Judging at Con of the North

The one thing that makes a quality games convention are the events, and Con of the North has had a wide variety of great events of all kinds over the years thanks to our Judges and Referees. Without you, we'd have no convention. Thank you very much!

Judge or Referee?

Event GMs are a combination of volunteer and convention attendee. Some GMs spend most or all of their time at CotN running events, while others run few events and play in many. For a long time CotN Volunteers who are not going to play in or run events have not had to pay, while almost always GMs had to purchase a badge. Now we have a program for GMs who are just volunteering their time and effort to get the same treatment.

Judges are GMs who pay to attend the convention. They receive a Player and a Judge badge, and can thus play in events as well as run them. Only Judges who submit events for the Events Book receive Judge Premiums like the “$5 off or a T-Shirt” choice, Pop Vouchers, and event prizes. Also, only Judges can apply for a Theme Room. Judges can submit their events after the Events Book deadline and have their events in the Onsite Supplement.

Referees are GMs who are not going to play in any games. They do not pay to attend the convention. They recieve only a Referee badge, do not get any Premiums, and cannot apply for a Theme Room. Referees must submit their games for the Events Book to get Referee status.

Both Judges and Referees can purchase items from our Vendors and get the Convention Hotel rate. They both must follow the guidelines for attending the convention and running events, including checking for Player badges before letting people play in their events.

Event Submission

Event submissions for Con of the North 2014 have not yet opened. Check back later!

Pickup Events/Open Gaming

Even if the deadline has passed, you can always run an event or play a game onsite! To run a pickup event, stop by the convention registration desk and ask for a table in the desired timeslot. We have a whiteboard where you can write information about your event.

Guidelines for GMs

As a Judge or Referee at Con of the North, you agree to abide by these guidelines:

• Prepare for your event before the convention.
• Begin and end your game on time.
• Be courteous and polite to all attendees.
• Make sure all players in your game have registered for Con of the North. (They must be wearing a Con of the North 2014 Player badge to play in your game.)
• Do not charge any more for your event. If you would like to charge extra for an event (a sealed-deck CCG tournament, for example) then include that information in the Special Requests section of your Event Proposal.
• Avoid unnecessary profanity, descriptions of violence, or other conduct which may offend attendees.
• Avoid excessive noise or other activities that may disrupt other games.
• Most importantly, have fun!

Theme Track Rooms

If you or your GMing group run similar games for most of the convention and you'd like a bit quieter area to run in, we have a deal for you! Submit your games in a group as a Theme Track and you could be running them in the relative quiet of a converted sleeping room on the same floor as the convention.

To apply for a Theme Track Room, you or your GMing group must:

• Come up with a name for your theme. It could be simple like "Cthulhu" or somewhat more descriptive like "Superhero League of Minnesota".
• Run at least 28 hours of roleplaying events that fit your theme.
• Submit all of your events together by the events deadline along with the Theme Track Proposal Form or a short note listing a primary contact, theme name, theme events, GM name(s), and any special requests for your theme room.
• Have all of your GMs register for the convention, preferably when submitting the Track request.

If approved, your theme track will be listed in the front of the Events Book and marked accordingly in the event listings. At the convention, you will receive a single table in one of the sleeping rooms of the second floor of the hotel. (That's the same floor as most of the convention.) You will also receive keys for that room. While running your theme events you may close the door most of the way but not latch it; all events must be accessible to other attendees and convention or hotel staff. When not running events, you may lock the door. All Con of the North and Holiday Inn rules apply to your events as they would to any other event.

Con of the North reserves the right to reject any theme track proposal. We will attempt to contact your primary contact to let you know the results of your proposal. If rejected and not stated otherwise in the proposal or when contacted, your events will be scheduled normally. There is a limited number of these rooms available, so submit your proposal soon!

Judge Packets and Forms

Will be available soon.

Form Printing Help

Con of the North's PDF files require at least Adobe Reader 7 or higher to use correctly. You can get the latest version of Reader from Adobe's Download Adobe Reader page. Our forms are done as Acrobat Forms, which you can fill out in Reader before printing.

When printing these files to Letter-size paper we recommend turning off Acrobat's page scaling options. In Reader 6's Print dialog, look for "Page Scaling" and set it to "None".

If the form doesn't print correctly and you have it open in Internet Explorer, try saving the PDF file to your machine and opening it directly in Reader. You can save the PDF file by right-clicking the link to the form and selecting "Save Target As...". (This is a known issue with IE and Acrobat/Adobe Reader.)

Still can't get the form to work? Please contact us at info@conofthenorth.org. If possible, include your OS version, Acrobat version, printer model (if printing), and what form you were using along with what went wrong. We want to help you!