GenCon demo fest Wednesday night

[John Harper]

Yes, this was a HUGE help. Thanks so much for the guidance and advice, folks. And thanks much to Clinton for setting it up.

[Yokiboy]

Hello,

Are any of these demos generally available? With two friends of mine we're hoping to demo indie games at the Stockholm, Sweden convention in September, and some demo materials would be appreciated.

TTFN,

Yoki

[Nathan P.]

Gah! I ended up missing this cuz I was helping with product check-in, so I didn't get to check out as many of the demos as I would have liked. But, all the demos I did get to play at the booth were tight and good, so it seems like it was a valuable time!

I don't know if this is what was happening or not, but I think there's room to expand on the concept for coming years. Something like "teach-a-demo" night, where people can snag a designer to teach them how to run the demo, and so gradually expand on the ability of the booth to provide them. Saying "hey guys, learn each others demos" is good, but leaves it open to not learning others demos. Saying "pick one demo and learn it" and arranging the time and place to do it would be awesome.

I probably could have run some others peoples demos by the end of the weekend, but I didn't have the confidence for it cuz I hadn't done it yet. Having a time to learn it, and then run it once or twice for the designer, would be a great confidence builder for most of us, I think - going from "I probably can" to "I can" is teh hotness.

Yoki - Sons of Kryos recorded a bunch of the demos and will be putting them out on their podcast! How cool is that! Also, I think you could ping any of the designers at Gen Con to get demo materials for specific games. For example, if you want the materials to run carry demos, I can hook you up with those - drop an email to n.d.paoletta-at-gmail-dot-com.

[Lxndr]

One thing I'm hoping for next year with this is not just the designers running the demos, but also possibly tightening up demo-packs and their portability by, maybe, making sure that some other people run the games of the designers, rather than just run through them.

That said, this was very awesome and useful.  Tony's index-card Capes distillation has inspired me to do the very same thing for Fastlane.  Tony can tell you more about it, but basically, he created a little Capes mini-game that manages to pretty-well capture the way Capes plays, without needing to explain rules or anything.  To split a die, there's a nice little card that says 'split dice'.  There's a similar card that mimicks inspirations, and other cards that mimic story tokens and, of course, pre-generated goal cards.  This is the perfect way for me to sidestep the "eight minutes out of a ten minute demo" that involves (a) setting up a wheel, and (b) explaining how to play roulette and dive right into gameplay, even if it somewhat blasphemously removes the wheel from the demos.

[Blankshield]

Yes, it was quite helpful to run through the demos and get a sense of other games, and get a chance to tighten up my own.  I know (because I timed it) I was running 15+, often pushing a half hour before the con, cut it to 15 minutes at the practice night, and the two demos I actually timed at the booth both rolled out in 10 minutes, which I'm very pleased with, and it likely wouldn't have happened otherwise.

thanks,

James

[Judd]

This was tremendously helpful and it honed my demos for the rest of the con.

[Meguey]

Ditto the 'this was super helpful!' stuff above. I got excellent feedback about my demo, and it was way fun to see/hear/play other games. I loved being able to actually give good, clear pitches of a dozen games by Friday morning, and the demo workshop really helped. Also, I felt much more confident that other people could demo my game when I had to do kid-care.

[TonyLB]

I've said before, and I'll say again that I believe the ability to demo other people's games is something we should consciously make room for.

There's a learning curve.  Your first demo of Capes is not going to be as good as my hundredth demo of Capes.  It may even be so bad that you lose a sale that I would have easily secured.  I don't care.  Because your second demo will be better, and so on.  On a purely logistical level, that means that I can step away from the booth (or not attend a convention) without my game losing its voice.  On a more global level, your pitch of my game will be a much better pitch after you've run even a few demoes, and started to learn what particular parts of the game fit with your style.

The wednesday night session got me stoked to demo 1001 Nights (which I did), and Mortal Coil (which I didn't get a chance to).  Being stoked about that on thursday got me charged up to learn and repeat Judd's demo for Dictionary of Mu, and to try to pick up other people's demoes.  I did much less mutual support than I would have liked, but much more than I would have done without the demo-fest.  I feel strongly that it should be repeated, institutionalized and expanded.

[Yokiboy]

Hello,

I can't wait to hear those podcasts of the demos, but if there are written materials that go along with them (e.g. character sheets), I would love to receive copies of them. I am sure lots of fans of your games would like demo copies, and believe posting the demos on your web sites would be worthwile.

At Stockholms Spelkonvent 2006 (Stockholm's Game Convention) we will be bringing our own copies of your games, and will do our best to pimp how cool they are. We will host scheduled gaming, but believe that quick demos would only help get the word out.

• Here's a list of what we'll have on hand for pimping purposes:
  With Great Power...
  Capes
  The Shadows of Yesterday
  Burning Wheel
  InSpectres
  Lacuna Part 1, second attempt
  The Mountain Witch
  Breaking the Ice
  Polaris
  Dogs in the Vineyard
  Primetime Adventures
  Sorcerer and all three print supplements
  The Riddle of Steel
  The Princes' Kingdom
  Conspiracy of Shadows
  HeroQuest
  Faery's Tale

We will probably also pimp some PDF only games, and games we don't own in print, but love, such as Trollbabe, Contenders, Piledrivers & Powerbombs, The Farm, My Life with Master, Cat, etc.

TTFN,

Yoki

[Yokiboy]

Let me rectify my statement, as I had misunderstood my invitation. I was invited to run three sessions of 2-3 pre-selected indie games, there will be no organized "pimping" or demoing going on.