Ok, so now that buzz is settling down to a manageable level, I want to catch everyone's immediate and fresh impressions for next year's booth.

So next year, assume all this year's goodness, but what else do what? What would you change or tweak?

This isn't meant to be a bitch session. If you've got a problem to address, offer a real actual solution for us. Also, this thread is primarily addressed to booth members this year, but comments from interested customers are welcome as well.

I've got my own ideas, but I want to hear what everyone else thinks before I propose my cockamamie thoughts.

Go!
-L

a bigger booth.........

I would suggest the same.
Granted I didn't exhibit with Forge, but I did get the chance to stop by check it out, speak with a couple of you ^_^
Would say bigger booth would be a great thing. Too, this is a bit of a personal (or selfish?) reason~ Spent way too much money for my return this year for Twilight, and if possible I'd love to hang with Forge next year (if they would allow my meager CCG- might help if I have Divergence finished by then ^_^) and even help with the extra booth space- get a couple more people could possibly afford an extra 10x10 no? Would at the least be more gaming space~

The first thing that pops into my mind was the rack. I am not saying it was horrible but that maybe it could be better. It was a traffic jam at times to get around that thing, not to mention to the long table behind it (such as when stock needed to be adjusted) or the gaming tables beside it. When we were busy there was very little actual viewing room.

I was actually prepared just to pay things on a table in stacks. Not sure that would be better either though.

Maybe the long table that was on the edge of the booth could have been a rack front and back, like an A-frame rack. Then the F*ck This table could have been moved closer to the others and the rack would have been congestion lighter.

The booth this year mostly rocked, I thought. Not much I'd want to change. But here's some late-night brain dumping.

Regarding bigger space, a 20 x 20 "peninsula" booth cost $4750 this year with early registration. That's a helluva lot of cash to count on. I'd say that a larger booth is pretty unlikely for next year, and that we should stick with thoughts of how to better work the 10 x 20 space.

I didn't much like the whole "handing out flyers" business. I'd rather do something like have folks walking around in t-shirts or something that say "follow me to booth 1141 for a free demo," and list the various buy-ins on the shirt. And the landfills in the Indianapolis area would probably appreciate the lack of paper waste.

By the way, did everyone remember to pitch in and help Luke pay the $180 those flyers cost?

To make more space for banners, we could see how much it'd cost to hang the Forge banner from the ceiling. It might not be much in the grand scheme.

One more thought: since space on the rack was a little tight this year, maybe the number of products you plan to display should limit your buy-in choices. For example, if you want more than 2 different books displayed on the rack, you must buy in at the 200 level or higher, or something like that.

To make more space for banners, we could see how much it'd cost to hang the Forge banner from the ceiling. It might not be much in the grand scheme.

Three words: plastic electrical conduit.

With three lengths of rigid plastic electrical conduit, two right angle join pieces, and a roll of duct tape, we can elevate the Forge banner itself above the height of the curtain wall by taping the smaller gauge conduit to the upright poles, just like the booth next to Key20 did this year.

Paul

Several times I saw Julie and others holding up little DEMO STARTING signs and an idea struck me that for the games that have banners like MLWM and Riddle did this year that you could mount those on some time of pvc or electrical conduit and pull them off the back wall and elevate them when a demo starts, maybe with an under banner that says Demo Starting. I can imagine someone standing with something like that out in the traffic, or at least at the edge of the booth would be a bigger visual impact than the little signs used this year. (2 jolly good try points to those signs though).

Trevis

Please forgive that these aren’t booth construction related exactly but more booth management. You might consider having Forge t-shirts made or patches used in conjunction with a general dress code of some manner that will help distinguish who a person should talk to at the booth.

The “follow me to the Forge Booth for a free demo” is a cool idea. During the feedback session for GenCon people mentioned that the Exhibitors’ Hall lacked a level of excitement that it once had. They asked for things like the Doom-Sayers from a few years back that promoted Hell on Earth. Maybe the Forge can work on a spectacle over the next year for one of the big releases or such.


Tigger

Hello,

I really like the idea of suspending the banner. The first reason is that it frees up so much space on the back curtain; I swear I'd forgotten how big the thing is.

The second reason is that, as one approached the Forge booth from the nearest entrance (nearly a straight shot), it was absolutely and completely obscured from view until you got to it, due to another booth's height-heavy display. I like the idea of a banner being a long-distance landmark.

I might even be willing to spring for getting another made, so we can suspend two at right angles to one another (two sides of a square) over the booth.

The flyers were good in their way, but we broke GenCon rules about fifty times with them, and (more importantly) did indeed cramp the styles of our neighbors. Apparently most of them forgave us when they realized that we corrected our behavior fully and quickly when told. (The Kung Fu Fighting guy was really nice about it when he had a full right to bitch me out, and you should buy his game.)

Here are some thoughts that got kicked around among several of us on Sunday.

1. $200 buy-ins should start with $100 first. This is for the companies' benefit, for a number of reasons. Suffice to say it's not good to put that much into it but not get stellar sales, and to get stellar sales, you need to have a really strong idea of how the booth works.

I'm not totally certain about this one, but it's something to consider.

2. Crack down hard on who's getting exhibitor badges. In the interest of civility, I won't point anyone out, but if someone gets an exhibitor badge at the Forge booth, it means you freakin' work there for half a day per day. Some folks took a bit to find their feet, but that's fine - they came to work there and eventually did it. Others should not have had badges at all.

Part of this is a clarity issue, for people who sign on fairly late in the process and without a lot of interaction here or in previous booths. I simply need to be more firm.

I'm gonna tell you something I was planning to keep quiet about. You know how you paid $55 for each badge? Well guess what - an exhibitor badge cost $70 this year on-site, all of a sudden. Which means Adept Press just ate $15 of loss per person who got a badge besides myself and three others. Do the math ...

I can't ask anyone to help me with that, but it's an example of the kind of unexpected cost that will plague anyone who takes point in an endeavor of this kind.

So in previous years, a spouse or friend or someone extra who's really getting the exhibitor badge just to be at the con and get in and out of the hall at the same time as their booth-friend, was no big deal. This year, a handful of such folks was a real kick to area VI.

Conclusion: no one gets a badge without a full personal statement from them, to me (or whoever's point), that they are working at the booth according to the written standards.

3. I have another idea. Wait for it ...

Two booths. Two separate sets of primary sponsors, so that means the headache doesn't get doubled, just re-distributed.

It would be interesting to consider the advantages and disadvantages of two options, if we have two booths.

(a) Put one on an endcap and one on a side-row of the same island, so they share a corner. Removing all the barriers would make for a mighty fine space.

(b) This is the weird one - have them be well apart from one another in the hall. Two whole worlds of goodness.

Best,
Ron

Ron Edwards wrote: Hello,
I'm gonna tell you something I was planning to keep quiet about. You know how you paid $55 for each badge? Well guess what - an exhibitor badge cost $70 this year on-site, all of a sudden. Which means Adept Press just ate $15 of loss per person who got a badge besides myself and three others. Do the math ...

Hiya,

I got the badges at the con itself, which was the only and single way to make sure that absolutely everyone got his or her name and company right.

I discovered that last year, when I tried to do it piecemeal along the way and ended up with an amazing headache at the con, including a few new badges to buy, a few names to switch around, and even (somehow) a few unused badges. Plus it made getting into the hall for the first time a total nightmare. It was the number one complaint from booth members. This year, it was top priority for me to make sure that when every single person arrived, all they had to do was go to the exhibitor booth, state "Adept Press," get their badge with their name on it, and walk in.

Yeah, it was easy to get in this year, huh? That's because I spent literally days getting the slightly-more-ambiguous information straightened out across dozens of emails and posts over six months. That "straightening-out" of emergency additions and last-minute name switches was absolutely necessary literally right up to the last two days before I left for Indianapolis. That's what I learned last year and it applied to this year as well.

Matt, I really do appreciate your viewpoint, but I cannot demand recompense from people, because it's changing the original deal on them, which is what they budgeted for when deciding to come. I didn't even want to post about this in the first place, because I despise saying things like "Well, I can't make you do X, but you should do it," which carries the implication "Or I think you're a bad person." And any posting of this sort is going to be read that way by a lot of people.

(Incidentally, this is different from Luke needing a bit of help on the great flyers he did, which was an on-the-spot thing at the con and not at all a contractual understanding. Same goes for the banner last year.)

So basically it's my whole fuckup. I should have known that on-site badges were $70 and that I'd be getting them on-site, hence $70 per. "Should have knowns" cost money, and that's all. I'll do it right next year.

Best,
Ron

Ok, thanks for the clarification, Ron. Folks, in case it ain't clear or you're fucking blind, Ron ain't a bad person!

Hello,

Let's get back to booth improvements, suggestions, feedback, and so on.

I like the idea of some gimmicky way to do the "demo starting" signs, although the low-tech and grassroots approach is actually pretty effective. Danielle has this very audience-attracting expression when she holds up the demo sign ... kind of a self-mocking but also confident look which is socially 100% opposite of the usual "GenCon vendor look." My demo-dance from 2003 was similar; I still can't tell you why it worked, but it did.

So I guess I'm saying that a gimmicky add-on to these fundamentals would be neat.

Clearly, a PDF here at the site explaining the whole deal for exhibitors, to be available all year 'round, is a good thing. Must ... do ...

Best,
Ron

I think we need a one-page handout specifically geared to distributors and retailers. We had a lot of distributors and retailers stopping by the booth and their questions were the hardest ones to answer. A handout that sums up the fact the the Forge is not itself a business or a distributor or a warehouse and explains which games are available through distribution and which ones are only available directly from the creator would be handy.

Julie

No offense to Danielle or Julie or Jasper (for that matter), but what about a booth babe. Those cheerleaders for Undefeated caught my eye (on more than one occasion).

I was told on several occasions that having women there is a good idea. That women feel more comfortable talking to other women. And lets face it, what guy wouldn't stop for awhile to talk to some babe about the games.

Although I think that having them in the booth might be distracting, but having them wear "Follow me to the Forge clothing" and walking around the hall might be a good idea.

Again, no disrespect to the wonderful job that Julie and Danielle did, they were great and generated alot of buzz themselves. This is just a suggestion and nothing more.

Hiya,

For purposes of discussion, I'll define booth babes as women who are present in the booth with an explicit role of showing off their bodies/features and their attentive charm (at a personal level) to people who arrive there.

I've always wanted booth babes ... but from watching lots of other booths, I've decided that they have to know and like the games. When that's the case, the books literally fly off the shelves. When it's not, then the 'babes get ogled, but that's all.

But my definition needs revision. With no irony or joking involved, this is exactly the role that Jasper successfully took on during Saturday and Sunday. It makes it very clear to me that a male and female team would be ideal, probably just one of each. Again, though, the real payoff is that the person, once having attracted attention, then answers a question about the booth and/or the games in a way that demonstrates fully insider-gamer knowledge.

Elizabeth Miller played this role for Aphophis Consortium for several years; as a long-term playtester and part of the production staff, she knew all about the game and could rhapsodize about her character with the best of them. Given the one-two whammy of (a) cleavage + eyes + smile and (b) "gamer chick," she was unstoppable. I think they sold 200 copies their first year at GenCon.

