Monthly Archives: February 2020

RPGs

Registration Chaos For Gary Con 12

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Today, February 22, 2020, at Noon Central U.S. time, Silver Badge registration opened for Gary Con 12.

The server almost immediately had issues and no one could stay logged in. The company that runs the online even registration service, TableTop Events indicated that their Cache servers had an unanticipated issue, even though they had prepared for the load of all the badge holders signing up simultaneously.

Sadly, that effort was short-lived. A few individuals, such as myself, were able to select events into their carts and complete checkout.

Thankfully, the decision was made to allow those few who checked out to keep their registration.

Later the decision was made to keep items in the carts of those who did not complete checkout. Normally, they expire after two hours.

Direct Link to Facebook post with the link contents below plus a screenshot.

https://www.facebook.com/GaryConLLC/posts/2791721214229655

Full Text:

Greetings Seekers,

Today, TTEs server had an unprecedented error and were disabled. We suspended sales at that time to take the load off the servers while they were repaired. No tickets were able to be sold before then, to our knowledge. The president of TTE released a statement regarding the error at that time and repaired the error. We attempted to reopen, but more errors kept popping up and the servers, despite adequate load, were still not functioning.

At this time, it seems our best option is to reschedule the launch. We understand that this is incredibly inconvenient and disappointing. We don’t quite know when we will reopen, but we promise to notify you by update through TTE at least 24 hours in advance. Some attendees were able to get tickets. We are unsure whether we will reset tickets at this time, but we promise to give you notice on our decision soon.If you have further questions, please feel free to contact me. It may take me a little longer than normal to answer as I have many, many emails to sort through already, but I will personally respond to each and every email I receive.

Update @ 1:43pm: The staff has made a decision regarding tickets already sold: you will certainly get to keep those. We believe very few were actually able to accomplish this feat and it seems inequitable to take those tickets away from the lucky few. TTE normally empties carts after 2 hours, but TTE has disabled cart expiration, so events in your cart right now SHOULD stay in your cart.

Thank you,
—
Caroline Burks
Director of Guest Relations
Gary Con Gaming Convention
Caroline@garycon.com

History

Registration for Gary Con has had issues in the past. They have used TableTop Events for the past several years. This year’s issues have been the worst that I’ve seen it. The history of past issues has not helped.

When the registration failed the first time, Table Top Events shared this through the Gary Con Facebook page. Direct Link.

https://www.facebook.com/GaryConLLC/posts/2791673430901100

Full Text:

An explanation of the TTE problem today and an apology from the head of TTE, JT Smith. Thanks to JT and his crew for their quick response and resolution today.

“Tabletop.Events were prepared well in advance of the launch of Silver tickets today. We had fired up over 20 extra web application servers and nodes to the database. Unfortunately, something we could not anticipate was that our cache server was about to be overloaded. The cache server is used to maintain user login sessions. We’ve handled conventions double the size of Gary Con on it, and even Gary Con itself on it without issue in the past. We’re still trying to diagnose what went wrong there. Needless to say we have replaced it with larger servers that are 12 times the size of the current servers just to make sure that it can’t happen again.

“Even though we had done everything we thought we could do in this case, Tabletop.Events still takes full responsibility for this outage. We are sorry we caused a delay in your registration. We apologize to both Gary Con and the attendees. Moreover, as the owner of Tabletop.Events, I am also personally sorry for this mishap. We will do better.

-JT”

All Over Again

Unfortunately, the re-try at 1:00 PM Central had issues again. Thankfully, as mentioned above, those with successful completion get to keep their registration. Also those with items in their cart will keep their cart when it goes live again.

On top of issues with the hotel overbooking some rooms that lead to confusion and anger among some, this has lead to a lot of harsh criticism across social media.

My Experience

My first Gary Con was number 8, and I’ve been every year since. Registration hiccups have been minor, to me. Other things, like no alert of cancelled games, table service being slow or occasionally not happening. Overall, they have been great experiences and the minor issues are fairly easy to overlook.

