Con Support

[AdAstraGames]

What I see happening here is a replication of the Tragedy of the Commons.

My perspective?

I was running the booth directly across from the Forge at GenCon Indy this last year, splitting it with Final Sword, Timeline and Blood and Cardstock.

Our booth wasn't nearly as nice as yours in terms of display, but it was much more focused.

Here's my experience with your booth as a customer, and then as an observer.

Things you did right:  

1) All three times I meandered through your booth, someone stopped what they were doing to say "hi" and ask me what I was interested in.  Beautiful use of manpower from an outsider perspective, though I'll wager everyone there was having nightmares about scheduling.

2) There were lots of small tables to do short demos.  I sat in on an EABA demo, and part of a Sorcerer demo.

3) Your displays were a bit mishmashed (but compared to mine, nicely done).

Now, I picked up a copy of EABA from Greg.  I picked up Universalis....and I can tell you that the reasons I picked them up had nothing to do with your booth.

EABA I'd heard good things about from Bob Portnell.  I was coming in with the intention to license the engine (rather than develop my own) for commercial products to push through the distro chain.   So I knew about it before I sat down at the table.

Universalis I'd seen a preview edition of, and Ralph has always said nice things about my games.  (And if there are two games further apart than AV:T and Universalis, I'm not sure my brain can contain them both at the same time).

So, I came in to buy things I knew about before hand.  In this, I'm not unlike most RPG customers.

What I'd change to make your booth better:

1) Organize by subject.  Fantasy, Modern, SF, Horror.  Have distinct sections of your shelf space.

2) Assign specific people to specific shelf space monitoring.  Instead of one guy who has to know enough about everything to move it, have one guy handle the Fantasy stuff, have one guy handle the SF stuff, etc.

3) Game design will sell to guys like me.   To sell something to a wider market than "obsessive compulsive writers who are also math geeks", you need to push setting and differentiating features.  Everyone monitoring a specific shelf section should know three things about each title that are selling points to end consumers.

4) Buy a white board and an easel, and post a schedule of demos, and have it face the walk-way.  Put a small amount of it up to act as a message center.

5) Consider getting a unified Forge logo and putting it on the covers of all the games you sell.   Yes, I know, you're a bunch of independant free thinkers...but that's the side you show to prospective members.  

The side you show to customers is that you're a monolithic production house.   Even better (and I know that this has 0 odds of happening), define minimum standards for publication and display.  The new look GURPS sourcebooks could work -- put Forge Productions across the top, and an inset box that has the cover art pertaining to the source material.  This will make your displays for sales look like one publishing house, and make the average gamer go "Oh, these are all the same game?"  (At which point, you say "No, not quite -- but that title you're looking at is very cool, and is closest to "X", but is more fun for reasons .")

My demo tables at Origins/GenCon run three man teams, but my game is a fairly complex one.

1) I have a display -- Giant LEGO Spaceships.

2) Next to the display I have a guy whose job is Mr Meet And Greet.  He smiles at the people who go "OOooh!  NEAT!" at the Giant LEGO Spaceships. and then says "Would you like to blow up some chocolates?"

If the answer is yes, he does the 7 minute booth demo...then feeds people to the two guys actually demoing the game on a map.

The two guys demoing the game are Mr Know It All (He's the teacher) and Catcher (the guy whose job it is to look for people who are looking a little lost.)    When the demo is at a self sustaining level, Catcher goes to the second map and gets it ready for a demo, and he becomes Mr Know It All, while Meet And Greet becomes his Catcher, and the first demo team leader rotates to Meet and Greet Duty when his demo ends.

If there are no people sitting at a demo, Know It All and Catcher play a game between themselves.

In a pinch, Meet and Greet and Catcher can be the same guy, but having them as two bodies lets people take breaks.

Have a prepared demo script.  Have all your people rehearse it.  

