Hugo House

[Blankshield]

Yes, please. This site was brilliant in pretty much every way I can think of.

Suggestions for next year:
- have the pop in a not-gaming space, so that the folks in that room aren't putting up with a semi-constant stream of traffic
- have better weather, so that we can get use out of the park across the street.

...

That's all I got. Hugo house was a fantastic venue in pretty much all ways.

James

[gammaraygames]

Could the beverages perhaps go in the kitchen which was clearly designated as a 'no gaming' zone?

[Ben Wray]

Another idea might just be putting them on the counter of the bar, after it's stopped being one.

[Brendan]

Agreed, James; Hugo House blew the other venues we've tried out of the water. I thought the catered food was excellent this year, too (and the desserts... well, there are other threads for raving about them). Decent walking range of other food options, too--next year I want to organize some kind of mass Dick's run so that we can all experience cheap burger delight/worrisome consequences together.

One emergent behavior I noticed was the attempt to combat loud game/quiet game combinations in the upstairs rooms; we just taped a piece of paper to the door of Uranus warning people of likely volume issues before Roach, and after our Taste for Murder game drove another group out of Pluto, they grabbed Neptune for the last slot and taped up their own "this is going to be a quiet game, please don't interrupt" sign. This isn't exactly ideal, but maybe we should just have a designated loud room (or two) and a designated quiet room from the get-go next year?

Massive, shiny plaudits to the GPNW organizer crew for finding and arranging everything at Hugo House! As always, you guys knocked it out of the park.

[skinnyghost]

The House itself was awesome. I'll agree about having the pop in a friendlier space. Maybe, also, have a really specific way to handle people looking for pickup games? There was a lot of milling around wondering what to do when you didn't have a game to play.

I think that the only issue I had was with the loud/quiet game differential. It seems like just about every room had an Apocalypse World game running in it - which tend towards the loud end of the spectrum. Hard to escape the random shouts of "I STAB HIM WITH MY MACHETE!" when you were trying to have a quiet scene. It really irked me that a group had to hijack a room and put up "This is a quiet room, fuck off" signs. Maybe picking one room as the "quiet room" would help?

[Joel P. Shempert]

I think we talked about this last year and just kinda forgot. Designating a Quiet Room (I vote Pluto) would have been good.

The pop thing was indeed awkward. I never played a game in that room but it was indeed embarrassing to be the interrupter.

I miss the beer from last year. When I saw that it was a pay bar I thought, OK, I can suck it up (and I had a couple of comp beers to call in), but it didn't occur to me that the bar would be opening night only. Soda and fruit nectar was nice, but I loves me some brews for late-night gamin'.

The house was lovely, plenty of rooms for gaming, nice atmosphere. But c'mon, guys, rain? Who was Weather Czar? There needs to be a serious reckoning there. Perhaps 40 lashes with a wet noodle.

Thanks so much organizers and Hugo House! I loved it.

Peace,
-Joel

[johnzo]

Noise pollution is a fact of life at game cons, unless you rent a dorm for the weekend and give games individual dorm rooms, like Dragonflight did a few years ago. Gamestorm 2010 was also pretty good in this regard, there were lots of little nooks and crannies in the hotel for relatively quiet gaming.

I've been to all four Go Plays, and Hugo House had the least noise pollution of any of them. Remember when we were all crammed together in two rooms, back in 07 and 08?

Also I should thank the very nice people who excused themselves from Pluto on Sunday night when I explained that we were playing Montsegur.

My only quibble with the venue was that there seemed to be too few restrooms.

[Joel P. Shempert]

Yeah, compeard to 2009 I was very pleased with teh noiz. Though I say that as one of the people who had to be politely asked to shush a couple of times.

[BabbageCliologic]

Hugo House was awesome.

Another vote for GPNW being there next year!

/Matt

[Ice Cream Emperor]

I agree with everyone that this was definitely the best venue yet -- lots of variety of spaces, etc. The catering was also a huge improvement over last year -- the vegetarian option was even tastier than the chicken, and both were delicious.

But I also agree that I would like to see a somewhat more proactive approach to 'quiet' gaming spaces. The venue itself provides one single-game-only room, which I was very thankfully able to swap into for our Saturday Ribbon Drive game (thank you very much, lottery people!) -- though having that also be the pop-room was probably not ideal. But besides that room (which is also a great single-room for LOUD games, or games that need a big table)it would be great if a 'quiet zone' could be instituted, even semi-officially, in one of the upstairs rooms. Our Sunday afternoon-evening game started out in Pluto -- by far the best upstairs room, acoustically -- but we ended up having to move the game three times before we eventually just took over Uranus, closed the door, and stuck some 'please do not come into this room' post-its on the door. Which I felt kind of bad about, but by then the grumpiness-factor had become fairly high.

Topically, both Uranus and Neptune would benefit immensely from some sort of rugs, curtains, wall-hangings... anything to help improve the super-echoey acoustics in what should otherwise be fairly intimate two-games-max sort of rooms. As mentioned, Pluto would be my vote for a quiet room -- it is big enough for two quiet games and the room had no echo at all. The huge theatre room downstairs actually had much better sound in terms of housing multiple-games, which is a major bonus for such a large room.

Quietness primadonnaing aside, I'll just repeat that I think this was a great venue, and I hope to visit the Hugo House again next year.