Growing Pains

This year, Gary Con is the biggest ever. It has morphed from a con focused on older games and miniature war games to having a large contingent of newer D&D 5e with Adventurer’s League and official Wizards Of The Coast support. Some have called this selling out to the big money, or big names, as more D&D celebrities are attending.

D&D 5e and all the rest is not a problem in itself. The real issue is that the family is committed to keeping it in Lake Geneva, home to D&D and the original TSR. This results in the reality that there is only one location big enough to hold it, and that location has exceeded capacity to house it under one roof.

It is a huge roof with the boonies at the far end of connected structures. This year, some events are occurring on the grounds of the venue but in detached buildings that are 20 minutes by available transport away. Some comments online indicated they were not sure if there was a walking path available for that.

This year will be a real test for Gary Con. Will it be capped at a certain size? Will Gary Con really be able to stay in Lake Geneva?

I certainly hope it can stay in Lake Geneva. I really like going to Gary Con as I get to see some people I don’t see anywhere else, other than other similar cons. Sadly, there is a limit to how many cons I can attend each year.

Suggestions For Improvement

I suggest getting the word out across all social media, and not just Facebook. There are lots of people who avoid Facebook and were left in the dark on other social media until those of us on Facebook could fill them in.

Such instances of “telephone” can lead to inadvertent misinformation being introduced.

Gary Con is on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and perhaps others. I suggest coping & pasting the message from one social media to all the others so those who only follow on one get it.

Also, Table Top Events should have a way to put up a message on the website so we all see it.

I’m no expert on running a busy website, but I know there are ways to deal with this. I hope they can keep a list of the issues that occurred this time, and all prior times, and verify that all of those issues are resolved before trying again. It makes both Table Top Events and Gary Con look bad.

I’ve gone to other, smaller cons that use Table Top Events and had no issues. Table Top Events handles conventions larger than Gary Con. I am not aware of the other cons using Table Top Events having these types of issues.

KUDOS

Caroline is the Director of Guest Relations and she is the best person for that job. She remains cool under pressure and handles the chaos of stressed out gamers. We should all show our appreciation to Caroline, as she is a key member of the Gary Con team. We should all chip in and get her something nice, like a vacation in a place without internet, or at least a gift card to a business she wants to patronize.

RPGs

How To Stream With OBS

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I mentioned online that I finally figured out how to stream and that it isn’t difficult, there’s just a lot of moving parts. I had one person ask me to share what I know. You can see the companion YouTube video here.

First, let me be clear that I am not an expert and have only live streamed on Twitch a half dozen times at most, and never for more than a few minutes until today, when I streamed for an hour. I recorded three new episodes for my YouTube series, Roll20 For The Absolute Beginner.

It was not the best looking stream, nor the best sounding. Proper lighting and audio are two entirely different topics for which I am not the best example. I figured out how to make it work, I didn’t say I do it well. As with anything, practice and familiarity, plus an effort to improve will yield results.

In my experience, you want to use OBS, Open Broadcaster Software. It is open source freeware that is quite sophisticated and can handle both recording your screen, or your webcam, or both, plus the webcams of others.

I have long wanted to record games I run online. Mostly for playback to analyze my GMing or to record how I explained something because I really liked how I said it, but can’t recall the specific words from memory. But getting the audio from other players to record at a volume one can easily hear always seemed always to be missing a step.

Between a combination of a few different videos and my own trial and error, I finally hit on the right formula to record the audio of another person from an online meeting software. This also allowed me to make sense of how to get the right hardware settings on my PC and get the right results for recording a small overlay with my webcam displayed over my web browser displaying Roll20 or other browser window.

I recorded about a half dozen short videos and played them back until I got the sound right. For me, I found that using the headset speakers and microphone prevented the microphone from picking up the sound from external speakers and causing an echo. There is probably a way to do sound so that it doesn’t cause an issue between all the pieces, but this was a solo operating for me to do streaming.

The same settings that allow me to stream a browser tab will also let me stream a video game. Again, none of this is hard, it is just a matter of figuring out the right combination of hardware settings and settings in OBS to get the results you want. Once you get it working, improving the lighting and sound is the next natural progression. There is a lot of information online about those topics which are beyond the current scope.

