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Warhorn Statistics that we need to Change

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The Masked Ferret

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« on: <03-10-14/0931:30> »
Guys, if you look at Shadowrun Missions on Warhorn, they have statistics on how Shadowrun Missions is doing. These can be found here.  Currently 0.7%, that is less than 1%, of the organized play games on Warhorn have been Shadowrun Missions games. 0.4% of all the games on Warhorn have been Shadowrun Missions. We need to get these numbers up! Admittedly, the Shadowrun Missions campaign was not added until Mid-February. Still, we should aim higher.

[Crossposted on CDT Forums]
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Belker

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« Reply #1 on: <03-10-14/1443:32> »
As I posted on the CDT forums - why? As a promotional tool? I'm not aware of any gamers in my area (central MD) who use Warhorn to find games in the area. I only make use of Warhorn myself when a convention utilizes it for their event registration system, and the majority of conventions I attend (and run at) don't use it.
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Kincaid

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« Reply #2 on: <03-10-14/1501:52> »
Maybe it's a regional thing?  I live in western PA and use Warhorn all the time to try to find cons running SRM--an area that would include parts of MD, actually.  Do you just have individual websites for those cons, or is there a separate equivalent service?
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The Masked Ferret

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« Reply #3 on: <03-10-14/1631:24> »
Maybe it's a regional thing?  I live in western PA and use Warhorn all the time to try to find cons running SRM--an area that would include parts of MD, actually.  Do you just have individual websites for those cons, or is there a separate equivalent service?

I know that here in Atlanta, I have seen very large conventions (Dragon*Con) with their own scheduling system. Locally, our Pathfinder Society group (which is the main organized play in the area) uses message boards for most Game Days. If they are trying to organize something bigger than 1-2 tables, they generally use Warhorn. SCARAB in SC uses Warhorn, and they are a moderately sized convention.

I added 6 tables that I will be running this summer and it pushed the OP percentage by 0.1% to 0.8%. A little more, and we will reach 1%.
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Namikaze

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« Reply #4 on: <03-10-14/1654:42> »
I have to play devil's advocate here.  Beyond the obvious reasons of brand awareness, etc. why do we care what Warhorn rates Shadowrun Missions?
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Belker

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« Reply #5 on: <03-11-14/2305:10> »
I'll break down the conventions & events I have run at or will run at since last October through this fall (at least as it stands now).
  • Save Against Fear, Lancaster PA - con organizers have their own system
  • CritCon, Columbus OH - Warhorn v1
  • Charm City Game Day, Glen Burnie MD - uses EventBrite, was Conplanner
  • GADCon (Games & Dice Con), Baltimore MD - own system
  • GaryCon, Lake Geneva WI - own system
  • 1d4Con, Winchester VA - Warhorn v2
  • Origins, Columbus OH - well, this will be my first Origins since Baltimore in '91, but I believe they use their own system

This doesn't include the weekly Missions game I run (two weeks a month Season 4, two Season 5) at my FLGS in Glen Burnie. The Season 5 group got big enough that I had to recruit a second GM so we could run two tables. These are listed on the store's website, Facebook page and event calender, as well as dead-tree calendars they create for each month.

In a perfect world there would be some sort of master place one could go to find games, gamers and conventions, but the reality is that it's horribly fractured. For finding individual gamers there's GeekTransit, NearbyGamers and other specialized sites, but I frankly hear of more people connecting via MeetUp. And convention listings are just as bad; my old book marks didn't survive my last PC rebuild but I had four or five different sites with listings, none of which were anywhere near complete.

What I'd really like to see that seems realistic is for Catalyst to put the effort into the CDT program that it deserves, but that requires dedicated resources which don't seem to be available.
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DWC

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« Reply #6 on: <03-12-14/1131:15> »
Warhorn is definitely a relic of a dead age.  It came into its own during the glory days of the RPGA's Living Greyhawk campaign, when it was being run aggressively all over the country by very large numbers of small events who didn't have their own registration and organization infrastructure, and the nature of the campaign rewarded players for traveling to far away events.

With the demise of that massive campaign and the pending demise of LFR, Pathfinder Society is the new elephant in the room, but brings its own infrastructure.

Timothy M. Patrick

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« Reply #7 on: <03-12-14/1234:00> »
Warhorn is definitely a relic of a dead age.  It came into its own during the glory days of the RPGA's Living Greyhawk campaign, when it was being run aggressively all over the country by very large numbers of small events who didn't have their own registration and organization infrastructure, and the nature of the campaign rewarded players for traveling to far away events.

With the demise of that massive campaign and the pending demise of LFR, Pathfinder Society is the new elephant in the room, but brings its own infrastructure.

Technically we have our own infrastructure as well antiquated as it may be http://catalystdemos.com/
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The Masked Ferret

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« Reply #8 on: <03-13-14/1241:59> »
I have to play devil's advocate here.  Beyond the obvious reasons of brand awareness, etc. why do we care what Warhorn rates Shadowrun Missions?

We don't, really. Beyond getting more people excited about Shadowrun Missions, there is no point. But marketing the campaign in every way is important, and someone could look at Warhorn, look at the Shadowrun statistics, and go 'Nah, Shadowrun is not important because it has such a small share here on Warhorn', and you might loose a possible event or player.

