Origins After Action Report

[Luke]

Hi Folks,

Sorry it took so long to get this up, but I've been a busy bee (and then a very tired and burnt-out bee).

I wanted to give a brief wrap of the "Forge" games at Origins.

We had a booth, shared with 9th Level Games, Nerd NYC and a slew of other small companies. Our specific table was divided between games and t-shirts (as it always is).

Our location wasn't the best, but it wasn't horrible either. Back left hand corner, but in a nice traffic turning point.

We were on site from Friday to Sunday. It was moderately busy Friday, busy on Saturday and rather quiet on Sunday.

Burning Wheel sold 30 copies at the con. A very nice number, and right on par with my expectations.

Sorcerer sold a hardback plus 4 supplements. We were sold out by Saturday morning and would have certainly sold more if we had more.

MLwM sold 3 copies, plus I donated one to Robin Laws in order to get Paul nominated for the DJ Awards.

Brennan's Bulldogs D20 SF game sold two copies.

kpfs sold one set.

Uni sold one. The low number was in part due to the fact that my friend Pete had no idea how to pitch this game.

FVLMINATA sold one copy.

Jared's games didn't sell at all. I don't really know why this is, they are usually a good seller.

Also, I couldn't move Pax Draconis or Multiverser for the life of me. I've tried at many, many cons and I haven't gotten more than a nibble. I really don't know what to do with these games.

All in all, not bad for games that no one has ever heard of and that weren't being demoed at the con. People came looking for these games. We even had one guy come looking for a hard copy version of Donjon!

This was rather enlightening. It finally dawned on me that we have stuff that people want. Given a knowledgeable, enthusiastic and, well, cool sales staff we can move these games. Pete and Dro busted their collective ass to push those games all weekend long. (Even if they'd never even read 'em!)

So Origins marks the last time I'm going to be selling "Forge" games under the "send me your games and I'll sell 'em for ya" model. I think a slightly more formal and business-like approach will benefit all parties in the future. I was a good experiment, this past season. It proved to me that there is a market for small press rpgs. I plan on expanding on that idea this next year.

thanks all.
see you at GenCon!
-L