“Spiel” is the game fair to be in Europe, this year 19 to 22 October. Previously discussed here and here. This weekend on NordCon, I was approached by the folks of “Projekt Odyssee” who asked how seriously interested people from the Forge are in a presence at Spiel. PrO would be interested to do a joint booth.

Who are PrO? They are a project group of Nexus e.V., a role-playing club (membership corporation) from Berlin. What they do is they provide an organization for German indie game authors to be present at conventions and fairs. They have had booths on Spiel several times and know how things go there.

A booth 2 meters times 5 meters is approximately 800 Euros. The people of PrO figure that if you take two of those, you could have a booth and three tables for demos. Nexus e.V. would put in some money, as would some German authors. However, if on their own, they probably wouldn’t even get together a single booth. They need to know:

How many authors and booth monkeys would sign in?
How much funding could be raised for such a project?
Who would be the responsible person in charge at the Forge?

Since the sign-in term is the end of May, a decision needs to be made quickly. I promised to get back to them within the next couple days.

Watcha say?

I cannot stress this enough: Spiel Essen is one of the most important gaming events in the world.

And here's some information I have from direct experience: Nexus e.V. and more specifically Projekt Odyssee, is one of the most significant actual-play, actual-promotion gaming groups in the world.

It's important to remember that "the Forge" is not a company and does not own or pay for anything; technically, the Forge booth at GenCon is really the Adept Press booth.

So Frank, I think that expecting any centralized or leadership-based response isn't going to work well in just a few days. The key information right now is commitment directly to Projekt Odyssee. And for that, PrO needs to provide their financial expectations and requirements, as in, "how participating in this booth will help us all, and here's how to do it," so individual publishers can make their decisions quickly.

As for me, I will be in Germany twice this year, but I will not be at Spiel Essen due to my job requirements here in the States. I do plan to have an Adept Press presence there, via PrO depending on the details of their program. I am also willing to commit right now for a blanket promotional investment in the booth, up to E300, again, depending on the stated plan.

Best, Ron

Thanks Ron,

Okay, so lets find a way to make this work. I am willing to coordinate this as best I can between PrO and the Forge people. I think that a "double booth" is a good idea if we can get the money together. I'll sign in as a booth monkey, but I can't promise 100% that I'll be able to be there on the working days. I think the way to go is for PrO to organize the booth and individual people of the Forge diaspora to provide funding and/or help at the booth. But we need a definitive commitment. So:

Which of you would want her/his game presented, sold, and possibly demoed at the booth? How much money would you be willing to commit?

Who of you would actually commit herself/himself to be at the booth in Essen on 19 to 22 October?

I think if we could raise some 1000 Euros and get some... I dunno... 4-6 people to actually be there, we could do it.

- Frank

My, we're moving late here. Well, these things take time to set up. If not this year, then the next. Frank: if you need help in your assumed coordination role in terms of web operations (I'm not in Germany, obviously), contact me immediately.

I've written about my own Essen-attitude in the earlier threads. Current situation: no game for Essen 2006 with 90% certainty. On the other hand, I've committed to getting a game out for Essen 2007 in self-respect terms. When I have a game, I'm rather eager to operate Essen in a manner similar to the Gencon Forge booth. In this regard I have an intense interest in an Essen booth this year, too.

Meanwhile: IF THIS HAPPENS this year, I'm committing two highly skilled workers, myself and my brother Markku. This is more than reason enough to appear, even if I have no business of my own there. We run the Arkenstone operation in Finland, so we're more than qualified for selling and demoing the usual assortment of American Forge products. I'm rather sorry that I can't commit money, but with no product it'd make little sense, even if something like this would be an useful experience for the next year. And I don't exactly want to hasten my planned design schedule just to get my game done for Essen.