Best,
Ron

Yeah, there was a gamer chick over at the VESI (Visionary Entertainment -The Everlasting Game) booth. While I was there talking she sold over $200 of material in about 20 minutes. She talked about what her character did, the successes she had and her cool exploits. She was able to 4 people to buy at least one pair of books and two of those people bought 1 of everything.

I believe they had each book @ 30 and if you bought one of them the core book was then 20 or something like that. She sold them out of hardbacks while I was there.

Hey,

The idea I had for next year was to maybe set a schedule for demos and advertise it (which would be the key). Maybe set 2 tables aside for scheduled demos and two for ad hock demos.

About the payment issue with Ron taking the hit. I think that is really unfair. My solution would be pretty simple. Ron charges the early registration fee and you only buy in if you are sure you are going to be there. That way he can get the badges at that price point. If you aren't sure you wait and pay the full late fee price. If you don't show you eat the cost. It may be harsh but I think it is the only fair way to do it.

Finally, about the booth expansion idea, I like it. To take it a bit farther I was thinking we should contact other Indie/Small companies that might be interested in being in the same block of booths and try to open them all up. Kind of a collective the size of White Wolf.

Keith

Keith, Ron,

I hope I can express what I want to say well enough to be understood. I have no doubt that sex sells. But. It saddens me that titillation is being expressed as a possible booth improvement. It downplays the existing personal interactions at the booth between designers and gamers. Explicitly resorting to eye candy undermines all the efforts to make the Forge booth different and unique.

Julie

The only word of caution of I will through in regarding the larger booths, is the dilution of attention. The booth was crowded but that can be fixed using other methods. Getting a larger booth means either forking over more or getting more sponsors.

I like the idea of the large white wolfish style area, but how many vendors will we need to make this happen? Will this increase the booths bottom line? Probably. But would we all see greater numbers or would we see less profits per vendor?

jrs wrote: Keith, Ron,

I hope I can express what I want to say well enough to be understood. I have no doubt that sex sells. But. It saddens me that titillation is being expressed as a possible booth improvement. It downplays the existing personal interactions at the booth between designers and gamers. Explicitly resorting to eye candy undermines all the efforts to make the Forge booth different and unique.

Julie

jrs wrote: Keith, Ron,

I hope I can express what I want to say well enough to be understood. I have no doubt that sex sells. But. It saddens me that titillation is being expressed as a possible booth improvement. It downplays the existing personal interactions at the booth between designers and gamers. Explicitly resorting to eye candy undermines all the efforts to make the Forge booth different and unique.

Julie

Here's my thinking on a larger booth.

Part 1) I would utter completely totally love it.

Part 2) I think its a completely bad idea and we shouldn't do it.

Why? Lets face facts, bigger booth means bigger cost. There are only 2 ways to meet those costs, pay more apiece or get more companies involved.

Getting more companies involved would defeat the purpose really, you'd wind up with pretty much the same overall density and with the extra display and shelf space required the actual # of demo tables per product ratio would actually go down.

Ok, so same number of companies, bigger booth...I would LOVE that.

I would love jacking the $100 buy in level to about $250 and the $200 up to about $500 to help cover the cost of the space. But you know who'd win out. The hand full of companies whose make enough sales to cover their costs. The rest of the Forge Companies...the second tiers who sell maybe 20 copies the whole con, and the third tiers who sell maybe a dozen and the fourth tiers who sell less...would be completely and utterly screwed.

The bigger booth wouldn't generate them any additional sales, just additional cost. The big sellers would have a couple of extra demo tables so they could run demos all the time and not have to share so if anyone is helped it would be the bigger sellers.

While my capitalist tendencies say "great" the idea behind the Forge I think suggest thats not really what the Forge booth is about.

When the companies selling 5-10 copies start selling 20-50 copies...then we can start thinking about a bigger booth I thinks.

Ok, based on Ralph's comments (a primary sponsor), I feel I need to chime in (as a primary sponsor).

1) BW does not have legs to run a booth on its own. I've seen the numbers, and I know that much of my sales come from just being a part of the booth. Adjunct to that, I don't want to be apart from the Forge booth. I love being there.

2) I want a bigger booth. I ran one or two BW demos a day this year. This wasn't due to lack of interest -- there simply wasn't enough room for me to run demos.

As many of you remember from last year, I can and will run demos ALL DAY straight back to back. This year, it wasn't much of a problem. I didn't really have stock to sell and the game was selling itself. Next year, when I have completely revised game, I am going to want to monopolize a table and pump my sales.


For that to happen, either we are going to have less companies present, stricter demo table policy, or more space.

A four booth end cap, which I think would be perfect for our operation, essentially doubles the cost of the booth.

Actual cost for booth expenditures this year were $2400 + 900 in furniture. $3300 would probably be doubled to $6600 unless we managed to bring our own furniture.

So the prices would have to go up. 4 primary sponsors would be paying $1250 each just to reserve the booth. Buy-ins would then be mitigating that cost and paying for furniture.

I can afford that cost for BW at GenCon at this point. It's the same as getting a solo booth, but the rewards for being part of the Forge are far greater than goin' it alone.

he bigger booth wouldn't generate them any additional sales, just additional cost. The big sellers would have a couple of extra demo tables so they could run demos all the time and not have to share so if anyone is helped it would be the bigger sellers.

Hi there,

H'm, we may have to do a "babe" discussion in another thread sometime, maybe later. For now, I'll say that Jasper's perfect combination of attraction, game-savvy, and humor is what I have in mind, and that I don't think that it would be lowering ourselves to enjoy that combination. However, maybe we should just chalk it up to synchronicity of the moment and not strive for it.

I can say this, here for this thread: there is no freakin' way we can have a single bigger booth using the current model. And the current model is the only way that people can enter at the level we all want them to.

I like the idea of two separate booths, each with its own set of primary sponsors. That way all primary sponsors are hit no harder than they were this year, and we have twice the space. I'd like to increase, but not double the number of buy-ins from this year, which means that the net effect is more space for each.

Bear in mind as well that demo tables were artificially limited more than usual because the booth swung into action as a unit to promote one of the games disproportionately, in recognition of the difficult position that the Driftwood guys were in. The 2003 demo table situation was equally active (except on that messed-up Saturday) and not as stifled, as I recall.

As for whether the two booths can be close or not close ... well, Adept Press currently has big-ass priority points, for a small-press company. If another company who had their own booth for the last couple of years wants to join in, then they can be point man for the other booth, and we will therefore have a pretty good chance of getting what we want. I can think of a couple of candidates right now.

Best,
Ron

I'm not following. What essential difference is there having one bigger booth vs two smaller booths? If the number of companies are the same the total costs are the same either way (unless there is a declining per booth cost the larger you go, then the single big one is actually cheaper).

Logistically it would be a nightmare. Two top dogs, each trying to control their own personal booth space...each "in charge"...each having to cooperate with the other...each passing off the undesired stuff to the other...in the hectic crazyness of exhibit hall traffic...

...no freakin way...especially if the other booth head is currently a non Forge participant who just happens to have booth points to spend.

Big time bad idea IMO.

There needs to be 1 booth, 1 booth identity, 1 brand. Not another booth run by someone who's primary interest is to capitalize on our brand recognition and energy, and which almost certainly will be viewed by forge booth people who are assigned there as being relegated to the secondary booth.

Can you expand on what you see as the advantage of a two booth system, because alls I'm seeing currently is headache and brand dilution?

If its primarily logistic then what's needed is just to appoint a deputy to share the logistical burden with. Not another top dog to share the creative vision with. The creative vision should be discussed and tossed around among booth members as in this thread, but if there isn't 1 single top person with final authority then nightmare city I'm thinking.

Gee Ralph, I guess we disagree. Good thing this is just a brainstorming session ...

To clarify, I think that primary sponsorship should be reserved for people who have a strong track record with the booth already, and that there would indeed be a single leader for the whole endeavor. Anyone who can't get behind that would forfeit their $$ and be asked to leave, no matter what.

Regarding the cost, the point is that two booths mean more primary sponsors - eight instead of four, for example. But two different people would actually be managing the money of each one, hence not expanding the headache.

Anyway, it's all still brainstorming, not policy. I'm merely musin'.

Best,
Ron

So I took a look at booth furniture for a bigger booth. We actually get 4 long tables (and a paltry amount of chairs). 1 of those table could house the register and "stuff".

The three others could be used to run demos, add another $900 worth of booth furniture (same as this year), and we have nearly fully kitted out booth for a reasonable price ($4750 is the current price, plus $900 comes to 5650.)



Let's assume that we have 16 companies again next year.
$5650 divided evenly is about $353 per company. Not bad!

However, only seven companies made significanlty more than that at the booth (enough to be considered booth-profitable). Five of those 7 made $1000 or more. 2 of them made between $500-$1000. The other nine sponsors at the booth made $360 or less.

Now I want all tiers in on the booth. I really believe that you never know what's going to sell, and that all levels drive sales and promote good game.

We had 4 primary buy-ins at $600 this year. Jumping that to $1000 would knock 4 of the 5 big earners out of profitability (based on this year's numbers). So that number needs to be tamed a bit.

4 $200 buy-ins this year. All but one of them earned a hefty profit, and even the last didn't lose money on the buy-in.

7 $100 buy-ins this year. According to Ralph's numbers, none of them lost money on the buy-in bargain. But there were two companies who just squeaked by with a profit at this level, so I think it's important to have a $100 level buy-in available.


I think, for a bigger booth next year, we could add tiers.

$750 primary sponsorship. 4 sponsors raises $3000 right there.

$400 buy-in for those powerhouses like Lumpley, Paul, Matt S, Ralph, and BTRC. 5 $400 buy-ins nets $2000. Yes, this fee would be assessed based on previous year's earnings.

But, just with those 9, we've covered the big booth costs. And there is enough energy in those 9 to seriously drive a booth.

$100 and $200 buy-ins -- $100 base for a single game/book/product, $200 for your second book/product, plus +$50 per additional product on the shelves.

If we get another 6-10 at this level, we cover furniture and incidental/hidden costs like flyers.

We have more space, more tables by default and plenty of room to accomodate all companies, without spending an egregious amount of money.

am I crazy?
-L

Hey,

H'm, that looks good at first glance, Luke.

We'll have to consider a few other things, like whether the long tables are really functional for our purposes, and similar. And bigger space means more little tables and more chairs (expensive little suckers). But it's a good start.

What was the shape/size of the booth you were looking at?

Best,
Ron

Yeah, I would definitely be in favor of linking booth buy in to previous years sales. I'd also be in favor of more closely and formally aligning booth perks to buy in levels (i.e. how much wall space, how much shelf space, how many hours of table time, who gets the good display area, etc). We all worked it out amongst ourselves ok, but if tier prices are going up, that should probably be more organized.

I tend to think in jumps and starts, so I know that I'll have more to chime in with later. I'll only address maybe two things that were said above in my comments, mostly sticking to my own stuff.

Andy was a booth monkey. Here's his criticisms and suggestions:

First of all, all the other booth monkeys, the ones going in knowing that they were to sell others' stuff, were awesome. Everyone pimping everyone else's game was great, too.

That fifth table. We really could have used it. The Cartoforge people were doing a great job, but we could have rigged up a makeshift podium or something, or use the end of a long table. That fifth table wasn't being used for demos, and when there were people looking for demos in a full house, its loss was profoundly felt.

