FG Unity Convention Feedback (9/18 - 9/19/2020)

[sciencephile]

Just a FYI to the Smiteworks leadership and developer's, particularly those working on Unity...

I ran 3 games at PAX online over the weekend (Call of Cthulhu) and I used FG Unity to run the games (I have Ultimate so convention attendees only needed demo). For context, all the games either ran without a VTT or were Roll20. I think someone else was attempting to run Unity as a VTT but he never really got any players, which was unfortunate.

All 3 of my games were full with 6 players each and I had heard from a few of them that they joined my game because they wanted to experience Fantasy Grounds Unity.

I successfully introduced Unity to 18 new people. Five of the 18 have used classic and were curious about how Unity operated and they all came back with excitement that they will relay to their gaming groups. They enjoyed the LOS features and other aspects. For the most part we didn't use maps (Call of Cthulhu is not map centric) but I did end up demoing the maps and LOS features to 6 of the players who wanted to see the demo after one of the games.

The other 13 players had never seen Fantasy Grounds before and many were intimidated by the concept of using it before we started the game. Their VTT experience was Roll20.

When we finished, everyone was very comfortable with Fantasy Grounds Unity and I received a lot of very positive feedback with some feedback coming back on how they liked it even more than Roll20 in how it worked.

Just wanted to share the feedback from my ambassadorial mission this weekend.

-Danny

[LordEntrails]

Well done.

I also ran FGU at PAX. Over the last two weekends I ran 5 D&D AL games with 3-6 players each. It was a 2 game and 3 game series so many of the players were the same (1 player did all 5 games with me). There was at least one other DM running AL sessions with FGU (He was running the Moon 10 series, I was running Moon 1). Not sure about anyone else.

As for players, I also had several new to FG, and even two that had to download and install at the start of game time. Hopefully I will get access to the survey results and hopefully the players all filled them out as requested. Everyone said they had a good time, and in several cases signed up for the second or third sessions in the series after running the first.

Despite the organization problems (my understanding is that Baldman Games was given very little advanced notice, no marketing and no IT infrastructure) and that the AL at the direction of WotC changed the rules in the middle of the convention, third that second weekend of the Con overlapped with D&D Celebration, and fourth that we had to convert the modules ourselves with only a few days notice; it went well.

Hopefully the organizers for PAX, WotC, and AL will take some lessons learned from this one. There is a lot of room for organization/administrative improvements to encourage more folks to run games at these types of events and to increase quality etc, but, it was a good time.

[sciencephile]

Awesome. Sorry, I probably should have clarified. I only ran Call of Cthulhu games. PAX's website seemed riddled with issues and I had to rely on Chaosium's Warhorn page (which showed only Call of Cthulhu and Runequest games) to see the game list, so none of the 5e games were listed on that. I wouldn't have played 5e anyway but I probably should have mentioned about the smaller sample size, since it excluded 5e and PFS type of games.

To be honest, I hope they continue the online format. Some of us have a hard time travelling hundreds or thousands of miles to go to a gaming convention in person.

On a similar note, hopefully, we will eventually get some FG Cons going in the future again. I will likely try to attend that now that I have gotten used to running games at virtual cons.

[LordEntrails]

On a similar note, hopefully, we will eventually get some FG Cons going in the future again. I will likely try to attend that now that I have gotten used to running games at virtual cons.

Let me say, the FG Cons I have gamed at, as GM or player, have been much easier to register and get the information I've needed, both as player and GM, than PAX.

Let's see, to run an AL game at PAX I had to;

1. Sign up at Heralds Guild website
2. Join PAX GM Discord Channel
3. Join PAX Player Channel
4. Sign up at Warhorn Website
5. (I think there was a third website too)
6. Never received a list of players registered for my games, so I had no way to communicate with them or even tell them if I was using FGC or FGU before they showed up.

I know there was another DM here who gave up and just didn't run anything because he wasn't willing to go through the hassle.