Site capacity *Important*

cymryc

Squire
Hello Everyone,

We are really close to site capacity. I think there are only a couple spots left. One those spots are pre-reg'd I will be closing pre-reg and the people on the pre-reg list will get priority for sleeping spots.

That said, I know we have gotten an extra body in a cabin by rearranging space.

The sad reality is that the site has 72 beds

We are at 51 PC and 21 NPC pre-regs. of which I know of 2 people who are bring a RV and will be staying in that if we can figure out where to put the RV. This leaves 2 beds.

If you have pre-reg'd and will be late you need to let us know. If you do not your spot might be given to someone else who is on site and trying to find a place to sleep.

Some of these details are still up in the air as staff tries to resolve this difficult issue.

I want to thank everyone for their patience.
Cymryc
 
With this many people parking is going to get tight, please be considerate and try and park a close together as possible.

Please start at one end and just start filling in the lot.
 
cymryc said:
We are at 51 PC and 21 NPC pre-regs. of which I know of 2 people who are bring a RV and will be staying in that if we can figure out where to put the RV.
I was thinking about that earlier, and the best place I can think of is side by side at the end of the road, just past MC, up against the fence of the drainage pond. (People in RVs, I swear that's not as bad as it sounds.)
 
obcidian_bandit said:
cymryc said:
We are at 51 PC and 21 NPC pre-regs. of which I know of 2 people who are bring a RV and will be staying in that if we can figure out where to put the RV.
I was thinking about that earlier, and the best place I can think of is side by side at the end of the road, just past MC, up against the fence of the drainage pond. (People in RVs, I swear that's not as bad as it sounds.)

Yeah, I planned on folding up and stashing the trailer over there to make room in the lot. If the lot is tight, I can park over there also.
 
We're working with our staff and park staff to find an appropriate spot to park the RV, we'll have something figured out.
 
My plane is scheduled to arrive in PDX at 8:24, and I will be leaving directly from there, so I will likely miss the first bit of game, but I would still like a bed!
 
elliotbay said:
My plane is scheduled to arrive in PDX at 8:24, and I will be leaving directly from there, so I will likely miss the first bit of game, but I would still like a bed!

We have a bed reserved for you; we will put you down as a "late arrival" and make sure your bed stays secured for you.

-Adam
 
I wish to express my discontent at the way this is being handled. Full disclosure, my opinion is biased as I am one of the "over capacity" group.

I don't necessarily have a problem with pre-registration being linked to reserving bed space, but the two have never been associated in my presence before, and making the announcement that 'btw, if you don't pre-reg then we are giving away your bed in your group cabin' on the last day of pre-registration is unfair in the extreme. And it was not even 'if you don't pre-reg', it was 'if you don't pre-reg early enough'. By the time the announcement got made, it was really 'People who pre-registered before now get beds, the rest of you are SOL.'

I think we can all agree that sleeping with your group is important, for a number of reasons. Whether it's a convenient place to have private discussions, or having your companions around you when the cabin gets invaded in the small hours of the morning, I have heard some people claim that the number of cabins in Brooks is the reason we have the number of active groups in Landfall that we do. This is a non-trivial change of policy that has the potential to impact the dynamics of in-game interactions.

We have known for a very long time that we are outgrowing Brooks as a camp site. If this was going to be necessary, it should have been communicated well in advance.
 
We apologize for the frustration and inconvenience this has caused everyone, it was not a decision taken lightly.

When we chose the sight, our decision was based on the attendance trends over the past year, which going by those numbers left us with nearly 20% extra capacity. The last few events we've had a 98-100% pre-registration rate, with the majority of players having pre-registered well in advance of the deadline, this event we had a larger spike in pre-registrations later in the period, which caught us off guard and we began looking for solutions. Unfortunately, given the time of year and climate, there are fewer options available for overflow.

Moving forward, I will be checking availability for a different site for our January game and future games.

If any one has question, concerns, complaints, etc, please do not hesitate to contact a member of plot or one of our player reps, you can find the contact information for our staff here.
 

"We will be opening beds up to underlined folks and people who are listed from 11 or higher (see below for what that means) starting at 21:30 (9:30p). If you know you are going to be late, or suspect you might be arriving after that time, please reply here to let us know, otherwise we will give your bed away."


Since we travel from a good distance, I'm glad I checked the boards again. Frankly if I had shown up to game on Friday late due to traffic, life, etc. and having pre-regged and had a bunk assumed secure only to have it given away? I would have left. I'm entirely with Daniel on this one, I understand that sites are hard to come by and this is out of the ordinary, but this needed to have been handled very differently.
 
Although I have a bunk and will be there early, I don't like how it turned out the way things ended up being handled either, though it couldn't be helped and I have no grudge against anybody. Ideally everybody would have their own cabin to themselves and their group. Most sites this is okay cause there are enough buildings. It just can't work out that way at sites like brooks, and it actually pisses me off when there are no more empty cabins available and a lone player or two has to go looking through a campsite to find a bunk and everybody tells them "Sorry, this cabin which fits 10 people is reserved for my group of 5, even though I don't own this building in game and have no authority oog to deny you a bed here." But this game caught everybody by surprise cause this many people showing up for an oregon game is irregular. It's not anybody's fault(Not the orgs or players alike), and we just need to grit our teeth through it this one time. Of course we don't need to smile and pretend it's not a big deal. It's lame, but at this point it's up to us the players to help each other out to make the best of this bad situation. Make room on the floor for more people, bring air mattresses, hammocks, etc. which makes life easier for the org too. They probably feel like crap about it. But now they have a heads up for next time.
 
