Hello all I had a great time playing Missions at Gen-Con,
With the new FAQ I guess I am glad My previous Character PaPa CeeJay Troll Voodoo Shaman Retired 191 Karma is retired. I made Finnigan the Tir Nan Og Boxer.
I played in the Team Tournament at Gen Con and had a great time playing the iconic characters. I hope that the aggregate actions of the teams participating will be reflected in some new supplement perhaps Corp War 2.0, the legends rules made for a fun game and I got to stretch out my hacking playing NetCat.
My only concern is that neither of my DM's for the timed tourney seemed to have read the adventure before. I know that all gm's are volunteers but given that it is a competition GM's spending 45 minutes of the 4 hours reading the encounters and shuffling papers is a serious disadvantage. Now this is not all sour grapes we did not do well in the first round of the tourny though we had fun, however we did run out of time and were penalized for not completing all of the objectives in the first round.
It would be great if the folks responsible for staffing the tournament could be rated by the event staff and only the most reliable or competent chosen to run the competition event. Asking the questions about the hacking rules or magic or have you even run much 4th edition? Our 2nd DM had not run much 4th less than 5 games.
I could hear some of the teams around us having a great time, not that we didn't enjoy it but if you are going to run a tournament with prizes involved the playing field should be as level as possible and an unprepared DM or missing character sheets 1st round does not do it.
Full Version: Gen Con Shadowrun Team Tournament
Which team were you in the tournament? What GMs ran for you? If you don't want to call them out on the forum, drop me a PM. I'll try and address your concerns with the Cadre.
Your feedback is always appreciated.
While there were various glitches and the tournament wasn't as top notch as you'd like, I believe it was fair for everyone.
The completion of objectives is a major component of the scoring. Unlike Missions events where the GM make an effort to ensure the final scene is reached this is not the case for the Tournament. In Missions, the final scene is important because that is where all the goodies are handed out. In the tournament reaching the final scenes in the alloted time is how you are graded. There is no Karma/Nuyen/Rep handed out at the end of the Tournament. The GMs specifically are moving things along to the end scene precisely because we are measuring the effectiveness of the players in reaching the Objectives. It is the players responsibility to manage the teams efforts in reaching the Tournament objectives. Note that teams going over the alloted time are deducted completion points, they are graded based on where they are at the end of the four hour slot, even if they did play a little bit longer to have their fun.
All the GMs received the tournament at the same time. Only the writer of the tournament has an advantage here. As a GM, I will admit I also flipped through the adventure quite a bit, but this was a function of the layout. I expect every GM had this happen where they needed to flip back into previous sections to look up some material. This had nothing to do with preparedness. A lot of the second night material meant referencing the previous nights content. I was flipping back and forth like mad.
GM quality... there are going to be different quality of GMs. There is going to be a difference in styles. I am not sure where the difference in percieved quality makes a significant difference in your score. I would point out you are more likely to impress a less SR4 experienced GM with your rules knowledge and team work then you mgiht with a vastly more SR4 experienced GM. If someone knows and plays the game at an advanced level to yourself, you can't help but score them high. It's probably harder to impress the burnt out veteran Con GMs. They've seen everything already. More of the same gets the same old scores. If I was playing the tournament myself I'd want a snazzy rookie GM I could impress. There's a reason you get random GM each night, so any of these factors even out. The GMs also get together to review any scoring issues. Outlier scores are reviewed. BTW, I ask rules questions of players even when I know the answer already. It's a way to check if the players know something. The GMs are all volunteers. Bull was fortunate in getting enough for the events that CGL ran. While I'm sure there's some qualification and verification of ability, we do the best we can with whom we have.
Given all that, it may be worth suggesting to Bull that we have pre designated pairs of Tourney experienced and newer GM so give that kind of balance.
While there were various glitches and the tournament wasn't as top notch as you'd like, I believe it was fair for everyone.
The completion of objectives is a major component of the scoring. Unlike Missions events where the GM make an effort to ensure the final scene is reached this is not the case for the Tournament. In Missions, the final scene is important because that is where all the goodies are handed out. In the tournament reaching the final scenes in the alloted time is how you are graded. There is no Karma/Nuyen/Rep handed out at the end of the Tournament. The GMs specifically are moving things along to the end scene precisely because we are measuring the effectiveness of the players in reaching the Objectives. It is the players responsibility to manage the teams efforts in reaching the Tournament objectives. Note that teams going over the alloted time are deducted completion points, they are graded based on where they are at the end of the four hour slot, even if they did play a little bit longer to have their fun.
All the GMs received the tournament at the same time. Only the writer of the tournament has an advantage here. As a GM, I will admit I also flipped through the adventure quite a bit, but this was a function of the layout. I expect every GM had this happen where they needed to flip back into previous sections to look up some material. This had nothing to do with preparedness. A lot of the second night material meant referencing the previous nights content. I was flipping back and forth like mad.
