On the plane ride back from GenCon I was thinking about my daytime gaming experience.  It was kinda lame.  My choices were indy games that were packed to the gills, games I thought might suck, or games that I knew would suck absolutely.

It occurred to me that I should damned well volunteer for GMing next year (and at any other Cons along the way).  I mean, DitV is super fun, and probably one of my personal top pics for Functional and Entertaining Within A 4-Hour Block.  Then something else occurred to me;  Every game I played in during the Con ended with either a free game, free game pieces (more Pirate ships!  Yay!), or a useful discount at a booth where that game was sold.  I mean, even the L5R game that nearly sucked the life from me produced a $2 off a purchase of $10 or more at the AEG booth.

You can see where I'm going with this.

I'm wondering if there are any of the indie-designers here at the Forge that would be willing to drop a discount for any Convention players who play their game at an organized event?  A good game plus a $2 off the Purchase of the Game You Just Enjoyed coupon might be the one-two punch it takes to make another sale. 

For the purposes of this thread I'm not interested in discussing why this may be a less than perfect means of selling a game.  I am interested in discussing ways to benefit the designers and the Forge as a whole as I'm GMing their games.

-Eric

How do we make sure that games other than the most popular games get this treatment?  It's not that I don't think that Dogs in the Vineyard and (say) Burning Wheel, Sorceror, My Life with Master, etc. don't deserve their popularity.  They certainly do.  But I also think that (to pick at random) Kayfabe would make for a terrific short-form slot for people who've never even heard of it.

I think the answer to that is really simple Tony.  You need people who are excited about those games to volunteer to GM them (or just organize them when there really isn't a GM).  That's it.

And then do all the paperwork and hoop-jumping to become an official GM at GenCon.

I happen to be intereted in jumping through those hoops for DitV and tMW.

-Eric

You know, there's something odd going on here. Every year, we have too many people around the booth. Now, all of these people are itching to play games. But we don't want to run demos for these people, especially if they've played the game before, or have had a demo already.

Now, GMing a game officially is one way out of this problem. But there's another. One thing that was supposed to happen, but didn't, is that people were supposed to get together at the booth and then go and play stuff during the day. But somehow that just doesn't happen.

And I gotta tell ya, I tried. Me, "Hey, should we get some folks together and play a game somewhere?" Random Forgerino, "Well, um, I wanna get in a demo of Game X in a bit."

I don't get it. Maybe it's just me? I did shower this time, honestly.

What I think we need is a room. Whatever it takes to get a room, I think we just have to have one. Where, instead of going to get a demo at the booth, you can go and get a full 4 hour game with whoever happens to be handy.

Mike

You're totally right, Mike. As an eager indie game purchaser and player, I know in my gut that the booth isn't really for me once I've demoed a couple of the new games and made my purchases. But I kept coming by anyway because I wanted to be part of things. Eric's idea of having more daytime indie sessions is a good one, but the more informal stuff Mike suggests would be even more satisfying to me.

I would definitely be in favor of having a room for this purpose at future cons. I'd even be willing to pay a nominal fee (equivalent to attending a scheduled game) for the opportunity to hang out and play pick-up games.

-EJ

I totally agree with this, and would take it one step further:  On firday (particularly) and saturday (maybe), at least some game designers should spend two hours away from the booth, hosting games in this annex space.  Of course, by that time they must have at least two designated people who can demo their games in their absence.

I know Twilight wasn't demo'ed a lot at the booth (I did squeeze a couple in along with Imp), but thats pretty much what I had set up to happen at the TCG hall. We scheduled a slew of 2 hour slots, from 10 to 10, and had a few folks man the tables. This made a very nice, open way for folks to come in, get a full game (or several!) in without being rushed. It accounted for about half of my sales. I tried to make sure that when people were interested in checking it out, all they needed was a generic ticket for the next event and they were ready to go. On top of offering a drawing at the end of the day, we had a decent draw.
Next year, I'm planning on getting a room one way or another anyway, because of the tournament structure I want to get rolling on. First couple days will be placement events for later events, which are to be a part of a Storyline event, but at the same time I'm going to keep up with the 2-hour "long demo".

