Hmm. Was it two or three years we gave them to sort out their act?
Not to mention the fact that Horseman had plenty of experience from when they were the RPGA.
I rather think Horseman didn't give the LARPers a fair chance, and did their absolute best to make Gencon economically unviable for them. But what would I know, I've only run LARPs at Gencon for 5 years or so.
Still, we now have Consequences. It may be the ghettoisation of LARPing, but at least we get our priorities attended to. And an affordable event.
What we found frustrating is that when big evil TSR and Wizards were running the con themselves, they appreciated the value that a strong freeform programme added to it, and were really pretty helpful and supportive. Yet once it fell into the hands of "the gamers", freeforms got progressively marginalized and neglected.
If they understood our message that running good freeforms needs a sufficient critical mass of players a sufficient length of time in advance of the con, they weren't able to act on it.
And this year it seemed like they only noticed at the last minute that there weren't any freeforms, and started trying trying to get friendly - but it was too late by then.
Having worked at different times for both of these Big Evils, and been involved in event organisation for them, I do love the way they are retrospectively rehabilitated.
TSR was soooo bad. Bad, bad people, making money from Lovely Altruistic Gamers and Ruining The Hobby. Until WotC bought them, that is. Then WotC were Absolutely Horrid and everyone loved TSR really, poor little thing. Then Mattel bought WotC, and ooooh, that was evil of them, buying and ruining everyone's well-loved company...and 'gosh' people went, 'running conventions that size actually must have taken time and effort and money...who'd have thought
( ... )
No, we just got sick of them being unable to organise a piss-up in a brewery and not getting enough players to make it worth us running games. Sooooooo sorry....
Just so that you know, the 'not giving them a fair chance' was my paraphrase of about 5 minutes conversation, but the guy didn't endear himself to me by using the word 'difficult' in his first response to my comment that many LARPers had said they would never come to GENCON again.
Well, that does seem a little petulant to me. It's not like GenCon defiled their grandmothers' graves, is it? I'd happily go to future GenCons if they manage to organize it so as to tick all the requisite boxes.
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Not to mention the fact that Horseman had plenty of experience from when they were the RPGA.
I rather think Horseman didn't give the LARPers a fair chance, and did their absolute best to make Gencon economically unviable for them. But what would I know, I've only run LARPs at Gencon for 5 years or so.
Still, we now have Consequences. It may be the ghettoisation of LARPing, but at least we get our priorities attended to. And an affordable event.
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If they understood our message that running good freeforms needs a sufficient critical mass of players a sufficient length of time in advance of the con, they weren't able to act on it.
And this year it seemed like they only noticed at the last minute that there weren't any freeforms, and started trying trying to get friendly - but it was too late by then.
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Having worked at different times for both of these Big Evils, and been involved in event organisation for them, I do love the way they are retrospectively rehabilitated.
TSR was soooo bad. Bad, bad people, making money from Lovely Altruistic Gamers and Ruining The Hobby. Until WotC bought them, that is. Then WotC were Absolutely Horrid and everyone loved TSR really, poor little thing. Then Mattel bought WotC, and ooooh, that was evil of them, buying and ruining everyone's well-loved company...and 'gosh' people went, 'running conventions that size actually must have taken time and effort and money...who'd have thought ( ... )
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*sputter*
No, we just got sick of them being unable to organise a piss-up in a brewery and not getting enough players to make it worth us running games. Sooooooo sorry....
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Well, that does seem a little petulant to me. It's not like GenCon defiled their grandmothers' graves, is it? I'd happily go to future GenCons if they manage to organize it so as to tick all the requisite boxes.
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