Joint booth with Projekt Odyssee at Spiel in Essen/Germany?

[Frank T]

Eero: e.V. means "eingetragener Verein", which is a registered membership corporation, usually non-commercial. It's a legal person with limited liability under German corporate law, which has a long tradition of being the form of organization for any range of social activities, sports, hobbies and the like. Nexus e.V. would be the actual legal entity to conclude the relevant contracts and assume liability.

[neph]

Hi again,

Nexus is a society of roleplayers from Berlin (originally). They organize a convention called the Odyssee once a year, which is a con for small, indie, neglected, out-of-press and other games, you don't usualy expect to played at conventions (Jürgen Mayer did some sessions of Forge-games there, some of you will know him).

During one Odyssee-Con the idea for the Projekt Odyssee emerged to promote german smallpress or even hobby-authors. So the project is based in the Nexus-society and they provide some of the money.

I also thought about doing this in 2007 but the PrO needs a little motivation right now and we missed the Spiel last year already.

Andreas

[Emily Care]

I'd like to support this effort and would be grateful to have my games represented there. I could help as well with 100-200 Euro.

best,
Emily

[Frank T]

I have opened a thread for the booth monkeys so you can see who will be there to promote your game and demo it to people.

- Frank

[Ben Lehman]

Hey all --

I'm completely sold on this by the showing so far in the booth monkey thread.  Who do we get the money to, how, and by when?

yrs--
--Ben

[Daniela Nicklas]

Hi,

I'm Daniela Nicklas from Stuttgart (Germany), Nexus e.V. Member and project coordinator of Projekt Odyssee (PrO) (since October last year, Nimer Yussef founded it).

The booth in Essen will be coordinated by Stefan Unger (who is also the organizer of NordCon, one of the biggest fantasy conventions in Europe, and it was this weekend, so give him some time to have a good night's rest). So I'll leave the details to him, but some information for you right now to help your decision process:

People:

So far, four PrO authors want directly contribute to the booth. This is a rather low number, but quite a number of other systems got so mature that they have their own booths. So we are very happy to make it a joint event with the Forge, because being present at Essen is very important not only for the authors, but also for PrO itself.
(beside the fact the it is a utterly cool rpg project which I'd love to boost).

Additional, I guess there will be about 5-7 more people from PrO that will work as booth monkeys. Some of them (me included) are also happy to present or talk about The Forge Systems. So we won't have a problem with populating the booth and representing systems even if their authors don't make it to Essen.


Money:

We plan to have a mixed funding: half of the booth can be covered by Nexus, the other half have to be splitted between the authors. Maybe we should have different amount here, depending on whether the author wants to sell books or not (some of the PrO systems are online and for free). Altogether, it should be no more than 100 Euros per author. These are details that Stefan has to figure out.
A small booth will be around 800-1000 Euros.

Organization:

We are fine with organizing the booth and keeping the contact to the Essen fair. Frank T. will be the coordinator for the The Forge side.
Soon, we will set up a mailing list for organizational issues where you can subscribe to.

hope to see you in Essen,

  Daniela

[Daniela Nicklas]

Another remark: one way how Nexus raises the funding for the booth is a rpg auction at the biggest German Indie-Convention, "Die Odyssee".

You could also donate nice things to sell at the auction (e.g. a signed The Forge Game). If you plan to, let me know (best per E-Mail), I'll give you an postal address where to send it.

We will print all donators to the program and announce them loudly at the auction.

Daniela

[Dirk Ackermann]

Hi Everybody,

thank you Frank T for the news!

Because it is that far away I am sure to lend my help.

Frank mentioned something about the possibility to do a TRoS or BW demo. I would do it if there is some interest!

I am confused about the money. Please can somebody explain it to me in a sentence?

Anyway, I will help, because this is just too cool. Tell me how and I am satisfied.

MfG

Dirk

[Frank T]

Hi Dirk,

Money: Authors take a share of the costs for the booth. Booth monkeys work for free and cover their own expenses, but don't contribute to the booth costs.

- Frank

[Eero Tuovinen]

I'm Daniela Nicklas from Stuttgart (Germany), Nexus e.V. Member and project coordinator of Projekt Odyssee (PrO) (since October last year, Nimer Yussef founded it).

Welcome to the Forge! I hope this project gets off the ground, just because I'm curious to get to meet the Odyssee people and see your games.

So far, four PrO authors want directly contribute to the booth. This is a rather low number, but quite a number of other systems got so mature that they have their own booths. So we are very happy to make it a joint event with the Forge, because being present at Essen is very important not only for the authors, but also for PrO itself. (beside the fact the it is a utterly cool rpg project which I'd love to boost).