The fourth table. There were some times on the early days of the con that one or two people would sit down on one of the Four tables, prop up a book, and wait for people to come to them so that they can run a demo. Nuh-uh. Didn't work. Luckily, it didn't happen on Sat afternoon or Sun.

Training! Getting in friendly demos of the games at night was a great way to get accustomed to the game. However, I think that we need to make an effort to get the Booth Monkeys, namely those people specifically coming to pimp others' games (and maybe the low-tier people too), perhaps pre-release copies of the materials. I'd like to have every booth monkey be able to run a quick (20 minute) demo of at least TWO or THREE of the New Hotness games by Thursday morning when the con opens. If you're on the low tier buy-in, your own game would count towards that. Fresh off the press is great, but it's a bullet in the foot if it means the only person at the booth who has played or can run the game is you.

Don't "bark" or "herald". At least, not too much. The people at the SGJ booths yelled things out in the "barker voice" a lot, and it was kind of annoying. Except for the "kind of". We did it a few times, hell I did it once or twice to announce demos. We're not a fish market, no need to yell out things like "Indie Games, Step right up!!!" etc.

Build a fucking monstrosity. Someone mentioned something to the extent of "Hey, can we build a two-story structure?" before the Con. Maybe that's something to look into, if only for a REALLY HIGH SHELF to keep our stock on (and a mini-ladder to go up and get stuff). I've seen some pretty stupid but handy guys at college make some incredible, sturdy, rock-solid wooden structures (bunkbeds and the like), and maybe we can think about something like that. At least for storage. I'd love to make a 2-level booth with tables above, but seeing some of the Gen-Conners, I'd feel REAAAAAALLY uncomfortable being underneath some of them.

Perhaps retire the shelf? It is awesome, it truly is, but it's hard to manuver around. Else we can think of a new way to use it (keep the 'third side' empty, etc).

Not enough running. We had booth monkeys there specifically so that people can limit their stock under the table, and when supplies got low they could "fire off" a monkey to make the 20-minute round trip journey to get stuff and bring it back. Instead, we had LOTS of unused stock piled up under the tables, which got in the way. Stuff like the register box, too, didn't need to be there. Hindsight 20/20.

Demos were awesome. But like Luke did a few times, I think we need to get some of the Forge booth buy-in folks to schedule actual events of their game. Make interesting 4-hour demos at the actual tables. It will run you out a little, make you a little ragged, but you will have a captive 5+ player audience (I've never been to a non-RPGA RPG event that wasn't full). Bring extra copies of you book to the table, and you might be able to score some insta-sales when the adventure is done and you're packing up. If it's not legal to sell stuff at the gaming table, head out to the lobby or step outside the building for a friendly exchange. Or, if the hall is open then, just lead them to the Forge table.

I don't like homogenous shirts. Having said that, an easy way to spot Forge booth attendees would be nice. Like a badge/pin, or a sombrero or something. But not a big point, because you could always spot the Forge people at the booth easily: They were talking or selling stuff to other people. Personally, I find a LARGE group of people with similar shirts kind of intimidating, if I'm only there to "poke around".

No Press Anthology: Part Zwei

Credit Card reader. It was probably a pain in the ass last year, but I watched how some companies did it (Obsidian folks), and they had the process down pretty slick. You cannot easily split the money apart like you could with the register. Having said that, I watched a girl bring TROS to the register, then realize that no cards were taken, then look in her wallet, and then walk away when she realized she had little cash. Credit is evil and is destroying people's lives in both the US and Japan... but it's grrrreat if you're running a Con Booth and are banking on impulse buys. :)
Seriously, though, It'd be worth it to get maybe 2-3 people (monkeys) involved on the CC side so that we can have one person running the Register totals at the end, and the other person figuring out the Credit Card sales. If you have a healthy seperation between credit and register, it should reduce the calculation time.

I think it'd be a good idea to contact some of the smaller booths to see if they'd be up for joining forces for next year, since TROS may have to fly their banner elsewhere (but hopefully close by).

I hear the comments about a Larger Booth and Two Booths Seperated by Space. I can see the good points of both. But I'll leave that discussion entirely to the people who will actually be there next year.

Oh, and I was kidding about the sombreros.

-Andy

Ron Edwards wrote: Hey,

H'm, that looks good at first glance, Luke.

We'll have to consider a few other things, like whether the long tables are really functional for our purposes, and similar. And bigger space means more little tables and more chairs (expensive little suckers). But it's a good start.

What was the shape/size of the booth you were looking at?

Best,
Ron

Type Dimensions Priority Priority Late Badges
Standard 10X10 $995 $1,095 $1,385 2
Corner 10X10 $1,175 $1,290 $1,540 2

THIS YEAR:
End cap 10X20 $2,400 $2,640 $3,080 4

Proposed Next Year:
4-booth peninsula 20X20 $4,750 $5,335 $6,490 8

6-booth peninsula 30X20 $6,950 $7,645 $9,485 12
8-booth peninsula 40X20 $9,125 $10,035 $12,475 16
10-booth peninsula 50X20 $11,300 $12,430 $15,940 20
4-booth island 20X20 $5,620 $6,180 $7,760 8
6-booth island 30X20 $8,000 $8,800 $11,085 12
8-booth island 40X20 $10,400 $11,440 $14,550 16
10-booth island 50X20 $12,750 $14,025 $18,015 20
12-booth island 60X20 $15,100 $16,610 $21,195 24
14-booth island 70X20 $17,500 $19,250 $24,660 28
15-booth island 50X30 $18,725 $20,595 $26,180 30
30-booth island 50X60 $37,450 $41,200 $49,440 60

Another thought for future booth monkeys:

Perhaps the tie-in to live, scheduled events could work well, to the point where we try to get every person at GenCon to run at least 1-2 scheduled gaming events (time slot up to them, and number of slots, including "none" left up to their comfort level) in the scheduled area. That would give people a chance to get away from the Forge booth, pimp a game they like by running a solid, functional demo for a crowd interested in the sound of the game, etc.

It will take a lot of work to organize something like this, and do it in advance enough to make it work, but IMO it'd be worth it.

-Andy

Monkeyspeak:

Ron, I'd be more than happy to fork over 15$ to cover your extra costs. I know you aren't asking, I'm offering. That said, one of your extra badges last year was mine, which I paid for and then could not show up to use. Stupid car. This year I made sure to get it tuned up the month prior to the trip, and it paid off.

I think two adjacent booths would rock, even if it was an end and a side. Particularly, I think: End = Display/Sales, Side=All Demos, All the Time. I think two separate booths would be bad for a few reasons. One is that on the way from one booth to another, it's easy to get distracted. And there's that dilution factor, too. But this is all monkey observation, I defer totally to people who actually have product there.

As for the booth-person recognition factor, I don't like the T-shirt idea either, for pretty much the same reasons. 1) Seeing a bunch of "uniformed" people there is imposing and counter to the "Forge-vibe" as I understand it. 2) There are enough of us that we frequently outnumber the customers, which I think would look awkward and bad. Again, my retail-fu is rusty, so feel free to discount my opinions. Pins are fine if we have something besides our own clothes to pin them to. I wear all my best gamer-gear to the con and would prefer not to stick holes in it. Sombreros... well, I won't get into it.

Besides that, I'm cool with any gimmicks anyone wants to tap me for, as far as leading people to the booth from afar by any means, wearing any accoutrements or outfits (as long as I have forewarning), waving banners, whatever. I think the flyers are cool, because a lot of folks who didn't pay much attention at the Con itself can still check out the websites when they get home. I personally was probably responsible for 99% of the flyer-violations, for which I apologize to anyone besides myself who got yelled at. All I know is I handed out an assload of flyers.

I am SO down for pre-con monkey/ninja training sessions. Getting to know the games even a little bit makes it much easier to tout them... "I haven't actually played this one, but I hear it's really good!" is not a good closer, suffice to say.

Alright, I've run out of even potentially useful things to add, so I'll close by saying I had a great time, I hope I was helpful, and I'm open to anything that will make me more helpful next year.

First, let me give more kudos to Ron for setting things up and to everyone for helping make the absolute most of a tight space. After reading through all the comments, here's my 2 cents.

Suggestions?
More space. Like everyone else is saying. I'm willing to commit $400 (maybe more) to Ron -right now- as a share of a 4 booth peninsula for next year, or at least a 3 booth corner. I think it is well worth it.

More shelving. Ron knows the sort of thing I'm talking about. A couple of those and a few fixed racks with better exposure that would rotate "feature" products or something. The triangle shelf is nice, but a lot of the time I was pointing people at the sides they couldn't see and therefore ignored.

Push the tech. If we had wireless access, we could process credit cards or paypal. We could also have a dedicated computer sales station. Want a T-shirt? Order it in your size from Cafepress.com and it will be shipped right to your door. Mugs, coasters, mouse pads, posters, RPGmall print on demand, etc. Allows some access to other revenue streams without the up-front expense or space of a pile of shirts in the wrong size. Is it worth the space? Never know 'til you try...

A flip chart. Something to write on in big letters, like "Sorceror demo at 11am".

A contest. Something that you enter now, and check back later to see if you won. Maybe something where there is a drawing at a certain time, and the "losing tickets" are a coupon for "$X off product Y". Basically, something to get repeat attendance and an incentive to buy.

Greg
BTRC

How about a card people could get and if they demo X number of games they get 10% off a sale or something. The Booth Monkeys could carry a stamp that for each slot, kinda like those coffee cards at coffee shops but for Demo's.

I know from what my friends bought that when they got caught up in a demo they bought the damned thing.

Throwing an idea out in this storm of brains.

While overpriced, the geometries are a good source for ideas:

http://www.godfreygroup.com/literature.html

Greg
BTRC

As long as we're throwing out questionable ideas: What about buying folding hard-top stools rather than renting chairs. I know they're not that expensive at WalMart, and they can't be that much less sturdy than the really expensive rented chairs. Plus, they take up less room when not in use, and the lack of a back keeps people attentive in their demos. Storage and transport would be issues, but surmountable ones, I think.

I think the sombreros are cool. No, really. Highly visible but allowing those who wear them to still maintain unique identity stuff (esp. line T-shirts and so forth). Bizarre and unexpected.

Also, they would synergize with another suggestion, this one an observation as a customer...

Limits on monkeys.

One thing I did find tricky about the booth this year was that sometimes it seemed like there was more monkeys than people, and more monkeys waiting to run demos than demo tables. This is just an impression, as Ken Burnside had me too dang busy running demos elsewhere. So this is poor stats, a couple data points only... but the impression was nonetheless there.

The answer to which has to be rationing peoples' time at the booth. Space is at a premium, and booth personnel are one consumption of that space - frankly more so than shelf space for your product. Certes, we have necessary minimums, and they're high for a booth in general... but a stern eye not to exceed that number of staff would be a good thing. Think of it as if, whenever one of the booth staff is at the booth's location or in the neighboring aisles, we have to pay them. Real money (because space is money). Whether they like it or not.

Obviously this would be facilitated by the previous suggestion. Bring N sombreros. If you are not wearing one of them, head elsewhere for a while. Recognize that we want to maximize sales of everybody's product; give up your personal space on behalf of a potential customer.