I make the above commitment while quite aware that this will most likely come to nothing, considering the amount of coordination and investment required in the available timeframe. TO MAKE IT HAPPEN: Frank, I suggest contacting the top American indie names personally and finding out if they'd be interested in investing money and product, if a capable team is formed to take care of their talent for them (akin to what Ron suggests above). It seems to me that we have men of good reputation and high skill for the project here in Europe, but less in terms of product to move and money investment, so the only way to make this happen is to get overseas investment. While working on that, here's a logistical angle: while any American product for the booth is probably best shipped directly there, Arkenstone can retail or warehouse any sensible (meaning under 20 copies per title) leftovers afterwards. So returns are unlikely, as long as as the numbers are kept realistic.

Anyway, is there any European designers with product here? Frank, what's the Barbaren situation, I've not seen it at the forum lately? Or any American designers willing to come, for that matter?

I'd very much like a representation at Essen and, like Ron, what I'd like to see very much is a simple explanation of: "This is how much this will cost you, this is what we will do for you, this is how we'll get profit back to you (if at all.)"

I'm tentatively willing to commit 100-200E into the an Essen presence; I just want to get a stronger sense of exactly what you're doing.

yrs--
--Ben

Eero, you are right, we are moving late here. I think probably the best way to get moving in time is to point the PrO guys to this thread directly, since they are much more experienced in running this kind of endeavor than I am, so they can tell you how they’d do it. I’ll also write to some game authors personally to make sure they’re aware of this thread. Plus, I’ll point it out to a few German people who might sign in as booth monkeys. Having some German native speakers around who can demo Forge games would probably be key.

As for Barbaren, I won’t have the book finished till October. This makes me unhappy, but I have to be realistic. What I’m hoping for, however, is a neat poster and a demo version. Based on this, I’ll be willing to put in 50-100 Euros as well.

As I see it now, once Clinton, Luke, Vincent, Matt and others have posted to this thread, we’ll already be pretty close to having the money together, provided that we manage to figure out the legal and logistic part in time.

- Frank

P.S.: There’s one more thing to consider: The weekend after Spiel, there is the south-western game fair in Stuttgart. PrO gets a booth for free there. So any stock left from Spiel could be taken there (if Eero doesn’t take it to Finland), and anyone traveling to Germany could stay around for a week, see some sights, and do the Stuttgart fair as well.

I'd be available for booth duty on at least one of the weekend days, as well. I could demo some of the games I know for the german audience.

Regards,
    Harald

This sounds like a great idea! A booth at the SPIEL would be a great springboard for indy-sales in Germany and to do this together with PrO (who have much more experience in stuff like this then anyone else in the German indy-sector) is excellent.

I would gladly be a booth monkey, even though I will not have any design of my own ready in October. But still, this is a great opportunity and if we can pull this off in 2006, chances are that in 2007 (when I might just have a game ready) we will manage again. I don't know if I'll be able to be there for all 4 days, but it should be no problem to take Thursday and Friday off, as to ensure some presence on the weekdays.

So, I'll demo Forge games, haul boxes, get coffee and ... well, stuff like that.

Frank wrote:
As I see it now, once Clinton, Luke, Vincent, Matt and others have posted to this thread, we’ll already be pretty close to having the money together, provided that we manage to figure out the legal and logistic part in time.

Hi Eero,

You are right, the homepage says that the sign-in term expired 15 May. The PrO people were telling me something about the end of May, so I guess they are probably in contact with the fair organization and have some means to still book a booth. I think we’ll have to wait for the PrO folks to show up here, I have posted about this to the PrO forum and will send out some mails this evening. They will be able to answer most of the questions much better than me.

Your suggestions seem sound to me. Concerning the use of left-over stock, I think the PrO people always have a certain stock of games they take from convention to convention, but I don’t know how much they can and will handle. Again, I hope they’ll show up pretty soon.

The PrO people are all working complimentarily, and I’d expect the same from other helpers, so no additional cost there.

- Frank

Hi,
I'm a PrO-Author and part-time forge reader. I did the organisation for the last PrO-Booth two years ago.
This is on very short notice for us as well, but everyone who heard this so far was enthusiastic by the idea of doing a booth together with the forge (perhaps this will even motivate some more PrO-authors).

