DJ Feng Shui#
To all that participated in the NAQ and/or NAC at GenCon,
I sent the following letter to GenCon expressing my opinion on how the
NAQ and NAC were handled. If you are of the same opinion that I am on
the subject, I encourage you to send a letter of your own.
to:
lawr...@gencon.com
cc:
lin...@gencon.com
p...@gencon.com
pe...@gencon.com
vte...@white-wolf.com
GenCon,
I'm not sure if this is the correct place to mail this, if not, please
forward to the appropriate party.
This letter is in regards to the treatment of the Vampire: The Eternal
Struggle (V:TES) CCG tournaments at GenCon Indy 2003. Specifically,
the North American Qualifier and North American Championship
tournaments. As you may be aware, these tournaments did not have
enough contiguous space assigned to them. These tournaments were
held in room 210 of the Convention Center. On each day (Friday and
Saturday) at least half of the participants had to exit room 210 and
move to assigned spaces in different rooms to play their round. In
addition, on Saturday the final regular round of the tournament had to
be moved to Exhibit Hall F, and tables had to be found. Most of these
tables were not in a contiguous space.
Why was this a problem? V:TES is played in timed rounds. Having to
divide up the players meant that not everyone was playing on the same
clock. Also, the arrangement made it difficult to locate the judge in
a timely fashion, should a ruling be needed. These factors could lead
to situations of collusion and cheating amongst participants. The
arrangement contributed to the rounds not concluding in as timely a
manner as they would have had they been held in a contiguous space.
This lack of efficiency may have had an impact on the ability of
tournament attendees to participate in other activities and events in
and around GenCon.
Despite these difficulties, the White Wolf staff running these events
compensated well and should be congratulated for their efforts. In
addition, GenCon staff made a good effort to provide alternate
arrangements.
The participation fee for these tournaments was $9 each. The qualifier
had 71 participants and the championship had 81. It would seem to me
that for our fee and level of participation, those tournaments
deserved more space. In my opinion, the lack of space showed
disrespect for the amount of money I invested not only my event
participation fee, but also my convention badge fee.
White Wolf Publishing, the maker of V:TES, is a large and prominent
gaming company. They used GenCon Indy as a venue to make a major
announcement this year. In my opinion, the lack of space for the
V:TES tournaments shows a lack of respect for White Wolf.
This lack of respect may cause the participants of these tournaments
to lobby for, and White Wolf to think about an alternate venue for
these events in the next calendar year. It would be a shame to see
GenCon lose the premier event for V:TES in North America.
Nicholas Smith