Which in turn synergizes with my third suggestion. Not only would it be a good idea to have real, scheduled demos outside of the exhibit hall, but I would suggest that we go so far as to tap the convention's pockets for demo space... by booking Forge demos back-to-back throughout the con. Essentially, create a second locus, not in the exhibition hall, but in one of the gaming rooms, where at any time of day you can find Forgies demoing one of our products. Which one? Check your con program for the default, which can obviously be changed at the decision of the players/GM present for the demo itself.

Unify them in the name of the event. I don't know how much the con controls the presentation of things in the manual, but event names like:
[Forge] My Life With Master - Demo: Withering Heights
[Forge] Burning Wheel - Demo: Thunder and Light
... and so forth.

This last suggestion depends largely on whether, armed with that sort of nomenclature, we can "convince" the con guys that this should just be one table with a reliable location or at least a reliable room, in all time slots. If so, cool - make doubles of some of our eye-catchers, and make that table a second advertising locus. (Can you imagine if one of the many indistinguishable demo rooms had a Forge banner above/beside the door?)

If there had been a scheduled Universalis demo, I would have scheduled around it. As it was, I left it ad-hoc, and ended up running out of time for one (though I did get a shot at Elfs, my other hmm-let's-see-how-it-plays Forge product for this con). This by no means replaces our in-booth, ad-hoc demo program... it supplements it.

- Eric

General brainstorming thoughts from an eBay search:

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&category=46719&item=3836061461&rd=1

Is this a good price?

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&category=3242&item=5515931630&rd=1

Has some potential, depending on how high the bids go.

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&category=1304&item=5515132796&rd=1
http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&category=1304&item=5515705459&rd=1
http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&category=1304&item=5516178585&rd=1

Interesting, possibly eye-catching

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&category=3242&item=5515896371&rd=1
http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&category=3242&item=5516251361&rd=1
http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&category=1304&item=5515785158&rd=1
http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&category=3242&item=5516328443&rd=1

Of generic interest, though some are a bit steep.

Greg
BTRC

Eric hits on a good idea. I don't know if Gen Con has anything like this because I've not gotten to be a mere attendee at GenCon since 1994, but at Origins there are rooms around the convention center that are reserved for a single company.

They are largish classroom sized rooms of the sort that would have 5-8 round RPG tables in them for normal scheduled events except they are 100% running a single companies games all day everyday.

Columbia Games is the one I'm most familiar with at Origins but I believe that Mayfair and Rio Grande et.al. have done this as well.

It looks, from the numbers Luke posted, that two two-space endcaps is only trivially more expensive than a four-space booth. I'm thinking two endcaps right across the aisle from one another would be better than a square of four. You get to whack customers, as they walk through, from both sides with the Forge experience.

Also, I don't think you should strive to double the furniture costs because the booth, the demo area in particular, is already too tight. Add a few tables, but don't just duplicate the current setup.

As far as the great triangular shelf goes, consider that the inside is wasted space (at least from a presentational POV -- is the inside used for something?). If you had three planes of the same size, folded out, you could have stuff displayed on each side, doubling the area for books.

Chris

Another thought, riffing off Andy's point about more than one demo-capable person per game. Perhaps behind the counter we should have a Demo Box. Everyone prepares their demo, complete with character sheets and hopefully a quick rules summary, and they all get put in one box behind the counter, along with plenty of dice, coins/chips and several decks of cards. That way, when someone needs to demo a game, they can just grab the demo pack and go!

I kinda like the Forge Demo Table. As far as running ticketed demos, I've had pretty good luck with them. This year, I ran four 2-hour demos, one each day. I got to run for 14 different people, and I know at least 4 of them bought the game, and another 5 said they were going to pick it up.

I also have to weigh in against the two separated booths thing. I foresee lots of folks saying things like: "Isn't this the Forge booth? Where's Burning Wheel?"

"Um, it's on the other side of the hall, at the other Forge booth"

"Did you guys have a falling out?" Now, booth person must use valuable time to explain why some games are here and some are there.

If I could expand and reinforce some of Eric's points....

- Sombreros might not be the best option, because of the space they take up - but distinctive gear is a plus, especially if it lets you limit the number of demo minions present.

- The Forge Mini-Con is very cool. However, as Eric noted, it was also several negative things:

1) A traffic jam. It was sometimes hard to get to the Forge booth as a result, hard to get the attention of people in the booth, and the pack dissuaded us from trying to get into the Forge space on a number of occasions.

1a) And it was also hard to get to booths next to it. The latter is important - you had indie publishers on three sides. Do you really want to impact on their con success, and give them negative feelings towards the Forge? I'd answer "no". I know that when I was on duty at the Ad Astra booth on Saturday, two or three of you spent the entire time chatting while standing in a wall in front of Jeff Siadek's Battlestations booth. In his shoes, I'd have been right pissed; and I felt rather ashamed of considering myself a Forgite (or at least a fellow-traveller :) ), watching that.

Good will from your neighbors is worth something - in crude sales terms, it's worth referrals (or, with ill will, worth gripes that may drive people from coming by.)

2) Corinne and I sat down at a free demo table looking for a demo of TROS and/or Burning Wheel, and amenable to most other suggestions. Nobody took the slightest notice until we singled out Don from TROS and asked him, point-blank, for a demo. I know it was Sunday - but the nifty conversations were keeping you from noticing potential customers.

2a) Because of the *lack* of a uniform, we couldn't really tell who might be ready to demo what. Consider having the hats labelled with the products you are ready to demo.

So: the Forge mini-con is cool. But it needs to take place elsewhere!!

Move the Big Demos into the RPG room. Get a pair of tables and start a demo every hour, on the hour, to run for 2 or 4 hours. Each demo gets half of a banquet tabel - in the minis rooms where we did AVT demos, you could fit 8 people at each table.

*Move the Forge Mini-Con to the RPG room.* More people around the demo table helps generate buzz, and you can tell people when the next demo begins, or even run 5-minute showoff demos while standing around. There may also be empty tables around you can temporarily colonize until their rightful owners show up; and this demo site won't close at 6PM.

Take a big stack of the Indie Booth Tour flyers to the RPG room and hand them out so people can find the sales booth. We gave away a *lot* of these from the AVT demo table - not least because people liked the large-format map of the dealer hall!


In addition, running the major demos in the RPG room lets you crunch the booth demos into 5-15 minute showpieces without guilt.

Using the My Life With Master demo as the first example....

Paul's demo to us ran for about 40 minutes. In that time, three of us got a short scene each. We got an extended rundown on the mechanics of the game.

Revamp this demo! The character sheet should be printed ahead of time with all the stats printed right on it. Paul should have a highlighter pen so he can mark stats as they come up.

The demo should begin by telling players they play as minions of evil masters, and should now choose to serve one of four masters: A, B, C, and D - each of whom gets a name and one short descriptive phrase. ("Wilhelm wants to be the world's greatest rock star but must drink blood to overcome his fear of crowds.")

The players choose a master. No explanation of system is given - it's just *BANG* right into gameplay. Rules get explained as little as possible; just "ok, roll this plus that, here's the dice".

Total demo time elapsed: 60-90 seconds. High concept explained in the first sentence, game setup (choose a master) takes the next 45 seconds. Introduce the minion character in 30 seconds - "Ralph is big and strong, but really ugly, and therefore despised. However, he secretly loves Esmerelda and a puppy named Johan."

Now you designate one player as active, note that you'll cycle through them all in turn, and begin the first interaction with the Master....

Get players into the fun FAST, keep them there, and leave them begging for more - which they can get by Buying The Game and/or joining the RPG room demos.

The TROS demo is the second example. It's a good setup for a combat demo. It also completely ignores the SAs. Change the demo by providing two sentences of setup: each of the fighters needs a reason to be in the fight, and that reason should be providing SA dice. Ta-da - you're showing off another key Cool Aspect of the Game, doing it seamlessly, and in the process adding flavor and zest to the demo already in progress.

For the booth demo, the TROS demo should have only 2 combat exchanges. Impose some deadline - the ship is sinking, you're fighting for the last boat? And, as before, get them to buy the game, or join the RPG room demo, for more.




Overall rule for demos: whenever possible, don't *tell* me the game is cool - *show* me the game is cool through incorporating the Cool into your demo as seamlessly as possible.




To further enforce short demos, ditch the tables and chairs entirely. You save money on furniture *and* reinforce the need for quick demos. :)



And, finally, since much of the above has been negative: I'm really glad you guys were there. I'm happy to have finally met some of you and put a smile to the name; and I was pleased to see a crowd near the Forge booth, at least when it looked like mostly customers.

Hey guys- I wanna drop the sombreros thing, it was a joke. Truth be told, I got the idea by watching a demo of guys that were playing some German board/card game on the other side of the Mongoose booth (at a demo). I was walking by, and saw 5 guys crowded around one spotty, skinny kid, all of them wearing sombreros. It was obvious that the game had a Mexico vibe to it, and the hats were demo tools to get people involved, but instead it made them look like 5 confused, slightly bored guys wearing sombreros (they might have been more excited had not the spotty kid been speaking in anything but a low monotone).

And that made me think back to the demos. Here's some more quick feedback:

Some of the demos were too long. In my eyes, the demos should have been no more than, say, 20 minutes TOPS. The epitome of demo I saw when I went past Paul running MLWM. I was curious how he was going to run it, so I stood over his shoulder and watched:

"OK, guys, now normally we each have our own characters and play them out here, but since there's not enough time we're going to use this One Character here, and each of you will run him in a scene with me." Wow. Drop-dead perfect. Demo was probably, what, 10 minutes tops, including summary of game and plugging of its good points.

In many situations, this totally went down. Unfortunately, I can't remember the game or who was running them, but a few demos I swear lasted at least an hour. At that point, you're coddling the person. They've decided if they wanted to by at 15 minutes, and anything after that is just you either "finishing the adventure" or something. It's kinda like a hooker giving out a free trick.

If you've got a hard sale, make the demo last for up to 30 minutes, but by that time they should absolutely know if they are interested or not. At best, you're giving an uninterested person a "freebie".

Again, my rec is 10-20 minute games at the Forge booth- a *bang* quick in and quick out, and if you want to run longer either take it to one of the open gaming areas (which AMAZINGLY were NOT filled with people simply resting and eating- There were plenty of open seats), or schedule a few open 1, 2, or 4 hour slot events at GenCon itself to run and showcase the game in the RPG areas. Because the GenCon registration system is so overflowing and fucked up that I guarantee that you'll have a full table (usually of people who couldn't get into anything else and chose your event as a backup- Which gives you a chance to really knock their socks off!).

And on the "demo materials" area- Tres cool idea, but I don't know how practical it will be. Ex: I can run Dust Devils in my sleep if the players generate their own characters. If I want to go for the *bang* quick in and out, I need to make pregens. Matt Snyder handed me a, I think it was Ron's, demo pack for Dust Devils- 4 characters, their backgrounds, how each one was after another in some way, and the complicated events surrounding their relationships that we wanted to draw out over play. I stared at it for like 10 minutes before I realized that I simply could not run that. I had to come up with my own stuff (retreating for about 20 mins to write up characters), after which I ran about 3 Dust Devils demos which worked for me (and got at least one person from each of the demos to then grab the game and walk to checkout).

