Spiel Essen 2010 Forge booth

[Eero Tuovinen]

OK, once more with feeling!

History

Ever since 2005 or so we've been speculating about a Forge booth at Spiel Essen, the largest tabletop gaming convention in the world. The benefits are obvious: the convention has potential for the Forge mission and the individual publishers who participate, and the European indie roleplaying scene could stand to have a semi-stable point of cooperation like the Americans have at Gencon. It'd simply be cool to be able to meet with the Germans, Brits, Italians and whoever on a semi-regular basis and recoup the costs, too. We have the technology, so why not?

We actually did this in 2006, spearheaded by the German rpg association Nexus and Frank Tarcikowski. The event was a modest success then, so by all rights we should have been able to repeat the booth in the following years as well - especially considering how the number of self-reliant, high-level designers has only increased in Europe over these years. However, as it happens, the organisation has consistently failed so far, mostly due to nobody taking the lead on the matter. Last year's discussion is a good example of how it goes every year.

The Plan

Well, this year I'm not going to Gencon, and I happen to have plenty of great games of my own to sell. Therefore I'll make a point of getting a booth for the Spiel, finally returning to the convention after three skipped years. I figure that because we haven't been able to make this thing happen without strong leadership, I'll just go ahead and get a booth, and we'll figure out later who wants to join me. The truth of the matter is that a 10 square meter mini-booth, costing in at 650 euros or so, is not exactly going to bankrupt Arkenstone at this point in the game. I'll still be glad for some company, both for cultural variety and workforce reasons, but it's not such a crucial issue that I would have to build an elaborate consensus on the matter in advance.

I figure that the mini-booth is an appropriate starting point for this sort of thing. Once we get some sense of the convention, its potential and how wide-spread the interest in this thing is, we can make more informed plans for 2011. I'm hoping to build something semi-permanent out of this so that the logistical experience of making this convention presence happen carries over and helps us all cross the borders and travel a bit more over the Europe over the long term. I figure that we could stand to cooperate a bit more on this continent, too.

Get with the program

The convention is on 23rd to 26th of October. The deadline for reserving booth space is next week. I'll take care of the booth reservation at 10 square meters in the rpg section of the convention. (The mini-booth is cheaper per area than larger booths, which is why I'm so enamored of that particular size at this point.) If anybody has some useful pieces for the logistical puzzle, I'd like to hear it: we'll need some shelving and a couple of tables of some sort, as well as half a dozen chairs, and while I could entertain driving them to Essen from Helsinki, that's 2000 kilometers - surely there are alternatives closer at hand?

I'm also interested in booth participants; I'll be happy if we get 3-5 other people aside from myself and my crew (consisting of myself and whichever of my brothers I can talk into this, I imagine), but we'll make it work if there is more or less interest. Booth monkeys (volunteers with no product of their own) are welcome to show interest at this stage; no idea if we'll need you to crew the booth, but at least we should get some gaming going after-hours at the convention if nothing else. Publishers get in at a fair price - likely fixed per product, but we can discuss the financial model and the specific costs here. Because I'm likely bringing some of our retail library as well as my own stuff, I'll probably carry the lion's share of the expense. We'll see.

I'll be contacting some specific people about this later on - ideally we'll get some German native to participate just to take care of the inevitable minority of non-English speaking audience at the booth, for instance. I'll also be talking with other Finnish about their interest in joining us, and I wouldn't look at other Nordics askance either, if there's interest. We'll see who'll come out of their caves for this.

There's no particular hurry about this thing, except if there's a huge number of interested people and we really should be looking at a larger booth. Do let me know if this is the case

[Ben Lehman]

Hey, Eero: Given that you already stock my games, is there anything for American publishers who won't be in Germany to add?

[Gregor Hutton]

This is something that Matt Machell was musing about the other day to some of us in the UK. I'll flag this up with them. It's a con I'd love to go to since I have good friends in Essen (last year I missed Spiel as their wedding was the week before!).

[Eero Tuovinen]

Good question, Ben. In your specific case I need nothing - I've represented your products in the Finnish scene for years, know them well and will likely have a reasonable stock for Spiel. Especially Polaris is still fat from the stack you left here. Bliss Stage is out, actually, now that I look at the inventory... I think you haven't yet published the new edition? Perhaps we'll remedy that somehow at some point.

