Not A Harry Potter Book Review (bit long)

[kwill]

Following is a report on me running a demo game (JK Rowling & the Pyramid of Puzzles) at a bookstore for non-gamers (kids), something that has been discussed at the Forge before. (Other target audience is the GMing email discussion list I'm on.)

Mostly Actual Play concerns, but seperate Connections/commercial topic threads might end up being suitable. I'm not online as often as I'd like so apologies for any delays in replying. Any comments or questions would be certainly be appreciated, though.

I currently work at a general & technical bookstore (Adams & Co) where, due to some coersion on my part, we do stock a few roleplaying books(*) and, in a feat of genius, I earn time off by running a book stand at the local gaming days/con
(http://gaming.iwizards.com/)

(*) D&D core books; we also keep dice and a few CCGs which trickle out slowly

I have learnt that simply having stock doesn't mean it will sell, even such sure-fire products as the core books. If they *were* selling I would be sure to order more interesting titles, but essentially we have a chicken and egg problem (and I need to get rid of this 3rd Ed stuff before 3.5 Ed comes out).

(The other interesting point in all this is that I actually work in the technical/textbook department, not general books were the roleplaying stock is kept. So this is all "part-time".)

Background aside, like any other bookstore the world over we made a big deal about Harry Potter & The Order of the Phoenix. We were holding a magician's show at another branch and I decided to run demo roleplaying games thereafter and have all the gaming stock on display.

(This other branch is not interested in keeping CCG or roleplaying stock on a regular basis for puritanical reasons. No, I don't understand why they are still prepared to stock scifi/fantasy books or host a HP party.)

The magician's show was a success, even though he looked like a grown-up Draco Malfoy. Naturally the book was selling like hot canary creams. We didn't have an insane turnout because insane people went to Exclusive Books' (a national chain) midnight party, but
enough to fill out the shop (mostly kiddies and parents).

Before going to wash his beard glue off, Dumbledore announced that I would be running "demonstration fantasy games". (Before this I had been talking to people who had come up and looked at my stock, displayed prominently near the magician's table. Also A4
(letter) posters promoting the demo, explaining "what is roleplaying?" and promoting stuff I didn't have in stock.) The game was prepared for 4-6 players; I was aiming for lower rather than higher but pushy parents meant 6 players at the tiny table.
Then again, they were tiny people (10-12 years I'd guess).

There were six characters to choose from: a wizard, witch/quidditch player, paladin, rogue, elf and dwarf. I explained that they were going to take the part of characters in a story, except that they could decide what to do. Their character sheets had a space for player name and character name. I'm not sure how well I explained/they understood the "play a character" part, since they were a bit confused about filling in character names. Maybe it's just hard to make up a name if you haven't had practice (in the end we had a Harry, Hagrid, Voldemort, Hermione...).

(Interesting point: their parents basically stood nearby and helped out for the character creation bit, and some hovered around thereafter.)

I demonstrated all the dice, 'cause I reckoned kids would think they're cool (they just glazed over, really), but explained we would only be using the twenty-sided one. The system, such as it was, was d20 + attribute score (attributes named for D&D attributes, but no 1-20 scale, just a +0 to +5 score). I explained this and they got it. (I didn't think that HP readers would have difficulty with the meaning "Dexterity" and "Constitution" but some did.)

(There were no other elements to the system (eg, hit points) apart from inventory items & spells. Inventory items were just a name on a list, and spells had HP like names (Wartus Toadicus), simple descriptions ("You can turn any monster into a toad!"), and the restriction that they could each be used once only - no pseudo-explanation given and no one asked.)

I leapt into the adventure by describing how JK Rowling had been kidnapped before submitting the final chapter, and Mr Weasley telling they had to rescue her from the Pyramid of Puzzles. He opened a magical archway in Diagon Alley and revealed that the
hieroglyphs above (from the Wingding font family) spelled the name In-po-top. I paused expectantly. They did nothing. I asked "Are you going to go in?", and they pretty much agreed. During the course of the game they became more confident in deciding what to do, but mostly I still had to prompt them to do anything ("What do you do?" "Which chamber do you enter next?" "How are you going to do that?")

The pyramid contained an entrance chamber leading to three seperate puzzle chambers. The puzzles were simple to the point of not really being puzzles at all, just multiple skill rolls, but my preperation here wasn't so hot. I had a good idea of what I wanted out of each room, but a playtest (or just spending more time on them, writing them out in more detail for myself) would have revealed the niggles I had. This meant that the puzzles didn't seem to be challenges as such, just things-to-do.

Absolutely no characterisation happened at all. I wasn't really expecting it, and didn't put any descriptive personality text onto the character sheets (I don't think some of them read what was there).

