Origins After-Action

[Luke]

Origins, to my eye, is a pretty strange con. It's laid across a sprawling convention hall and lacks a sense of centrality. There appear to be an overwhelming number of attendees. The lines are long, the supplies are short: the bathrooms are without paper towels, the food court rapidly runs out of various dishes. But events are under-populated and the dealer's room traffic was fairly light. And very few folks were buying.

Thor and Brennan were manning the booth Thursday. They said it was "surprisingly busy."  Dro and I arrived Friday. We went straight to the dealer's room to get to work. It was dead all day long.

It bears noting that I was sharing booth space with Key20, IPR and the guys from The Crossroads of Eternity (a new fantasy rpg). The booth was set up in a standard convention booth "L" with all the product on the outside, and all of us trapped on the inside. It was a like a wall between me and sales.

At the end of the day, we agreed to rearrange the thing to give it more energy. Aside from Dro, no one else there had been at the Forge booth in previous years. I'll tell ya, demos for a small press game are a must. Friday was a complete lesson in humility. Sure, I had buzz and name recognition, but not nearly enough to carry me through a con without busting my fucking ass.

So for Saturday, I made sure we had a nice demo table set up. It was magic. Within moments of the hall opening, I had a demo going and made a sale.

We ran demos for BW, Capes, Shadow of Yesterday and even Universalis!

Actually, that reminds me: Mike Holmes deserves the Honorary Andy Kitowski Award. He hovered around our booth when he didn't have a game going on and helped us pitch games. His sense of humor and energy were a fucking balm. Thanks, Mike!

Which leads me to the proof positive example of why demo tables are an absolute must: Midday Saturday, Peter Adkison and one of his hunch-backed underlings, Rennie (just kidding, Rennie!), sauntered up the booth and said, "Run us through a demo!"

My first impression of Peter Adkison? "God damn, I want to be like him when I'm older!" He was open-minded, enthusiastic and good humored. In the BW demo, his character was chopped in half on the first action. He loved it. Thought it was great.

He stayed on to demo Capes and Universalis. Then he practically raided us like a barbarian. He walked away with a BOX full of stuff.

All the while, he had nothing but great things to say about small press games. Yeah, I want to be like him when I'm all grown up.



Sunday was better than Friday, but not as good as Saturday. I ran demos, but couldn't make any sales from them. I really felt like I was off. Felt like I couldn't catch my groove.




All in all, Origins really made me appreciate GenCon and the Forge booth. I'm very excited to get back into the thick of it with you guys. The energy and comraderie are just so fucking vital.


However, Dro, Thor, Brennan, and Mike Holmes made a great crew. They are the elites of the elites! I couldn't and wouldn't have picked anyone else to be there with me.


====
Drum roll please...


And now for the numbers.

My Life with Master: 5 (Sold out Saturday)
Dogs in the Vineyard: 5 (Sold out Saturday)
NPA: 3
Burning Wheel: 25
Monster Burner: 11

I don't have access to Jason Valore's numbers, but I'll see if I can get him to post them.

Also, I hope Brennan will post his sales here, too.

Games I wish I had bought and brought: Primetime Adventures (Matt, people were asking about it), The Mountain Witch (Tim, you got buzz), and With Great Power (Mike, hurry up!).

going to the beach now,
-Luke

[Mourglin]

I was also at Origins, not as a vendor but just to play some war games.  I went through the exibit hall several times and didn't buy anything for myself.  There was not anything that I didn't already have or wanted or needed.  I stopped by the IPR booth and sat down with the guys who made the The Crossroads of Eternity game.  Talked to them a bit about their project and game.  I must say they were nice guys and were very helpful in answering questions.  Later I think it was Saturday, I pulled myself away from the big war game I was playing and stopped by again and had the The Crossroads of Eternity guys run me through a character gen of their new RPG.  I believe I met Mike H, and introduced myself.  He was busy it seemed so I went back to my discussion with the CoE guys.

abzu is right, I think there were a lot of events that were short people, not a lot of floor sales going on and the con was very spread out.  As a matter of fact, I was on the far north end of the building, probably a 1/2 mile from the Hyatt and we were upstairs all by ourselves with the other 40-50 board gamers.  I got sick of walking forver to get to anything... plus is was freezing up there.  

I have not been to Gen Con in many many years, but I plan on showing up and staying all day Saturday.

Based on my observations I am not sure (if I ever get my game done) that paying for booth space at a big con like Origins would be the best way to get some exposure.  It didn't appear to me that The Crossroads of Eternity  game was selling much, nor was this other RPG called Noble Hero which was written by some people local to my area. Most of the time when I walked by either booth, it was quiet.  

