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There is no LFR EPIC adventure planned for GenCon this year.

We are anticipating release of at least 2 more LFR EPIC adventures in 2012, likely with one in the summer. 

May 11, 2012 -- 6:42PM, Keithric wrote:

Gen Con is aimed at more entry players, so epic just isn't really a desired event there (nor at Origins, though it'd be _slightly_ easier there perhaps). 

Desired by whom?

A group of ten of us met pretty much every weekend for 4 months back in 2009 to advance our characters to Paragon tier in time for GenCon that year -- we'd have likely done something similar this past year for 2012 if there was going to be any Epic play at GenCon.

If the organizers don't want the trouble of having to try to staff Epic (and even Paragon) tables in addition to the Heroic tables, that's one thing. But it seems like something of a self-fulfulling prophecy to say 'hey, we don't run any Epic and barely any Paragon, and we don't see any demand for it, so we don't see the need to add any'.

In fairness, there is one Paragon adventure at GenCon2012, and people who are motivated to do so can probably put together more, or even some Epic, during free-play times. Also, offering 'old' Paragon or Epic mods next to 'new' Heroic mods likely does a disservice to the older mods, since odds are if you're going to GenCon with a character of the appropriate level, you may already have played the older mods.

Doesn't make it any less disappointing not to see support for the higher tiers.

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Pauper

May 14, 2012 -- 4:59PM, Keith53 wrote:

Gencon has a very high percentage of new players and players who only come out once a year, so WotC wants to cater to that demographic at Gencon.

My problem is that these two groups are not necessarily the same.

New players? Sure -- GenCon is the big game convention of the year and you're going to get new players. But 'players who only come out once a year' includes me and a good number of the folks in our area who play regularly in our local LFR, at regional cons, and even online. A lot of folks who are told that D&DXP caters to the 'hardcore' organized-play player don't want to give up going to GenCon to go to D&DXP to play the characters we'd rather play, and since we don't live in Indiana and have to consider things like our jobs and our families, we don't really have a chance to do both except in very rare cases.

I don't want to gripe too much, because I'm sure organizing all the LFR at a huge con is a massive challenge (it's a big challenge just to put together the three monthly tables we run locally sometimes), and the Baldman does a good job of it based on the last few GenCons I've attended. I just wish that, instead of a 6/1/0 split between heroic/paragon/epic tier adventures, the distribution was more like 4/2/1 -- still lots of heroic for the newbies, but a better selection of higher-level modules to satisfy the folks who've been around awhile.

Maybe that's been tried and wasn't as successful, I don't know. I only know what I'd like to see.

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Pauper

I'll also note that offering an EPIC adventure ties up that DM with one adventure (and one table) for an entire day (since all EPICs are three-rounders).  ISTR that Dave prefers to have his DMs  prepping multiple adventures, and be able to be flexible in what they run from slot to slot.   In addition, many of Dave's DMs may not be skilled at (or willing to) run an EPIC adventure.

Plus, an EPIC (unlike a Heroic or Paragon adventure) is written for one particular character level.  The organizer has to hope that there's going to be a sufficient number of players who are ready to play that new EPIC (i.e., they've already played the previous EPICs), and that they're free on the day that the EPIC is being run (i.e., no conflicts against other events, even non-LFR events, being run on that day).

Is there some demand for EPIC at GenCon?  Well, certainly, as this thread proves.  Is there sufficient demand to warrant putting resources there, knowing that those are resouces which don't go elsewhere?  That, I can't answer, though it wouldn't surprise me if the answer is "no".

May 15, 2012 -- 11:38AM, Uthrac wrote:

One of the strengths of DDXP is that I get to play with campaign staff, which IMHO is worth the expense!

By "play with campaign staff", are you referring to getting to sit down and game with campaign staff, or having a table full of campaign staff - after Greg said we weren't allowed to attack the kraken anymore - go sit at an empty table to attack the kraken again anyway?