Penguicon 2013 Dominion Tournament Postmortem Analysis

[nemorathwald]

I prepared for this year's tournament more meticulously than any before, but got a worse outcome than ever before. Contestants: I hear you, I understand exactly what caused this, I have a plan to fix it, and it will never happen again. Previously, I have never had such space constraints that I would have to make it clear to the programming team that my event needed tables empty for an hour beforehand to set up the tournament. That was my downfall.

The sign-up sheet was almost full. The tournament was scheduled to start at 4PM. I was scheduled to be in the Penguicon Board of Directors meeting from 3 to 4 PM, so I got some minions to set up the tournament. I gave them setup instruction sheets and one pre-assembled material packet per table. Unfortunately, there was a presentation going on in the Private Dining during that hour, so all the tables were full of gamers. My minions are kind-hearted and would never kick gamers out of the only places available to play. Due to space constraints, they would effectively close down the entire game room, end all the games in progress, and kick pretty much everybody out. I was the only one assertive enough to do that, and I was in a meeting.

As a result, setup did not take place, and the tournament started almost an hour late in a huge panicky disorganized rush, while the room was crowded with contestants. A lot of our signed-up players walked out during this time, meaning we had to re-organize the seating chart, and it took even longer. There were some setup errors, so some games had cards in them which I did not intend, resulting in extremely slow and/or swingy games.

How to fix it:

1. A sign on each table at the start of the day, saying "Please be done with games on this table by 3PM, to allow for Dominion tournament setup".
2. Do not accept being scheduled to do something else during setup.

Congratulations to the winner, Mike Riverso! He jotted his contact info and shipping address on Evernote on my phone. As soon as he left, it gave me a "java.io.IO" error and lost his information. I put up a sign in the lobby, and he sent me his info through email, so all's well that ends well. He will receive a copy of the new Dominion expansion, "Guilds", in about a month when it is published.

New things that went well:

Penguicon's new Dominion collection. The convention now owns two copies of every Dominion product, so we had enough cards. With thirty-two players and eight simultaneous games, it was the largest Penguicon Dominion tournament ever, so we needed it!

Using a megaphone. No more shouting myself hoarse.

I ordered plenty of "Estate" "Duchy" and "Province" ribbons to hand them out to each contestant. I have next year's supply already.

Comments

[ckd]

The setup delays and confusion were definitely frustrating, but once they had passed I found it easy to set them aside and enjoy the tournament (despite my fairly low placement). I'm glad that the issues were ones that can easily be resolved for next year, and I look forward to playing again and possibly doing a bit better....

Having a full library was great, since it meant no need to interleave sets between tables; I got in several good pickup games during the weekend and was always able to put together a kingdom set without stress.

Thanks for all the work you and others put into this.

[matt-arnold.livejournal.com]

I'm glad you enjoyed it! Now I'm curious as to who you are.

[ckd]

My LJ userid is my initials, and I was at your table during the second round of the tournament. :-)

[nicegeek.livejournal.com]

I appreciate Matt taking responsibility on this, but now I'm going to take it back from him. I was the one helping to get things set up, and figured that I could wait until about a half-hour before the tournament to start nudging people out of the tables. This was incorrect for the size of the tournament; an hour would have been a more correct estimate. That lesson has been learned; please accept my apologies for the delay, and direct any flames for said delay in my direction.

[amanda_lodden.livejournal.com]

May I suggest that instead of trying to kick gamers out of the open gaming area (which will almost certainly result in people complaining-- you'd just change which set of people it is doing the complaining), you ask Programming to set aside a dedicated space for the tournament, complete with setup time?

The answer might be "Sorry, we just don't have it, you'll have to make do with the open gaming area," in which case you have a good fallback plan detailed above. (And "not accepting being scheduled to do something else during setup" is a good idea regardless.) But if you can wrangle space for the Dominion tournament that isn't in the only gaming space, then you can take more time setting up without alienating the people who want to game but don't care for Dominion, or don't care for tournaments.

[matt-arnold.livejournal.com]

That's already my plan. This year, the programming team set aside the entire game room for the tournament, because that's all the room they had. Next year, there will be more room.

However, I failed to ask them to set aside time for setup. I will do so in the future. However, people will still sit down and play games during that setup time, unless there is a sign on the table.

[the-dark-snack.livejournal.com]

Happy Birthday!

[matt-arnold.livejournal.com]

Thank you! Can you give me a hint as to who you are and where I know you from?

[the-dark-snack.livejournal.com]

We know each other from PenguiCon. I was going around this year handing out "Taster of the Dark Snack" & "That Just Happened" ribbons (if that helps).