Two game events stick in my mind: when someone threw a rope and grappling hook across a chasm and I stated they failed the roll but "it looked alright". Naturally no-one wanted to use it and I confused the issue by trying to explain that their characters didn't know there was a problem. I didn't take all back but just pushed the situation forward quickly.

The second event was the combat with the mummy; everyone had ideas and an initiative roll would have helped in terms of who-goes-first. As a "spot rule" I don't think it would have caused confusion.

Laughs all round when the dwarf hit the mummy and I hopped around explaining that because he was short he'd only hit its leg. Ah, cheap humour.

I just remembered that the mummy didn't actually get a "go" in the combat, doh!

Dice rolling was a bit challenging. I forgot that younger kids might have trouble adding. (I talked them through it rather than doing it for them.)

After each puzzle a new set of heiroglyphs was revealed and returning to the entrance chamber for the final time (after each puzzle was solved I simply cut the scene back to the chamber) a non-obvious puzzle (coloured balls and trays, no explanation) was revealed. By translating the heiroglyphs that had been in the entrance chamber all along the final puzzle was easily solved (RED-ON-TOP GREEN-IN-LEFT) and JK Rowling was
freed.

(I kept track of the heiroglyphs and their meanings on the player map, so they had a good idea that learning new heiroglyphs was the "point" of the game.)

I was aiming for a 30 minute game and according to Jem (who was the only roleplayer I know who popped in) clocked it at 20. I think a slightly slower pace and/or an additional room before the final puzzle would be a good idea.

I'm confident that another game would have run smoother with me having had "engaged" the scenario properly, but I couldn't russle up more players. (There were different hieroglyph sets so that observers could have played without prior knowledge issues.)

I explained all the stock to those that stayed after but (surprise surprise), no one wanted to fork out R1200 (er, $150 or 90-odd quid) for a full set of core books, or R400 for a PHB. (Damn shipping costs!)

Unfortunately I hadn't received stock of 1) the D&D Adventure Game Box (the boxed set with Everything You Need To Play) which retails at about R155, 2) the HP CCG starter decks, a mere R49.95 or 3) Universalis, which will probably end up at R189. (Oh and to
give you a better idea exchange-rate-wise, HP is currently retailing at R269.95 and we undercut the competition by offering it at R229.95 for the weekend.)

Cheaper introductory stock would **definitely** have sold. I reckon at least 2 game boxes from my little group and a couple of HP starter decks. (They just turned their collective nose up at Magic; admittedly I didn't have starter decks for that either, and I wasn't about to sell them decks without instructions.) Universalis(**) was meant to piggyback and launch in SA (okay, Durban) for the already-roleplaying crowd, but as noted above, they didn't pitch (don't ask me why we didn't promote the fact that our HPs were the cheapest).

(**) Uni ended up on a boat rather than a plane. Depending on when I get it, it may go to Icon (SA's biggest con) if I manage to go myself, or just to the local Durban con (September).

Also, and I've experienced this in bookselling generally, customers do not want to place orders for things. They want to see stuff NOW. (But, they don't neccesarily want to see and actually *buy* it.) No-one at the demo wanted to pre-order (ie, put money down) for the stuff that was still on the way.

While I'm sure Uni (above) will find an audience in SA gamers, the general books manager wasn't keen on ordering a lot of stock. Considering that we have had 2 each of the core books for over a year without selling I can't really blame her. (We did sell a D&D Game Box but then didn't want to reorder, sigh.) But, I don't know that people will want to pre-order (with money) when I sell out wherever I do take Uni to. (I'm thinking of selling but hanging on to stock until the end of whatever con to encourage browsing
and thereby pre-orders.) I've ordered Sorcerer for myself and hopefully I can generate pre-orders (with money) within the gaming crowd just by showing everyone my cool new game.

Anyway, one slightly older kid came in after the demo and got all excited about D&D, apparently he's been interested but hasn't actually seen it anywhere else before (Durban has one actual roleplaying store stuck in a funny shopping centre). I left the
stock there for the weekend (being firmly told to keep the CCGs out of sight) and was phoned at my branch on Monday to be asked which core rulebook was first, so there was one sale (presumably the same kid) in addition to the Pokemon CCG starter deck I sold on the day. The Harry Potter starter packs arrived on Friday and I've sent some to the puritanical branch unannounced; apparently the MD (a non-puritanical chap) actually asked for them to be sent anyway, so maybe they don't mind it because it's just Harry Potter.

(They obviously were never forwarded *that* article from The Onion ;)

Finally, considering the audience I stick by my decision to promote D&D as the beginners' game of choice. It's not the game *I* prefer to play but 3rd Ed really is designed for the complete newbie in a way that I haven't seen in another game. If you have any other suggestions, let me know!

(Similarly, I think it's important that my demo system was super lite D&D, considering that I was trying to sell that product. If I was just introducing roleplaying for non-commercial reasons, at a school, say, I probably wouldn't run a D&D-alike.)

