To build a bit more off Adam's answer and based on my two prior GenCons:

Grinders/BootCamps are literally one ongoing game of battletech. It never stops, so long as players are at the table. Because you're talking about a non-mission based scenario for a wargame (and they often use much simplified Introductory rules from the boxsets/Intro rules), you just have people show up, learn the basics of the game, slowly increasing the weight class of Mechs assigned. Rinse and repeat. No RP required, hence more time to play. There's the first point.

The "storyline" events have previously been broken up into two hour blocks. They tend to span six or more hours, but each two hour listing (while being the same battle/event overall) counts as its own listing. I'd imagine the Grinders mentioned above are listed the same way, in two hour blocks. Hence, it shows much more games available. Also, as Adam mentioned, there's no real RP here, hence no GM required for each table/game/demo. That means one ref can handle multiple small tables (or in the case of storyline events, one large table with 30 or more folks). Additionally, at the storyline events, you tend to have a much higher proliferation of BT vets, so rules are often handled amongst the very knowledgeable players, and GMs are needed only for rule conflict resolution. And not, you know, GMing an actual RP based Shadowrun session.

You're comparing apples and oranges (an RP game to a minis/wargame), with what sounds like the express purpose of showing lack of CGL support for Shadowrun. While that could potentially be the case, depending on your opinions of CGL, it isn't the case due to what you're suggesting. Meaning, simply because there are less SR games listed (which take more time, and a lot more intensive resources), that isn't the deciding fact on whether or not CGL is giving proper SR support at GenCon.

I can deal with the fact that the events are shorter, thereby allowing more of them. That makes sense, and not something Jason Hardy mentioned. That still doesn't fully add up, unless each BT game is one-seventh as resource intensive as a Shadowrun game. I've played a fair share of con games, and they can still be pretty grueling on the organizers. D.M. says that grinders are broken into two-hour blocks, but IIRC RPG's are allocated in four-hour blocks. So, there should be twice as many BT games as Shadowrun, if time and resources is the limiting factor.

BT is less intensive, I get that. But seven times less intensive? I don't get it.

Edit: I also get it that Shadowrun demos, for some reason, aren't counted. But why is that? Every other company puts all its demos on the schedule, AFAIK.

Because the plan for demos at the moment is to do them more on the fly, not necessarily scheduled. And demoing an RPG, as has been pointed out, is different than demoing mini games.

Jason H.

Cain,
How many sessions of "A Time of War" the Battletech RPG are they running?

I freely admit I have an ulterior motive. It may hint as to when its going to be in print. Fantastic game BTW, I recommend it.

BlueMax

As someone who used to play Event Coordinator for Shadowrun for the cons for FASA and FanPro, I think I can address this a little...

First and foremost, the problem is manpower. It's always been a struggle to find enough GMs to run events at the cons, and Origins is much harder to get people for than Gen Con, for various reasons. When I was organizing, I as lucky enough that I was able to tap some local friends (and folks from IRC and ShdowRN), and then later we started recruiting some of the local players that had won the tournament several years in a row, and that I'd made friends with.

However, running events at a con is very time consuming, especially when you're doing it as a job for a game company. It's fatiguing, and you end up with a fair amount of turnover. It's rare that GMs come back more than 2 years in a row unless they really, really enjoy GMing, or they need to work the con to be able to afford to attend the con. And for most folks, it's less fun to GM than it is to play.

With Miniatures games, as has been said, there's a LOT less for the person running the event to do, so they're less taxing, on the whole. They set things up, they handle rules arbitration, but beyond that, they're passive. They can sit back and relax until something comes up. (I'm assuming a few things here, I'm not entirely certain this is how it goes). There's also generally a lot less prep work to do, since generally at best the BT games are scenarios... You set up the board, lay out the objectives, and you're done. You're not actively progressing and maintaining a story throughout. And for those times that the guys running do actively get involved, hey, they're getting to play Battletech too, so likely it's a bit more fun for them.

That said, I also know that currently the guy heading up the conventions on the Battletech Side is Southpaw, and he's a local. Originally from teh Dayton area, and now up in Cleveland, he draws a LOT of local BT players to run events for him. Chuck, who heads up Shadowrun, is also local, but I don't think he's nearly as active anymore, and only has a couple friends he's able to pull in to GM for him.

As has been stated abover, you can do a lot more "events" for Battletech with fewer personnel, and it's less work for that personnel.

