SoCal afteraction report

[Luke]

I've been to a lot of cons in the past three years. SoCal was unlike any that I've attended so far. It was a gaming con, but slanted heavily toward card games. Attendance seemed to be about 5000 people. Did I count? No. But I've been to cons with 5k attendees before and it seemed about the same size.

There were rpgers there, but they were the definite minority. And they seemed to be split into two distinct groups -- people who knew exactly who we were and maybe even had our stuff, and people who had no idea that small press game even existed.

I see this as an opportunity. Had I been better prepared, I think I could have maximized the situation. As it was, I was woefully unprepared to run a Forge-style booth. We just didn't have the staff or the furniture. I'd consider going back next year and doing it right. I think the infectious demo-heavy atmosphere would go over very well there. I think a combination of scheduled games and booth demos would kill at SoCal.

Sales were ok. We did about as well as we would have at a busy local con. Saturday was the dead day. Barely any activity. Friday and Sunday were busy.

I sat on two panels. I can't stress enough how vital panels are to getting the word out there. GenCon 05 was strong evidence, but SoCal 05 confirmed it. Panels are equally as good as demos at getting people interested in your game. I'm sure George Lakoff would have something erudite to say about that.

Gripes: The dealer's portion of the hall was in the way-back. There was plenty to do before you got to the dealer's area. Would have been nice to be up front, but maybe the card-hawks paid more for their space than we did. And maybe Wizards paid to have the rpga get prime real-estate, but I doubt it. RPGA should have been forced to walk through the exhibitor's area to get to their tables, not vice versa.

Everyone was exceptionally nice, but NO ONE had any fucking money. It was bizarre. It was like the poor gamer's show. All day Saturday it was the same thing over and over -- "wow, that was great, but I don't have any money!"

Corollary to that, the ATMs ran out of money. I'm going to contact Peter and Rennie directly about this, but is it so hard to make sure the ATMs remain stocked?

Food: Holy good god, the food situation was terrible. Everything was hugely spread out, and anything in the area was ridiculously expensive. Dro, Chris and I easily walked a mile to find a good taqueria. What why did find was excellent and cheap, but it took some doing.

Perks: The weather. Having to go outside to get to events was actually a nice perk! Warm, dry and sunny. I came home to rain and clouds in the northeast. SoCal I miss thee already.

Cuter gamer girls. Hey, I'm just being honest.

I'd love to brainstorm a bigger and better Forge presence at SoCal next year.
-L

[lampros]

I think SoCal is largely a local con. Most of the people I talked to were from OC or So Cal, very few had flown in. That might explain the lack of money. A con you have to fly to is necessarily going to have more affluent attendees.

And the food in OC generally rocks, the area around the convention is this tiny little bit of suck.

[ScottM]

It was good to meet and buy from you Luke.  Jennifer and I were among your late Sunday sales.

We haven't done many cons, but I agree that the emphasis didn't seem to be on the roleplaying-- not as much as other cons, at least.  I missed you at the booth both Friday and Saturday while you were at your panels, so that might count as a drawback-- though your booth crew covered for you pretty well.

I certainly look forward to a more extensive Forge presence in the future.  Now that I've been, I'm more willing to participate in an Indie Explosion thing, if it's coming to town.

Scott

[ptevis]

There were rpgers there, but they were the definite minority. And they seemed to be split into two distinct groups -- people who knew exactly who we were and maybe even had our stuff, and people who had no idea that small press game even existed.

I see this as an opportunity. Had I been better prepared, I think I could have maximized the situation. As it was, I was woefully unprepared to run a Forge-style booth. We just didn't have the staff or the furniture. I'd consider going back next year and doing it right. I think the infectious demo-heavy atmosphere would go over very well there. I think a combination of scheduled games and booth demos would kill at SoCal.

I think you're right, but I'm curious to know how you'd swing it. As we talked about, I think there's a growing mass of gamers out here (by which I mean southern California) who would dig on Forge-style games if given the right exposure, but since they never make it to Indy don't see them. What would you have done differently?

--Paul

[jburneko]

Hello,

I'm a SoCal local and (shamefully) I haven't made it to SoCal GenCon yet.  About 3 to 4 years ago I made an effort to bring indie-games to the three local (strategicon run) local cons.  What I had observed was that the role-players were very clique-y.  You had the Call of Cthulhu crowd, the RPGA D&D crowd, the GURPS crowd, the (surprisingly small) White Wolf (largely evening LARP) crowd, and one small group that consistently ran In Nomine.   Every con was EXACTLY the same.  Pick a game type and you'd see the same faces from event to event.

At the time, I was alone, and I met a lot of resistance to my events especially from con coordinators who had trouble believing that InSpectres wasn't a GURPS event.  I once had to tell a co-ordinator THREE times in ten minutes that InSpectres was a whole GAME and not a scenario title.

I eventually stopped going to cons and running events because 3 events in 4 would have zero attendance and I had no back up.  After following the GenCon Indy threads very carefully, I realized that scheduled 3 to 4 hour events probably aren't the best way to show case these games.  But I knew of no-one else local who could help me do blitz-kreig style demos.

It seems that this year indie games and gamers interested in them has picked up at GenCon SoCal.  This gives me hope and I may return to the con scene if this trend continues.  In addition to a dealer-room/demo presence what I would really like to see is a strong indie presence in the open-gaming room.  I think having "off the record" scheduled game events (kind of like an indie-con within the con) in the open-gaming room could really attract attention.  If 3 or 4 of us agree to show up and play no matter what that would get passer by exposer and hey, if one or two other people want to join in that's even better.  The idea is to create an atmosphere of enjoyable excited indie-game play that leaks out into the environment around us.

Jesse