"FALL-IN! AAR" Topic

Hello All,

Below are my thoughts on FALL-IN!, both personal and professional, so to speak.

I think that most everyone is aware of the problems that we faced with our events manager flaking out, and leaving us with no events, and overbooking Friday night by 18 games, and Saturday by a half dozen or so. There were several GM's who could not be accommodated, and I feel bad about it, but space is unfortunately limited. I am also aware that some games were missed, as we were not able to recover any e-mails sent to James that included group games. We also could not retrieve games mailed by the USPS. I know what you are thinking, USPS? I have done events for FALL-IN! for the last three years, well, 4 if you include the debacle this year, and I received mailed in forms for all three years, so I would guess that something was missed there this year. The good news is that I received no real complaints from any GM's, they all seemed to be very understanding, and forgiving, which I GREATLY appreciated!!!

We had some issues with the layouts of the game tables in the Ike I Ballroom. I was not able to be in two places at once, so while I was in the Registration area doing my CD work, I was not in the hotel doing the events manager work, which led to the room being set up 180 degrees off! Luckily, the GM's took this in stride, and I once again heard of no major complaints. I know this was difficult, as GM's were constantly setting up in the incorrect place. Guys from my own club were set-up in the right place, when I moved them, based on how I had laid the tables out, only to later find out that the room had been set up upside down, leading to another GM needing the table that they were on. Again, my hats off to the GM's that support HMGS, they had every right to be upset with the way things worked out this past weekend, but they all seem to have taken it in stride. Well Done!

I would like to extend my apologies to the Tournament crowd. The Eisenhower was made aware several months ago that we would not be returning to Gettysburg in 2010. I do not know if this caused them to double book the hotel for this week, or if it was a simple oversight, but either way, it affected us negatively. The hotel had a convention in during the week; it was some sort of handicapped association. These folks were booked into the IKE II Ballroom until Noon on Friday. Many of the tournaments were booked to start at 9 or 10 that morning, and were forced to delay until the other folks cleared out, and we could get tables set. I hope that most of them were not too upset. I did have two people tell me that I am an anti-tournamentist because of this. I can assure you that this is not the case, we did the best that we could with the situation at hand…

In addition to the above, we had a new registration system running for this show. I hope everyone will extend a thank you to Jim McWee for his work on this system. It is not yet perfect, but he has done an extensive amount of work to get the system to where it is. We had some issues, but seemed to overcome them pretty quickly. Love or hate it, it appears to be here t stay. I hope that our experiences will make it better for Cold Wars and Historicon, and by the time it gets back around to FALL-IN! next year, all of the bugs should be pretty well stomped out of it. I would love to give out the numbers for the show, but I simply do not have them yet. Jim will be working this week to pull the reports from the system to create the numbers. I will be posting this data as soon as I have it available, please bear with us…

I spoke to a few dealers, and most reported sales that were not great, but somewhat better than expected with the current economy. I know my spending was greatly abbreviated, not because of the economy, but because of my lack of time to stroll through the hall! We had a couple of new dealers, and I hope that they did well, and will return next year. We had two thefts reported by the Constable on site. One stand lost a book, and one lost about 8 packs of miniatures. It is a real shame to have this kind of thing happen. Thankfully, this is not the norm!

For those who were following along at home, I resigned my position as FALL-IN! Director a month or two back. The reasons were many fold, but I had every intention of making 2009 my only year of running the show. Many things transpired during the show this year at the organizational level. The changes resulting in some of my concerns being alleviated, and several members of the BOD having a compelling plea to stay on for next years, I reluctantly agreed to give it another go. For better or worse, you will once again see me at the helm next year, sorry! I know there will be a lot of debate about the show, both for its moving from Gettysburg to Lancaster, and for the fact that it will be on Halloween Weekend. Let me go on record now as saying that I was not involved in any fop the decisions above, but I will do the best I can to make the weekend enjoyable for everyone.

OK, I think that covers the basics. From a personal perspective, I had a pretty good time. I had way too much to do, leaving nowhere near enough a time to spend the time that I would have liked with my friends. Many of them disappeared before I was able t say goodbye. The good news is that I will have more free time at Cold Wars. I was involved in running one game, but I was called away from that several times to fight fires. Having considered this in advance, we scheduled three of us to run the game, allowing the players to not be inconvenienced because of my commitments. I was scheduled to play in a game on Friday night, but was not able to get there in time. Larry, thanks for the slot, sorry I missed it!!! I did play for about an hour in another game on Saturday morning. Again I was called away, but all of the players in the game were friends, and they were able to continue playing without me. I returned to find my command ruined, but it gave me great fodder to harass him for the rest of the day…

My personal high point during the show was having breakfast with Ed Mauser, a 93 year old Vet of the famed Easy Company. We discussed Vierville, and Foy, and other events in his life. What a great guy he is! I hope that a lot of you were able to speak with him. He very much enjoyed the attention. This was the first time he had been to any type of show, and I understand that he would very much like to do it again…

OK, I am tired, been a long week, I need sleep so I can work in the morning!

Thanks
Andy

I had a great time.

Thank you and to all the staff of HMGS who made it possible.

Andy, both my buddy John and I felt it was one of the best Fall Ins we have been to, all the Mattes cock-ups notwithstanding. Thanks for doing a terrific job.

