GenCon 2006 Booth Menu Draft and Redraft

[Troy_Costisick]

Heya,

I thought I'd post this here so that there's no confusion with the other thread in conventions.  Okay, here we go.  I've posted the first draft of the Menu at: http://divine-games.org/gamemenu1.pdf Go check it out if you have a game you will be selling at the Forge booth this year at GenCon.  Inform me here, in this thread, about any mistakes or changes that need to be addressed, and I'm sure there'll be plenty.  That's okay.

Now let me explain some of my rationale for this thing.  First, the games are listed in two columns because I wanted this to actually look something like a menu.  When you get it, I recommend folding it in half.  That means, Luke or whoever he puts in charge of bringing it, should probably print off a dozen or so on cardstock and have them laminated.  That's what I would have done had I been able to attend.  Second, there are only five games that received graphics on the menu.  Two reasons: first, there's not much room left and second, Adept Press, Burning Wheel, Lumpley Games, Timefire Games, and Blue Devil Games are the ones who put up the big bucks to secure the booth.  Therefore, they get should get special consideration.  I'm not going to listed to objections to that unless they come from Ron or Luke.  Third, I put the Forge logo in the background cause that's where we all came from.  It's where we got to know each other and how this whole booth thing got started.  So I felt it deserved some recognition.  Ron, if you don't like it, let me know.  Fourth, I chose to put genre on the menu because if you're giving this to a person to look at, "genre" is the easiest way to convey a lot of information in the smallest amount of space IMO.  If the person is into Supers or Scifi, he can quickly locate the games that might interest him/her and say, "Show me this."  Finally, there are some games on here people have told me they're selling but not how much they cost (notably those from lumpley games).  Please get me that information ASAP. I'd like to have this done by Monday.

Thanks for all your support and feedback.

Peace,

-Troy

[Iskander]

Hey, Troy, neat stuff!

Some thoughts (and I apologise for my nitpicking disease; it's unhealthy, I know):

- Lose the title/genre/MSRP headings, they're redundant.
- Lose the 00 cents from the prices, they make them harder to read, and it's not worth it for the one $44.95 entry. (Brennan - are we really going to be pissing about with the nickels? Oy.)
- Lose the "GenCon Indianapolis, best four blah blah". If they don't know where they are, they have bigger problems than knowing how much the games cost. Besides, we can use the space.
- The Forge logo doesn't render correctly in the PDF I see - the 'e' of Forge is truncated. Also, it makes some books hard to read.
- subheading: Burnign wheel should be Burning
- Sci-fi or Sci-Fi, pick one.
- Carry's genre is Veitnam, which should be either Vietnam, or more generally "War"
- Dawning Star: Heilos Helios Rising should be just "Helios Rising".
- I would abbreviate Conspiracy of Shadows Companion to "CoS Companion", it's right beneath the full CoS, so it should be obvious (in general, the line breaks in titles are sub-optimal)
- I would peg CoS as horror/fantasy myself.
- DitV is a Western?!
- Timestream's genre should probably be "Time Travel" - in general, I think you can afford less of a column gutter, and more space for the info


If you want to hand this Sisyphean task over to someone who will be attending the con, I will happily take it on. I think it would be useful to have the menu in two formats: one, like this (perhaps with images and sponsorship messages on the reverse), for littering around the booth, the other a 1/2-letter size folded to a quarter, for the 40-odd booth staff to have in their pockets.

Cheers,
- Alexander

[Clyde L. Rhoer]

• At the top, Burning Wheel is misspelled.
• A|state and Kill Puppies for Satan are not properly capitalized.
• Vietnam is misspelled for Carry's genre listing.
• I also can't see most of the E in the Forge graphic also.
• The Forge graphic and the pictures on the bottom are fairly badly pixelated. This makes it hard to read some of the game titles on the bottom, and I imagine that will only get worse with printing. This may not be an issue as they are already listed above the pictures.

Besides those minor quibbles, I think it looks great, and I plan to print it out so I can make sure to demo the games I'm not already familiar with.

[Iskander]

A|state and Kill Puppies for Satan are not properly capitalized.

Funnily enough, they are correctly capitalised in the PDF - both of them use lower case.

[Nathan P.]

Carry's proper title is

carry. a game about war.

Leave the genre as "Vietnam," please.

Ditto on the Forge "e" being cut off. I agree that you can leave the 00's off of the prices. If you kill the headers and take off the 00s and bring the center white space in a bit, I bet you would have room to put in a sentence or two about the Games On Demand thing.

[Clyde L. Rhoer]

Funnily enough, they are correctly capitalised in the PDF - both of them use lower case.

