Cast The Stand for Festival last night, one of the longest and hardest casting sessions I've ever had to do. Took me literally five hours yesterday. Frequently I'll get a run where everyone wants to be the same character. Usually everyone wants to be the heroic white hat, and finding a villain is next to impossible. This time around everyone wants to be a baddie, or a shifty shade of gray. I've got some of those but not an entire game, so I struggled to fit people in as best I could. I really hope people like their characters even if they're not perfectly what they ask for, I tried really hard to make do. :-P Hints are out now, as well as bluesheets and rules. I want to look over the full character sheets before I send them. Even though the game's been run twice before, I like to make sure there's nothing that needs tweaking between runs before I give them out.
There's one player who I have not heard any communication from whatsoever. No casting questionnaire despite numerous pokes, no nothing. I'm a little afraid she's not going to show up. I cast her in what I consider to be the easiest character to excise from the game just to be safe, but still, I want that character there. I think what I may do is engage a pinch hitter to be on standby to step in and take over the role if necessary. Of course, I would technically be within my rights to replace her entirely. Last year when I was con chair of Festival, one of the GMs contacted me to say that she had a player who was completely unresponsive, even to an email asking to please even confirm that he was still interested in playing. I made the call that she could cut him off her list and put the first person on the waitlist in. I'll give this person a little more time and at least one more ultimatum to respond and confirm that she wants to be involved, then I may just do that myself.
Anybody interested in doing me a huge favor and possibly taking over this role? :-)