I couldn't make it, but I'll get you a beer at Cold Wars as thanks for the hard work.

I thoroughly enjoyed Fall In and as a gamemaster the hiccup with the event manage did not affect me. My table was where I expected it and everything ran smoothly. Thanks Andy and all the other support staff!

Great show, good job.

Cheers, Xin

I am very pleased you are staying on for another year. Given the circumstances, things ran as well as could be expected and it was a very enjoyable time both running a game (no hitches and it was a 9am Friday) and playing in several great games on Saturday. Thank you to you and your staff.

Andy…everything went well from the Dulles Wargaming Club's perspective. My hat's off to you brother. Thanks for all you did to make it an enjoyable experience for us.

Thanks for your hard work. I had a great time again this year.
David

Andy, Glad you're going to be back running things next year. Thanks for all the hard work.

A friend and I had submitted, on line, a Friday night 7:00 Sudan Game. It never made it on line or in the PEL. Friday, after the Games Master table was set up I approached the two gentlemen working the table and explained. They found me tables in IKE II at 7:00. They made game cards for 7 and the game went on as planned. I was even able to accommodate two walk ups.

Over all a minor glitch, corrected by two of the "nameless" volunteers that make the show run.

I thank them very much
Mike

Great Job Andy, a heartfelt thanks

Orest

Being an attendee, I wasn't even aware of the events issue…didn't have any problems myself. On the other hand, it seems odd that events couldn't be accomodated as there were empty tables in the two main ballrooms, unless it was just a period of a couple of hours between games where there wasn't time between one finishing and one setting up to squeeze in another one.

I found the staff as efficient and helpful as always. It was a pleasure all round.

Thanks, Andy!

SMPress:

I think that most everyone is aware of the problems that we faced with our events manager flaking out, and leaving us with no events, and overbooking Friday night by 18 games, and Saturday by a half dozen or so.

I've looked around TMP and found bits and pieces, but can you summarize what happened here?

Y'all did a great job with the con. I was surprised at the number of games running full bore at 8:30 pm on Saturday night. Looked like you had a really good turn out.

The table set up thing stumped me for about 30 seconds, until I flipped the map 180 and it suddenly all made sense.

Andy,

I also want to thank you for your hard work. Con Director and Events Manager are always jobs that end up being two person's worth of work anyway, so in my book you carried off the work of four people. The various snafus didn't set my games back and it seems that most of the players I talked to were aware of the issues and had adapted a flexible attitude. I had a great time.

Also wanted to comment that I liked the online registration. As a GM, I like being able to see how many players are signing up – let's me plan on maybe adding a command or two if the game looks to be filling up fast, etc. As a player, it is also helpful in deciding whicg game you want to play to use your pre-reg on and which one you might have a better chance of getting into on-site. Once the kinks are worked out, I'm sure this will be a favorable system for almost everyone.

Later

Brian

Andy,

Great job, and I look forward to next year's event (but not the location or date; obviously as a long-time Civil War author and tour guide, I much prefer Gettysburg, but that's out of your control).

Scott Mingus
The Johnny Reb Gaming Society
York PA

Thanks for all the work you and the rest of the staff put into the show.

I thought I was very good – any complaints I would have would be about the facility not the organization.

The dealers were very good this year I thought – some great deals were had.

Hats off to the I 95 gamers – the FOW tourney was excellent and we will be back again.

Andy:

I had a great time, played some games, bought some toys (more than I usually do, in fact), drank some beers, told some lies. It was a great weekend away for me and I commend you on your hard work and dedication. I am very grateful for your efforts, and relieved you have opted to run FI for at least another year. Well done, sir, and if I can be of assistance to you next year, ask me.

Walt

Andy,

Thanks for your hard work.

In the spirit of moving constructive criticism (not freaking out), there were two issues that arose that made things difficult for the DBA tournament crowd in addition to the ones you mentioned.

First, there were many errors in the catalog (event listing) with regard to our events. One Saturday event was listed as Sunday, the descriptive text for one of my events ("When Things Were Rotten" -- HYW campaign) was overwritten by a copy of the descriptive text for the Sunday Themes, the title for "Rotten" was given as "When Things Were Roman" (which is interesting, but incorrect for the Hundred Year's War), and none of the DBA tournaments seemed to have any location listed in the catalog.

Second, the Sunday Themes got moved to the All-Star on Sunday. Which wouldn't be bad, except that the Ike2 staff locked the doors to the Ike2 ballroom, we left all our DBA stuff there (signup sheets, mapboards, stuff on the walls, terrain), and we weren't told about the move. Our expectation was that we'd stay in Ike2 (where the DBA area was throughout the con). Since I found out about the locked doors at 8:30am on Sunday with the tournament supposedly starting at 9:00, this made it very difficult. We had to get the Ike staff to open up the ballroom, pack up everything, move it to the All-Star, unpack a necessary minimum, and hope that our players developed the pyschic powers necessary to find us.

Again, I appreciate your efforts, and I know that organizing things is a relatively thankless job; I am not trying to scream or point fingers, but the best way for me to help you in your efforts to provide a good con next year is to make sure you get the best information about where the weak links were this year, and what might be improved.

Thanks,

David Kuijt