Part of the issue is that, whether actively promoted or just perceived, the booth is the place to be.

Folks don't want to go anywhere else, because they're here pretty much for the forge, and nothing else.  So while the dealer's hall is open, that's where they are.  I'm quite certain that this:

Mike wrote:
Me, "Hey, should we get some folks together and play a game somewhere?"
Random Forgerino, "Well, um, I wanna get in a demo of Game X in a bit."

Fantastic stuff!

One problem.  The subject of this thread is getting players from the games I will be running back to the booth to buy games.  Not to get buyers out to play them.

To reiterate:

I will be running official, in the books, buy yerself a ticket indie games at GenCon and Origins next year.  Along with a slew of smaller cons between now and then.  Suggestions on getting players who dropped in on DitV or tMW (or anything else I run) as noobies to run out and buy a copy of the game immediately?

I mean, I'm gonna be running the games.  That's in stone from my pov.  Now I'm offering the designers of the games I love the opportunity to make a couple sales from my sessions.

And maybe others will spread out and start running indie stuff on the books at these games, infecting others with their kewlness and furthering the sales of indie designers even further.

-Eric

I will certainly try to figure out a way to balance being a boother next year with running some on-the-books games.

I know that the two gamers who played Dogs who didn't own the books ran to the booth and bought it after our game.

A player in the Sorcerer game had the main book but I saw him with the three supplements, & Sword, Soul, Sex.

The GM's of IGE could make it a habit to get back to the booth to let folks know how it went.  They could offer to go with the gamers at their table.

James, you're right, but I just don't know how to combat the effect in question. That is, again, it's baffling to me when I ask somebody to play cool game X for 4 hours, and they say that they want to hang around the booth to wait for three hours to get to play a demo of the game for twenty minutes.

Eric wrote:
One problem.  The subject of this thread is getting players from the games I will be running back to the booth to buy games.  Not to get buyers out to play them.

Mike,

Rock.

Sincerely,

Judd

Mike --

If I get the information (room #, etc) of the Indie Games Explosion next year, I will make it a point to send satisfied customers and extraneous booth folk alike to that room with instructions to get their play on, and I'll come out as soon as I have time away.

I didn't know where the IGE was this year, and I wasn't certain that pick-up play could happen there, so I couldn't send people.

I'd even spring to have "The Forge: Booth xxxx.  Demoes all day every day.  Indie Games Explosion: Room xxx.  Pick-ups and scheduled games all day and all night." printed on a bunch of bookmarks, and hand them out with every purchase.

yrs--
--Ben

Well, to be clear, there was no such room this year. That is, all of the IGE games were scheduled in room 207, AFAICT, but the room was not specially cleared for pick up games. And I'm not even sure that such is allowed per se. Had I gotten people to come play during the day this year, I'd have just found some open area to play. But, again, that's less attractive than being at some place where you know there'll be interesting traffic.

What may have to happen to get a room like this is to schedule "blank" events. I've seen this before, and I'm not sure how valid it is right now. But you put an event in the book like "Indie Game Explosion - come to the IGE room and play one of several independent RPGs!" and then we just make sure to have enough GMs on hand to ensure that if people come with tickets that they get to play something. But mostly we just run on generics.

Some rooms, however, seem to just get away with having the room to run events at will. Looney Labs comes to mind. So it's something that we'll have to check in with Gen Con to see about what the options are.

Worst case scenario, if there's "open gaming" somewhere we can just set up a station there, and make that indie game central. That said, I don't know that I saw any such areas this year. It could be the embassy suites, but that's a bit too distant from the booth. It would be nice to be able to get back and forth with alacrity for those who wanted to split time between working the booth and playing and such.

