The Making Of « Big Bad Con Admin Site

Feeding the Wolf – And you!

By Sean Nittner, on August 10th, 2014%

Thai Saturday

H&G are very happy to announce a couple of this year’s food trucks for Big Bad Con. Braving the Black Forest to visit us again is the wonderful Nuttawee Taasevigen from Siam Loco Wraps with her fantastic Thai delights. Some of the delicious items on her menu:

: Roti Boquet

: Siam Golden Wrap

: Thai Style Chicken or Tofu Basil

: Pad Thai

: Thai Taco

: Honey BBQ Chicken

And more…including delicious treats like mango and stick rice and thai tea!

Mediterranean Sunday

Joining us for the first time is Sal Khoury from Sajj Street Eats, featuring amazing Mediterranean food including falafel and shawarma. Some of the savory and sweet delicacies on his menu are:

: Falafel in Pita

: Steak Shawarma wrap

: Shawafel bowl

: Pita Chips and Hummus

: So many flavors!

: Baklava

Nine more private rooms – Thanks to you!

By Sean Nittner, on July 21st, 2014%

Hello all, I put a poll out in the end of May asking if it would be worth it for GMs to pay for badges if it allowed the con to rent more private rooms…and you responded in droves!

More than 80% of the responses said they would pay for a badge (or already do), but there were several considerations that you mentioned:

Discounted or free badges for GMs that are facing financial challenges.
Giving an option for Players, Wolf Pack Volunteers, and others to chip in a few bucks to help cover the cost of rooms.

So, we’ve elected for an opt-in choice for GMs and other attendees that have the means to contribute. If you can, please select one of the options below:

Full Support – $40 – If all GMs attending pay for a full badge, or a few players chip in for an extra one, we’ll have enough to cover all the rooms.
Helping Out – $20 – If you’re a GM who wants to contribute, but would still like to see a discount for your contribution, or if you’re in financial troubles, a half price ticket still helps!
Chipping Away – $10 – Every little bit helps. Designed for attendees who want to contribute a bit more to the con or fans of Big Bad Con that can’t attend but want to help out!

Idea – More Private Rooms if GMs buy badges

By Sean Nittner, on May 27th, 2014%

Last weekend I went to KublaCon with the intent of finding a way to bring enough revenue to Big Bad Con that we could afford more private rooms for RPGs.

Considering PFS

Pathfinder Society (PFS) is a good candidate for bolstering the con. They work in large meeting spaces (and could put our big rooms to use) and are largely self organizing. If I brought PFS to the con, I could afford to move some of the existing RPGs out of the meeting rooms and in private spaces.

To get a better feel for it I played several Pathfinder Society games at Kubla. Unfortunately these are the things I noticed that indicated it wouldn’t work well at Big Bad:

There is very little crossover between Organized Play (PFS) gamers and non-Organized Play (everyone else). While I’m savvy that LARPs and tabletop RPGs crowds don’t always intermingle, I feel like that separation is very slight in comparison to the divide between the PFS audience and other tabletop gamers. One of my goals at Big Bad Con is to foster a sense of community and I think that adding a PFS games area would be counter to that purpose.
In every game I played there was at least one (if not) several gamers that were under 18. While I’m a huge fan of the next generation of gaming (raising two myself), Big Bad has always been an 18 and older event. I think we’d run into one organization or the other (BBC or PFS) having to change the way they operate, which I don’t want to ask either one to do.

Looking to GMs

I went back to the root of this. Why are more private rooms needed? This is something that I primarily see GMs asking for. Either because they are loud, or they want the room quiet, or because they like to use music in their games, or their content is very mature. There are a plethora of reasons (all of them good) but most originating from the GMs wanting the freedom and flexibility of having their own space.

After crunching some numbers, we realized that if GMs bought their badges, the con could afford another nine rooms, which would mean more private rooms for games and even being able to further reduce the games in the board rooms from three to two. So, it begs the question…

Big Bad Con has two issues that I would like to improve!

By Sean Nittner, on March 14th, 2014%

1. Donations raised for Doctors Without Borders. Much as I keep costs low and raise additional income (dealers room, sponsoring from Evil Hat, t-shirt sales, Crowdrise fundraising for the Wolf Chase), the con only raised about $500 last year. While I planned to split the proceeds between DWB and seed money for the next year’s con, the amount was less than I hoped, so I gave the full amount to DWB.

2. Game sign-ups. When sign-ups first open, the web host simply cannot handle the traffic. I’ve used WordPress optimization techniques and moved the site onto a virtual private server, but those improvements weren’t adequate. Moving to a dedicated server would be costly, and bite into issue #1 above.

I have an idea that I think might help out both of these issues. The idea is:

Changing the benefit for GMs

Early sign-ups, a week in advance.
One game sign-up per game run.
GMs would buy badges normally, before submitting games to run.

Benefits

A significant number of sign-ups would be done before reg opens, reducing lag on the website.
We would raise more money for Doctors Without Borders.

Logistical Challenges

Some games might fill up before general signups open.*
Can a GM give away early signs-ups to other attendees?
How will the system limit the number of games a GM can sign up for?

I’m sure there are others as well. I have some ideas for those which I’ll work in detail if this change comes to fruition.

I want to get an idea from both players and GMs if this change is something you want. If you have any other concerns about how this would work, please leave them in the comments below.

*Every time I see game fill up quickly, I immediately start looking for GMs to run extra sessions of those games. So even if GMs do fill up a game, I’ll work on getting another one on the schedule.

Please let me know:

Little Red’s Basket

By Sean Nittner, on December 8th, 2013%

252 pounds of food donated to the Alameda County Community Food Bank!

Previous Years

2012: 480 pounds
2011: 230 pounds