Differentiate your product without slamming someone else's.  For AV:T, I say "If you liked B5Wars, you should check this out."  Or "If you like SFB, you should check this out."

A quick catch phrase of "Would you like to blow up some chocolates?" helps me.    One for TROS would be "Would you like to save the princess from the Gelatinous Bear?" (using a gummi bear) would map almost one to one.

[Christopher Weeks]

1) I have a display -- Giant LEGO Spaceships.

Yeah...let's make giant LEGO um, Sorcerers?  (Can we borrow James for some building?)

Chris

[Valamir]

Hey Ken, thanks for stopping by.  I can see the Forge is starting to suck you in already...heh...heh.

The Forge booth is a work in progress to be sure.  This is, I think, the second year of its existence, and by all accounts was much better organized and set up than Forge 2002 (largely through the efforts of Daniel and Paul who provided the banner and shelving).  No doubt next year will be even better.

As far as Forge Branding though, I think that's a non option right from the start, given the Forge's pretty clear line stance on independent ownership of games.  Even if it was just a marketing gimmick it still carries with it connotations of branding and all of the ownership, control, and liability that that implies.  I can't imagine much would be worse for an indie publisher like me than to have some reviewer write a review about Universalis published by the Forge.  

Instead, I think, the brand image we want to promote at the Forge is more of Forge as "think tank", "bazaar of innovation", and "promoter of games that are actually fun to play and not just read"...as opposed to Forge as publishing house.

Some things we do need to work on for next year is traffic flow, appropriate numbers of booth folks at appropriate times, and an organized demo schedule.  Alot of that will depend on what Peter & co decide to actually implement to assist us small press types next year.


Folks, for those who don't know Ken, he's one of the sharpest people out there and if we can pry him away from his space wargame fetish and over here to RPG land he'll be quite an asset.  

This is a guy who took hyper realistic neutonian physics...in 3-D...with as little handwaving science as possible and made a tactical space game...that's actually playable...for normal people.   I heartily encourage following the link in his sig.  Its quite an achievement.

[Emily Care]

Hello all,

Having something to tie together all these disparate games would be a good thing.  The high quality of each individual game would help sell all the other games--if people have a good experience with one, seeing the Forge mark on another will let them know that this is something they should check out.  In the world of games/books/products out there, it would make all these games stand out as having a similar commitment to quality and innovation that does make them different from other games.

Since the Forge isn't a publishing house, putting it into the printing of games would be misleading. Instead, make a "seal of approval" or symbol that signifies that the game was developed by a designer active on the Forge.  

I'd can see there being a unifying forge logo that is prominently displayed in the booth, and on anything you hand out (bags, business cards, book marks, free stuff)--that simple advertising.  Then on each game, put a sticker or a loop of paper slipped around the book that has the logo and maybe a phrase or two saying that it's made by a designer active on the Forge.  I mean, the Forge itself is such an appropo image--have a catchy slogan with a forge or crucible theme.  

The forge is a think tank, and a great one--the shared logo could be a seal of approval, or simple acknowledgement that it came out of the creative synergy found here.

Thanks for the suggestions, Ken. Good luck with your own games!

Regards,
Emily Care

[Michael S. Miller]

As far as the "Forge seal of approval," while I can see its potential marketing benefits, it seems strewn with potential controversy that could ultimately be very bad for this site.

Who's going to arbitrate what gets the Forge seal of approval?

Ron & Clinton? They really don't need yet another thing to do.

Minimum post count? Then it's not really any assurance of quality as it is an indication of free time.

Some kind of voting? Then we open up the kettle of fish of who's eligible to vote and whether all votes are weighed equally and who's going to count the votes, etc.

Decent idea, but impractical, I think. Of course, that's also been said about an anthology of indie games, but Luke Crane (abzu) is making it a reality, so ...

[Ron Edwards]

Hi there,

Let's put aside the common logo thing. It's been beaten to death before, and everything I (for instance) have to say about has been said.