I'll break down the conventions & events I have run at or will run at since last October through this fall (at least as it stands now).
  • Save Against Fear, Lancaster PA - con organizers have their own system
  • CritCon, Columbus OH - Warhorn v1
  • Charm City Game Day, Glen Burnie MD - uses EventBrite, was Conplanner
  • GADCon (Games & Dice Con), Baltimore MD - own system
  • GaryCon, Lake Geneva WI - own system
  • 1d4Con, Winchester VA - Warhorn v2
  • Origins, Columbus OH - well, this will be my first Origins since Baltimore in '91, but I believe they use their own system
I am impressed, sir. Aside from a home game I started after last Dragon*con, I generally don't GM too much Shadowrun except at Dragon*con.

This doesn't include the weekly Missions game I run (two weeks a month Season 4, two Season 5) at my FLGS in Glen Burnie. The Season 5 group got big enough that I had to recruit a second GM so we could run two tables. These are listed on the store's website, Facebook page and event calender, as well as dead-tree calendars they create for each month.

In a perfect world there would be some sort of master place one could go to find games, gamers and conventions, but the reality is that it's horribly fractured. For finding individual gamers there's GeekTransit, NearbyGamers and other specialized sites, but I frankly hear of more people connecting via MeetUp. And convention listings are just as bad; my old book marks didn't survive my last PC rebuild but I had four or five different sites with listings, none of which were anywhere near complete.

What I'd really like to see that seems realistic is for Catalyst to put the effort into the CDT program that it deserves, but that requires dedicated resources which don't seem to be available.

Meetup is definitely a place to go. Frankly, I didn't even know that there were other sites that competed with Warhorn. I never thought of Warhorn competing with meetup. I have seen Messageboards used a great deal.

Technically we have our own infrastructure as well antiquated as it may be http://catalystdemos.com/

I somehow managed to miss that we had one of our own, even though I have been posting events on there for years. Hmm... You gentlemen make me think.

So far, I have:

As places to post Shadowrun stuff.

Now, back to the Original topic:

Well, everyone agrees that the situation is terrible. Listings are fractured. The advantage that Warhorn has over many of the other offerings is that PFS also utilizes Warhorn a good deal - if a small con uses Warhorn to organize PFS, we can usually use the same site to list our Shadowrun games. I am not saying it is ideal. I am not saying that there are not better options. But, Warhorn is here and they are working on improving. Why not work with what we have until something better comes along?

Also, keeping up lists of conventions and dates, etc, would be Hard work.
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Namikaze

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« Reply #9 on: <03-13-14/1347:21> »
Based on the other posts, it sounds like Warhorn isn't the go-to organization site anymore.  So...  *shrug*?
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Timothy M. Patrick

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« Reply #10 on: <03-14-14/0848:22> »

I somehow managed to miss that we had one of our own, even though I have been posting events on there for years. Hmm... You gentlemen make me think.

So far, I have:

As places to post Shadowrun stuff.

Now, back to the Original topic:

Well, everyone agrees that the situation is terrible. Listings are fractured. The advantage that Warhorn has over many of the other offerings is that PFS also utilizes Warhorn a good deal - if a small con uses Warhorn to organize PFS, we can usually use the same site to list our Shadowrun games. I am not saying it is ideal. I am not saying that there are not better options. But, Warhorn is here and they are working on improving. Why not work with what we have until something better comes along?

Also, keeping up lists of conventions and dates, etc, would be Hard work.

Yes it is a mess as a player and GM I hate the lack of organization and I know if you want to go to a convention style game you need to schedule well in advance so I have been crawling all of the forums; this one, dumpshock, shadowrun, and the cdt forums to note every convention that will have shadowrun at it and post it here.

http://criticalglitch.com/?page_id=197

I do my best to check these sources once a week
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Belker

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« Reply #11 on: <03-14-14/1052:16> »
Yes, I run at a lot of conventions. I will concede that I may be a bit bonkers.  8)

I get the desire to up the stats to promote the game. But in the absence of any real data, I'm unconvinced that the reward would be worth the effort. That said, I'm making assumptions about the size of the population of people using Warhorn to find games based on my own (anecdotal) experience which could be way off base. But I'd comfortably bet on it being fairly small.

I'm not saying people shouldn't list their games there. I just don't see how it would work for the many sessions I run.
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PittsburghRPGA

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« Reply #12 on: <03-18-14/1033:14> »
As one of the Demo Agents in Western PA, most of the yearly conventions use warhorn (COSCon, Tekko, SibCon, GASPCon), but the monthly game days do not. Whether they are the GASP monthly game days, COS monthly game days or from Meet Up groups or whatever, they get organized on some message board.  Ancon and Con on the Cob (eastern Ohio about 2 hours from Pittsburgh) both use their own in house warhorn like sign ups, because they're under MTSB gaming.

BTW, Tekko's Missions offering will be two sessions of Welcome to the Sixth World, and SRMs 5-01, 5-02, and 5-03 and that's in just over two weeks the first weekend of April.

Cordially,

Eric

KarmaInferno

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« Reply #13 on: <03-24-14/0923:28> »
The majority of conventions in the northeast US seem to use Warhorn still.

Of course, it's 90% Pathfinder games these days.



-k

Timothy M. Patrick

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« Reply #14 on: <03-24-14/1007:41> »
No one is saying not to use warhorn it' more a case of there is no point in going out of our way to pad the stats so to peak in warhorn for shadowrun games if that is not the system that is currently used for the venue. It's a tool to be used in the right situation each GM know's what works best for there region and there event.

We are never going to be the same size as Pathfinder the all we need to remember is to focus on what we do and make sure our players are having a good time.


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