Ubercon Aftermath

[Luke]

Wow. It's so strange to have free time. I feel like I'm on the run from the law.

I've been meaning/wanting to participate here a lot more of late, so here goes my reentry into the fray:

Mike Miller, Brennan Taylor, Drozdal, Thor Olavsrud, Pete Tierney and I tackled Ubercon this weekend.

Money=Mouth?
We sold three copies of Dogs, 2 copies of the With Great Power preview edition, 1 copy of MLwM and 1 copy of Universalis (to Thor and Urbwar, actually).

Brennan also sold 4 copies of Bulldogs.

We didn't sell any copies of Inspectres, which shocked me. Didn't sell any BW, but then again, I didn't really have anything to sell.

Mouth=Money?
I ran my Burning Wheel stuff non-stop as usual. Thor stepped up and ran a demo of his own.

Mike Miller ran With Great Power, Inspectres and My Life with Master.

Brennan ran Bulldogs, Conspiracy of Shadows and I roped him into running a game of Dogs in the Vineyard.


The games were hopping. Mike and Brennan had full tables for most of their games. I have a bit of a following at Ubercon and I tried to feed them players from my BW demos. Seemed to work pretty well.


The attendance was disappointing. 620 people. Many of them repeat attendees. While this is a good base, con attendance for this potentially great big con seems to be levelling off. It gets harder and harder to get our crew out to this con. They know it's going to be the same ol', same ol'.

Speaking of same ol': I ran a new 4-hour, 16 player game this past weekend. I'm honored to say it was my first complete and utter con-game disaster. It was humiliatingly bad. But I think I learned a few things. Oddly, the well-tread Gift scenario that I ran the next day was intensely fun. I was, in fact, surprised by the outcome (which is rare).

For me, it was an OK con. But I think overall -- for our game-set -- it was a good weekend.

One thing I'm disappointed in was that I didn't get a chance to run a game shop/seminar. I think Mike Miller, Brennan and I should start hosting brow-beating, er, game design workshops at Ubercon. We need to start engaging in discourse and spreading the word.

Mike, Brennan, what did you think?
-L

[Valamir]

I'm honored to say it was my first complete and utter con-game disaster. It was humiliatingly bad. But I think I learned a few things.

Bad day, bad scenario, bad players, bad chemistry...?

What did you learn?

[Thor Olavsrud]

Money=Mouth?
We sold three copies of Dogs, 2 copies of the With Great Power preview edition, 1 copy of MLwM and 1 copy of Universalis (to Thor and Urbwar, actually).

Brennan also sold 4 copies of Bulldogs.

We didn't sell any copies of Inspectres, which shocked me. Didn't sell any BW, but then again, I didn't really have anything to sell.

Hey, don't forget the copy of No Press Anthology we sold. We also sold two copies of Capes.

[Michael S. Miller]

Hi, Luke.

We also sold one copy of the NPA. I, too, am shocked that at least one of my InSpectres players did not buy the game. Frank and Sarita were raving about it after the session.

My overly long Actual Play report is available here  Thanks a bunch for feeding me players. It is always appreciated.

As for the prosletyzing/game design seminar, I'd certainly participate, although I'm not as verbose as some folks. But I'd gladly play the MC/straight man and feed you topics until we trigger an abzu-rant. 8^)  If it's more workshopesque than panelesque, I think I could have more to contribute.

[Brennan Taylor]

I'm down with the panel/workshop idea. I would like to raise my profile at these local cons, and panels are a good way to go.

Despite the low turnout, I was quite pleased with the games I ended up running. There was a strong RPG contingent at the con this time around, and they were enthusiastic about trying new things. I had full or nearly full games, some more successful than others. This is a big improvement over past Ubercons, where I have had difficulty attracting interest in my games.

My Sorcerer game was a great success, and did lead to one sale. For details on that one, take a look at this thread: http://www.indie-rpgs.com/viewtopic.php?t=14665. Bulldogs! was popular, and the two sessions I ran sold four games. The Capes demo did all right, but I had some problems that seemed to work out by the end. An overview can be perused here: http://www.indie-rpgs.com/viewtopic.php?t=14704. The Dogs in the Vineyard game was basically a pick-up, since one of the players had bought the game the night before and wanted a demo. That one went really well, and the players thoroughly enjoyed it.

My Conspiracy of Shadows session was a very weird case. I had a gaggle of teens in this one, and all they wanted to do was kill each other. They pretty much ignored the NPCs except as weapons against other players, and they basically had a brawl down to the last man with only the thinnest veil of in-game excuses for the fight. After an hour-and-a-half it was all over, and they left the table largely satisfied. A bit strange to me, but I just let them go at it. It was clearly what they wanted out of the game.

[Thor Olavsrud]

Ralph, I didn't play in Luke's scenario, but we had a little post-game analysis, so I'll try to offer my impression without speaking for Luke.

