Red Priest wrote on Jul 20th, 2009 at 5:30pm:Wow.. I can't say enough how disappointed I am with the gaming situation at BabelCon.
I am disappointed with the lack of support I encountered this past weekend at babelcon. Their on-line gaming registration system, and their frequent postings to this group, and others, regarding gaming at babelcon led me to believe that gaming was an organized event at this convention. Soon after arriving at the con, I was readily corrected in this assumption.
Although I registered my game well over a month prior to the con, there was no record of my game whatsoever. In fact, there was no record of any game to be run. It turned out that all gaming was open gaming, and tables were first come, first served. Considering there were only about a half dozen tables in the very small meeting room designated for gaming, this meant if you wanted to run a game in the afternoon, you had to stakeout and sit at your table all day. Sorry, I wasn't about to to do that.
Yes, I am not happy with the way babelcon treated their gaming guests. I was misled as to the organization of gaming and I feel duped.
I'll admit to being rather put off by the spamming around here by babelcon. Whereas it's nice to hear about the doings of local-ish conventions, it would be nice if the representatives would actually participate in this forum rather than just drop their spam here.
Not a happy camper at all.
I made a very similar post on the bayou wars yahoo group. Babelcon is guilty of the same spamming on that forum as well. Their reps only post about their con, and never engage in general gaming discussion.
As one member of this forum, and dupe from the con, I'm tired of it. That said, if reps from babelcon want to be full participants in groups and forums, and not just view such places as
Free Advertising, I would welcome them with open arms as full, participating members. Until then. Stop the spam.
Rob
Rob,
Let me start off by apologizing that your experience at BabelCon was not what you expected. Each year we solve new problems that crop up, and make corrections the following year. Unfortunately, the 2009 Game Room was hindered by a series of unfortunate occurences that may have led to some problems with proper execution of said Game Room activities.
First let me clear up a rumor, as there seems to be some misinformation, perhaps due to a miscommunication on the day of the event. There were two game rooms. The game room you spoke of, with 24-hour "open gaming", was the small room in the hotel. The large game room in the Alumni Center was the main game room, and thats where your game was scheduled to run (along with 14 other games). How you wound up in the auxiliary game room, I have no idea.
As to the game room, there were some issues behind the scenes. At the last minute, two bad things happened. One, the game room volunteer host dropped out on us at the last minute. It wasn't his fault, as he had some serious personal stuff to deal with, but it did cause major logistics problems.
This meant running the game room fell to me, as a backup, but I had already been contracted to work out of state that day, on a work gig 8 years in the making. My solution was to procure Little Wars, the Baton Rouge game store, to take over the two game rooms for the entire weekend. They were supposed to schedule and run the games, as well as sell products to the gamers.
When I returned on Sunday, I only heard good things about how the Game Rooms excecution went, so I did not probe any further. I am saddened to hear your experience was not on par with the rest of the convention goers. If there is anything I can do to make it up to you, I would be happy to do anything within my power.
If you, or anyone reading this, would like to help organize the game room for 2010, I would be happy to give you/them a free weekend Superpass.
As to the advertising here without participating (we are Bayou Wars sponsors, so that forum does not apply, but its true I do not know people on here, nor shop 100 miles from my home in Baton Rouge), I would happily engage anyone in conversation about games I am familiar. I only play Dungeons and Dragons, so if anyone wants to talk about it, I would do so with vigor. Seems like no one talks much about D&D any more.
Thanks,
~Randy