Did you find a naked asian man in the trunk or get knocked out by Mike Tyson or get a facial tattoo?

No, maybe, and I don't think I can get that drunk while in the Continental USA unless I'm in Moonshine Country.

You missed out on the GummiBoozyBears of doom. They managed to even give *me* a buzz

Battletech blog. The guy who runs it is a trusted friend of mine. Good blog, to boot.

I missed out on a lot, and I think the Freelancers now know why.

I think your friend may be miscalculating somewhat, or painting all Battletech games with one price (when that's not the case, the price varies from game type to game type). The Bootcamp games, for instance (which your blogger friend points out are the important ones, to get new players trying the game) are still just a single ticket, $2, the lowest price possible, to play the full session. The Trial of Bloodright (as I already mentioned) comes with some pretty hefty prizes attached, so I don't think their pricing is out of line for it. Likewise, Grinder sessions include gift certificates (unless the one I played this year was remarkable and they changed it from last year), so a mild price increase doesn't seem unreasonable to me.

But...*shrugs* Either way, I'm sorry if the price increase diminished his enjoyment of the game any. Several of my former gaming group are the guys running many of those events, and I'll shoot them a link to his blog so they can pass the info onwards and upwards.

$2 for 2 hours and $4 for 4 hours is the baseline ticket price. That's all money that Gen Con collects, nothing goes to CGL. Many, MANY companies have started to upcharge a little for events to help defray costs, since the upcharge amount is something the company does collect from Gen Con.

Gen Con is EXPENSIVE. Travel expenses are through the roof these days. Hotel prices keep going up. Shipping for the product we bring to the show, warehousing and shipping for the booth and supplies. Printing prices alone are crazy just for the paperwork we print for our events. Producing signs, standees, and the like. Prize support. Volunteer support. And one of the biggest expenses of them all, Booth Fees.

Larger companies like Paizo, WotC, Wizkids, and CGL spend tens of thousands of dollars to do what we do at Gen Con, and booth sales don't always cover those costs. Upcharging events don't either, but they do help defray the volunteer expenses a little, and every little bit helps.

You may think a couple extra dollars for an event is a rip off, but apparently others disagree. Most of our SR events were upcharged $2 ($6 for a 4 hour event), with the exception of intro games (Which were base price). And we sold out in 12 hours when event registration went live, and we packed our games to overflowing, and our exceptional volunteer staff stepped up and ran a bunch of extra games to accomodate. We had over 800 players over the course of 4 days.

We can cut back the ticket price, but if we do, you'll see a significantly diminished Demo Team presence, as we simply won't be able to afford the volunteers and prizes we have now.

Bull

Not to mention the greedy little freelancers who insist on being paid.

Odd. When I ran games for catalyst at gencon, I didn't get paid shit. Glad my cost of 0 was passed on to the customer as an upcharge.

Honestly, at this point, it'd probably be more.cost effective to skip gencon and support more regional cons, but that's above everyone's paygrade here to decide, I'd imagine.

As far as I know, CGL (And FanPro and FASA before them) has always provided Volunteer support in the form of T-Shirts, Badges, some form of booth Swag, and at least partial hotel compensation. All of those (except the badge) costs CGL money. We had about 30 volunteers for Shadiowrun at Gen Con, Battletech had a few more, plus we had dedicated booth demoers as well.

Bull

Glad I caught those I did at the Meet'n'Greet. Sorry I missed out on the Claddagh; ah, the life of a freelancer. I remember when I went to Gen Con to play games and not for meetings. =i)

Every con I've ever volunteered to GM at, including Gen Con for the past nine years as well as Gen Con SoCal for all four years that it ran, I received badge comp as well as booth comp at a minimum.

It all comes down to how much you volunteer.

Regardless, it's not like the GMs get "paid" directly from the incoming players' tickets. It's not a "one for GenCon, one for me, one for GenCon, one for me," sort of thing, or like we even get straight-up cash or something.

PS+ pays straight up cash ;P