More importantly and practically:

1) Organize by subject. Fantasy, Modern, SF, Horror. Have distinct sections of your shelf space.

Not a bad idea at all, but definitely debatable. I can see the benefit, but I can also see the benefit of "diversity marketing" as well. Some customers like the subject-catalogue approach, and others like to embrace the bewilderment of the spray-of-diversity approach. Comics retailers struggle with this all the time, and those who emphasize small-press often find that organization isn't as big a deal as they thought it was - the customers who like those comics also like to browse through stuff of all kinds.

As I say, debatable, and a good point to consider for next time. I have no definite position on it yet.

2) Assign specific people to specific shelf space monitoring. Instead of one guy who has to know enough about everything to move it, have one guy handle the Fantasy stuff, have one guy handle the SF stuff, etc.

With the #1 recommendation in place, yes, absolutely. Even without it, I think a version of this suggestion is still viable.

3) Game design will sell to guys like me. To sell something to a wider market than "obsessive compulsive writers who are also math geeks", you need to push setting and differentiating features. Everyone monitoring a specific shelf section should know three things about each title that are selling points to end consumers.

H'm ... to my understanding, that's what we were doing. I spent a fair amount of time prepping people at the booth to ask the customers questions that would then lead into discussing selling-points tailored for them. Whether this worked or not, I don't know (and Ken, your experience isn't a good test case; you're about as far from the "wandering customer" example as one can get, as you indicate).

4) Buy a white board and an easel, and post a schedule of demos, and have it face the walk-way. Put a small amount of it up to act as a message center.

Yes, yes, yes! I agree. I also proudly state that my little "demo dance" in the aisle often worked wonders. Why this is, I do not know. So a white board plus the demo dance should be a good combo.

Ken, many thanks for your input. You'll be amused, I think, to see the usual cockamamie Forge discussion about the booth in the months prior to the con. It's ... um ... rather unstructured.

Best,
Ron

[Emily Care]

As far as the "Forge seal of approval," while I can see its potential marketing benefits, it seems strewn with potential controversy that could ultimately be very bad for this site.

Nope, I just meant anybody who was associated with the forge ie that was selling at the booth, would get one. Seal of approval's a bad term. And anyway, Ron nixed it.

--Em

[Matt Wilson]

Those are some good suggestions. I especially like the big white board.

I thought the Forge booth was pretty cool, and goddam: kudos again to Paul for making that kickass display case. I wish I'd had something to put in it.

Two problems I had with it:

1) It needed to advertise a bigger reason for people to stop. "The internet home of creator-owned RPGs." Why is that a big deal? I think Ron has some good boiled-down answers to that at the Adept Press site. It should be advertised. "Games people actually play and enjoy." "A direct line to the author, who will explain every reason behind every rule." That sort of thing carries some weight, and maybe "award winning" wouldn't hurt either.

2) Too many people in the booth. I think those of us, like me, who were along to help out, didn't need to be around that often. There really only needed to be maybe 4 Forgites in the booth max at any given time, and there were usually close to 9. It's really intimidating for a customer to walk into a booth where he or she is the only one out of a dozen people who doesn't know everyone else.

Gotta get those demo tables clear visibility, too. When the game authors got cooking, the passers by needed to see the expressions on the players' faces.

There was that great moment in a BW demo when Drozdal's orc crushed my poor guy's face in, and that prospective customer cried out "This game is awesome!" If only that demo had been broadcast on a big screen or hooked up to a PA or something.

[Christopher Weeks]

2) Too many people in the booth. I think those of us, like me, who were along to help out, didn't need to be around that often. There really only needed to be maybe 4 Forgites in the booth max at any given time, and there were usually close to 9. It's really intimidating for a customer to walk into a booth where he or she is the only one out of a dozen people who doesn't know everyone else.