First, the nucleus of the players were the same kids that Brennan had in his Conspiracy of Shadows game. These kids (I think they're 14 now) have been Burning Wheel groupies for the past three or so Ubercons, and they've been weaned on Luke's Poisonous Ambition scenario, in which you play members of a disintegrating orc clan. That scenario is designed to lead to all sorts of infighting and secret backstabbing. They've played that scenario very well in the past, but I think perhaps it has colored their gaming a bit.

The new scenario is set up for its share of political double-dealing and backstabbing as well, but the characters are weaker and it's readily apparent from the sheets and the characters' Beliefs, Instincts, and Traits that they are going to have to form strong alliances and pull together if they want to survive.

To be clear, I think Luke represented this very clearly in the characters, but I also think many of the kids did not read/understand their characters (many of which are much more complex than the Poisonous Ambition orcs) and also carried their Poisonous Ambition experiences with them and assumed that they should play it similarly. I suspect that the leader characters need to be apportioned more carefully to players with more forceful personalities.

Also -- and perhaps something that will mitigate the first issue when corrected -- it seems that the initial setup for the scenario could give players the impression that they can initially disengage from the conflict and retreat to safety. I believe we've corrected this problem.

Tellingly, I think, the above-mentioned kids seemed to enjoy themselves a great deal. Other players did not.

[M. J. Young]

For what it's worth, we sold a copy of Multiverser's Referee's Rules and an accompanying First Book of Worlds. Overall, I think this was the best Ubercon we've had to date; let me expand on that a bit.

I've always put myself forward to participate in panels. This time I was on the three game design panels, the meet and greet, and the "what are you doing now?" panel. I had signed up for the closing Ubergather panel, but decided to leave early and begged off (it was essentially another meet and greet) so I could see my brother and his kids and get home at a decent hour.

My impressions of panels is that they do two things that matter.

One is that they introduce you and your product to people who wouldn't notice it in the convention schedule as a demo or particularly pick it up on some dealer table. This time around, we had several people become very interested in what Multiverser was and how it worked from talking to us at panels. I don't know what became of these (some of them were looking at character creation as one panel was ending and another was beginning, but they vanished and I did not see them again), but I think we had the opportunity there to make them familiar with the game ideas.

The other is that conventions are very much about networking between the creative people. This was my fourth Ubercon as a guest, and at this point many of the other industry people who do Ubercon know who I am and respect me as a fellow writer/creator. I'm confident that many of them would mention me elsewhere if something arose in relation to my work, so there is some return on that quite apart from the value of being known. Additionally, there are writers and artists in that batch on whom I could undoubtedly call if I needed something done and done right, who now know who I am.

We ran three demos, all on Saturday. I will admit to having started out a bit off balance--I have been running online games for quite a while, and some of my online players made a point of bringing their characters to the live game, which meant I had to transition from the very purposeful pace of posting to forum play to the frenetic pace of real live multiple staging. The first game, at nine in the morning, took me a while to really find my way into, and one of the long-time gamers was getting slighted a bit in favor of new people until I could get past that. On the other hand, several new people picked up the game, and one of them bought copies from us while the others clearly enjoyed what they did. I try to remind myself that the fact players don't buy books from me before leaving the table does not mean they were not impressed. One of the players this time around (good story here) had been at the last Ubercon running Hackmaster at an adjacent table, heard us playing and decided it sounded like fun, joined us for a later game at that same table, and then ordered the books from an online bookstore after he got home. I don't know and may never know whether the other players will buy any books, or indeed whether anyone at the writing seminars will buy any of my books, but it does happen.

We are particularly excited about the one fellow who bought Multiverser books from us, because he was not from around here--if I understand correctly, he was visiting the States from Spain. He is interested in introducing the game to players there, and possibly in arranging a license to translate our materials into Spanish for distribution overseas. That's another point about conventions: some of the people you encounter will help you in ways you don't expect.

We are fortunate in that it does not cost us much to do Ubercon. It is within half an hour's drive from my parents' house, so we crash there and get breakfast and dinner each day. Mostly it's travel costs and pocket money (we don't have a table, but Luke and Aaron usually have our books at theirs). We probably lose money, but it's not like conventions where we have to pay for hotel accommodations and buy all our meals, and I think that the exposure has a significant return in spreading knowledge of and interest in the game beyond our immediate area.

I'll be back at Ubercon VI. I did Game Design at UNY-con; Brennan and Vincent were both there, and it went well, I thought. If you're interested in doing it, let me know--I'll let Kim know that there's interest in doing such a panel, and we can talk about what to do and how organized we want to be.

--M. J. Young

[Dregg]

The one complaint I have about ubercon was the "Pack em in" method of the RPG's. One one could hear me speak and even I was feeling trapped. My Pulp Era game was full and now that it is a tangible book, the next con I can try to make sales.

Panels would be a good thing, and mayhap Ubercon has an audiance who would listen to the indie designers and publishers.