You know how everyone has those adventures sitting in the back of their heads that they can simply just "go with" at the drop of a hat, and run them in their sleep? It's like that. Comfort and all. I figure that, if nothing else, if we can get some copies of the New Hotness to some of the booth monkeys about a month in advance, that gives them time to read, plot, and come up with a demo (and probably test is out as well with their local game group) for the con that they can run at the drop of a hat, from the top of their head. That's the kind of demos we need to bring out at the booth. Demos where the GM is unsure of the rules, or stumbles a lot during the setup of the game, relfectively makes the game itself look bad.

First:

I like all of you. I think you guys are doing a valuable thing for the community, and are a fascinating development fora.

Second:

Unless things change, I'm going to ask to be placed out of line of sight from you folks at future cons.

Here's the problem:

Too many people blocking off too much traffic. I saw people walking down the transverse aisle (the one that ran across the long side of your booth, the Ad Astra side of mine...) and literally saw people stop and decide to turn the other way rather than walk through what looked like a crowded bar scene.

I had people who said "Yeah, I'd *oof* like to see more of" "Excuse, me, sorry I ran into you like that..." "Tell you what, I'll come back when it isn't so crowded..." throughout the peak times of all three days.

It got infinitely worse when Calder was getting beaten on...

Let's take a look at this from another perspective.

How Many Jobs Are There To Be Done?

I count 7.

1 person handling the cash register.

1 person handling the "stock room" (Hint: Buy up a set of plastic shelving units like ours...) Stock Room Person should also be the default guy to go to ask questions of.

1 person for each demo table (3, preferably)

1 person at each end, INSIDE YOUR BOOTH AREA, flogging games.

If you want Calder to get whacked by the Mimbo, have that done in the RPG room where the full on demos are running. Not in the booth or aisle where it will cause people to turn the other way and leave. (The swinging in the aisle also means an innocent bystander can get hurt, and can then sue GenCon, which means that GenCon takes an incredibly dim view of this.)

You need a rotating book rack to display products. Greg is showing some on this thread.

You DESPERATELY need a whiteboard that shows table A, B and C with a grid showing what games are on demos, so that people can come by, see that MLWM or Sorcerer is up at 2, and come back.

If you aren't doing one of these jobs, Be Somewhere Else. Be in the RPG room running hour long demos rather than 15 minute high concept sketches. In the RPG room, hand out the large format exhibitor hall maps.

Yes, I know it's Your Baby on display there. And you're worried that the boothmonkeys are doing a good job, and flogging with appropriate enthusiasm....

Trust your fellow Forgies, and leave.

When you're flogging demos, having a schedule out there that everyone can see means that your floggers only have to flog the games actually being shown. This means your floggers can actually KNOW something about the game. They generally didn't as we watched from across the aisle. If they can't give the high concept when someone asks the question, they're not doing you much good.

For floggers, find people who are shorter than average (Ralph's height is about the top of the scale -- Luke and Paul are about ideal) who are energetic, can say "Here, have a flyer. It's high in fiber..." and then direct those who look at the flyer to a demo table. Female and knowledgeable also helps, far more so than "female, dressed to draw stares, and looks like she's afraid the geekiness will stain her".

The big tall guy with the ponytail who kept making sudden gestures did you guys more harm than good. We watched people steer as far away from him as they could rather than come within arms reach.

On your demos themselves...rehearse your demos. Rehearse them a lot.

Your demo should end with the opportunity for the customer to ask questions. If they don't ask questions, let them go. If they do, you've got a sale.

Most of the demos that I saw and sat through (I saw through MLWM, TRoS, and tried to get in on Universalis and Sorcerer but was pulled away), ran too long.

Look at a screen play. Or James Sterrett's suggestion.

Start with the action In Medias Res. For a TRoS demo, it's on the deck of a sinking ship. Each fighter has a reason to do what they're doing, so they have an SA firing. You should give an objective ("I must keep this evil bastard so and so from reaching the cabin where my beloved is hiding") and set up the fight. After the fight is lost or one, show one other skill mechanic in play, ask them what would've happened if the SA's weren't in place, and let them ask a question or two. Once they start asking a question, shift the dialogue into closing the sale.

Entire time? 10 minutes. If you've got an hour blocked per game, a 10 minute demo lets you run 6 demos in your time slot, and move people through the setup. When your time slot is over, you hand the Hat of Command to the guy taking over your demo, and lead your new customers to the RPG room to show them more of their new purchase.

This has people cycling through the booth regularly without putting 18 people in it at once.

On multiple booths...

Because of your tendency to do aisle creep, and form a wall around the forge booth, or a wall of asses in front of your neighbor's booth, I think that having two endcaps across the aisle from each other is a disaster in the making. Do a 3 booth setup, definitely.

Furniture for next (and subsequent) years:

$900 for furniture? I sincerely hope you got kissed afterwards, for you surely did get screwed.

A rental trailer costs $80 for the weekend or thereabouts. You can find places like Office Max where you can buy the furniture and throw it out at the end of each show for under $400. (Cafe tables run about $60 each, you need 3 of them. Folding stools cost $20 each, you need 12 of them.)

Or, for another $180 you can rent a storage locker in Indianapolis and put it in storage for the times you won't need it. If you ever decide to do a forge booth at Origins, have someone coming in from the west take it along.

The plastic shelving units from Lowe's cost $45 per set. 3 of those is a good investment.

This discussion has generated some neat ideas, and advice from other experienced indie-publishers is always welcome and appreciated...but lets not lose sight of the fact that

The Forge Booth FUCKING ROCKED. For the third year in a row.

It is now a destination booth. People make a point to come to the Forge Booth precisely because its such a unique experience.

Take the Mini Con to the RPG Room? Gotta say, ixnay on that idea straight off. Its the Mini Con atmosphere that makes the Forge Booth a success. Its the radical departure from the norm that makes people stop and wonder "what the heck is going on here".

Its the fact that our booth people aren't just sitting quietly behind a table waiting for customers to show interest that has built a following. All of these things: the non standard booth layout, the numerous and eager booth monkeys, the hectic and slightly crazed atmosphere, and brief brushes with anarchy are all part of the Forge booth experience and all part of how a group of small independent RPG publishers can hammer $11,000+ worth of sales (on products that average $15-$20 per unit) in 4 days on products almost no one had heard of.

We moved over 700 UNITS of product...there ain't nothing broken here folks. Room for tweaks and enhancements, always. But the basic booth model rocks, is a proven success, and doesn't need any major revision.

Advice and suggestions are appreciated, but anything that would make the Forge booth less like the Forge booth and more like every other booth at the con...I have to say doesn't really interest me...at all.


Concerns about interfereing with other booth's business are valid and I take those quite seriously, but I think we did a pretty good job of accomodating those who raised this issue at the con.


But I'll close with these thoughts, those independent booths who are near the Forge:

1) Benefit from the additional traffic the Forge draws to the area. And yes we are at the point where we generate traffic.


2) Benefit by making themselves and their products known to us so we can actually refer folks to their booths as well.

I sent at least 4 people to the Ad Astra booth personally, 3 who were interested in space games and 1 who wanted cool t-shirts. Other referals went to Delerium, and I sent at least 2 Universalis folks to the Gold Leaf booth once I learned they enjoyed playing Uni on-line.

Other booth folks did the same to various degrees. I know I heard other booth folks talking up Delerium and Sanguine and Ad Astra.


That's all gratis, free-of-charge, helping out our fellow indie publishers stuff that we do willingly and voluntarily. Stuff that I feel quite strongly vastly outweighs any occasional "wall" or congested area that our enthusiastic monkeys and customers may cause from time to time.


and

3) There are plenty of booths who would benefit from learning and adapting Forge style sales tactics for themselves. There was nothing stopping Ad Astra, or the other space ship guys, or the kung fu card guys, or the 3d wooden hex game guys, or the guys down by the GPA from joining in the party atmosphere. From getting up out of their chairs and getting a little funky.



So heres my advice to them.

Next year, try to make your booth MORE like ours. Not ours more like yours.

Thought:
Bar stool tables. Demo-ees can stand, demo-ers can sit and still be at eye height.

Greg
BTRC

Hey James,

...on Saturday, two or three of you spent the entire time chatting while standing in a wall in front of Jeff Siadek's Battlestations booth. In his shoes, I'd have been right pissed...

Yeah, I was thinking the same thing, until Jeff told me directly on Saturday that he was totally cool with the traffic congestion/slowdown along that side of his booth. He was finding it productive to rope folks in for Battlestations demos as their passing got slowed in that zone.

Paul

Fair enough - and thank you for asking him about it, too. (Which I did not.... :) )

My parents have been making a living selling their own products (lawn ornaments and stuffed animals) at crafts festivals, Fairs and conventions for 15 years and are preaty damn successful. I asked them what they thought about the discussion and they have this advice:

Spectacle Draws Attention. Use it. Calder in his jumpsuit and me in my getup worked well.

the most valuable thing a booth can contain is Open Viewing Space: The tower blocked off everyones vision, If there had been shelves along a back wall, displays and the like, I think it would have worked better.

Easily Identifiable Sales Staff: If no one likes the shirt idea than what about hats. Forge across the front and something on the side "Booth Monkey" or the name of your company or whatever. Hats for sales staff should be in a bright color, red preferably. Corperate stratagy and research has shown that black, white and red togeather evoke a sense of competence and leadership. Walk into any corperate building 9 times in 10 the guy in the black suit with the red tie is the boss. Red is a power color. use it.

Borders: putting a frame around something makes it more apealing to the eye. this could be easily accomplished during booth construction. I mean framing the booth itself, like the prosinium arch of a theater. Arches are also useful for doing things like hanging signs on.

Friendly Exitement: I don't think we have any problem here, just including it anyway.

Corners: a booth on a corner gets more traffic than one in a middle space. Booths near food vendors also do well. Ideally, getting two booth spaces ajoining at a corner and opening that space up is the best way to economise space, increase booth traffic and promote from two directions.

That's mostly it. The construction of a booth is preaty easy. I build sets for theatre productions on limited bugets, calder does too. if someone were to get me booth measurements 3 or 4 months in advance, I could design an easy to build, cheap and asthetically pleasing structure in a week or two. All we'd need is someone to pick up hardware supplies and 5 or 6 guys that are decently technical to help set up the night before the Con. What do you guys think.

I think it would be cool to have an arbor style arch opening into the magical play land of the booth...maybe even with those velvet theater ropes to either side to add some flair.


I'm not big on the uniform idea though. I think I'd rather have customers NOT know who the sales staff is, for a couple of reasons.

1) passing traffic sees a ton of people in the booth. If they don't know that 1/2 of them are staff they're more inclined to think "man that booth is REALLY hopping", rather than "man that booth has alot of staff".

2) I witnessed a couple of customers actually selling our games for us to other customers ("hey, I demoed that yesterday and it really rocked"). I think bluring the line between who's a customer and who's staff enhancing this effect.

3) most of the staff aren't really staff. They're just fans of the games no different than the customers themselves. They're fans who love the game so much they give up 1/2 their gen con experience to help out in the booth. I think that message is lost if you put them in common garb. Then it looks more like they're their because they have to be.

I like the idea of game designers wearing their company specific garb to aid in identification. But I'm big in favor of the booth monkeys and assistant types being as incognito as possible.

I think there are lots of great ideas and comments flying back and forth here, both from us and our neighbors at the con.