Scheduled events are fine, and should be a part of this if possible. But what I'm envisioning is more freeform so that people can come and go in games as they find people to play. Instead of having to worry about who you're going to end up with in a scheduled event. So you get the best of both - scheduled event length, and getting to play with your favorite folks like you do in the booth demos.

Mike

Mike wrote:
Well, to be clear, there was no such room this year. That is, all of the IGE games were scheduled in room 207,

Open Gaming at Gencon was in the Hyatt lobby, reachable via the skywalk but not somewhere anyone would walk by unless they were staying in the Hyatt or headed there deliberately.

Paka's game of DitV was in 205, very near IGE in 207.

Will there be an IGE room at GenCon SoCal?  Is there an interest in having one at DunDraCon (held mid-February in San Ramon in northern California; GM applications open September 5th)?

I'll be at both of those (as well as ConQuest labor day weekend near SF airport) and would be very happy to run as much Dogs as anyone cared to play.  Possibly also Capes, Under the Bed or The Mountain Witch.

--Carl Rigney

cdr wrote:
Open Gaming at Gencon was in the Hyatt lobby, reachable via the skywalk but not somewhere anyone would walk by unless they were staying in the Hyatt or headed there deliberately.

Paka's game of DitV was in 205, very near IGE in 207.

Will there be an IGE room at GenCon SoCal?  Is there an interest in having one at DunDraCon (held mid-February in San Ramon in northern California; GM applications open September 5th)?

I'll be at both of those (as well as ConQuest labor day weekend near SF airport) and would be very happy to run as much Dogs as anyone cared to play.  Possibly also Capes, Under the Bed or The Mountain Witch.

Hi guys,
I thought I'd chime in from the other side. As a game designer and primary sponsor of the booth, I'm not leaving mid-day to run anything. There's just too much to do -- either running demos or dealing with headaches. Also, it appears any free time I do have will be absorbed by the game design panel. (Which we will be doing next year.)

However, Thor, Dro and I did discuss this at length. We're going to add another member to our crew next year. One that can run 2-hour games in the IGE track during the day. The other two can run support for the demoers/GMs and help out at the booth.

I strongly urge the game designers to work with Mike Miller to get a game or two into the schedule via the IGE. Mike ran 7-9 slots that seemed to be full. I ran 8-12 slots that were definitely full. I saw Matt Gwinn run a packed Kayfabe game from 9-1, I think. Or maybe it was 8-12.

Anyway, organizing daytime pick-up games is a different animal. Mike (Holmes), if this is something you'd like to take up with Gencon, please do so. But I have a feeling it's going to have to be a "Game with the Forge Monkeys" event. 'Specially if it's happening during the day.

Then again, maybe those designers not on a panel or running an event, should take Thursday or Friday afternoon and do something like this to drum up interest in their games early on. A little public exposure does wonders.

-L

Mike is right that the IGE could be a lot better. One of the things that could get it there is having a non-exhibitor running it. I was over-committed this GenCon and consistently chose to support WGP over IGE. My wife Kat has volunteered to run the Explosion next year, but with both her AND Holmes, all I gotta say is WOW!

About the daytime slot issue, during GenCon '04 I ran one 2-hour WGP scheduled event each day. All of them were full and one I had to turn away several people with generics. For GenCon scheduled events, my rule of thumb has always been "if you run it, they will come." Except for early Thursday morning and later Sunday afternoon, I've never had a problem filling games by listing them in the convention book.

As for the original purpose of this thread, I think making it widely known to people at the booth that "these cool games are being played at location XXX" and making it known to people at the IGE that "these cool games are being sold at booth YYY" would go a long way toward coordinating sales and play. For mid-day games, you can even walk people right to the booth.

Good plan Mike.

I'd be more than happy to escort buyers right to the booth.

I'm also considering putting some line on each character sheet (cuz ppls like to keeps their character sheets) that lets people know right where they can go to buy a copy of the game if they enjoyed it.

Maybe someone who's manning the Forge booth next year will compile all the Forgite games being run from the Book O' The Con and post a short list right there at the booth.  I imagine that would be pretty effective.