Dang!  I passed the booth several times with piqued interest and only on my final pass through the hall did I go to the effort to engineer, against the seemingly massive crowd occupying the booth, a chance to wriggle in and take a look.  And that's uncharacteristic behavior on my part.  Normally I'll just move on rather than deal with a crowd.  If nine of those people were y'all, then yeah, I think there were too many people in the booth.  I wonder how many prospective buyers didn't make the effort I did.

And if it matters, I bought all four of Ron's Sorcerer books and Charnal Gods and Dust Devils right then and there.  And because of those purchases and coming to the Forge, I've bought three more games (all different publishers) and have at least two more on my 'must buy' list.

This crowding thing might be a serious issue.  On the other hand, I wasn't intimidated by being the only customer...I had no idea that 3/4 of the people there were associates of some kind.

Maybe if there're that many people available, 2/3 of the folks should just stand in the isle blocking traffic to expand the zone of sanity around the booth :-)

Chris

[Ron Edwards]

Hello,

Actually, I did make a concerted effort to shoo booth-associated people away from the customer-browsing spaces around the rack and in front of the rear tables.

I sent them specifically (a) into the aisle, for meet & greet purposes (Jeffrey and Matt deserve special recognition for their skills at this) and (b) just away, out into the con, for break-time.

I'm pretty confident that if you saw a crowd at the booth, at least half of the people if not more were customers. I can think of a few moments when that was not the case, but those moments weren't frequent.

This whole issue is tricky, though. People who are selling games tend to want to be at the booth, for obvious reasons. Certain games are easy for non-authors to sell than others, and authors of the less-easy ones have a certain justice in wanting to be on the floor for more time.

The really important things I focused on, then, were:

1. Break up "walls" created by booth-associated people hanging out at the edge of the booth - this is incredibly easy to do by accident.

2. Make sure the path to the display rack was pretty open; we debated quite a bit after the first day as to exactly where and how the rack should be, and I think we did get it into the optimal spot after that.

3. Get the demo tables full as often as possible.

Best,
Ron

[AdAstraGames]

I'm perhaps a bit more of an anal retentive organizer than many, and I've managed sales teams (and done political speech writing).

Rehearse your sales pitch(es).  In fact, if you know which people will be repping at that booth a month ahead of time, I recommend doing the following:

Assign every person three games that are NOT THEIRS.  Arrange for a copy (PDF or something else) to go to people who don't have one for review.

Arrange several IRC chat that has each person try to pitch those three games to other random participants in the IRC chat -- some people who are going to be at the booth, some who are not.  The designer of the game should NOT be present at this sales pitch seminar -- but should get the log of it.

The designer should take that log and write a sell sheet from it -- the sell sheet should be something that fits on a 3x5 card.

Organize sell sheets by category, and print up flyers.  (I have a printer that periodically has extra slots for 25k 4c/4c copies for 600 bucks)  Have the flyers by your rack space (even if unorganized...)

For setting up your booth with the shelving units, look at a kindergarten class room.

You use the demo tables to bring people in (and always have two guys setting at a demo table, even if they're both boothies -- two people playing a game look interesting.  One guy looking expectant looks like a trap.)

The natural path from the demo table should be to the display racks...and the natural result of the display racks should direct traffic to the cash register.

When I go get my booth for GenCon this year, would you like to coordinate booth placement?  I'll have one fewer companies splitting the booth with me, but if we end up with 3/4 of an island between us, I can probably arrange something where your demo tables can overlap into our space if we get to use them too...  (For that matter, going for a full Island might even be worth it between us.)

I'm also looking at purchasing some wire rack free standing display stands with Final Sword.

Ken Burnside

[AdAstraGames]

Guys, I'm going to do the old alien shedding his skin routine, and let my Mad Marketing Weasel persona write the next post:

1) Marketing is about generating consumer awareness.  Your "direct to consumer" model relies on brand presence through web sites and convention presence.

2) Whether you admit to it or not, you are creating a Forge brand.  I know this because I know what the answer to this question is:  "If I buy a Forge product, what am I getting?"  