The hardware settings are going to vary by Operating System. Windows 7 is now outdated and no longer updated by Microsoft. Windows 10 is different in how you get at the hardware than Win7. Linux may vary on the GUI controls that are available with different window managers, or the command line. MAC OS, since it is a UNIX variant, should have both a GUI and command line option for configuring sound and microphones.

Once you have the hardware defaults set correctly, you can use the settings in OBS. OBS can rely on the default speakers and microphone, or you can specify the exact one of each you wish to use.

One can live stream a game or other activity to Twitch, YouTube, or other streaming service.

One can also use it to simultaneously record for editing and uploading to YouTube or other VOD (Video On Demand) service.

Obviously, this means that one can also either stream and not record it, or record it and not live stream it.

If you want to live stream an RPG, I recommend the three videos that Jacob Noorman of the Mini Terrain Domain YouTube channel put together.

Zoom is an online conferencing service that has a free option that is unlimited for 2 people and limited to 40 minutes for 3 to 100 people. There are two tiers of paid service that allow hours of use. Only one person, the host, needs a paid account. One could just as easily use Skype or other similar service.

How to Stream D&D and Other RPGs using OBS & Zoom
https://youtu.be/AvmdQaToSZw

How to Make Overlays and Stream Assets (Part 1)
https://youtu.be/3EAKW1lfucE

How to Make Overlays and Stream Assets (Part 2)
https://youtu.be/xN6YDCsfDTU

RPGs

Professional Online RPG Technology Training

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I may not be the first person others have paid to train them how to use technology to allow them to play RPGs online, but it is a new concept and experience for me. [Listen to the companion Podcast here.]

The other day, I got an email out of the blue asking if I’d be interested in training someone how to use Roll20, and he was willing to pay me for it.

I was a bit shocked. I tried googling the name to see if it was a prank or something to be taken seriously. I couldn’t find any obvious prank or troll, so I replied asking all kinds of questions. Why me? What exactly do you want to know? Do you know how to play D&D already? and so forth. We had an exchange of questions, I proposed a fee, he agreed and we scheduled some time.

He had seen my YT series, Roll20 For the Absolute Beginner, and he wanted someone to get him started running a game for his group, as they are all interested, but none of them have experience in using Roll20. He thought, “Why not see if I can find someone and pay for training.”

He said I was the first person he asked. I found that very flattering.

Friday night we had our first two hour session. Creating a sample game and going over settings and the basics. There are a lot of little things that are hard to recall wihtout using them. So I suggested he just play around with what I’ve showed him so far, and that will help him become familiar with it.

We’ll do another session in a couple days, and maybe a follow up session later, if needed.

I’ve known about professional GMs for a few yeas, but this seems like something that might pan out for players who are not tech savvy who want to use technology to play D&D and other RPGs. There’s lots of different programs for different things, and some people want the answers of how to get started in a format they can absorb and put to use without having to wade through manuals, etc.

As someone who currently plays mostly online, excpet for cons, I love RPGs and if I can help people get over the hump of using a program to help them enjoy their favorite RPG with their friends, I’m glad to help. My YT series, Roll20 For the Absolute Beginner, is very popular and gets hundreds of views a month. I can go much more in-depth one on one than I can in a video that is best kept to 15 or at most 20 minutes.

Peronally, I don’t think it’s hard, but I love technology and have been using internet technology for over 20 years and using Roll20 for 6 years. I’m a dig in a figure it out kind of person. It’s why I’m so good at my day job. As with anything, once you know the answer, it’s easy.

Our first session went well, and he asked for another session, so I think I did well. I was up front about the features I’m not familiar with, like some brand new features, but mostly the paid features, as I still have a free account. So I’ve got some homework to do to help explain some paid features. I’ll probably get a paid account so I can use them and not just rely on the online documentation.

If this ends well, then I may make myself available on a regular basis for paid training. That’s not the way I thought I’d get fame and fortune in RPGs, but teaching how to use the tools is analogous to the merchants in the gold rush. There are lots of people of all ages who are not tech savvy or with the patience to figure it out, or want to start playing right away. Not everyone can luck into a group with a knowledgeable and helpful person to show them the ropes with Roll20.