All of that factors in. I know I wouldn;t be GMing events this year if I wasn;t strapped for cash. I'd much rather go and hang out. I enjoy GMing, but I enjoy slacking off more. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)

As for Missions and what we're doing... Adventures take time to write, and we're behind schedule on things, badly. Two coordinator changeovers in the last year, plus a lot of chaos with the license situation, has wrecked havoc with what we can do. There are a total of 5 new Missions being run at Origins for the first time (03-12 Hell in a Handbasket, and the first four CMPs). We'll have four more CMPs at Gen Con, and all 8 of those and all of Season 3 will be available for the Dragon Con coordinator.

Oh, that same GM pool was (and still is, so far as I know) handling the Ctrhulhutech and Eclipse Phase events. So that divides things up a bit as well.

Chuck put out a call for GMs back in Janurary. We had a post here in the convention section, and a post on DUmpshock's front news section. We currently have a whopping 8 GMs running at least 50 events. Most of us are running 5-6 events. I'll also probably be doing extra duty on top of that helping out at the booth, the seminars, etc. Some of the others will be doing that as well.

All I can say is, if you're not happy with the number of events being run? Then step up next year, and when the call for volunteers goes out, put your name down. Because we can schedule 400 events, but if we only have 8 GMs... THere's gonna be some unhappy people at those events.

Bull

AToW is the only RPG that's being handled by someone other than our GM team, so far as I know, and there are only 5 of those events scheduled... Looks like probably one each day.

Have you tried stand-up comedy? The name game is pretty funny. Somebody should have told me that I had locks in my name. Could you maybe at least use my actual name out of common respect?

Like has already been mentioned, though you seem to enjoy ignoring it more. There's a world of difference between a wargame and an RPG, most especially in demoing it. I claim no knowledge of how SR Missions works out, but this is nothing new for Shadowrun and Battletech. I realize that's only going to feed your point more, because you'll say it shows continued favoring of BT. But there's another side that's not being considered here (mostly by you, and I'm really not sure why I'm trying to convince you, but hey, I'll keep trying!). BT has had a very strong con support team and the CGL Agents (formerly Commandos) for BT have been a very, very active (and surprisingly large) group. This stretches back into the FanPro days. As Bull mentioned, the bottom line is that you need GMs to run an SR demo. And that's a lot more time and resource intensive work. And less GMs turn up for SR. Each of the times I've attended GenCon (and the times I've spoken to MooCow about it, one of the previous folks involved in the GenCon SR tourney for a number of years) there's always been a chronic shortage of SR GMs for GenCon. On the flip side, BT has not often had to go asking for extra help in that regard.

When there's a bigger turn out of support for BT from the Agent Team and the fanbase (who are not company folks, mind you), you can expect bigger (and more) games being run. That's not some kind of company conspiracy, that's just pure numbers at play.

I do like how you're continuing to ignore the difference between RPGs and mini games though. That's impressive!

Edit: Unnecessary aggression removed.

If you paid for my flight out too, you might actually get me to one of these things. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/biggrin.gif)

Otherwise, see you at ComicCon.

BTW, I'm surprised to see no one hating on the original SR4 cover. I love SR4A simply for the redone cover, by which I will judge the interior, thank you very much. Awesome book. I just wish the SR4 covers weren't so hit and miss. Need some consitency here. Make 'em all suck, that's fine. At least then I won't get my hopes up (looking at you Arsenal).

And that was petty. Simmer down please.

Already edited: You grabbed it as I was. Apologies.

Well, if a BT gamemaster is overseeing four tables at a time, and he's running two hour blocks, he is handling EIGHT times as many tables as the SR gamemaster overseeing one table across a four hour block.

The local Battletech conventions I used to go to often had anywhere from 4-6 tables being monitored by a single gamemaster. It's not uncommon.



-karma

For the two cons I have GMed at I would have to say that the company made it less fun because I had to run their crappy adventure and run it per RAW. Part of the fun as a GM for me is completely winging it and seeing where we end up. If I were to ever do it again I would insist on either running my own story or just give me a paragraph about the BBEG and what he hopes to accomplish.

It isn't legally dodgy in Canada. If you create a rendition of the Mona Lisa or other work, you own it. There is nothing that can be done about. The area that is dodgy is reproducing a trademarked item.

It worked for me. And although I am not an illustrator, I do have my graphic design diploma.

X-box 360 is an example where the artist refused to add more internal space for heat sinks. Thus you have 1/3rd failure rate do to overheating. The engineers were told to make it work despite the physics being impossible. Now in this case the client ie management supported the artist foolishness and I have see that happen in more than this case. Look at coffee shop art sales and other places artist find buyers. Granted this is a lot like freelancing only they are searching for a client who will buy.

