I really watched Dexcon and Dreamation change in a great way from '05 to '06 and I am sure people who have been going for more years than that can say more on the matter.  The con is packed with indie designers and indie RPG's playing in every time slot.

Not to mention that everyone from last year went home, told their friends and brought buddies to this one.  The web is growing.

I credit Michael Miller's effort for this but I am not sure what that effort entails or what exactly he did other than post a thread here and make a schedule sheet on his web-site.  I have no idea what went on behind the scenes or what he specifically did to make the IGE happen.

But it happened and it was cool.

So, how do we cause an Indie Game Explosion at a new con?  I am going to run two games of Sorcerer and two games of P.T.A.  I know Luke and Jared are attending, so there very well might be another Indie RPG Roundtable, which was really cool at Dreamation.

A lot of the good response, I think, can be credited to Dreamation and how well they treat the designers that come to the con.

I have this wild idea that I'm not sure would work, but would be a great way to sort of seed an area. I call it "Indie Speed Dating." Every interested designer or GM who likes indie games that is coming makes a 30-minute demo of their favorite game. Get a 4-hour time slot and then have the games rotate. Optimally, someone interested in indie RPGs who doesn't know where to start could experience 8 indie games in one time slot. That'd be amazing.

Clinton wrote: I have this wild idea that I'm not sure would work, but would be a great way to sort of seed an area. I call it "Indie Speed Dating." Every interested designer or GM who likes indie games that is coming makes a 30-minute demo of their favorite game. Get a 4-hour time slot and then have the games rotate. Optimally, someone interested in indie RPGs who doesn't know where to start could experience 8 indie games in one time slot. That'd be amazing.

Indie gaming at I-CON falls under my domain (Gaming Demos) so I am willing to Badge any Forge member who wants to come out and run games. I spoke briefly with Clinton and I am going to ad him to the Guest list and enter him in the Indie Designers awards we are having for the first time ever. I want I-CON to have a large indie gamer focus, and I am even giving Abzu a table in the dealers room so the Indie games can be sold. The I-CON dealers room has over 6,000 visitors so getting the word out there is not too hard.

So what I would like any Forge members to do is shoot me an email at demoteam@iconsf.org and tell me what you want to do. I will send you an event template and make sure you are badged. If you want in on the dealers table contact Abzu and see what his plans are for it.
Time is running short and I want to get all events finalized by mid Feb so they can go on the web site for pre reg.

Those wishing to do panels (this is including Abzu and jared) need to contact Cherise at gamingguests@iconsf.org so she can work with you there. I am currently in the process of building a Indie games library for gaming demos so a indie book can be checked out and played in a open gaming area. This way if they like it they can run it at the con for their friends and then go and buy a copy from the dealers room. Any indie press company wishing to donate for the library or add to the prize support should contact me as well.

I will try may best to make this all happen

Thanks

Thor wrote:

Clinton wrote: I have this wild idea that I'm not sure would work, but would be a great way to sort of seed an area. I call it "Indie Speed Dating." Every interested designer or GM who likes indie games that is coming makes a 30-minute demo of their favorite game. Get a 4-hour time slot and then have the games rotate. Optimally, someone interested in indie RPGs who doesn't know where to start could experience 8 indie games in one time slot. That'd be amazing.

Aaron from Nerdnyc must be sharing your psychic space or something, because he's been working on this very concept. He plans to have an RPG speed dating round in March, I believe. He's talking about 15-minute slots.

I wish I could partake, I-CON duties keep me a bit busy. If this becomes a regular thing mayhaps Dexcon 9 where I plan to help more with the booth and things.

Thor wrote:

Clinton wrote: I have this wild idea that I'm not sure would work, but would be a great way to sort of seed an area. I call it "Indie Speed Dating." Every interested designer or GM who likes indie games that is coming makes a 30-minute demo of their favorite game. Get a 4-hour time slot and then have the games rotate. Optimally, someone interested in indie RPGs who doesn't know where to start could experience 8 indie games in one time slot. That'd be amazing.

Aaron from Nerdnyc must be sharing your psychic space or something, because he's been working on this very concept. He plans to have an RPG speed dating round in March, I believe. He's talking about 15-minute slots.

Judd,

I am trying to get something like this organized, and some systematic way of getting people together to run a lot of indie games at local cons would be great for everyone. Since I have this thing called IPR, using that to bring people together might help. Alexander had some great suggestions for setting things up to reward GMs with some kind of rating system. I will be exploring that as well.

