What’s the actual schedule for Scarefest? Like, what time slots will there be for games?
Friday: 8:00-12:00, 1:30-5:30, 7:00-11:00
Saturday: 8:00-12:00, 1:30-5:30, 7:00-11:00
Sunday: 9:00-12:00 (brunchy social game-sharing time), 1:30-7:30
Can I bring my kid(s)?
Yes, you can! However, we ask that your offspring be at least 12 years old before you send him/her/it off to play at a table where you’re not supervising. Younger children can play at the same table with you. We do ask that children be directly supervised at all times during the con. Humanoids 13-15 do not need constant supervision (obviously), but we do ask that they have a responsible adult present while they are at Scarefest.
Also, if you have concerns about a particular game’s suitability for your offspring, please note that we do have a rating system for the game listings to give you some idea of the content. Understand that neither we nor GMs can guarantee that another player at the table won’t burst out with something outside of the rating, but the GMs will do their best to run the game within it. Also, it’s worth bearing in mind that our con is in an open hall, and there’s every possibility your spawn might overhear the occasional unsavoury comment or ritual to Yog Sothoth. And just to be doubleplus clear, please bear in mind that this is a Halloween-themed convention, so spooky stuff will abound. Please take your child’s temperament into consideration before bringing them to a hall full of spiders, skulls, and possibly creepy clowns. We would honestly hate to be responsible for giving a child nightmares for years. Our parents did that to us, and look how we ended up.
What about food?
You are totally welcome to bring your own food. If you’d prefer not to, however, we have arranged meal tickets to cover you for the entire weekend. This year a meal ticket covers all you can eat breakfasts, lunches, and dinners up at Assembly Inn.
If you don’t want to bring your own, and you aren’t interested in a meal ticket, there *are* a number of fabulous restaurants in downtown Black Mountain. Be aware, however, that while an hour and a half for mealtimes may seem ample, driving down, finding parking, and dealing with restaurant wait times may still make it a bit pinched. In other words, keep your wits about you and don’t dally — you don’t want to miss your next game!
What’s this token system I keep hearing about?
First thing you need to know: tokens look like raffle tickets. But we like calling them tokens, because then we can say “Have a token of my appreciation…” when we give them out. Which brings us to subheading one:
How do I get tokens?
- All players will be given at least one token for buying a ticket (the earlier you buy your ticket, the more tokens you get!).
- Arriving in costume will merit an attendee one token (yes, each day).
- GMs are given a token for each session they run a game.
- GMs are also given 2 tokens at the beginning of each game slot, to be given to players for Great Deeds, such as brilliant ideas in character, awesome role playing, or character teamwork and sacrifice for the group.
- All players are encouraged to gift away tokens as a means of indicating gratitude and appreciation.
- Enduring a character death and posting it to the Character Graveyard, if witnessed by a Minion, is worth a token.
- Minions are all empowered to gift tokens at their discretion, and will do so should they witness any Acts of Awesomeness, such as taking out the recycling if it overflows, or helping a little old lady with her character sheet.
What do I do with them? The Official How-You-Get-Stuff-With-Tokens Guide
Along with demonstrating your everlasting gratitude to that player at your table whose character just cracked you up for five solid minutes as they bravely sacrificed their life so your character could finish the mission…tokens can also be traded for a chance at one of our fabulous prizes! This year we will have several different ways to enter for prizes, so make sure to read your program when you get there for details!
When can I sign up for games?
One of the most common questions our attendees ask is when they can be “cleared” to sign up for games on our Warhorn. Please understand that we send out a specially trained contingent of Minions into the world to hunt for GMs. This is a dangerous and taxing mission. They have been mistaken for door to door salesmen (with a variety of rather interesting results), and at least one was mistaken for an evangelist (to be fair, she had set up on a soapbox in a park and started screaming about the end of the world, which is definitely outside the training manual). This being the south, we also lost a couple when little old ladies had them in for tea and cookies and wound up adopting them. Regardless, they consistently turn up excellent GMs, and we will be diligently posting their games for you to see on the Warhorn.
But not all of them have returned from their pilgrimage yet, and so we don’t have all the games listed. Refreshing the Warhorn page every 30 seconds or so may yield new, exciting games for you to peruse, as well as contributing to a general increase in grumpiness for the Warhorn staff as they need to work their eldritch server magic keeping the website up (we love Warhorn, donate here).
In our desire to deliver maximum happiness to everyone, however, we have come up with an answer to this question.
* If you are a GM, you will be able to sign up for your player slots on Friday, Sept. 22.
* All other attendees will have access to sign up for games on Saturday, Sept. 23.
If you buy tickets after September 23, we’ll have Minions standing by to release you as quickly as they can, in between the rigorous play-testing we are doing of the games on the schedule. The Yeti has played “Secret Hitler” so much that he is starting to seem eerily fascist, and he’s insisting that we check the inbox for new orders between every game, but these slots are long, so expect to be “cleared” within 4 hours (more or less) of buying your ticket after the 3rd of September.
What’s your harassment policy?
Our official harassment policy is very simple: don’t. No one, be they guest, GM, staff…or even the Overlord, Itself, is immune to this policy.
The Overlord does a lot of creepy stuff, like folding paper masks obsessively, lurking in corners, demanding paperwork in triplicate even when there’s a digital copy, or laughing loudly for no apparent reason. These things are difficult to be around as a Minion, but they are not harassment. If the Overlord were to discriminate against or make fun of someone based on their gender, race, religion, age, disability, sexual orientation, etc. or sexually harass anyone at all They would get in Big Trouble. So will anyone else. If you experience or witness anything of this sort at AVL Scarefest, please report it to the nearest Minion as soon as possible, and we will address the situation immediately with a punishment befitting the injury. If you don’t know who the Minions are, they are listed at the bottom of the Abettors page on this website, and they will also be wearing the red Scarefest shirts at the con.
Is Montreat anti-gay?
No. But it’s not surprising you might have heard that. Montreat Conference Center and Montreat College sit right next to each other, but are not affiliated. Montreat College has done some pretty anti-LBGTQ things lately. Montreat Conference Center had All Gender signs on their bathrooms the first year we were there, and came out adamantly agains HB2 when it passed. You can read up on the situation here.