dnemiller wrote:
I tried to faithfully call at every 15 minutes.... until the last 15. At that point I shoot for every 5 minutes.
Yeah, thanks; it made a big difference. I had my timer going on my watch so I could look at any time, but it was a good reminder to check which round we were on (usually we were pretty much on track).
One idea I had was to have the players call out when they're about to start a new round. "Starting Round 3" when they roll init for Round 3, for example.
This does a few things:
--It gives the judges a clear designation of who is going fast and slow. Like, if one table says "Starting 2" at the same time as another table says "Starting 4", the judges know they may have to look at something.
--It could be seen sometimes as a race between games...
"Oh yeah, we'll get to the next init before you!:P" or something like that. I could imagine this kind of thing only boosting the comraderie at an event like Gencon.
--By calling out which round they're in, the players are reminded of how many rounds they've played (
"Wow, 5 already! W00t!" or vice versa), and the rest of the players in the other games also get a sense of how fast the other games are going too. I think that sometimes people don't really realize how fast or slow they're playing until they are reminded to check.
It might be something similar to the "Bonzai!" cheer that some other game in our hall has before every tournament at Gencon.
And the best thing about my idea: it doesn't require any changes in DCI software or money or anything else beyond our immediate control.