GM quality... there are going to be different quality of GMs. There is going to be a difference in styles. I am not sure where the difference in percieved quality makes a significant difference in your score. I would point out you are more likely to impress a less SR4 experienced GM with your rules knowledge and team work then you mgiht with a vastly more SR4 experienced GM. If someone knows and plays the game at an advanced level to yourself, you can't help but score them high. It's probably harder to impress the burnt out veteran Con GMs. They've seen everything already. More of the same gets the same old scores. If I was playing the tournament myself I'd want a snazzy rookie GM I could impress.
There's a reason you get random GM each night, so any of these factors even out. The GMs also get together to review any scoring issues. Outlier scores are reviewed. BTW, I ask rules questions of players even when I know the answer already. It's a way to check if the players know something. The GMs are all volunteers. Bull was fortunate in getting enough for the events that CGL ran. While I'm sure there's some qualification and verification of ability, we do the best we can with whom we have. Given all that, it may be worth suggesting to Bull that we have pre designated pairs of Tourney experienced and newer GM so give that kind of balance.
Eh, I'll speak up as I think i was your first round tourney GM.
Some of the problem was was a physical one, the GM packets for the tourney didn't make it there until Friday or Saturday so most of us didn't get our packets until right before the tournament. While I did review the material when it was went out electronicly a week prior to gencon I like everyone else have a lot on my plate in the intervening time. Plus there's just the fact that the tourney contains a boatload of information presumably more so this year. The players had to read the dossier on one character, the GM's have to read the write up on all of them, then read the module etc etc. That's a lot of information to take down and digest. So on that part at least all the GM's should have been consistent.
Now this was my first year GMing the tournament so in hind site while consistency is important I shouldn't have focused as much on the bare text in the module and just drew in the details from memory and let you guys go. Part of my problem at least at your table is I went to flip through the packet and a fair amount of the stuff wasn't meshing well with my memory.
So as Radiant said all the GM's were at a roughly equal level of unprepared and all the tables more or less ran consistant. Of the first nigth tables only one table ran in under time and they accomplished that by skipping significant swaths of material, which in turn cost them completion/roleplay points.
I'm not defending things and I think your concerns are valid, i'm just trying to assure you that if it was broke it was broken pretty much across the board
Some of the problem was was a physical one, the GM packets for the tourney didn't make it there until Friday or Saturday so most of us didn't get our packets until right before the tournament. While I did review the material when it was went out electronicly a week prior to gencon I like everyone else have a lot on my plate in the intervening time. Plus there's just the fact that the tourney contains a boatload of information presumably more so this year. The players had to read the dossier on one character, the GM's have to read the write up on all of them, then read the module etc etc. That's a lot of information to take down and digest. So on that part at least all the GM's should have been consistent.
Now this was my first year GMing the tournament so in hind site while consistency is important I shouldn't have focused as much on the bare text in the module and just drew in the details from memory and let you guys go. Part of my problem at least at your table is I went to flip through the packet and a fair amount of the stuff wasn't meshing well with my memory.
So as Radiant said all the GM's were at a roughly equal level of unprepared and all the tables more or less ran consistant. Of the first nigth tables only one table ran in under time and they accomplished that by skipping significant swaths of material, which in turn cost them completion/roleplay points.
I'm not defending things and I think your concerns are valid, i'm just trying to assure you that if it was broke it was broken pretty much across the board
One thing that we did when I ran tournys for the RPGA was get together the night before the tourny and go through the tournament encounter by encounter, answer rules questions and clarify materials to achieve the most we can for parity in the GM's and the experience of the players. Something like that might be a good idea for you folks in the future. My crew was in Delta Table we had our share of inter-party conflict. I would like to emphasis my crew and I had a good time especially the second round which we got to finish but we started 20 min late the first round do to character sheets that were not found and were not given those 20 min back at the end.
The contention that everyone was equally unprepared is not a good one to make. If some tables start on time and others start even 10 minutes later, due to the GM, that is not equality. As the premier face for Shadowrun at the Biggest Gaming Con in the us everyone should be equally prepared not unprepared at all. Not broke at all but one of the best experiences people have playing shadowrun anywhere. My friends and I are still planning on hitting the tournament again next year hopefully it can be organized a little better and folks can be encourgaged/bribed/guilted/beaten into being ready.
That's my two sense.
The contention that everyone was equally unprepared is not a good one to make. If some tables start on time and others start even 10 minutes later, due to the GM, that is not equality. As the premier face for Shadowrun at the Biggest Gaming Con in the us everyone should be equally prepared not unprepared at all. Not broke at all but one of the best experiences people have playing shadowrun anywhere. My friends and I are still planning on hitting the tournament again next year hopefully it can be organized a little better and folks can be encourgaged/bribed/guilted/beaten into being ready.
That's my two sense.
This is a "lo-fi" version of our main content. To view the full version with more information, formatting and images, please click here.