Original deadline was May 15th but we called the publisher who organizes the Spiel. Booth-registration will even be possible after the end of May but only if there are free spaces available, and who knows in what corner the booth will be in that case.

I will do a few phonecalls this evening and try to find out more details, like actual pricing of a bigger booth, and try to post them here.

In the last years the PrO-authors paid 50-100 Euros for the booth, the rest was sponsored by Nexus eV, but accomodation was mostly managed on a personal basis (like having seven PrO-people in my flat).

Andreas

Huh, this seems to come together faster than I expected. I'm giving it... 30% odds to succeed, which is up 15% since the beginning of the thread.

Could somebody tell me more about all these German abbreviations? Like, what's Nexus eV? Sounds like they could be a factor here.

I have a suggestion for other American publishers regarding the Spiel booth.

It's this: consider buying into this booth to be an investment in good will and good promotion. That's what I'd doing with my E300; I would not expect that money to return to me from booth sales.

Now, whatever money is made by sales of my books there, I'd like to have it, yes. But recouping my investment, in this case, isn't the highest priority. I'd rather see a PrO booth at Spiel with a lot of our books there, and with some knowledgeable people promoting them (and playing!!), as the first priority.

I don't expect anyone else to be quite as motivated as me about this, and I also think it'd be financially prohibitive for most of us to buy in, travel to Europe, stay for a few days, and deal with all those expenses. So what I'm calling for are American publishers who are willing simply to contribute to the booth's financial existence and to supply some books, without necessarily going all the way there and working the booth itself (we can talk about that for 2007 though).

E75 to E100 sounds about the right range for such a contribution, if you're interested. Let's call this a fund-raiser for a worthy cause in which at least a little of the contribution might be recouped, but isn't expected to be fully repaid.

Andreas, with my E300, maybe this interpretation can get us up to E1000.

Best, Ron

Ron, this is exactly my thoughts on the matter -- having a presence at Essen does enormous amounts of good for the culture of role-playing as a whole, and also for our relationship to the European gaming scene, which has historically been really receptive to our games.

Here is me, contributing at least 70 euroes, maybe more as I hear more stuff about the booth.

yrs--
--Ben

P.S.  Eero, contact me privately about your Polaris stock and ability to cover the con w/ it.

Eero: e.V. means “eingetragener Verein”, which is a registered membership corporation, usually non-commercial. It’s a legal person with limited liability under German corporate law, which has a long tradition of being the form of organization for any range of social activities, sports, hobbies and the like. Nexus e.V. would be the actual legal entity to conclude the relevant contracts and assume liability.

Hi again,

Nexus is a society of roleplayers from Berlin (originally). They organize a convention called the Odyssee once a year, which is a con for small, indie, neglected, out-of-press and other games, you don't usualy expect to played at conventions (Jürgen Mayer did some sessions of Forge-games there, some of you will know him).

During one Odyssee-Con the idea for the Projekt Odyssee emerged to promote german smallpress or even hobby-authors. So the project is based in the Nexus-society and they provide some of the money.

I also thought about doing this in 2007 but the PrO needs a little motivation right now and we missed the Spiel last year already.

Andreas

I'd like to support this effort and would be grateful to have my games represented there. I could help as well with 100-200 Euro.

best,
Emily

I have opened a thread for the booth monkeys so you can see who will be there to promote your game and demo it to people.

- Frank

Hey all --

I'm completely sold on this by the showing so far in the booth monkey thread.  Who do we get the money to, how, and by when?

yrs--
--Ben

Hi,

I'm Daniela Nicklas from Stuttgart (Germany), Nexus e.V. Member and project coordinator of Projekt Odyssee (PrO) (since October last year, Nimer Yussef founded it).

