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| Re: I Assassinated Claude Errera *IMGs/VIDs* *LONG | |
| Posted By: Louis Wu <halo@bungie.org> | Date: 6/24/11 2:17 p.m. |
In Response To: Re: I Assassinated Claude Errera *IMGs/VIDs* *LONG (Revenant1988) : Wu, : I'd like to pick your brain on this. I've hosted local LAN's many times, but
: Aside from making sure there are enough screens/xboxes/discs/controllers etc,
You need to make sure there's room for everyone to sleep. (If you don't HAVE that room, you need to make sure you've researched alternatives.) You need to make sure you've got room for everyone to play. It's not enough to have enough Xboxes and screens (and games) - there have to be places to PUT everything - including people. Food is an issue - either you have to supply it, or folks have to bring it (bad idea for long-distance travelers), or someone has to pay to order it. Working out the details ahead of time saves a lot of butthurt during the event. :) Something that's bitten us here at least twice (that is, on two separate occasions): make sure your power grid can handle the demand. If you're putting a lot of equipment in one area, make sure you have some LONG (50-100 ft) heavy-duty extension cords (outdoor cords for Christmas lights are a good choice) to route some of the power demand to other circuits around the house. (Take a look at your circuit panel to see what outlets are on the same breaker, for example - so when you DO have to move the demand, you don't end up plugging into another outlet on the same circuit.) : What kind of time frame did you generally keep? (in terms of how long the LAN
It's varied, from LAN to LAN - but recently, it's settled on: Arrival time begins Friday afternoon/evening. (If you're busy Friday, go with evening, or Saturday morning; you don't want to be dealing with visitors if you've got other stuff on the table.) Know who's coming early, so you can plan for food Friday (which will be smaller than food on Saturday). Saturday has been the traditional 'gaming day' - any setup that didn't happen Friday night happens Saturday morning, and you try to plan for the folks who show up late, because you'll have to break from playing to help them set up their equipment or integrate them into the existing layout. Sunday is the standard 'leaving day' - folks with long-distance travel plans need to leave early, folks with less far to go tend to hang around. If you've got to work the next day, you might want to set a 'get the hell out of my house' time... but it's usually not that big a deal, almost EVERYONE needs to get going for their OWN reasons. Folks have always been really good about volunteering to haul people to/from airports/bus stations/train stations, and the last to leave have (usually) been good about helping to clean up and move furniture back. (If folks aren't offering to help with this, make sure you ask before they're all gone - it's a bitch to do it alone.) In the past, I'd picked up a lot more transportation slack, because there simply weren't that many people able to shuttle visitors back and forth - this can be a headache if you're trying to supervise the cleanup effort. In recent years, I've done almost NO transportation duty, which has been really, really wonderful - but I'm not sure you can count on getting that sort of support. I'm surprised every time it works out. :) So if you have a spouse/roommate/family member who can help out with the coordination, at least you can have someone who lives in the house supervising the cleanup while you drive, for example. :) : Any unforeseen/unplanned things that you had to address in future LANs? Count on things getting broken - it's simply one of the hazards of having a LOT of people in a house they're unfamiliar with. Stuff will get spilled, stuff will get knocked over, etc. If there's something that's really important to you, move it before they show up. Otherwise... live with the damage. If you're expecting it, it comes as less of a shock. ;) Definitely ask people up-front to be careful with drinks, make sure you lay out any ground rules at the very start ("no beer in the bedroom!", etc) - but don't freak out when something goes wrong, because it probably will. Almost everything can be cleaned up, so just be patient. ;) Also, see above about power consumption. : Any other advice or tips for accommodating out of state guests? We live in the boonies here, and the nearest hotels are 7+ miles (on country roads) away. Hotels? What am I saying? Motels. So we did our best to plan for MOST people to sleep here. Ask folks to bring sleeping bags, etc, so that they can sleep on floors - you can fit many more people that way. You can talk to friends who live nearby and see if anyone's willing to host a few people... this has worked at other LANs I've been to. (I've never tried it here.) : If you have anything at all you think might be helpful I would very much like
Start small. Our first lan was on a Sunday afternoon, and it was 11 people, mostly local. (The farthest anyone came was about an hour.) You can work out some of the inevitable glitches with this smaller group before you go big. :)
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