I'm going to be running a demonstration game of Dogs in the Vineyards at [/url=http://www.spikyfishthing.com/con-fusion/]Con-Fusion[/url] at the University of Victoria in the next few weeks. Does anyone have any suggestions on running an effective Convention game (both in general and for Dogs, specifically)? How can I show a predominantly Dungeons & Dragons and White Wolf crowd that there is hope in the indie RPG market?
Any suggestions would be wonderful.
I'd just, y'know, play the game.
One prob I see with Dogs at cons is: it works best for few players. 2, 3, 4 at the most, plus the GM. I wouldn't try to run it for 5 players, let alone the 7 or 10 I've run puppies for.
But yeah, run the game in public so people can see, for 3 or 4 players. Start with character creation, that's fun, and then play the first half of a town. Or else bring a bunch of pre-made characters and launch straight into a town. For sure bring more characters than you'll have players; a Dogs scenario never depends on having a particular PC there, so the players can freely choose.
You can run a town out of the book, choose one that someone else has made (I have a list on my Dogs page (http://www.lumpley.com/dogsources.html)), or make up your own. I recommend your own.
Any other advice, anybody?
-Vincent
If you're going to run a short, Forge-booth-like demo to introduce the system or draw attention, you could do worse than running the example demo scenario with the player, the brother, the son and the shopkeeper's wife/whore.
yrs--
--Ben
Oh yeah. If you're only spending 10-15 minutes, you're showing someone how the rules work, that one's perfect. I love that one.
-Vincent