For those of you who have been there done that, do you think hitting up Gen Con or Origins is worth it?  Personally I would not expect to even recoup the costs of attending a con with a new RPG being showcased at either.  For those of you who usually go to Gen Con, is this the better con to make an investment in as a vendor?

[Brennan Taylor]

I would definitely say that GenCon is the better convention for someone starting out. I managed to pay my way with sales, but I don't think that someone carrying only one product could pull that off at Origins. It's hard enough to do at GenCon.

As far as sales go, I moved 8 copies of Bulldogs! there, and Shadow of Yesterday, Capes, Sorcerer, and Conspiracy of Shadows were our other best-sellers. I didn't move more than 10 copies of anything, however. I don't want to publish any other hard numbers until I check with my members, since they may not want to publicize.

[Thor Olavsrud]

The IPR stuff did pretty well, although I don't have exact numbers (hopefully Brennan will come along and fill those in).

The big movers were Capes, Bulldogs!, and The Shadow of Yesterday. We sold the five copies of Sorcerer that we had fairly quickly, and unloaded a number of supplements too.

We also moved a number of copies of Conspiracy of Shadows, which we had discounted to $15.

Fastlane gathered some interest, especially when we broke out the roulette wheel for demos, but I don't think we moved more than a couple of copies.

A lot of people came by the booth looking for either Dogs in the Vineyard or My Life with Master after Luke sold out of those games. Despite hard pitches for checking out the other games, most of the people that came to the booth looking specifically for those games just walked away when told no more copies were available.

To back up what Luke was saying, Peter Adkinson was incredibly enthusiastic about the games. His friend Rennie, who is the director of program management for GenCon, told me as they were looking over the shelves, "Peter really loves the stuff you guys are doing. He's crazy about it."

They had a real blast with the demos (I think they spent about an hour or more at the booth trying different games), including a rockin' Capes demo with Brennan. Mike Holmes (hi Mike!) also demoed Universalis for them to much acclaim.

[Mourglin]

Do you think Peter A would ever invest in such projects?  Has he returned to his roots after making millions and is enthusiastic to see others that are trying to break into this market?

[Jake Richmond]

This is Jake. I do the art for CrossRoads of Eternity and we had our new game at Origins. I had a great time and learned a ton. I was a show virgin, so everything was a learning experience for me. It was great being able to share the booth with people who knew what they were doing. Thanks guys! I agree, once we opened the booths up on Sat it became a whole new game. Being able to get out there and get right up in peoiples faces, being able to run demos, being able to put a copyt of our game in someones hand; that really made the difference for us. We gave away ALL our promo material (we brought alot) and ran a fair amount of demos. We only had 6 sales the whole show, but I'll call that a good start.

Anyway, I just wanted to say thanks to everyone who came by the booth, and especially to Brennan, Thor, Luke, Dro, Jason and, uh... Jasons wife (I forgot her name) who were kind enough to share a booth with us and show us how its done. Oh, and Mike Holmes as well, for being our first demo victim.

Was it worth it. As a learning experience? Sure, it was awsome. I learned so much, I feel embarrased in hindsight for being so ignorant. As a sales tool? Maybe in the future. As I said, we sold 6 copies, and that certainly didnt pay for the plane tickets, or the hotel, or the cabs (although for the last 2 days we only ate if we sold books. We put that money to good use). As a promotional tool? Well, I personally put our fliers in the hands of 1200 people (thats how many fliers we brought, and we ran out 3rd day) but whether many of those people will ever by the book... who knows? Traffic on our sites been up since the show (crossroads-rpg.com) and I've gotten a dozen or so emails from people who either bought or demoed the game, so my hopes are high. I'd be more inclined to do this kind of thing if I didnt have to travel half way across the country ( I live in Portland OR). We'll try to capatalize on whatever sucess we had at the show. If sale pick up (from our current state of zero) and we get an increase of traffic on the site then we'll do the show again. If not? I'll spend my promotions money in other ways. I guess.

By the way, Luke gives crazy demos. If you havent seen him do it, its really worth checking out. Changed my mind completely about the whole value of doing demos.

-Jake

[Mike Holmes]

GenCon is huge at about 28,000 attendees last year. Origins is about half that size; still way larger than other cons, but only about 13,000 unique attendees (often attendance is measured by man-days which is not useful for sales purposes).

DragonCon and such are actually as large as GenCon or larger - but they're a mixed bag and not nearly as much about gaming. Even Origins is less RPG oriented than GenCon is.

GenCon has the combination of focus on non-wargame adventure gaming stuff and attendance that makes it far more potent a place to be.

