Council of Five Nations - GM Event Submission

Council strives toward the goal of "quality over quantity."  We're a medium-sized con (we expect 250+ this year), and we try to have top-notch events.  As with all the Councils in the past several years, our goal is a nice balance between role-play games, miniatures, board games and other stuff.  We thank you for helping make this happen, and for helping us maintain our high standards of event quality.

We're looking for good, popular games that will draw attendees in the door.  What’s hot these days?... that’s what we want.  Really obscure stuff, and games that haven't been popular for a long time, have generally not done well for us at previous conventions.  Also, the sexier your event description sounds, the better your chance of filling the game. 

For several years now, we've had a bunch of special interest "event tracks".  This helps with marketing efforts, and helps people see quickly if we have events to their liking.  Not all events have to fit in an event track, but we'll create a track if we see a pattern.

Some event tracks that have done well for us in the past, and we expect to continue in 2011:

• Board Game Geek Top 25.  BGG is an excellent gauge of what's popular.  We have found that Council board game events from the BGG top 25 often fill up quickly.
  
• RPGA Dungeons & Dragons - All Weekend.  This is a big draw for us.
  
• Historical Miniatures.  Our goals:
• At least two events per time slot
• At least one World War II event per slot
• A good variety of periods, but our most popular the past several years have been Napoleonic, American War of Independence, American Civil War, and Ancients.
• Pathfinder RPG.  This has been growing in popularity, both locally and regionally.  Art Lobdell's hard work is paying off!
• Battletech miniatures.
  
• Horror!  Call of Cthulhu RPG events generally do very well for us.  Other horror games too.
• Avalon Hill Classic board games.
• Euro Games.  Probably a lot of overlap with the BGG Top 25 list, but popular Euro games almost always do well for us.

It bears repeating - not all events need to fall into one of these event tracks.  Probably only 50% of all published events do.  But, if you'd like to run a game, and you're looking for ideas, maybe looking at these themes will give you some ideas.

We had a good experience at Proctors the past couple of years, so we've made a the decision to stay there until further notice.  By staying in one place, this helps us learn from experience.

Having several people help coordinate the different types of events has worked well for us in the past.  If you’ve got a question about running a particular type of event, please contact the appropriate person below:

Board Games	Eric Paperman	eric /at/ swa-gaming.org	(518) 347-2158
Miniatures	John Rigley	rigley /at/ swa-gaming.org	(518) 573-8223
Role Play Games	Karen Seiz	karen /at/ swa-gaming.org
Other Questions	Dave Cheng	dave /at/ swa-gaming.org	(518) 464-1977
Please replace the " /at/ " with the usual "@" sign.  We apologize for needing to take these anti-spam efforts.

Many of us got started in adventure gaming before we were old enough to drive, and we'd like Council of Five Nations to welcome families and kids. But we also know that the thematic content or complexity of some games makes them unsuitable for young players. To allow attendees and parents to make an informed decision on participation in an event, every event will be assigned one of the following Maturity Ratings:

• Child rating is for children age 6 - 9 with adult supervision
• E10+ rating is for players 10 and up in age (This is the default rating)
• Teen rating is for players 14 and up in age
• Mature rating is for players 18 and up in age.

Our hope is that all GMs will welcome players of ages 10 and above, as a standard. We think a mix of kids and adults at a gaming table is good for us and good for the hobby.  However, we also understand that the nature of some games, or the comfort level of some GMs, prevents this. These GMs should set the Maturity Rating of their game as appropriate.

We also know that it's healthy to have an offering of games targeted specifically for our younger attendees, so they can have fun on their own without adult players at the table.  Our goal is to have a few "For the Kids" games in each time slot, particularly in the morning (C & F) and afternoon (A, D & G) time slots. 

If you've got a game that would be good for our younger attendees, and you're good with kids, we'd love to have you GM for us.  Please indicate "For the Kids" by checking the box on the online form.  Please also be sure to click the appropriate button for the age group you think is best for this particular game (Child = ages 6-9) or (E10 = Ages 10-13).