In general, any designers whose games I already have on stock won't necessarily need to do anything about this; I'll take what I have with me to Spiel and market the stuff the way I do in Finland, by trying to pick the right game for the right guy. However, I don't have very many copies of most games at any given time, and about a third of all games that I'd like to keep in stock tend to be out at any moment. Currently we have a hundred different indie titles in stock, roughly, but there are some more high-profile designers and titles that are sorely missed, such as the entire Vincent Baker oeuvre and most Luke Crane stuff. I'm hoping that I'll be able to arrange for some sort of a collective shipment from the USA before the Spiel, but that'll depend on talking my accountant around on the need.

In fact, here's the Arkenstone out-of-stock list; if your game is on that or I haven't brought it into the store at any point, then we don't have any of it at the moment. There'll be a couple of Finnish conventions through the summer, so I might run out of something at them, too. I guess that if somebody really wants me to represent their product at the convention they can always ship me some stock or arrange for a printing in Europe, although I expect that the sheer size of the selection I can bring to bear will cause any single title to not find any great purchase unless the designer comes himself to do active sales.

If somebody specific is coming to sell their stuff themselves, I'll obviously leave that guy's products out of my own package, and will likely want to buy a bunch of their stock for our Finnish needs at the end of the convention, just like I've done at Gencon. Easier to not mix stuff up if we don't have the same stock from different sources lying around at the booth.

Also: Matt is definitely one guy I'd like to see at Spiel, and the same goes for the rest of you British collectivists of course. It's not a long trip, and should be educational.

[Frank Tarcikowski]

url=http://www.rpcgermany.de/]Role-Play Convention[/url] in Cologne, organized by a chap named Stefan Ohrmann and supported by the online RPG store o<Wiki siteWiki site

[Teppich]

Hey there!

I'm a German native and I'd be happy to hang around your booth!
If any demoplays are considered I'd happily offer myself as an explainer/GM/leading player for that.

I'm sorry I can't make exact promises about my appereance yet, as I will be starting my course at uni in Bonn at around that time, so I might be caught up in either renovating my flat or getting to now my fellow students.

[Markku Tuovinen]

OK, once more with feeling!

Get with the program

The convention is on 23rd to 26th of October.

It's actually October 21st to 24, Thursday to Sunday.

[Frank Tarcikowski]

[Eero Tuovinen]

You give a good argument for RPC, Frank - 40 000 participants is an impressive number for a RPG-focused convention. If we manage to do this Spiel thing without a massive net loss of money and patience, why not? I should do more marketing for my games, and the Middle-European convention scene certainly seems to have potential. I guess that not knowing anything about the German scene is sort of a hump in the way of my European activities - probably the same goes for everybody else on this continent, we don't usually look too hard outside our own countries.

[destruktivekritik]

Aloha from Germany,

it's great to know that the Forge is putting up an appearance at this fair. I'm looking forward to meeting some of you guys! Those guys of the Indy-Insel need all the support they can get, even if it's "competition".
"Das schwarze Auge" (the dark eye-rpg) is rising again, we have to gather our forces!

see you at the Spiel in Essen,
Alex

[Eero Tuovinen]

Good to hear of your interest, Alex, Teppich. It'll be interesting to meet all new people at a German convention!

[Matt Machell]

I'd definitely be up for some kind of involvement. I've enjoyed my previous trips to Spiel immensely!

Possible deal breakers at the moment are the pound to euro rates, which might make it prohibitive, and finding somewhere reasonable to stay. I'll do a bit of investigating on these before confirmation.

-Matt

[destruktivekritik]

[Eero Tuovinen]

Matt's definitely a guy I'd like to see at the Spiel; most excellent.

I've reserved the booth space for the convention, so the most time-critical thing has been taken care of. The sum total of expenses seems to be around 850 euros, tax included. We'll figure out some sensible principles for secondary buy-in later in the summer, I believe; I'll have to focus on my current projects next, myself, but we'll come back to this topic next month or so.

Also, anybody with German language skills might consider helping me improve my Spiel cash flow.