I usually have a wait list. Weird
-
Monstrous Menagerie II: Hordes & Heroes has a launch date! Mark your calendars for November 12th, 2024. 300+ more monsters for your D&D 2024, or Level Up: Advanced 5th Edition games, plus new horde rules and rules for heroic monsters who level up alongside you--whether they be allies, companions, or foes! Click here to follow on Kickstarter!
Paid Convention Games?
- Thread starter Reynard
- Start date
payn
I don't believe in the no-win scenario
Yeah I don’t think that matters. Come con time folks simply don’t show.
It's very common to pay for event tickets at conventions. Most events at cons I've attended over the past two decades charge. If nothing else, there are surcharges for purchasing tickets - I think in the past a minimum of $2.
Also, I'm part of the problem. I walk out of games regularly. It's a sunk cost fallacy to stick around in a bad time just because you paid.
A GM running a game just to have revenge on a girl back home who wouldn't date him.
A guy who wants to give you the narrative backstory of a campaign setting for the first hour of the game.
Creeps who put in blatantly offensive content.
GMs who turn the adventure into a PvP arena battle because they're too lazy to actually run the game.
When this stuff comes up (about half the games I play at Cons), I walk.
Also, I'm part of the problem. I walk out of games regularly. It's a sunk cost fallacy to stick around in a bad time just because you paid.
A GM running a game just to have revenge on a girl back home who wouldn't date him.
A guy who wants to give you the narrative backstory of a campaign setting for the first hour of the game.
Creeps who put in blatantly offensive content.
GMs who turn the adventure into a PvP arena battle because they're too lazy to actually run the game.
When this stuff comes up (about half the games I play at Cons), I walk.
jdrakeh
Front Range Warlock
My good friend is the head organizer of SCALE (the Rocky Mountain D&D Adventurer's League organization). He and another good friend were at the Cheyenne Gaming Convention running games this weekend. I'm pretty sure they (the convention) sell tickets to specific games in addition to the con badges, though I believe they have some open play tables, as well. I'll have to ask my friends once they get home and have a chance to revitalize.
Dunno what to tell you! Most conventions I've been to there's been a nominal fee, even if just to discourage people from signing up for things they are unlikely to show up for. Like I said, standard practice, at least in my experience.
Lucky you, I guess! In my experience, no-shows are common. I suspect that your convention game experiences seem to be something of an outlier.EldritchHistory
Explorer
I ran games for SCALE at GenghisCon back in February. There were tickets for the games (I believe $2 each in addition to the badge cost) and my last table only had 1 out of 6 players show up still. And the regular people who ran games weren't surprised at all.
Like I said,it is rare in my experience. But I don't run at Origins or GenCon.
Just for clarity, I am not talking about all event tickets cost $5 or whatever. I am talking about individual games arbitrarily setting event ticket prices, unconnected to the con's baseline event ticket cost (which at Origins is $0). So I am talking about an individual GM deciding to charge the 6 people signing up for their event an extra $10 or whatever.
Events have always been paid at Origins for as long as I can remember. I usually spend most of my time hanging out in the Board Room though, which used to be an extra ribbon you had to buy but has been included in the badge price for the last few years.