Additional, I guess there will be about 5-7 more people from PrO that will work as booth monkeys. Some of them (me included) are also happy to present or talk about The Forge Systems. So we won't have a problem with populating the booth and representing systems even if their authors don't make it to Essen.

Seems that we have plenty of people from the Forge side, too. Raises a question, which I hope the Gencon-experienced folks, Nexus people and others with experience with larger booths can answer: how many people do we need, how many are too much? I suppose "too much" will just mean that we get more free time from the booth. I have experience only of 4-6 people booths in much smaller conventions, so I don't even have a clear picture of how many people can operate a booth the size we're talking about at once.

We plan to have a mixed funding: half of the booth can be covered by Nexus, the other half have to be splitted between the authors. Maybe we should have different amount here, depending on whether the author wants to sell books or not (some of the PrO systems are online and for free). Altogether, it should be no more than 100 Euros per author. These are details that Stefan has to figure out.
A small booth will be around 800-1000 Euros.

Seems quite compatible! Of course the Americans and the Odyssee authors pay the same amount, right? I suggest that presence at Essen need not affect the cost either way, the benefit of actually coming yourself is that you get to ensure that your game gets the break it deserves. Free games: I agree that an author with a free game should get a break in the cost. I'd be tempted to let them come for free, but a free game still takes up resources in demonstration and sales pitches (and if it doesn't, it's not really there), so some cost is appropriate. Half or third of the normal cost?

Is Odyssee OK with the investment breakdown suggested earlier, so that authors pay equal shares for each game or game line they want to present at the booth? So, for example, Ron Edwards would pay for three shares, if he wants Sorcerer (+supplements), Elfs and It Was a Mutual Decision there, while Ben Lehman pays for one share to have room for Polaris? That seems fair to me. Is there any Odyssee authors with several games?

Current budgetary situation: if we need a 1000€ for the booth, is there any other shared expenses? Furniture? Tickets for the monkeys? Food money? Props? Anything else? Anyway, if we assume that Nexus pays half, we need to raise around 500€ minimum from the authors. If we have four Odyssee authors (did I understand that right?) and Ron, Ben, Emily have already said that they want to participate... holy fuck, it seems I have to actually come to Essen. Or am I getting ahead of myself in some regard?

If the Odyssee people don't have a problem with the Forge ethos of pitching other people's games as well, then I don't really see any need for organizational demarcation or turns at the booth for the different organizations or anything like that: let's just all get together and learn to talk about each other's games interchangeably. I don't suppose that I can demo a game that's only in German, but I can talk about it at least! (To clarify, what I mean with "Forge ethos": your primary concern at the booth is finding out what kind of games a potential customer would like, instead of trying to sell him on your own game specifically. Everybody pulls customers for everybody.)

Now we'll just have to find out where luminaries like Vincent, Ralph, Matt(s), Tim, Luke and others are hiding. It seems the cost per title could be neglicible (or alternatively, we can pay the entrance for the booth monkeys and use money for other less critical targets).

[Frank T]

Eero, please bear in mind that the 800-1000 Euro is for a small booth of 5x2 meters. I was aiming at twice that space, to allow for at least three demo tables. I believe Andreas is right now figuring out how much that would cost overall.

- Frank

[Brennan Taylor]

Frank,

I would be happy to contribute to the cost of the booth, and send support for Bulldogs! and Mortal Coil, my two games.

[Jason Morningstar]

You can count Bully Pulpit Games in as well, although we'll need more details about logistics.  We can contribute up to E100 and I'd like to get an idea of how many copies of The Roach we ought to send.  Gen Con-tested demo materials and other fun stuff as well, of course! 

[TonyLB]

I'm a bit hard-headed (perhaps thick-headed) on the business side of things, so I'm gonna ask:  Do you guys have stock to sell?  Or the provision to at least get stock in a reasonable manner?

Because if the booth doesn't have a cash register and a substantial number of books waiting to be put in the cash-paying hands of those who have just had a wonderful demo then that seems like a lost opportunity.

At the same time, shipping a substantial stock of all these games to Europe and then shipping anything that doesn't sell back to the U.S. seems like a logistically challenging and perhaps-expensive operation.  Have people got that under control?

[Blankshield]

I would like to see Death's Door as part of a greater indie/forge presence at Spiel, and I'm willing to provide product, educate (remotely) booth monkeys, share in booth cost, and contribute to costs above and beyond.  I can't be present physically.

What I need to know is what/how much I need to contribute, and when it needs to be done by.

thanks,

James