It would temper the fanboyism that seems to create part of the imbalance.

Basically if I run DRYH at Dreamation (no matter how much I excel at running it) I’m not going to get the 27 sign ups that Fred did. But if three slots of DRYH were sloted for the same time, with Designer Partiicpation listed, all three slots would probably benefit from increased enrollment.

And as a GM, knowing Fred had my back would be a comfort. Sounds win-win to me.

One benefit of this is that it will require us to step up and run stuff. If you’ve played DRYH at Dreamation in the past, and run it at home, maybe it’s time you volunteered to run a session. We’ll need lots of GMs, which is great.

…one major thing that would be helpful all around is to migrate Vinny to a registration system that does not involve steam and punch cards.

Seriously. It seems like it would be trivial to digitize the whole affair.

So the authors spend X amount of time with each group, hob-nob a bit, and move on.

I’ve heard that Luke at some point did something like this. He would float from table to table – each playing its own BW game – to answer question and preside over conflicts. As it was described to me, he may have actually been GM-ing each game.

For other designers – who do not have a bountiful supply of nervous energy – it may work better if each table has its own GM, and the designer wanders between each, answering occasional tough questions. Unfortunately, it’s difficult to gauge how many GMs a game may need on stand-by, unless you already have registration info.