Smiteworks need to set up a convention team

[portential]

You guys need to set up a convention team to train DM's on how to run Fantasy Grounds. Put up two seminars, one for players and one for DM's. Have a Q&A session set up with people skilled on the tool to answer questions, one hour after said seminar. Have a discount code available for the week of the convention and the following week to give a discount. Next, later in the con, have a session where you train DM's how to create a module in Fantasy Grounds.

Garycon would have been a prime con to do this. They are all Gen X'ers who are money rich and time poor. You could harvest that wealth there easily. Gencon could be another one as well. With volunteers, give them training and buy them their badge for the con as payment. It would be the cheapest advertising campaign you ever ran potentially with the biggest bang for buck.

You need to do something, because the training on the tools, is fractured in thousands of bits, its not exactly easy to follow. I lost 2 of my 6 players switching over to Fantasy Grounds over the learning curve. it's a problem. Until you can fix your training and make it easier to understand and cohesive, the best thing to get people trained up is conventions. Once I got someone in my group who was used to Fantasy Grounds and could explain it, it went a lot better for everyone. The problem is you guys are used to your system and don't understand why people can't pick up on it. Run some focus groups of guys who haven't done VTT's before and use that feedback please in setting up a more cohesive training program.

[LordEntrails]

Have you ever looked at taking some of the (free) classes presented by Fantasy Grounds Academy?
Landing Page | Fantasy Grounds Academy

[Jiminimonka]

Have you ever looked at taking some of the (free) classes presented by Fantasy Grounds Academy?
Landing Page | Fantasy Grounds Academy

This.

[ddavison]

We used to do Gen Con regularly for a number of years but we decided to stop that due to the expense and the inefficiency of running in-person demo walkthroughs with only a few attendees at a time.

Paulette and Brad will be at Gary Con this year, but they are going privately and not as a company event. They both mentioned showing off some stuff there though.

[BelleMuerte]

I will be running around Gary Con in my Fantasy Grounds shirts. Come say hi.

[Camberme]

I'll be running Fantasy Grounds classes / games in Kublacon

[portential]

To me, get a seminar reserved for a con, have the con provide a projector, have the speaker do it virtually, put on a demo how to be a player first, and allow the players to ask questions. Then do a DM section and allow DM's to ask questions. Have a moderator to forward questions to presenter. Have volunteers present to help with questions in person and online. Encourage players to bring laptops and those who registered gets some code for a free 30 day trial to try it out. Just adding one DM will likely add 6 to 12 players in a year. It doesn't have to be expensive but its a start at adding new blood and building good will. If you go back a decade ago, it was really only FG getting word of mouth, now its Owl Bear, Foundry and Roll20 very seldom FG and that is going to kill the player base.

[LordEntrails]

To me, get a seminar reserved for a con, have the con provide a projector, have the speaker do it virtually, put on a demo how to be a player first, and allow the players to ask questions. Then do a DM section and allow DM's to ask questions. Have a moderator to forward questions to presenter. Have volunteers present to help with questions in person and online. Encourage players to bring laptops and those who registered gets some code for a free 30 day trial to try it out. Just adding one DM will likely add 6 to 12 players in a year. It doesn't have to be expensive but its a start at adding new blood and building good will. If you go back a decade ago, it was really only FG getting word of mouth, now its Owl Bear, Foundry and Roll20 very seldom FG and that is going to kill the player base.

It's been done. I don't think it made much of a difference.

I agree that SmiteWorks should do something. It doesn't seem they get the viral word of mouth that other VTTs get. Why? I have no idea.

[SilentRuin]

It's been done. I don't think it made much of a difference.

I agree that SmiteWorks should do something. It doesn't seem they get the viral word of mouth that other VTTs get. Why? I have no idea.

Time & Money.

Is there time to do it - is the cost worth doing it.

I'm betting based on past experiences, the equation came out to "Not worth doing".

[Laerun]

You guys need to set up a convention team to train DM's on how to run Fantasy Grounds. Put up two seminars, one for players and one for DM's. Have a Q&A session set up with people skilled on the tool to answer questions, one hour after said seminar. Have a discount code available for the week of the convention and the following week to give a discount. Next, later in the con, have a session where you train DM's how to create a module in Fantasy Grounds.

Garycon would have been a prime con to do this. They are all Gen X'ers who are money rich and time poor. You could harvest that wealth there easily. Gencon could be another one as well. With volunteers, give them training and buy them their badge for the con as payment. It would be the cheapest advertising campaign you ever ran potentially with the biggest bang for buck.

You need to do something, because the training on the tools, is fractured in thousands of bits, its not exactly easy to follow. I lost 2 of my 6 players switching over to Fantasy Grounds over the learning curve. it's a problem. Until you can fix your training and make it easier to understand and cohesive, the best thing to get people trained up is conventions. Once I got someone in my group who was used to Fantasy Grounds and could explain it, it went a lot better for everyone. The problem is you guys are used to your system and don't understand why people can't pick up on it. Run some focus groups of guys who haven't done VTT's before and use that feedback please in setting up a more cohesive training program.

I have run a few seminars at different virtual cons with limited or mixed results. Many of the challenges with demos online come from the difficulty in conveying the requirements and expectations.
Different users with varying levels of computing power, network issues, and hardware or equipment issues.
I had two sessions with 12 users signed up. Two never showed.
Two users could not connect, so with ten minutes or so of troubleshooting, one of the two was finally able to connect, the other gave up kindly for the sake of the group and had eventually admitted the issues was on his end. One user could not even log into the Smiteworks website to obtain their userid and password, so she dropped out and rather dissatisfied with her initial experience.
Another user had a Mac powerbook with no mouse and a track pad, and at the time I offered to move his token to keep the gameplay going. And finally, another user kept disconnecting from our session. So more than half of the users had issues. This is not always the case, but the randomly selected pool of players and new users in a convention type setting seemed very anticlimactic.

So, a live demo might be decent, but not necessarily time and cost efficient, especially if you cannot access a big screen TV or projector at the convention. It'd be more effective on a large theater type screen as a thirty minute seminar.
To convey the best example of Fantasy Grounds can take longer than an hour. Most people want ten minutes or less. If I was at GaryCon this year, just meeting people, networking, and mentioning Fantasy Grounds and playing in a game I have never tried would be my focus. Especially not if there was no big screen or interests.

Doug and others have run events online too at Conventions.

And post Covid-19 and the OGL mess has lowered the engagement across the board. 2017-2021 was a good run though.