I'm seeing some kind of simple PVC or furring strip apparatus to hold banners on high making them visible from afar and freeing much of the back of the booth up for continuous shelving and demo-without-blocking-advertising space. Alternatively, A-frame style shelves could hold a lot of stuff in a smaller space. These considerations depend as much on topology as on aesthetics and "booth flow", which is something I think we lacked a bit this year.

I really dig the idea of an easel with a whiteboard to announce current demos, this would be immensely helpful from a monkey perspective, as then we could bark a specific product or set of products rather than "we'll demo anything!" which, while you'd think it would be attractive, didn't seem all that effective to me. At a con where people are already bombarded with choices, giving them our whole 20-company-strong product lineup to pick from for demos is probably a bit overwhelming. Not saying demos-on-demand are bad, but having at least a few "Now Playing!" items to bark specifically would be easier to sell, imho.

I wouldn't mind hats, but I think Ralph eloquated what I have had in the back of my mind but not brought up- The Forge booth looks like it's constantly filled with fans, which it is. Did any of us NOT buy at least one Forge product? We monkeys especially are there because we plain love this shit. The games I probably sold the most of were the ones I had just played in and could just blurt out "Dude, I just played that game, it was awesome!"- which I would have done (and have done) whether actively working the booth or not. That said, I also agree with the comments that sometimes we need to know when to get the hell out of the way and let the customers do what they're there to do.

In the end, it's a learning process for all of us, and just as I'm sure the booth has gotten progressively better every year, I'm sure it will continue to improve in the future. From all evidence we kicked a whole lot of ass in 2004, I know I had a hella great time; and I have every reason to believe that 2005 will rock even more.

Ralph, I will respectfully disagree with you on the "throng of fans, and booth staff".

Most of my demo minions bought something at the Forge, so did my boothmates.

Nearly every single person had the same experience -- this was the experience that I had when I tried to get Burning Wheel the first three times:

Person comes into Forge booth.

They want to buy something.

They have to fight their way through a crowd of people who A) aren't fellow customers (and are obviously not, because they're standing around having animated discussions), to B) try and find the random person in the booth who can actually C) find the product they want, and D) get to the cash register.

One hidden benefit your triangular display rack gave you was that it very clearly separated the retail side from the demo side of your booth. There are better ways to do this, I'll grant.

Being able to CLEARLY identify who the hell is "on duty" in the booth is, from a customer's perspective, the second most difficult part of the Forge experience. The most difficult is finding a way to move without feeling like you're a salmon swimming upstream.

(As a case in point, it took me three tries to get Burning Wheel, and I only succeeded because I handed you the $15 bucks and asked you to find Luke and buy the product from him on my behalf -- I'm grateful that you did this for me, but I'm still shaking my head that it took three tries over two days to do it.)

Scott Palter had the same experience getting Sorcerer and My Life with Master on two different trips.

James Sterrett reported the same problem getting My Life With Master.

This is why I gave the "Jobs List" earlier, with "Cashier" and "Stock Boy". Those two jobs, at the very least, should be CLEARLY labeled.

Another idea (from the wife, so it's bound to be good): We could have someone with a Polaroid ready for when the Big Names come around. Have a board (it could even be on the side of a display rack) that says: "CAUGHT SNOOPING AT THE FORGE" with pictures of Tweet, Laws, Hite, Forbeck, etc. taken at the booth.

Edited to add: Also, anyone who uses a hard-to-get randomizer (like Ales'x roulette wheel or FVLMINATA's Tali) should definitely have some to sell along with the product. FVLMINATA did much better once the Tali dice got made and sold.

AdAstraGames wrote: They have to fight their way through a crowd of people who A) aren't fellow customers (and are obviously not, because they're standing around having animated discussions), to B) try and find the random person in the booth who can actually C) find the product they want, and D) get to the cash register.

More stray thoughts:

I think the Quiet Zone worked wonderfully. As the idea was born right here on the Forge, I think each and every one of us should take a moment to thank Peter Atkinson & the GenCon staff for that policy. Contact info is available at http://www.gencon.com/displayindy.aspx?file=contact-us#exhibitors

The odd idea I had: Would it be worthwhile to get a booth facing the back wall? It would cut down on casual traffic--it would seem that our exuberance does that already--but it would allow more open space right across the aisle for in-depth explanation of the game, etc. without blocking other booths.

On the subject of being able to identify the right people for whatever game you want info on... how about buttons? Everyone likes buttons! Someone produce maybe 10 or so for each game (or more for more popular stuff) and then sell them for like a dollar or fifty cents or whatever. Monkeys get first shot at them, and can then wear them around the Con. Stuff like "Ask me about My Life With Master" in bold colors. That way if someone walks into the booth knowing exacly what they want to see they can hunt up someone with the relevant button and pull them aside. In addition if you are out just wandering the Con with a button, there is a chance (probably not huge, but there) that someone will just ask you about whatever the product is...

Disclaimer: i unfortunately missed GenCon this year and have not attended in the past, so i do not have any first hand experience with the whole Forge Booth...

Thomas

I also asked for a price list at the cashier so that I could peruse the offerings at a safe distance and it took some work to find that there was only one copy and only for the cashier and then to get him to let me view it. I did, and it increased my speed at the rack. Maybe a pile of those would be a good thing for next year. I actually asked for such things at a bunch of booths and almost no one had one. Weird!

Ok, here’s my two cents.

1- I don’t think the booth needs ‘babes’ of either male or female persuasion, having support that knows about the games and can add a few words about it can really help to sell a game. I sold a Universalis simply because the guy was into Pulp Fiction and I knew how that game played. Having a novelty or two is fine, but we shouldn’t try to think up more crazy stuff for every year. Maybe a ‘Calder’ could be used in TROS demos for the player to actually whack. Perhaps passersby will look at that and wonder which game it is where you could hit a guy during the demo. And lets face it, you guys are cool and have great games, that should be enough.

2- The dry erase board is cool, but make a disclaimer that other games are available at anytime, you don’t want people thinking they can only have a demo at those times. Another idea to add to a sign is a post-it note above the game that says “Sorcerer demo Saturday at 2”. I noticed that some people don’t really look up much and having something posted above the game they are looking at and having it personalized for that day may influence them to try the game. Also, what about scheduled demo game sign up lists? I can see bad and good issues with this, we wouldn’t have 20 showing up for a demo but I bet some people don’t keep schedules at the con. Just an idea.

3- L shaped booth sounds great! Imagine the area that was used this year as the demo table section, the display taking up the open corner area where people can freely walk around it and the smaller, single, side booth as the sales and storage area. Sounds nice to me. Having the booth facing the wall would be ok, as long as one side was visible from a main walkway.

4- I have to support the display some now. Two years ago Paul saw the need for a better display then the magazine rack that was being used at the time, and took initiative and designed and constructed it himself for the betterment of everyone at the Forge booth. It can hold a hell of a lot of stuff, which the booth definitely needs. Anything else is going to cost more than it was to make the current display and might not have the storage capacity that it provides. And if there is booth expansion, it might not be so bad.

5- Last one. What about sponsors paying X dollars and bring one folding chair of a specific type? The cost of furniture rental goes down helping out total cost and no one person is committed to storing a boatload of chairs. I know some have to fly to the con, and that could be worked out somehow. But after the first year, the chair expense would technically be eliminated. Still have to rent tables but any money saved is good.

Hiya,

The chairs are the real bite for the furniture cost, not the tables, so that is an excellent suggestion, Danielle. I think some details might have to get worked out, but the basic idea is sound.

Booth policy decision: the shelves work very well for their purpose and will remain. I have yet to see any objections or comments that can't be translated into "a ton of people want to see the games." That is good news, not a problem that has to be solved.

Best,
Ron

Ron Edwards wrote:
Booth policy decision: the shelves work very well for their purpose and will remain. I have yet to see any objections or comments that can't be translated into "a ton of people want to see the games." That is good news, not a problem that has to be solved.

I was thinking about one of Ken's suggestions and figured this might be helpful in the future:

You can rent a 5x5 closet, ten feet high for $25 per month at:

Shurgard Storage
933 N Illinois St, Indianapolis, IN 46204
(317) 974-0905

which is almost exactly one mile north of the convention center.

You can have 30" diameter cafe tables, 42" off the ground for $73 (or 29" high for a similar price) each and metal folding chairs for $10 from

You can also get 30x60" tables (I couldn't find four-foot tables as per Ron's specification here) for $86 each.

http://www.wholesalefoldingtablesandchairs.com

So the initial investment on two long and six tables and 20 chairs would be $610 with $300 (or maybe less if paying for a year at a time, I should have asked) per year to store them.

Does this seem like an unreasonable option for cost savings?

You'd still need to get a 10x20 carpet seam-stitched and delivered once (or maybe go with multiple 10x10 squares so you can grown and shrink modularly) and you'd want table cloths and skirts. But this is a start and it really does sound like a viable option. The storage cost might be cut down too, but convincing another repeat exhibitor to do the same thing and share.

Chris

Hey Chris, some good initial leg work there, thanks.

I would like to remind folks about this thread, however.

This is not the first time that alternative furniture arrangements for cost savings has come up. It was discussed by lots of people at some length this year prior to Ron's above final call.

Unfortuneatly when it came time to do the actual work to make it happen...nothing, which is the main reason why we missed the prereg deadline for furniture this year.


Ron already does a metric buttload of stuff to make GenCon happen, so if some alternative furniture arrangement is to be had for next year...someone (read: "Not Ron") reliable will need to step up and take ownership of it. AND get it done far enough in advance that come registration time for 2005 there's no doubt that its all taken care of.

The cynic in me isn't holding my breath.

wolfsong wrote: Easily Identifiable Sales Staff: If no one likes the shirt idea than what about hats. Forge across the front and something on the side "Booth Monkey" or the name of your company or whatever. Hats for sales staff should be in a bright color, red preferably. Corperate stratagy and research has shown that black, white and red togeather evoke a sense of competence and leadership. Walk into any corperate building 9 times in 10 the guy in the black suit with the red tie is the boss. Red is a power color. use it.

Hi,

I too am opposed to uniforms just because I have my own cool shirts for my game/company. Buttons would be good, but then again I think we should all wear the trey kool kpfs stickers.

About chairs, how about this for a possible solution. Those of us that have folding chairs in our possession (particularly those of us in the tri-state area) bring our own. I'm a new home owner so I have recently gotten shit like that and can easily bring them down next year. I also now have access to folding tables (cart table type). That is one easy way to cut down on costs on furniture...

I like the idea of splitting demos out. Short ones at the booth, some scheduled and some not. Long ones in another location, all scheduled.

I also think that smaller racks, maybe the turning ones might be a better idea than the big wooden one. Space is always going to be an issue with the booth since we as a collective can't really afford a huge booth.

That is all for now...

Keith

Clarifications:

The hats/shirts/uniforms/whatever-
I didn't mean everybody! hell that's just rediculous. I ment the actual on duty staff. I.E. the cashier and the stock boy/girl that is usually behind the desk to answer questions. Other than that maybe having one person on the floor acting in an official capacity as sales rep. Buttons are a great idea! Let's take it up a step, "Ask me about My Life With Master" isn't enough. "Ask me about My Life With Master Demo's" would be more effective. The buttons should only be given to the people directly involved with the game. I.E. The writer/owner and the buy demo-ing the product. The "fan's selling to fans" image is a great tool and we should keep it. Giving out too many buttons or hats will reduce thier effectiveness.
The power color thing wasn't really angled to be "corperate gimick" I was using that as an example of it's use by proven effective money makers. The important thing is that it be eye catching, hence the bright colors.