Right now my agenda for the big cons next year is pretty solid;  Bringing it to the masses during the day ('official' games in the book) and meeting up with the crowd after hours.

-Eric

But I have a feeling it's going to have to be a "Game with the Forge Monkeys" event. 'Specially if it's happening during the day.

Urggggggh....  Is it a good or a bad sign that I'm actually feeling jealous of the people who haven't published games, and could therefore enjoy four solid days of top notch Indie Gaming with clear consciences?

I have noticed with the Preview Edition of WGP.  Mike and I would go to a con, run schedualed events.  Even if he didn't make a sale at the con, there sales off the internet would increase.  the larger the con and more events run, the larger the increase.

Even if they don't buy the game at the table they talk, and someone will get curious enough to look it up.  So its been our experience that schedualed events = sales.

 

Mike Holmes wrote: Mike (Miller), Kat seemed to do a good job as far as was possible for the coordination of the events as they happened. So I'd be glad to work with her again. Perhaps she as "Scheduled Events" coordinator, and me as "Pick Up Events" Coordinator. That sounds like it would work excellently well.

Yes! Scheduled events for us plebes!

As someone who generally buys what I want fairly quickly, and who isn't Forge Inner Circle, I find myself in a position where I want to hang out at the Forge booth, where all the cool folks are. At the same time, there is a definite vibe of "We're actually interested in the paying customers here."

That's absolutely legit. The booth is there to sell stuff. It's one thing to complain about the Hard Sell (and I have, on the relevant thread). It's, I hope, acceptable to get into a demo at the booth for a game that I've bought that convention. I even presume to try to get into demos of games I've bought at previous conventions so that I can see how they are meant to be played. But, more than that is pushing, and that's not cool.

But, y'know, even though I've bought a bunch of games and am now no longer a target audience for the demos, I want to play these games. I don't just want to play them at home. I want to play them with the cool people I see once a year and the cool people I've never met. This is especially true of Forge games, where it often doesn't click for me until I see how the game works in play. I've had very mixed success running things at home, even when I've been in demos.

Well, there are the games at the Embassy Suites. These sound really great. Of course, I didn't even know that's where the gaming was happening after hours, and I'm not sure if this is something I'm supposed to show up to without a direct invite to a specific game, as with Kat's Everway game on Saturday. If this is something for the people who work the booth, write the games, sell the games, and run the games and demos, well, yes, I'm disappointed, but, y'know, it's not unreasonable to say, "No, these are by invitation only. It's our chance to detox and play with each other."

So, what does that leave? Open gaming, pick up gaming, and scheduled gaming. Over the years, I've gotten pretty good at figuring out what games are to my taste, so I'm definitely fine with scheduled gaming. Without it, even if it makes little economic sense to run such games, I feel a bit of resentment. What, I have to be an open wallet before someone runs a convention game?

So yes, I loved the fact that there were officially scheduled games of TSOY, Capes, MLWM, WGP, PTA, DitV -- and Charnel Gods! There was scheduled Charnel Gods! I am jealous of the folks who got to play that one. More scheduled games!

Then, there's open gaming. Yes, that's in the Hyatt, but if the Forge could get a room, or a table in a room in the convention center, great! And don't forget pick ups. Some companies had sign up sheets for scheduled pick ups, four hour games that weren't on the schedule, and were held wherever was convenient. I'd be willing to put my money where my mouth is (well, my time where my typing fingers are) and run stuff at for pick ups and open gaming. I'm not sure enough of my skills or schedules to run Scheduled Events yet, but this sounds like a good way to start.

Josh and I are planning to do Origins next year. By then, I am hoping to have run PTA, at the very least. I would like to be confident that I could run PTA, Polaris, DitV, and Mountain Witch at the drop of the hat. These are listed in what I think is order of likeliness. If I nail those, then Sorcerer would be next. Apart from actually learning by running, what resources should I be checking out? Are there any "Okay, here's how to demo my game" packs?

-Lisa