Please remember that we need to grow new gamers to replace the ones that inevitably attrition away from the hobby over time. If you don't help grow new players, you might not have people to play with in the future.

Some game companies and retailers are donating prize support for select tournaments.  If we get something appropriate for your event, we'll let you know.  Otherwise, if you would like to supply and award a prize for your event, that is entirely up to you.  We’re not making a big deal about prizes this year.

With the growth of this crazy internet thing, more of our marketing effort is moving online.  Printed pre-registration booklets seem to be less important each year.  Not only does this save us huge amounts of money (allowing us to keep costs flat even as our rent goes up), but it gives us flexibility to do some other things to help promote the convention.

One thing we've dabbled with in the past is having photos of games to include in the event description.  Obviously, the more 'visual' the game is, the better this works.  You can see a couple of examples if you check out the full event listing from 2010 here. 

Scroll down about 20% of the way to see a photo of Andy & Chris's awesome Battletech terrain.  There is also a link to more photos in the event description, posted on PhotoBucket.  Keep scrolling to about 75% down the page to see a photo of Wes & Jerry's incredible hand-crafted LotR Dwarven Hall.  (You can't see it in the photo, but the latrine actually shows goblin faces carved into the stone, and the King's 'throne' is a big goblin mouth...). 

If you have some good photos of your game board or terrain that you think would help market your game, please email them to us after you submit your event.  We'll include the best one in with your event description.  Send the photos to council /at/ swa-gaming.org

If you have photos posted at your own online site (PhotoBucket, Flickr, or some other site), and you'd like to provide a link in your event description, please do so.  That's just as good!

To show our appreciation, running a game that is listed in the pre-registration booklet will get you free registration for the whole weekend.  You will still need to purchase tickets for events you want to play in (most games are $2).  Events not submitted in time for the pre-reg booklet will earn you a $10 discount on the registration fee.  Please understand our rationale – we feel that the best way to promote the con is to have as "full" a pre-reg booklet as possible.  If an event misses the pre-reg book, it's far less effective in helping us draw attendees.

As a special token of appreciation to our Game Masters, and as an incentive for you to get your events in promptly, all GMs whose events appear in the Pre-Reg booklet will get a free Council of Five Nations T-Shirt.  This is the fourth year in a row we've done this. 

We hope you like the idea of "collecting one of each color", if you've GMed for us in past years.  Of course, it's never too late to start your collection now.  We're thinking this year's color will be a lighter shade, since we've had black, dark green and maroon the past three years.  Please list the size you want on the Event Registration Form (online version below).  GMs running more than one event (our favorite kind!) still get only one shirt.

Free convention entry for running as little as one event, and a super-classy T-Shirt.  No convention shows their GMs more love than Council of Five Nations!

Update:  As announced on July 28th via SWANews, Game Masters who submit events after August 6th will still get a special GMs-Only embroidered T-Shirt, but it might be a color from a previous year.  We've got to save money and clear out the old inventory.

The events have been coming in for over two months now.  We have a bit over 100 (which is great), but we need about 150 to have a nice, full event schedule to publish in the pre-registration booklet.

Our various Event Czars and Czarinas have been making calls and sending out emails to their contact lists.  Maybe you've received a phone call from one of them recently?

Please make every effort to get your events in by August 24th.  We would like to get the event schedule published by September 1st.

It seems like this internet thing is really catching on.  In the past few years, over 98% of our events have been submitted online, using the web form (keep scrolling down below).  This is our preferred method, as it makes things easiest for us.

However, if you prefer the more traditional paper form, you can download one here and mail or fax it to us.

David Cheng
1700 Western Ave #512
Albany NY 12203
Phone: (518) 464-1977  (any time before 11pm Eastern time is fine)
Fax: (801) 751-9120
Email: dave /at/ swa-gaming.org