And I'm not talking about commissioning work for no pay. I'm talking about basically holding a contest where the prize is your picture in a book and some cash. Most "art" be it music, paintings, or drama is all about convincing people to buy your art not making your art for someone else. That would be the difference between a rock band and the guy doing a jingle for jack n the box. Most people don't listen to the jingle on their own.

[edit] Lets say however CGL was going to commission art for a project by an artist they like. I would rather have them say "we need a cover for a book about X" rather than get in the way of the artists vision. Maybe it already happens that way.

No, but you could go with someone like Zeleznik or other fabled SR artists of yore who have proven bodies of work and contract them to do all of your books covers, creating a common style and recognizable theme. I'd rather have one person who does pretty good work do every cover than risk ending up with trash like Arsenal, Shadowbeat or the 3rd ED RC with the chick with the magic arrow.

I would, but no one seems to want to fund my plane tickets this year. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/frown.gif) If you find someone to volunteer, I'll gladly run eight to twelve hours of Shadowrun a day.

On the other hand, I'm currently involved in running a RPGA living Forgotten Realms campaign. That usually amounts to cycling through four GM's a month, two tables a week, every week, while avoiding GM burnout. Not as easy as it sounds. Me and one other GM have gotten to game once in the last month, because of the way the schedule has worked out. This isn;t on the same scale as what you're doing, but the point is that the impossible can be done, if you love the game enough.

I wasn't discussing ways which the Shadowrun art direction could be handled; I was discussing why doing it with spec work is not the way to go.

PS: fabled SR artist Zeleznik did the "trash" that was the SR3 Companion cover. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/wink.gif)

huh I'm trying to think of covers I actually liked

So far I got SR1, Sprawl Sites, Lone Star, Shadows of Europe, and SR4A... There have to be more but I can't think of any.

[edit] shadowtech, seattle 2072, seattle sourcebook, magic in the shadows

Quick note regarding # of gm's available, ie: non-company people. I used to run BTech at I-Con in NY, just a few tables, but I was pretty much only one of two at the time for the couple of years I was there.

It's much, MUCH easier to ref a BTech game then GM a Mechwarrior/Shadowrun RPG. I haven't kept up with BTech since they went to the new dark ages or whatever they're called, I was only around from the first boxed set until near the end of the clan era. Simply put, Battletech has less rules. A LOT less rules. You've got gear lists, movement rates, and terrain issues. That's pretty much it. Yeah, they can interact in fun ways, and sensor rules changed some modifiers, but in general, that was it. Shoot mech, hit 'area', remove armor. If it's inside the armor, roll to see if something blew up. Simple, easy.

There are still people trying to understand when bullets stun and when stun bleeds for SR, and that's just the core rulebook.

I could easily trust regular players to know 99% of the rules, and since they're competing with each other, the only time something would come up is usually with some esoteric equipment, like "When do I decide the hex the Thumper round I fired 5 turns ago lands in?"

So, no matter what CGL did, it's incredibly easier to have trusted refs who know most of the things and worst case, have one 'primary' ref for the things the other 4 or 5 don't. In each GM'd Shadowrun, that GM is god, and has to know everything. Much harder job, just from the simple ruleset, nevermind everything else.

So the only way it is satisfactory in your mind is if there is an exact number of equal games/demos of BT and SR being run? Ignoring the fact that the average BT game will be resolved much faster (don't mistake it for an actual fast pace though) than an average SR game, ignoring the huge differences in the actual games themselves, and mostly ignoring everything said to to this point? Again?

So let me ask this. If Magic the Gathering and SR are both being run by CGL, and there are more Magic demos...that means it isn't equitable support? Even though the Magic games will be done much faster? Let's take Battletech and minis out of the equation, since you seem to be zeroed in on it while ignoring the rest of the information presented.

Because Cain decided to ignore this post.

Well you're the one who threw his name out there, I was just making a suggestion.

I happen to like the SR3 Companion cover art.

well, reproduction of the mona lisa is legal because the artist have been dead so long that any kind of retroactive copyright extension to make it illegal would get even the most uncaring people sit up and take notice. However, trying to sell the rendition as the genuine article would get you for fraud, iirc.

thing is, there is a section in copyright related to plagiarism. So if something is under copyright (and anything video, image, audio or written by default is in most places that have some variant on the bern convention as law) you cant create something that can be confused with what someone else have created without getting the consent of the other creator.

trademarks are similar, but have to do with the likeness of brands, not content.

but this is me not being a lawyer.