These two things in conjunction would be great to set up an easily identifieable sales tier.
- A couple people with hats handling the buisness end. (handling money, restocking shelves)
- People with buttons representing the games from a demo-er or answer guy stance (if you're representing multipule games, just wear more buttons. Buttons are cool.)
- Spectacle personell drawing a crowd. It works. Even if it's distasteful to some, it's appealing to more, and even the ones who find it distastefull will still come for a closer look, at which point we've got them too. One or two is all we need.
- Everyone else. The "Covert Ops" Apparently just a bunch of enthusiastic fans talking up the games, dressed like everyone else, creating the "fans selling to fans" atmosphere.

Sounds to me like a preaty damn effective sales stratagy. Comments?

One reason i like buttons (and especially like having them for sale) is that customers unaffiliated with the Forge could buy one (for a dollar or something) and wear it around the Con providing free advertising. Heck, maybe they could even be manufactured cheaply enough to give them away with the purchase of the game. In addition, if anyone can buy a button they are not "official" marks of staff-hood or whatever.

Thomas

4- I have to support the display some now. Two years ago Paul saw the need for a better display then the magazine rack that was being used at the time, and took initiative and designed and constructed it himself for the betterment of everyone at the Forge booth. It can hold a hell of a lot of stuff, which the booth definitely needs. Anything else is going to cost more than it was to make the current display and might not have the storage capacity that it provides. And if there is booth expansion, it might not be so bad.

abzu wrote: PS I would love to add another company into our mix like NerdNYC or Key20 -- another entity to share a bigger space with, not a primary sponsor of the Forge, per se.

Hey, folkes. More info here in this thread than I can even hope to process at the moment, let alone respond to. But I'll try for a few things anyway.

-Vertical booth space. I've gotta throw my support behind not only reconfiguring the booth internally at the ground level, but also building up. There were all kinds of cool posters and banners at the booth, but they were often hidden by people and/or shelves. Some sturdy PVC framework and those posters would be up about 5-10 feet. Which I think would not only increase the eye-candy ratio of the booth up close (I work as a repairman for a local chain of movie theaters, and I've had the chance to see just how much thought goes into making sure no matter where a customer is looking, they're seeing something shiny), but also make the booth more noticeable on the Exhibit Hall skyline. Our near neighbors, the boffer arms dealers, had a tall banner crowning their booth, and I specifically remember several times people would ask me where the boffers were being sold, and I could point them directly to it, even if I was on the far side of the hall.

-Shorten the L-table arrangement lengthwise. It'll still make a small, but easily identifiable sales area, and free up back wall space around the product shelves, which is one place that it wouldn't be a good idea to have overwhelming congestion.

-I have to agree with some other things that have been said about booth uniforms. Creating a sea of people wearing the same thing would be a bad idea. But I do think it's not a bad idea to encourage people to wear something affiliating them with some specific game at the Forge booth, especially if an effort is made to ensure that that clothing is colorful and distinct from the others. People could still be identified as help staff on close examination, they would be moving billboards for whatever game they were representing, and the lively, motley atmosphere of the booth would be preserved.

-This ties in with a few other recent posts. I think it's definetely a good idea to establish warm ties between the booth and it's neighbors either by advanced design, or by just walking up and starting a conversation with the next-door booth. I do believe that spectacle and the carnival atmosphere can create beneficial crowd congestion for a entire section of the Exhibit Hall, but it'd be nice to be in congenial cooperation with all of the nearby booths on that point. I really had fun being the guy-in-jumpsuit-being-whacked-and-people-wonder-why, but at the same time, I would hate to think that anyone would consider me an obstacle to enjoying the con fully. To finish up this thought. I saw the relationship between the Forge booth and the Battlestations booth as a perfect example of this kind of camraderie, and I think it would be a highly fascinating experience to have an entire 'district' of booths that all functioned on that level.

Sheesh. More I'd like to write about, but I'm gonna have to actually get dressed at some point. There's a few of my cents, anyway. Later.

Very interesting discussion. One thing I really want to compliment you folks on is the friendly atmosphere and the cross selling. Your booth has made sales to me both this year and last that I might not have otherwise made (I used to be a "buy every RPG" sort of person, but I can't afford that any more).

This year, I dropped by on Sunday to do demos, and here's one place you failed a bit. I came in because Chris Weeks suggested I do a Universalis demo. Whoever greeted me asked what I was interested in and I told him it had been recommended I try Universalis. He asked what I was looking for in games, where I mentioned I liked a tactical combat system. He immediately suggested I check out The Ring of Steel, which I did, with demo.

The TROS demo was excellent. It was a great demo which quickly demonstrated two of the key differentiators of TROS (the combat system and Spiritual Attributes). Discussion of the system after that covered the general idea of sorcery (including it's own tie in to SAs). A sale was made.

But I left the booth without doing a Universalis demo. I did wander by a few minutes later and watched part of a Universalis demo, and I did buy Universalis from another vendor. But I wish I had done the demo. Now I could have been more assertive, but I think it would have been better to have made sure I did a Universalis demo also.

Here's a thought to perhaps help with that. WOTC has this nice card where you check off all the demos you do, they give you a prize for doing all of them - something you probably can't afford to do, so instead - have a card with all the games offered, and use a highlighter to mark the games the person might be interested in, and escort them to their first demo. Then when they finish that one, escort them to the next demo.

Another thing - if you can at all find a way to take plastic, checks, or even PayPal, that would really help. In today's society, I just don't carry much cash with me. If I had been sold on much more of the product, I would not have been able to buy it all. I realize plastic is expensive, but there's got to be some way to make it reasonable, and worth it to get some sales. Last year, I was able to manage a check payment (and I hope that worked out ok), and that might be an alternative (of course you folks can't afford the risk of a bad check for a couple hundred bucks).

But overall, the booth was great. The energy was great. The knowledge of the games was great.

Frank

ffilz wrote: Here's a thought to perhaps help with that. WOTC has this nice card where you check off all the demos you do, they give you a prize for doing all of them - something you probably can't afford to do, so instead - have a card with all the games offered, and use a highlighter to mark the games the person might be interested in, and escort them to their first demo. Then when they finish that one, escort them to the next demo.

Christopher Weeks wrote: I also asked for a price list at the cashier so that I could peruse the offerings at a safe distance and it took some work to find that there was only one copy and only for the cashier and then to get him to let me view it.

Christopher Weeks wrote: Maybe those of you who are comfortable in that kind of a dense crowd just don't understand that we aren't all. Maybe if that's your situation you should consider that there are people passing on the Forge "experience" because it's just too damn much work.

I'm not suggesting that everyone try and demo every game. My suggestion was to have someone spend a minute or two with a customer to find out one or two, perhaps three, games they were very interested in. Also, my demo ended up being with another booth monkey as the 2nd player because there wasn't another customer, so there was some wasted bandwidth.

I know it's tough, but the Forge games tend to be radical departures from standard games, so a demo is far more important to get the word out. Remember, a successefull demo is probably more than one sale (the player goes home and tells his friends about the game).

The idea of two or four hour game slots is cool, but I think you do actually get more bang for the buck with a bunch of 10-20 minute demos.

Of course building up more dedicated fans to run demos is something that will help. Obviously the brand new game will have a harder time of it, but some of the games have been around for a while, and probably have plenty of good fans.

Frank

Furniture. I have an opinion: tall cafe-style tables and barstool-type seating is the right way to go. It minimizes space use and creates the right "feel" for the booth. As we get closer to GenCon '05, I'm willing to put my energy/time/money/effort into helping make this real, if conditions are such that it still makes sense (same style booth, etc.). At the moment that's an empty promise, I know, but this really feels like the right way to go to me. So maybe I'll get a chance to back up those words, but if not, my opinion is known.

I was willing and eager (well, a bit less eager since my own game didn't quite get ready for the con) to personally run more demos in the booth this year, but it didn't happen - we had a lot of folks there, and when customers who wanted demos showed up (which was often, but not always), the tables filled very quickly. This is pretty much just a good thing, but maybe we could improve with a bit of organization along the whiteboard/"scheduled demo" lines.

It seemed to me that standing at a corner of the booth, "Demo Starting" sign in one hand, actual copy of a game in the other, both hands held high, with a smile on your face and a "wanna demo?" for anyone who makes direct eye contact (and you should be seeking out direct eye contact!), was surprisingly effective - if you're doing ALL of the above. Even leaving out the actual game in the other hand decreased the amount of eye-contact I got a LOT - and you don't want to know what happened when I stopped smiling. If there is an empty table, someone should be doing this ALL THE TIME. Now, your arms (and facial muscles, if you're like me :-) get tired after a bit, and this isn't SO effective that you're guaranteed to fill a demo-table before said tiredness strikes, so we'd have to rotate folks. But really, anytime there's an empty table, something at at LEAST this level of effort should be happening to fill it.

I'd also like to find a way to make 1-2+ hour demos practical somehow. Ron feels strongly (and accurately, best as I can tell) that short demos are the key to strong sales at the booth, but it seems to me that something a little more meaty is better at delivering a real feel of what is cool/different/engaging about a game.

There's a few thoughts,

Gordon

Reading through these 5 pages I have noticed that every viable problem the booth has revolves around one simple fact...we don't have enough damn space. We really need to get a 20' x 20' endcap next year. IMO a 10' deep booth is simply not deep enough for all the traffic we generate. Even with the 10' x 30' booth we had 2 years ago we were no better off in terms of crowding. The standard 10' deep booth is designed to be walked past, not through. Here is a potential floorplan I put together

http://errantknightgames.com/floor.pdf

I'm not opposed to paying a little more to sell my wares. I think $150 for each game/supplement you have for sale (up to $600) is a reasonable amount. If you can't sell 10 copies of a $15 game in a 4 day period you're simply not trying.

Paying more on top of the per game price will get you extras, like more banner space($100), your own demo table($100), your own personal booth monkey($100), etc. That means a primary sponsor with 4 or more books will pay at the most $900 and get his own demo table, space for a 30" x 72" banner, and their very own booth monkey to run errands like going to the hotel for more stock, getting your lunch, demoing your game, etc.

If it's still too cost prohibitive to get a 20' x 20' booth, what are the chances of us getting a booth across from one of the open gaming areas? That's a ton of available space for running demos when there's no room left at the booth. It would also give booth monkeys an out of the way place to hang and chat while still leaving them available and within sight of the booth.

It would also give us access to all the people that stop to take a break, play a couple games of magic or sort through their recent purchases. If they have time to sit around, they have time to play in a demo.

Another thought I had was limiting the number of workers at the booth. We go over this every year and I think a big part of our problem is that no one is quite sure when they should take off and when they need to stick around. Maybe some kind of system is in order.

How about this, let's get 10 buttons made that signify that you're "on duty". At the start of each day, 10 people take those buttons and the rest get lost for a while. When an "on duty" person needs a break they take off their button, put it in a basket we'll keep behind the counter and get lost. Anyone that is ready to put some time in should stop by the booth from time to time to see if there are any buttons available. If there's a button in the basket, put it on and get to work.