If I buy a Forge product, I'm getting a product written by someone who is passionate about what he thinks a game should be.  I know that it has been critiqued by the people at this web site, and that the people at this website, collectively, Know Their Shit.

If it offends your sense of ethics to capitalize on the brand you're creating for marketing purposes, then please ignore the following.

I propose the following criteria for a logo/slogan:

Slogan:  Tempered In The Forge.  A couple of logos should be done, some fantasy, some SF related.

To merit the use of this logo on your cover art, the following criteria should be met:

A) Is there a forum in the Forge discussing your game?  
B) Does your company have a web site linking back to the Forge?
C) You ask permission in the topic to be created later.  If anyone says ANYTHING against it within two weeks of posting, Ron or Clinton are the final arbiters.

If these criteria are met, you make a one time $1 contribution per product with the logo to the Forge's PayPal account (more if you're feeling kind) as a logo usage fee -- paid once per product, not per printing or use.  And you can use the logo on the cover of your book.

If you use the logo, the Forge gets a copy of your back cover blurb and (if bandwidth permits) a 2x3" graphic of your cover art to put into a database so that people can come to the Forge and see a listing of all the Tempered By The Forge products.  This should lead to a shopping cart system, and an Amazon-style user review/rating system isn't a bad thing if the coders know how to make one.

Maybe this could work with RPGNow, or maybe the Forge would get 45% of cover price to sell products as a unified front end/store.

(Were this my brand to manage, I'd find a listing of known good graphic artists, and request that the prospective logo user either have them say the cover art was acceptable, or have them contract to said graphic artists for cover art...but it's not, so that's a codicil, not a recommendation)

OK, I'm going back to being a frothing fanboy.   I promise, the Marketing Weasel stuff is only slightly contagious.

Ken Burnside

[Ron Edwards]

Hello,

No one ever understands my position regarding "the Forge" as a label or as a promotional device.

BAD =
1. "Published by" the Forge.
2. Use of the term "the Forge" as part of the title or subtitle of a game or game collection, in reference to this site.

GOOD =
1. Stickers with the Forge logo on the books sold at the con, just like those stickers Luke brought.
2. The back text of any game mentioning the Forge in some way
3. Color text of some kind on the front cover, as I've suggested for the NPA book Luke is organizing. Use of the logo is fine for this purpose, pending Clinton's approval (and your criteria look pretty good to me, Ken).

I suggest that the "good" options will bestow quite a bit of the value added that you're talking about, Ken, without any of the problematic issues of ownership or publishing.

So you see, the Marketing Weasel can stand there right in the light and discover ... hey! Those Forge guys aren't opposed to sensible exploitation of their rep after all! Oddly enough, they've even thought about this already, and heavens! seem to be getting ready to do this very thing for next year's GenCon.

I really wish this strange rumor that "Ron won't let anyone use The Forge as a promotional element" would die a filthy and quick death. Just quit using the terms "brand" or "publisher," and I'm all spiffy with it.

Best,
Ron

[Emily Care]

So you see, the Marketing Weasel can stand there right in the light and discover ... hey! Those Forge guys aren't opposed to sensible exploitation of their rep after all! Oddly enough, they've even thought about this already, and heavens! seem to be getting ready to do this very thing for next year's GenCon.

Glad to hear it, Ron. It does seem to be a sensible idea. And thanks for the clarification, I hadn't gathered that from your earlier post.

--Em

[AdAstraGames]

For GenCon Indy, I'm looking at getting either a corner booth like last year, or a double booth/endcap.

I'm willing to ask Jeannette Keblish to place my booth adjacent to the Forge and cross promote.  She mentioned that if we can find a fourth booth slot (or I buy it), that we could effectively get an Island location if we wanted it, but that we'd have to coordinate a bit.

I also asked to NOT be placed directly across from a facility using massive sound systems...this she couldn't make any promises on.

Is this of interest to anyone here?