(Jeremy made a good point that I could have made it even simpler and had them all wizards/witches with two reusable spells each. My intention wasn't really a "Harry Potter game", though, because that's a bit misleading (again, considering I was basically selling D&D). Exposure to Lord of the Rings meant the elf and dwarf concepts went down easily.)

So, on reflection some tweaking (clarifying, really) of the demo module would make it a easier-to-run and more exciting to play, and pre-stocking the product you're trying to sell is VERY VERY important (doh!). I won't be working at Adams the next Harry Potter, as I'll be back at varsity, but I'll probably try and coerce a bookstore down in Cape Town to let me run a demo, just to try it out again.

The only other venue I can think of for introducing roleplaying is schools, something that the Cape Legion of Adventurers and Wargamers thought of but never got round to doing, maybe I'll try it out when I get back there in 2004.

Finally, I still have no idea how to solve the issue of getting a regular bookstore to stock gaming stuff, and I do think it's a worthwhile goal, seeing that regular bookstores do stock for other small-interest groups. (Okay, maybe not the big chains so much.) It still boils down to needing stock first to get gamers in, but needing to know they'll come *and buy* to bother stocking.

The safety-first promote-item money-down-preorder method does not generate sales, period. The only time this works is when the customer knows exactly what book they want and is prepared to wait. (ie, how I buy)

Whew, don't think I've missed anything, let me know!

(If anyone has questions about the South African roleplaying/retail scene that would clarify anything I've raised, let me know and I'll fill you in if I can. -- It's basically pretty small. I've seen D&D modules in other regular bookstores before, but not often and not recently. There is one roleplaying & esoteric bookshop in Durban and one supplier - no physical shop that I know of - of Warhammer goodies. Cape Town and Johannesburg have two roleplaying shops (roleplaying & esoteric, and roleplaying & comics) each. No others that I know of.)

[Clay]

From a business perspective it's not suprising that you can't get management to reorder games that have sold.  If they've held the stock for a year without a sale, they shouldn't be reordering it.  They should be ditching the existing stock in any way possible.  It looks bad to have stock that's obviously not moving and not going to move sitting around on the shelves, and takes valuable shelf space from things that would sell.  My local game store suffers from this very problems.  50% or more of his rpg stock is stuff that's been there for over a year and will never move.  His sales volume is suffering because he won't liquidate the loser stock to make room for things that will sell.

My advice would be to liquidate the D&D stock, taking a loss if necessary, and try something else in that space.  One problem with D&D is that to the neophyte there's no way to know which book to buy, and the logical assumption is that you need to buy all of them.  That kind of investment is only made by somebody who already knows what they want.

If you're going to carry any gaming stock at all, carry things that are complete in one book, which makes the purchasing decision easier.  Call of Cthulhu, Vampire, Star Wars, Traveller (in either d20 or Gurps incarnations), even Discworld seem like reasonable choices.  Most importantly, stock only the core rulebook (note the singular) for each game, to eliminate confusion.  All modern books that I've seen have a website where people can go to get more information about additional product.  If the customers can't get it shipped directly from the manufacturer (which is likely in SA) they'll come back to the book store to special order the product.

I wouldn't hold out too hard for sales of gaming product though.  It's great that you're trying to generate sales, but it's a niche market and it may well not be worth the effort to keep such products in your stores.  Quite possibly the better solution for South Africa is a few retail stores in the major cities, and the rest of the country is served by mail order.

[John Kim]

Finally, considering the audience I stick by my decision to promote D&D as the beginners' game of choice. It's not the game *I* prefer to play but 3rd Ed really is designed for the complete newbie in a way that I haven't seen in another game. If you have any other suggestions, let me know!

Really?  I'm a bit surprised at this, in that I found 3rd edition to be a big step back from newbie-friendliness compared to the earlier TSR boxed sets.  But then, I guess that is true of the industry in general.  D&D3 does have the boxed D&D Adventure Game which is newbie-friendly, but it seems to me that there is a huge gap between the simple boardgame-like play of the adventure game compared to the intense, small-print, thick-with-rules-and-nothing-else Player's Handbook.  

On the other hand, I guess I should compare it to its competition.  My view of newbie-friendly RPGs mostly comes from the 80's:  I think of James Bond 007, Teenagers from Outer Space, Ghostbusters, and so forth.  I would say the basics of a newbie-friendly game include: (1) a good quick-start characters, (2) a good introductory adventure, (3) all materials for play -- though six-sided dice can perhaps be skipped, (4) simple-to-medium rules with lots of examples.  