Regardless, I think there should be at least 2 people at the booth at all times that are easily identifiable as being part of the booth and available to answer questions, etc.

,Matt

OK, at this point, I've read through all of the comments so far, and the following is the vision that I'm getting:

Booth Layout:

• More space needs to happen. For about a dozen reasons. And I think it's viable. Next year we will have more folks selling more products, if history is any indication. As to what to get, definitely go with Matt's layout or something similar - but the peninsula, not the two booth thing.

Why? The aisle thing, while appealing in terms of captive traffic, means that either you have to have two registers, or you have to send people across the street to pay. The former means you lose your overhead advantage in increasing the size. That is, if you double the size, but only have the same space overhead in terms of only one register, etc, you get an increase in the proportion of space for other things. For example, I think you could get ten tables on Matt's layout instead of 8. Or keep it more open in general. You lose this advantage with the split booth method.

The latter method is just asking for product to walk off.

• Framing, as Jasper said - we need this. Again, it should look, as has been proposed in past years, like the entrance to a coffee house somehow. Actually I'm thinking more like Italian cafe, with, perhaps, an archway. Or Ralph's arbor idea. The sooner this gets decided on the layout of the booth so that Jasper can start building, the better.

If we can determine that it's legal to put up a second story, I think we should really look into that. Jasper, if money could be gotten to you, could you construct Andy's "monstrosity?" And transport it? That might make it possible to keep the smaller booth. Somewhat farfetched at this point, but why not ask?

• Better furniture (and other features), as Mike Miller mentioned, should be bought. I checked into renting from local sources in Indy, and on a per day basis, it ends up being about the same to go with Fern - maybe slightly cheaper than that, but not enough to make up for the hassle of moving, etc. Meaning highway robbery any way you look at it (my ploy to get them at a discount could not be made to work, unfortunately).

For the money spent on rentals we could easily buy the stuff we need as pointed out by several people. It's an investment that needs to be made (it will soon save $1000 per con, potentially twice that with more space), but it's hard to organize - especially with the "there is no Forge organization" policy.

• The problem with the furniture and framing is the question of who owns the stuff once it's purchased? That is, either one party has to bite the bullet for all of it (and then we pray they come back year to year or that they donate it), or, it's a pitch in. But then who ends up taking the stuff home or storing it? Ken had some good ideas about the potential for storage and transport, etc, but that's all ancillary to the question of ownership. What if a partner leaves, does he get to take some of it with him?

• Then there's the question of what to get. I think that optimally, we all would like to see the tall stools and tables. But, that's more items that have to be owned as a group. Danielle's idea for folding chairs is very economical, but runs the risk of people forgetting, or just not being able. OTOH, one can always run out to Walmart and buy a couple if we're short. Basically, if we can figure out the purchase of items for the booth, then I'd lean towards getting everything wanted including tables. If not, then the folding chairs may be a way to cut booth costs going with Fern.

If we do have the tall tables, I'm not sure about whether or not to provide stools to demo-ees or not. Not hanving them is cheaper, easier to organize, keeps demo's shorter, and saves space, but I think that people like to take a load off when playing. Not having seating could make people feel less welcome. Again, optimally I think we should have them if it can be swung at all.

• Credit Card machines cost money to get and set up (you have to pay extra for the hookup to the con, IIRC). Might still be worthwhile, however. Also, there are ways to make it work in terms of distributing cash if, perhaps, one or more of the big companies accepts the credit reciepts.

That said, I think that Greg's wireless idea has some merit - many sites have paypal and the like and could process that way. The only problem would be cost - the wifi was charging like $25 a day or something? Anyone remember for sure? Not ridiculous, and still potentially cheaper than renting a machine.


Marketing:

• The 20x20 layout doesn't provide any more space on the curtain than we've had, and, in fact, puts it farther away from people. So the ideas to have higher signage, or corner banners would need to happen. Given "framing," too, this means even less visibility potentially, meaning that the banners have to go on the framing itself, or above. In any case, the above thing makes too much sense to not do.

• Better racking needs to exist. One problem with the current rack is that it doesn't allow overlap of product up to down (and because it doesn't have high support, some of the more flimsy product falls out). It was perfect, IMO, when we had the 2003 amount of goods. It was crowded this year. Next year, I think it'll be overrun. In any case, even if we keep the current rack, we'll probably need more racking.

• A whiteboard or flipchart with marker is, I think, not a great idea. Personally, I can't read them, period (OK, so I may not be normal there). But though I know we want to keep that indie vibe, a little nicer signage would be better. Something to fit with the cafe motif.

• Price list/catalogue. We keep threatening to do this. A simple price list is nice, but a catalogue would be cooler, of course. This should be like a con programme, and tell people about our demos and such, so it stands in for the flyer as well.


Personnel:

• Hat's should be done. Maybe not sombrero's but how about something adventurous? I'm thinking Forge Fedoras. Or maybe those outback hats. With (as Jasper suggests), the red white and black Forge Logo on them. I don't see a logo that small as being overwhelming. As people have mentioned, for key personnel only.

• For everyone else, buttons as mentioned, indicating what you can demo, or talk about sensibly. This might help people find somebody they can talk to, but more importantly it means that the booth personnel know who is who in these terms. Means you can tell someone affiliated with the booth from the potential customers. Yes, we give buttons to other people as well, but only after we're sure they've had the full sales pitch.

• Training should be available for fully prepped demos. I really missed Ron's big book of demos this year. It's simple, each seller who wants people to run a demo should have one posted someplace well before the con so people can learn them. Then they need to have packets for people to use to run them. And, of course, they need to be tight. Hmmm, we could even mark the buttons of people qualified to run demos as such for easy identification.

• Of course, none of this means that individual sellers can't wear their own t-shirts, etc. That's the advantage to hats and buttons.

• Given enough space, I can sorta see having a boothbabe (right now it would be overkill). OTOH, I think that Danielle and Julie already do serve as booth babes. Yes, by Ron's technical definition, they don't show more skin than anyone else. Somehow I don't think it's mattering. That said, I am by no means opposed to more pretty women at the booth as monkeys or helpers, etc. :-)


Events:

• I say yes to the idea of seeing if we can't get a room to ourselves. Given the staffing we have, I think this isn't problematic at all. In fact, it would help give people more useful things to do. This would only be in addition to, not instead of, demos the way they are now at the booth.

• A contest sounds like a great idea, Greg's right. Anything that might get people back to the booth later (in addition to demos). That said, I think that most of these schemes don't work well. They have to be the "stop back later to see if you've won" concept, not the "drawing at 5PM" idea. Otherwise people just forget.

• I'm sure we can come up with some other events to have at the booth. I really want to do an organized tournament for TROS next year, for instance. Other event ideas? Especially things that can be pulled out during lulls to draw attention?

• The Polaroid for taking snapshots of the famous I'm not sure abuout. I like the idea at first glance, but what if those people don't come back because of it? Hmm.



Some of the issues mentioned are organizational. They'll become better with time, and nothing but effort can solve them. This year was better than last, next year will be better than this one.

Would it be possible for somebody with some pull to ask someone from GenCon to monitor this and other threads to help with questions? Heck, last year Peter himself came over to answer many questions. It would be nice to know when we're thinking of stuff that's out of bounds, etc, so we don't end up spending a lot of time chasing ideas that can't work. And they might answer questions when they come up, too. Just an idea.

Mike

If we do have the tall tables, I'm not sure about whether or not to provide stools to demo-ees or not. Not hanving them is cheaper, easier to organize, keeps demo's shorter, and saves space, but I think that people like to take a load off when playing. Not having seating could make people feel less welcome. Again, optimally I think we should have them if it can be swung at all.

If it's the same as the WiFi that was available to normal convention-goers, the WiFi was supposed to be $10/day, and enabling people to use paypal or setting up a credit card link is a great idea.

*However*:

1) The flyers advertising the WiFi did not show coverage into the dealer's room.

2) I was not able to log into the WiFi network - in fact, couldn't *detect* it - while the hotel's tech support could not help and the WiFi outfit's tech support used a machine to take ny name & phone number and then failed to call back.

Upshot: Triple-check that your wireless kit and theirs are really going to work.


Chris & Tammy Garland of timeline just use an old non-electronic machine for credit card sales (where you put the card in the mechanical device and pull a leverl for an imprint); I gather the assumption is that most cards won't bounce, and those that do will be pursued via a collection service. This might work for you guys too.

JamesSterrett wrote: 2) I was not able to log into the WiFi network - in fact, couldn't *detect* it - while the hotel's tech support could not help and the WiFi outfit's tech support used a machine to take ny name & phone number and then failed to call back.

Chris & Tammy Garland of timeline just use an old non-electronic machine for credit card sales (where you put the card in the mechanical device and pull a leverl for an imprint); I gather the assumption is that most cards won't bounce, and those that do will be pursued via a collection service. This might work for you guys too.

Just so we're clear on the CC issue, here's where (it seems to me) it becomes a problem for the Forge booth: accepting 'em is a risk that is very hard to share across the many publishers. That is, without (and sometimes, even with) extensive real-time infrastructure, you don't actually know for certain that you're going to get that money until some time after the transaction. Who's responisble for doing all the follow-up to make sure the payment really happens, and who has to swallow the loss if it doesn't happen? Hard to answer. This is why taking checks is always a case by case decision for each publisher to decide.

I'd like to think this isn't really a problem nowadays, that credit card fraud (of various types) is rare and wouldn't happen at the Forge booth. But 15-20 years ago, when I was in retail, rarely did a week go by without at least one of the CC transactions having some kind of problem. Maybe things have changed, or maybe one publisher is willing to shoulder the risk - it sure would be cool to be able to accept plastic. But I think we have to realize that credit is an inherently centralized process, and we are an inherently DEcentralized group. That's where (I think) the big problem comes from, never mind infrastructure costs and technology headaches.

Gordon
(And Andy: yeah, I'll spend some time answering phones in a hotel room - if someone is running one of the usual Forge kick-ass gaming sessions in the room, too. Hey, I like that! All the fun of the after-hours games while the convention hall is open! Credit-card phone duty might get TOO popular . . . )

ok, how's this for a credit card option. One of us sets up a paypal account (or offers up one of our own).

Step 1:
Customer gathers what he wants and brings it to the register.

Step 2
Cashier calculates price, bags up the product, labels the bag with the customer name and a number. Customer gets a card with his customer number and the Forge Booth's designated paypal account.

Step 3
Customer leaves and pays via paypal either using his own PC or one of the PCs gencon has available foir internet access.

Step 4
Someone from the booth checks the paypal account writes down whcih customers have paid.

Step 5
Customer returns to the booth and picks up his games.

Slightly inconvenient and hurts the impulse buys, but doesn't cost us anything other than the Paypal fee.

In most cases, con attendees browse their first day through anyway, so waiting a day may not be a big deal. It also allows customers to pay at their convenience later in the day when they might have a better sense of how much cash they can shell out.

,Matt

Has the time come to break this up into smaller discussions (or long passed)?

Potential topics:
Booth Layout
Furniture
Structure/Facing
Racks
Banner Presentation
Catalogue/Flyers
Hats or other Uniforming
Boothbabes
Monkey Wrangling
Demo Prep and Presentation
Forge Game Room
Contests/Events
Credit Card Acceptance

Mike

Long past time, I think.

New threads, everyone. Thanks.

Best,
Ron