down the list at the appointed time and take as many as will fit in the order of signing.  My only complaint in this process is that the HMGS used to have sheets for the GMs with the pre-reg names on it, so I at least knew that I was filled with pre-regs and should start drumming up some back-up players early. :P
 

You can actually check on that yourself for each event - just sign into your account and go to your EO/GM Dashboard. Click on each event and at the bottom of the page it should list the names of all registered players, so you can use that to track who is missing - and if anyone returned a ticket at the last minute.

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Derek Guder
Event Manager
Gen Con LLC

In the two years that I've run Cthulhu Live games, they have sold out on day one. I'm considering running another one this year in addition to the old World of Darkness LARP that I'm running. If I am correct, there were very few if any oWOD games last year.

The Wrecking Crew actually fills a room of 8 tables or so, but that's with a mix of both World of Darkness (oWoD or cWoD) and (the newly-christened) Chronicles of Darkness (nWoD).

Not as much as I would like to see, personally, but there is some presence. You might want to reach out to them to see if you could run your events under their umbrella.

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Derek Guder
Event Manager
Gen Con LLC

Looking at that list, i am surprised shadowrun and adnd 1e, 3/4/5e is in 'such high demand' with how many rooms and tables they each get at the con...  I would have thought 1 or 2e adnd being so 'small' represented would be higher on that list..

This will be my first year as a GM at GenCon. Second year at GenCon, but I have over 20 years GMing in home groups.

There will be at least one Firefly (MW Cortex) game up. I'm in the process of writing it now. A "Who Done It" murder mystery. Keep an eye out for "Murder on the Serenity Express" if you're free late Friday night.

I'm also planning on running two DC Hero games on Thursday and Saturday featuring Justice League and JL Dark team-up. "To Save a Dream".

Since I'm a non-affiliated GM, I'm keeping to running games within my personal fandom that I'm familiar with that I didn't see in the schedule in 2015.

Awesome, thanks for joining up. I hope you have fun running in a con experience :)

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Derek Guder
Event Manager
Gen Con LLC

Last year was my first GenCon Indy. My friend and I both ran FFG Star Wars last year. He ran several sessions, I did one just to get my feet wet. Based on the experience, I am guessing that there is also higher demand for games open to Beginners. We had indicated "Some Experience: You know the basics" but at each of his sessions, there was at least one newbie. I have 3 different adventures in the works for this year: one for each of FFG's Star Wars settings. Two of them, I decided to specifically run for beginners.
So, I'm wondering if that was just our observation, or if that seems to bear out from the feedback you've gotten.

There's always going to be a mix of folks who want to try a new game, those who want to get into something they love, and players who signed up because some random element caught their eye. It's difficult to predict for, unfortunately.

There isn't really any way to police the experience required field, so I strongly encourage GMs to be prepared for at least a quick introduction to the rules (just like I recommend preparing pre-gens or having minis or whatever is needed for the game, even when players are instructed to bring their own), but technically it's completely justifiable to tell a player who signed up for an advanced game that you don't have the time to teach them.

That's almost guaranteed to result in an unhappy attendee and might mean you don't even have enough players, though, so it's certainly not recommended. Accommodate the player when you can, possibly even recruiting other players to help out, if they're familiar. If you have enough newbies, being able to shift a bit into a more introductory game can be very helpful.

This is where having some flexibility in scenario and GM style comes in really handy.

But if you've got a table of otherwise die-hard players ready to get into the nitty-gritty of a game and one players is a complete newbie who has never played before, it's ok to discuss that with them and explain the intent of the game.

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Derek Guder
Event Manager
Gen Con LLC

The other part was concerning high demand. It may not have been part of the data collected, but it seems from a couple of replies that there is an unmet demand for Beginner/Intro level play.  
 

It's difficult to properly track relative demand for introductory games vs. more heavily invested ones, at least for RPGs, because it's impossible to clearly identify why someone decided to try to sign up for any given event - at least for games on this list that pretty much fill up anyway.

Could be because they wanted to try a game or because it was the only game available.

That uncertainty is part of why I strongly encourage GMs to prepare for new players, whenever possible.

If any GM is looking for guidance on what kind of event to run, I would still say that it matters more what you want to run. Intro games are fantastic. They help get more fans into a given game, and that's great. More people playing more different things is always wonderful. But part of the point of running a game is for you to enjoy it too, so if you really are hankering for an advanced tier game where you don't need to explain the rules at all, then run that.

It's also worth noting this is more of an issue for RPGs than most tabletop games, where I expect players self-regulate a bit more and there isn't as much of an expectation of showing up and being taught the rules. Few players arrive at a competitive event to be taught.

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Derek Guder
Event Manager
Gen Con LLC

I don't think I would have the guts to show up as a beginner to a boardgame/card game if the description said experience needed. RPGs on the other hand are fair game, although I would at least try to get a rule primer from the internet beforehand. My group gave up our Eclipse Phase spots to 5 generic ticket holders when we all decided that we didn't know the system/setting well enough, even though we had downloaded info on it months before (Yeah. We failed to do our homework.) We didn't want the poor DM having to explain everything to us. We also didn't want to leave him hanging so we showed up to play, but fortunate was upon us all since the generic ticket holders were all experienced players of the game. Everyone walked away happy.

I've never seen a real line to turn in tickets (as a GM). And remember you can turn them in at any event HQ, so if one does happen to be busy, just got to another one.

maybe dwolf52000 meant returning tickets for a refund? Even for those, though, I very rarely see a significant wait.

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Derek Guder
Event Manager
Gen Con LLC

Anecdotal Info: I'm used to waiting 15-30+ minutes to return tickets for a refund.  The line is usually all the way through the queue and starting or heading down the adjacent hallway.  This was at various times from Noon-6 PM over the last few years.

I don't have a bunch of data points for this as normally I only bother to return tickets if I want to schedule something else in their place.  Otherwise it's not worth my time.

Hero System is now a victim of edition wars. The most popular are 4th, 5th, and Champions Complete. When you see something with Champions Complete or Fantasy Hero Complete in the title, think of it as Hero System 6th revised, and made genre specific.