My impression of the current market is that Guardians of Order are the ones making the most newbie-friendly RPGs these days, in particular their Anime series games such as Sailor Moon and El-Hazard.  I also get the impression that Steve Jackson games has been doing better as well with their powered-by-GURPS approach of standalone games like GURPS WWII.  However, I haven't actually played these, so take that with a grain of salt.

[Marco]

That rocks!

My hat's off to ya. Quite an undertaking (I find introducing one person to role-playing a challenge ... much less 6 young'uns with parents in tow). It sounds like a well constructed adventure (mechanical, yes--but sometimes that's more fun than figuring things out).

The hieroglyphs seemed like a nice touch too: props! Always good.

Right on, man!

I have only two comments:

1. I once was invited to run a game for a *church* group.* Yes, a church group--who'd heard of this roleplaying thing and ... wanted to see it for themselves. I successfully made my will-power check (despite intense pressure from friends) to avoid loading it with multiple "Satans." (it was AD&D so there wasn't a monster of that *name* but my friends had all kinds of ways for me to improvise).

It was quite a lot like a stage performance--and at the time it was a major challenge for me. It went well--but I felt I was lucky.

2. Instead of telling them this:

I explained that they were going to take the part of characters in a story, except that they could decide what to do.

You should have explained how they were to take part in a dynamic shared narrative with a GM-heavy power-divide such that setting and interpertation of resolution and level of success were adjudicated by said GM while action was declared by them in whatever play mode they chose.






What?

-Marco
* They were Unitarians--so I didn't back the car in and leave the engine running.

[John Kim]

1. I once was invited to run a game for a *church* group.* Yes, a church group--who'd heard of this roleplaying thing and ... wanted to see it for themselves. I successfully made my will-power check (despite intense pressure from friends) to avoid loading it with multiple "Satans." (it was AD&D so there wasn't a monster of that *name* but my friends had all kinds of ways for me to improvise).

It was quite a lot like a stage performance--and at the time it was a major challenge for me. It went well--but I felt I was lucky.
--------------------
* They were Unitarians--so I didn't back the car in and leave the engine running.

This sounds really cool, and I wouldn't put it off entirely as a aberration. For example, I know that in Sweden the Lutheran church developed a series of role-playing games for use in its confirmation course.  There was an English edition of one of these.  Here is an English URL on the games: http://www.rollspel.com/engelsk/theway.htm  

I think the problems in the U.S. with churches are more of a particular history combined with some fairly reactionary fundamentalist groups.  (I speark from the point of view of growing up in a liberal Presbyterian church where we did things like organized a group to go see The Last Temptation of Christ and discuss it afterwards.)  There is "Dragonraid", which is an American game intended to promote Bible-study, but my impression is that it is only barely an RPG per se.

[Marco]

Well, no, not an *aberation*--but you never do know what people's expectations will be going in, and my experience has been that the strength of a judgment is often porportional to the magnitude of the belief from which it stems.

It was pretty cool: they all had a good time. Declared it imaginative and interesting. And went home satisfied.

Maybe an RPG outreach movement along the lines of what kwill did would be a good idea.  I think D&D is a decent 'introductory game' for some situations (and not for others)--

But I'm very intrigued with the idea of extremely limited rpgs that have almost no scope (one adventure) but are designed to show off one aspect of what more traditional/advanced/in-depth play would be like.

So you might do an "exploration exercise" where characters are generated with a very simple system that makes the character indicative of the world--and there's a map to explore and stuff to see (the game's system is geared toward that one map).

Maybe another very simple system with a strong theme and a single introductory adventure to explore it. And so on.

After somone has done exercise games 1-5, you hit them with Hero 5x char-gen ;)

-Marco

[kwill]

thanks for all the comments

in short, Clay's right; I don't have the big picture on the SA gaming market(*), but it would seem that with the current consumer base just stocking the books isn't enough

I'm not sure about the feasability and profitability of a bookstore targeting a specific niche market, but it can be done (frex, Adams deals in Africana & rare books and other not-just-John-Grisham interests; from what I have seen, though, each section started with an enthusiastic staff member behind it -- pity that I'm not going to be here next year then)

that said, all the suggestions on which games to carry are welcome, especially the principle of one-book games (and special orders can take care of supplements)

I have realised both with the sitting roleplaying stock and working in other sections (esp. computer books) that variety usually outdoes multiple copies; and it just looks better

I guess the Players' Handbook is a bit overwhelming in terms of density; I haven't seen any GOO games yet, but they do sound less intimidating

lastly, the strange fundamentalist anti-D&D thing is, I think, just a leftover from the eighties here in SA -- unfortunately it seems that that name in particular still carries bad vibes

all this is definitely branching off into Connections or Publishing territory!

bringing it back on track with kudos to Marcos' last suggestion: small focused exercises, sounds like something I'll try at schools next year, if I get round to it

and in case anyone's wondering I don't especially like kids, really =)