Conklaavi experiences

[Eero Tuovinen]

The second largest Finnish rpg convention, Conklaavi, was last weekend. There were about 280 visitors or so. Arkenstone was there with a bunch of indie games to demonstrate and sell. I gave a lecture about "morality in narrativist gaming", which reduced more or less to explaining what narrativism is, how games support it, and how GNS modes can be distinguished based on the way they handle ethical and moral matters.

I had fun in the convention; lots of people to talk with, experience with mini-demos (15 minutes in length) and so on. My associates were not so pleased, as the sales were moderate: we sold mostly single articles (and three DiVs), the final turnover was roughly a buck per visitor. This is about the same we made in Ropecon last year, so apparently that's where the Finnish consumption level lies as far as we are concerned.

The demonstrations were a good way of contacting people, and I at least felt that they helped people to make investment decisions. We had six demonstrations prepared, for MLwM, Dust Devils, DiV, Fastlane, octaNe and NPA. I especially favored Dust Devils and octaNe, which are easy and rewarding to demonstrate in a couple of minutes, when the customer has no preference. Apparently octaNe's rampant Americanism doesn't fly with Finns, though; while DD sold two copies, not a single octaNe left our bosom. Fastlane was cool too, as the roulette wheel is a nice visual prop.

Finnish convention circles are small, and in practice only Ropecon is big enough to matter. Conklaavi is a magnitude smaller than Ropecon, and all other cons are again a magnitude below Conklaavi. So there's not much convention activity in Finland as it stands. Instead, our web-based sales work relatively smoothly, so I'm not too miffed.

[Michael S. Miller]

Let's see, the average price of stuff on your table is about $15. $280 total divided by $15 gives you about 18-19 items sold, right? At a convention of 280, that's not too bad at all. Over here in the US, conventions of that size are often dominated by the RPGA (at least in the midAtlantic region). Since RPGA players don't look at anything non-D&D, they sort of inflate the convention numbers for our purposes.

Anyway, glad to hear you had a good experience. Thanks for posting