Re: After Con Report - ECC VII

agoodall@att.net wrote:
> 
> Indy wrote (along with a good AAR):
> 
> > Waiting now eagerly for ECC VIII. Got lots of ideas for scenarios
that
> > I can do... (15mm OGRE, anyone? ;-D )
> 
> At GenCon a few years ago I played in a 25mm Ogre game. *grin*
> 
> It sounds like a number of the con games were too long. Do you have
any suggestions for running shorter games? I realize that it's very hard
to make a multi-player game where everyone has some chance to play and
_not_ have it take all day. Perhaps the same, smaller scenario run
simultaneously is the key (though this means that you need more
terrain). I'd be interested in your take on this.

I think the con games that ran long were primarily DSII, and mostly
because not all the players were familiar enough with the rules to kick
off immediately on the word go. This can apply to GMs as well when one
remembers one thing about the rules, someone else remembers something
else, then an inordinate amount of time is used up trying to track the
rule down. Sometimes newbies are in a game to check it out, and getting
them up to speed will take longer in all respects than it would in FT.
Set up is also longer than, say, in FT (as players tend to study the
terrain and place their units accordingly; there usually ain't no
terrain in space ;-). 

The OGRE game was set up for having X number of players with Y number of
points. Having fewer points would have meant smaller OGREs, and really,
if you're going to play an OGRE game, you wanna play with the Mk Vs if
possible. ;-)  We also wanted to field a variety of OGREs, and that in
and of itself immediately slows down a game. So in that particular game
it was artificially induced to slow down. It was too big in the number
of units that were fielded (plus the players, as John pointed out, spent
the first turn just trying to learn how to maneuver and fight with their
OGREs; that ate up a lot of time).

The Durango scenario got started an hour late. THis was partly due to
the fact I had other con business to attend to with limited time to
attend to it, biting into my own set-up time for my scenario quite a
bit, and partly due to players arriving late. Nothing can be done about
either of these unless I drop the con business stuff I needed to deal
with. And having players make *sure* they get up on time (but that means
getting to sleep earlier and hopefully not having a "skier" party next
door or two floors below blasting their sound system).

Thirdly (or fourthly, or whatever), the GM doesn't want to ride herd on
the players, since they are there for fun, so trying to push them into
moving units in a timely manner is....stressful, for the GM and the
players.

In addition to this, special house rules can *also* slow down (or
speed up, depending on the house rule) a game. The spotting rolls
the Germans and Italiens were failing repeatedly in the WWII/DSII
game meant we were unable to fire on Soviet positions at all (unless
they were fully spotted and exposed). If we had been able to fire
on them from the moment they were within LOS, things would have
heated up (and moved) much faster.

Having smaller numbers of units would also help quicken play as
there would be fewer units to activate in any given turn. However,
fewer units means if someone is pounded hard enough early on, they
are out of the game. A balancing act. But you know that bit. ;-)
Optionally, limit the number of players to, say, 4. The Martian
game had only 4 players. We ended on time (and three of the players
had *entire companies* of tanks to maneuver about, plus command units,
and at least one additional support element for me).

Lots of things that need to be overcome to make DSII play faster
in a con setting. Just need to work on it some more. :-)

Mk