I set up a forum on my site, and I'd love anyone to post calls for GMs there and talk about what local cons you are trying to organize an indie press explosion for: http://www.indiepressrevolution.com/forum/index.php?board=5.0

Clinton wrote: I have this wild idea that I'm not sure would work, but would be a great way to sort of seed an area. I call it "Indie Speed Dating." Every interested designer or GM who likes indie games that is coming makes a 30-minute demo of their favorite game. Get a 4-hour time slot and then have the games rotate. Optimally, someone interested in indie RPGs who doesn't know where to start could experience 8 indie games in one time slot. That'd be amazing.

Paka wrote:
So, how do we cause an Indie Game Explosion at a new con?

Kat wrote: Will there be a booth at ICON?

Kat wrote:

Paka wrote:
So, how do we cause an Indie Game Explosion at a new con?

Will there be a booth at ICON?  
An Indie Booth needs Demo space.
How far apart will the booth be from the RPG events?
The person in charge of this needs to find out what kind of deal we can expect from the con.

Who will organize the events?
How many of us are attending and how best can we scedual events so there is always something to do, without gluts or holes where there are too many cool games offered in one slot (=not enough players) and then no games offered in the next slot.

-kat  

Clinton - if you want to talk about doing the Speed-Dating at ICON, let me know. I can host/run so you can GM.

Emukt=a=nerdnyc.com

Paka wrote: So, how do we cause an Indie Game Explosion at a new con?

Awesome.

I should be able to make it out, and would definitly be down with running some games for speed gaming.

One question - will there be a hotel room (or whatever) provided for us drifters, or do we need to make our own arrangements?

Bret Gillan and I (and I think Paka too) are planning on running some indie games at <a href="http://www.oswego.edu/~stg/arcon/">Arcon V in upstate New York this year.  I think Bret has already put in blurbs for Capes and Octane, and I'll probably be running some Sorcerer.  I would love to have a huge indie presence there this year if possible.  It's not a really big con (about 100 or so last year), but it's always been a fun one.

I happen to know the guy in charge of vendors/guests (it's me), so if any of you designers out there want to come as special guests let me know.  We might be a small con, but we haven't had any guests or vendors go away unhappy so far and we've been getting bigger every year.

If you have any questions for me, please ask.  For those of you who don't know me I'm the guy with the camouflage jacket that was hanging around all day Saturday like a Forge fan boy.  :)

Did you play in my Carry playtest perchance? I'm bad with names but someone had a camo jacket...

Drat, thats the same weekend as Econocon, which I was thinking of going too. I'll keep an eye on it though, things could very well change.

Bob, Arcon V should entirely get its own thread, man.

As should my post for OrcCon.  But your original post didn't mention what Con you're talking about Judd, and I didn't catch it on the title of the thread, so I thought this was a general "How do we bring this to other cons?" thread.

I wasn't upset at people talking about how they've done this or plan to do it for other cons but I thought that Arcon and the indie track that Bob and Bret are running deserves its own thread is all.

I don't mind other cons being mentioned in this thread as long as the moderator doesn't mind.

But I would like the main focus on getting the IGE action towards I-Con

Nathan wrote:
Did you play in my Carry playtest perchance? I'm bad with names but someone had a camo jacket...

Paka wrote:
Bob, Arcon V should entirely get its own thread, man.

One thing I think was cool about the IGE at Dreamation was how it was all coordinated under the Indie Games Explosion banner - you could look at our overall schedule, we had a specific slot in the master schedule seperate from umbrella RPG, etc. Is this something that needs to be coordinated by a point person, like Michael did for Dreamation? Or is Dregg willing to keep an eye out for events that we individually flag as "Indie Game Explosion", and he'll make sure it happens? Are there other organizational issues that I just don't know about?

Nathan wrote:
One thing I think was cool about the IGE at Dreamation was how it was all coordinated under the Indie Games Explosion banner - you could look at our overall schedule, we had a specific slot in the master schedule seperate from umbrella RPG, etc. Is this something that needs to be coordinated by a point person, like Michael did for Dreamation? Or is Dregg willing to keep an eye out for events that we individually flag as "Indie Game Explosion", and he'll make sure it happens? Are there other organizational issues that I just don't know about?