That said, I don't think you can think of either as a place where an indie designer can make money. That's simply not what they're for. If you're counting on them paying off, you'll be dissapointed. Even the people who go to the Forge both at a GenCon only come out ahead (if they do) on booth costs if they partition the cost of the booth. If you have to pay for a whole booth, I think there's no way you can come out ahead on the volumes of sales that indy games generate. Brennan can do it because he's fronting for lots and lots of designers (and at that, he's not getting rich doing it).

So does that mean don't go? No, it means do split the booth costs, travel cheaply, and suck up the likely loss. Because if you don't go, you won't get the buzz that your game needs to sell. That's what cons do. GenCon better, but Origins is great for, well, getting Peter Adkison to see your game.

This is one of those "intangibles." Is it worth the cost? Hard to say. You might be able to much more cheaply generate the buzz you need.

But that ignores that the cons are fun. If you come and don't have fun, I'd say don't come back. Hard for me to imagine, however, because all of the "selling" at GenCon comes off to me more like a very fun vacation. As I always say, I would be there even if I weren't selling anything (will be there not selling anything at GenCon this year).

So, if you take these cons as a pure business expense, they might not be worth it. If you take them for the constant learning process that the represent, and for the fun that they are, I think that they're a fantastic thing to do. You'll have to decide for yourself.


Mourglin, sorry I didn't get to talk to you more. What's your real name? Did you mention it to me? This is why you should use it here (at least in your sig or something), because then we know who you are when we meet you. I recognized Eric not because he's Technocrat13, but because he's Eric.

Mike

[PeterAdkison]

My ears are burning something fierce!

Yeah, I had a blast at y'all's (oh, I love that one!) booth at Origins. Back when I acquired Gen Con I wanted to difuse some of the us-vs-them stinkin' thinkin' that had weaved itself into both organizations, and one the things I told the Origins guys so that they'd know I like them is, "You guys gotta do good now, 'cause I don't have time to play games at Gen Con!"  I enjoy Origins a lot because it's the one show where I get to play a lot of demos.  And the booth I enjoyed the most was the Forge, et al, booth.

I demo'd three games: Burning Wheel, Capes, and then Universalis.

It's tempting to launch into a full review of these three games as games, but this isn't a review forum, so let me frame my comments as first impressions, related to demos.

Burning Wheel. Wow, Luke is one helluva demo'er. He'd probably rather I start with "Wow, that's one helluva game", and that would be true, but playing a game run by Luke is about one of the funnest things you can do that doesn't require getting naked or getting drunk or both. In the demo, Luke had Rennie and I play against each other, his orc seargent and my dwarf warrior. In the very first swing of the fight I got split in two. How can you not love that? The nice thing about the demo is we got right into the action and got to see how the combat system works. It was relatively quick, and since I died right away Luke "revived me" so that I could die again.  Fun, very well run demo.

Capes. Let me come back to Capes.

Universalis. This is the first game I've had a chance to play of this genre where you spend coins (or cards or whatever) to control the game and there's no GM. My first exposure to this sort of game was at Gen Con So Cal last December when I purchased Fastlane. I read it cover to cover and loved the idea, but hadn't had a chance to play. So when I figured out that Universalis was in this genre I was very eager to try it out.  I really liked it. Mike Holmes ran the demo and he did a great job. Okay, maybe he doesn't bounce around the table as much as Luke, but he's very good at pacing and when we got hung up on something he subtly steered us in the right direction. We really got a feel for the game and of the three, it's the one we're most likely going to actually try and play without someone to hold our hands (Rennie and I are going to start a Gen Con lunchtime game in the office after Gen Con Indy).

Capes. Rennie and I were both confused as heck in this demo. I apologize, I don't remember the name of the person who demo'd it to us, but I do think he did a reasonable job and obviously had a command of the game. But Rennie and I just could not get the hang of the rhythm of the game. Now, just because I'm famous in the industry, that doesn't mean I'm all that bright. I can typically hold my own in a gaming group, but in a typical retail store "game night" there's going to be a couple of players that are better game players than I am. But still, I'm probably in the 80th percentile, so maybe the demo of this game needs to be simplified somehow.

Now that I've read Universalis and Capes, I think I see the trouble. Capes is a more complex game of this genre.  If I was more experienced at Universalis, I could probably learn Capes easily. But right now I'm just getting my head around the basics of this sort of roleplaying: framing scenes, taking turns in a scene, using some currency to control the story, etc.  In Capes there a lot more to keep track of and it was just too much for me to absorb all at once.  Perhaps after I've played Universalis a few times, I'll be ready to try it again.

Anyway, it was great to see you guys there. I thoroughly enjoyed hanging out for awhile. I'll definitely do a drive-by at Gen Con, and do a demo if I have time.