*chuckles and scratches head*

You mean they are properly improperly capitalized and this improperness is proper by design? It's not quite a tongue twister, but was definitely fun to write.

[Clinton R. Nixon]

I sent an e-mail to you this week, Troy, but you must not have got it. I have two games not on here:

The Princes' Kingdom - fantasy, children, war: $20
Donjon - fantasy, humor: $15

Lastly, The Shadow of Yesterday is $25.

I also want to reiterate Alexander's offer - I would be more than willing to make this happen. I could lay it out in a smaller fashion without much trouble.

[Troy_Costisick]

Heya,

Keep the corrections coming.  I've made most of the ones that have been suggested here.  Clinton, I didn't get that email so I'm glad you mentioned it here.  That's strange, but oh well.  Anyway, if someone gets ahold of Vincent, let him know I need his prices.  Thanks guys! :)

Peace,

-Troy

[Troy_Costisick]

Oh, and I want to add that I have no idea why the Forge logo didn't appear correctly in the pdf.  It's in color and complete on my raw pagemaker document.  /shruggs.

Peace,

-Troy

[Ben Lehman]

Polaris will be selling for $20 at the con.  I also recommend dropping the "genre" heading -- it's a little silly and I've never been totally happy with the idea of our games having genres.  More than one is unclassifiable.

Pure peanut gallering:  Consider making a double-sided flyer and folding it like an honest-to-goodness resturaunt take-out menu.  That will not only give you more space but it will be kinda cool and thematic.

yrs--
--Ben

[Valamir]

Nobody else has mentioned this, but I'd REALLY like to  see the publisher name on the menu...Publisher and Author would be of course perfect...but probably too much space.  Others may prefer author, but my vote would be for Publisher...or it could be owners choice.

In an ideal world, a webpage for each would be SUPER so that the menu has some usefulness to the customers even after GenCon.  I think this may be important enough to rethink the layout for if it can be fit without rendering the menu unreadable.

A booth version for the Monkeys that identified who the primary contact / demoers for the game is would be vital...that way I wouldn't have to shout around in the booth "who can take about game X"

I think I recognize some of the names as being d20 titles (like Poisoncraft).  That would probably be more useful as the "genre" than "Fantasy'

[Blankshield]

Nice work, Troy, but I gotta agree with Ben about the genres.  I would drop that column and replace it with publisher and/or author.

However, I'm not the one writing the damn thing, so feel free to ignore me.  Anyone got a clue what genre Death's Door "is"?

thanks,

James

[Luke]

Polaris will be selling for $20 at the con.  I also recommend dropping the "genre" heading -- it's a little silly and I've never been totally happy with the idea of our games having genres.  More than one is unclassifiable.

Pure peanut gallering:  Consider making a double-sided flyer and folding it like an honest-to-goodness resturaunt take-out menu.  That will not only give you more space but it will be kinda cool and thematic.

yrs--
--Ben

Excellent of you to volunteer to z-fold the menus, Ben. You are a stand up guy. I'll have them ready for you on Wednesday evening.

-L

[Troy_Costisick]

Heya Guys,

Excellent feedback.  I've made all the corrections to name, price, and genre that you've asked for.  I still can't figure out why the Forge logo isn't transfering properly.  Anyway.

In an ideal world, a webpage for each would be SUPER so that the menu has some usefulness to the customers even after GenCon.  I think this may be important enough to rethink the layout for if it can be fit without rendering the menu unreadable.

A booth version for the Monkeys that identified who the primary contact / demoers for the game is would be vital...that way I wouldn't have to shout around in the booth "who can take about game X"

This would be great for next year, I think.  It would take a lot of time and development to get a menu of that caliber and coordination.  But I totally agree that a menu w/websites, contact info, company names, authors, and even a little blurb would be a killer good piece of sales literature. 

Okay, I've handed this bad boy off to Clinton for the finishing touches since he has way, way more experience in layout than I do.  If you send me an update on your game, be sure to send it to him as well.  I wish I could have done more for you guys.

Peace,

-Troy

[timfire]

So is the Menu "done"? 'Cause I also think having the publisher name is more important than genre, not that genre shouldn't be on it. Actually, I would like to see the games listed by publisher, rather than one long alphabetical list. I would also expand it to double-sided, to give it a little more room.

But if it's "done", oh well, it's fine enough as is.

Also, how many copies of this thing are we making? I would be willing to *help* fold it if Clinton or Troy was going to re-format it more like an actual menu. (Actually, I would also be willing to re-lay it out myself, if y'all don't mind a simple layout.)