This was a bad situation to be in. I too, do not like how it was handled. With no set presidence for any of the following, the decisions made and poor planning were far more impactful. To note I am fairly unbiased, since my group is all together and we already planned for someone on the floor:
Never once has it been required to check the forums regularly or the Facebook page to ensure housing or anything else. Last minute you utilized two mediums that not everyone checks or chooses to have access to and other than the aforementioned forums, your website has no information about this on it.
You left the cabin planning to a group leader without directly contacting any group leaders, at least no one in my group. I happily stepped up but had I not taken the initiative, there would have been a serious problems.
The only "punishment" to preregging late or not at all was monetary, without making an announcement long before the incident, adding the caviat of and you also don't get a bed is really a turn off to people who may just be showing up to try out a game. It punishes new player who would be uninformed of our various outlets for information and logistics forms.

I guess what I am getting at is this could have been handled a lot smoother and delicately. No one is saying that running a chapter is easy and that any of us wouldn't have done the same things, with us in staff's shoes. We could have gone about this in a less heavy handed way. Once the announcements started getting spread around Will offered a huge tent to use, a few people offered to stay in their RV, people offered to double up on beds, etc. We could have made it work. I would highly recommend making an announcement at the start or end of game addressing this and setting a known policy for issues like this.
 
Hey everyone!

It's a good day. Sun is shining, Seahawks are winning, and I'm stuffed. I hope you're all having a happy day, too.

This situation sucked, and I agree that it could have been handled better. Hindsight is what it is, you know? Fact is, the game we all love is managed by volunteers who put a lot of work into making sure this chapter functions. They're paid in a form of currency that has no relevancy in the real world. They want us to have a good time, and they take a lot on themselves to do that.

They aren't paid professionals. They're people like you and me who happen to love this game enough to take on these tasks. So when we're giving our feedback, let's remember that. Let's remind them that while we don't really like how they scrambled on this solution, we do appreciate how much work they put in, and offer positive solutions while making criticism.

As a devil's advocate, I understand why they'd tie bunk reservation to pre-registration. It does make sense from a site capacity standpoint, and it would have been -considerably- better to make an announcement at the last event as well as a lot earlier on FB/forums. So that is what it is.
 
Hello everyone, thanks for your feedbacks.

Here are some relevant facts that I think people are either missing or should keep in mind:

  • This situation wasn't even on our radar until 5 days ago when I posted on the Oregon FB group.
  • When I posted my first post on the FB group 5 days ago, we had about 32 or so PC's registered, 8 below our usual PC cabin area capacity and we had about 12 NPC's and staff (that's about 45 people).
  • In the last 8 or so years, we have never reached site capacity at any of our sites. Ever. We have come close (as Joe noted, 80% capacity), but never actually hit.
  • To correct some erroneous information that is apparently going around, our numbers more recently (within the last 3 years) have averaged between 45 and 50 people (that's players, staff, NPC's, etc. together) per event (+ or - 10 or so), still a reasonably comfortable amount below Brooks' 72 person capacity. And when we were expecting more people (for example, May season closer), we got a larger site (Shepherd).
  • Two days after my initial facebook post (3 or so days ago), our number of pre-reg'd people basically jumped from 44 up to ~70 (capacity is 72).
  • I've heard that there are an additional 5-8 people who want to come and NPC, but they have not pre-registered or contacted us in any way.

So we have potentially 80 or more people that could show up and 72 beds to put them on and basically two (2) days to recognize we were at capacity, relay that information to you guys, our wonderful players, and then come up with a way to deal with it all as fairly and as well as we could.

This isn't a case of us knowing we were going to potentially have 80 people and be at or above our site's capacity 3 months ago. We had no reason to think we'd even be above 60 people until 3 or so days ago, let alone possibly pushing 80 like we are now.

We recognize that people are frustrated and upset with the situation - we are too! We don't like soiling anyone's good time; we've heard your frustrations and I don't know what else we could have done, or what else to do. If anyone has any specific suggestions, trust me, I'm all ears (or eyes if you write it down). Obviously having more time would have helped, but that wasn't really an option in this case.

We are extremely grateful to everyone who has stepped up and offered tents, air mattresses, and alternative sleeping arrangements. The offers are a very big help. We'll know more on Friday and will do our best to make sure everyone has a spot to sleep, regardless of anything else.

Again, we are very sorry for this situation, and will continue to do what we can to make everyone's experiences as positive and fun as we can make them.
 
I have a 9 man tent people can use. If needed I can also bring my trailer and along with it, 2 10x10 pop ups with walls. As long as people have bedding and we have places to set them all up that's 14 sq ft tent and another 200 sq ft in pop ups. Just let me know preferably on Facebook or email as I am horrible about checking forums. (email is Eric.Mead.dnd@gmail.com)
 
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