Peter D. Adkison
Gaming Mogul
Gen Con LLC
Hidden City Games LLC

[Jake Richmond]

well, that was kinda cool

[GB Steve]

I had a good time at the IPR booth and I'm sorry I didn't get to play more of the games but the guys were great in demoing Fastlane and Capes for me. I've now got some idea of how Capes works and could possibly even run it - something that I did not feel confident doing from just reading it. I would have liked to have played more IPR games, in particular the Burning Wheel big scenario but I was also doing the Cthulhuathon which turned out to be rather special. Shoggoth.net ran that gem.

I bought one of the copies of Dogs which I'm taking to France next week for SteveCon where I'll also be running it. I'm hoping my French is up to it!

Origins was a strange Con for me. With over 15,000 attendees it's about 8-10 times bigger than the largest UK con but given the large halls it appears to be less crowded than GenCon UK. When I tell you that it's much better organised than that Con, you must wonder what we have to put up with!

It's also not a roleplaying convention. Sure there are plenty of gamers but there seem to be many more board, war and card gamers. Roleplaying appears to be something of an adjunct. Still I'm jealous of Ohio gamers who get this and Gen Con within easy driving distance. I'm trying to think of a way of getting to both without using up all my annual leave. It's a long way to go for 2 times 4 days gaming!

The Origins' Awards, the thing that tempted me to go in the first place, were a strange kettle of fish. It was like a snake-oil salesman hawking his wares to the queue to get into the trading post. I was hoping for a bit more pomp and circumstance given it was my first nomination for anything. On the other hand I did get a photo of a belly-dancer and a stormtrooper holding my nomination board, so not all bad.

All in all a great experience and one I hope to repeat some day.

[Mike Holmes]

Thanks for the kind comments, Peter.

The Origins' Awards, the thing that tempted me to go in the first place, were a strange kettle of fish.

I'd agree.

(If you don't go to Origins, folks, you don't get to meet those traveling from other countries to see the awards, too. Nice to meet you Steve.)

The Origins Awards are always somewhat...controversial, I guess. In that there's always room to complain about how the current voting works or somesuch. But this year they opted for something that I thought was very strange, they announced the awards to the crowd waiting to get into the exhibitor's room. I was standing outside the crowd as it happened (because I don't like crowds), and I couldn't hear 90% of what was going on.

In previous years, the awards have been held in one of the ballrooms, and they've had that pomp that I think Steve was looking for. I think that, perhaps, the problem with those years were that the people involved, being skeptical about the Origins Awards themselves, didn't always take it all that seriously. But, still, they handled it with basic respect. It was always fun to see James Ernest up there in a tux doing the MC bit, or the like.

Maybe they couldn't get anyone to volunteer to announce the awards anymore? Who knows. I'm sure they had some reason. Perhaps it was because they believed that the crowd on Thursday morning waiting for the doors to open were less a gang of industry insiders, and more potential purchasers. And wanted to get the idea of the awards out to the purchasing public. Or something?

I dunno. It does seem that the awards have been further cheapened by this to an extent. I was glad to hear Attack Vector get an award (congrats, Ken!), but sad that said award didn't seem to have even the slight weight of circumstance that it has in the past.

I could call for a fix to the awards, but everyone already does that every year. I think that there is simply some deeply embeded endemic problem to awards that may just never be rooted out. Which is unfortunate. Because it sure seems to make sense that there should be an award for "adventure gaming." There is, even fragmented as it is, a sense of this hobby as a unique whole. And I think it does the hobby good to recognize its achievements.

Or perhaps I should just be happy that the Diana Jones Award exists for RPGs? And the Indie-Rpg awards?

Mike

[Brennan Taylor]

Capes. Rennie and I were both confused as heck in this demo. I apologize, I don't remember the name of the person who demo'd it to us, but I do think he did a reasonable job and obviously had a command of the game.

Hi, Peter,

That was me, and let me apologize for my inability to get the game across to you two! I actually had no idea you were so confused, so I am sorry I didn't go more slowly. I had the impression by the time we were wrapping up that you and Rennie were both figuring out how the game worked. I'm upset that I failed!

Let me know what you think might help for the demo, so I can improve it in future.

Also, thanks for dropping by the booth and I am very pleased to have met you.

[M Jason Parent]

Do you think Peter A would ever invest in such projects?  Has he returned to his roots after making millions and is enthusiastic to see others that are trying to break into this market?

According to at least one small publisher I knew (who's company no longer exists), Peter was a financial backer for his company (which was in the past 5 years).

So I'd say, yes... the possibility exists, but you'd be better off asking Peter than relying on me.