The booth in Essen will be coordinated by Stefan Unger (who is also the organizer of NordCon, one of the biggest fantasy conventions in Europe, and it was this weekend, so give him some time to have a good night's rest). So I'll leave the details to him, but some information for you right now to help your decision process:

People:

So far, four PrO authors want directly contribute to the booth. This is a rather low number, but quite a number of other systems got so mature that they have their own booths. So we are very happy to make it a joint event with the Forge, because being present at Essen is very important not only for the authors, but also for PrO itself.
(beside the fact the it is a utterly cool rpg project which I'd love to boost).

Additional, I guess there will be about 5-7 more people from PrO that will work as booth monkeys. Some of them (me included) are also happy to present or talk about The Forge Systems. So we won't have a problem with populating the booth and representing systems even if their authors don't make it to Essen.

Money:

We plan to have a mixed funding: half of the booth can be covered by Nexus, the other half have to be splitted between the authors. Maybe we should have different amount here, depending on whether the author wants to sell books or not (some of the PrO systems are online and for free). Altogether, it should be no more than 100 Euros per author. These are details that Stefan has to figure out.
A small booth will be around 800-1000 Euros.

Organization:

We are fine with organizing the booth and keeping the contact to the Essen fair. Frank T. will be the coordinator for the The Forge side.
Soon, we will set up a mailing list for organizational issues where you can subscribe to.

hope to see you in Essen,

  Daniela

Another remark: one way how Nexus raises the funding for the booth is a rpg auction at the biggest German Indie-Convention, "Die Odyssee".

You could also donate nice things to sell at the auction (e.g. a signed The Forge Game). If you plan to, let me know (best per E-Mail), I'll give you an postal address where to send it.

We will print all donators to the program and announce them loudly at the auction.

Daniela

Hi Everybody,

thank you Frank T for the news!

Because it is that far away I am sure to lend my help.

Frank mentioned something about the possibility to do a TRoS or BW demo. I would do it if there is some interest!

I am confused about the money. Please can somebody explain it to me in a sentence?

Anyway, I will help, because this is just too cool. Tell me how and I am satisfied.

MfG

Dirk

Hi Dirk,

Money: Authors take a share of the costs for the booth. Booth monkeys work for free and cover their own expenses, but don’t contribute to the booth costs.

- Frank

Daniela wrote:
I'm Daniela Nicklas from Stuttgart (Germany), Nexus e.V. Member and project coordinator of Projekt Odyssee (PrO) (since October last year, Nimer Yussef founded it).

So far, four PrO authors want directly contribute to the booth. This is a rather low number, but quite a number of other systems got so mature that they have their own booths. So we are very happy to make it a joint event with the Forge, because being present at Essen is very important not only for the authors, but also for PrO itself. (beside the fact the it is a utterly cool rpg project which I'd love to boost).

Additional, I guess there will be about 5-7 more people from PrO that will work as booth monkeys. Some of them (me included) are also happy to present or talk about The Forge Systems. So we won't have a problem with populating the booth and representing systems even if their authors don't make it to Essen.

We plan to have a mixed funding: half of the booth can be covered by Nexus, the other half have to be splitted between the authors. Maybe we should have different amount here, depending on whether the author wants to sell books or not (some of the PrO systems are online and for free). Altogether, it should be no more than 100 Euros per author. These are details that Stefan has to figure out.
A small booth will be around 800-1000 Euros.

Eero, please bear in mind that the 800-1000 Euro is for a small booth of 5x2 meters. I was aiming at twice that space, to allow for at least three demo tables. I believe Andreas is right now figuring out how much that would cost overall.

- Frank

Frank,

I would be happy to contribute to the cost of the booth, and send support for Bulldogs! and Mortal Coil, my two games.

You can count Bully Pulpit Games in as well, although we'll need more details about logistics.  We can contribute up to E100 and I'd like to get an idea of how many copies of The Roach we ought to send.  Gen Con-tested demo materials and other fun stuff as well, of course! 

I'm a bit hard-headed (perhaps thick-headed) on the business side of things, so I'm gonna ask:  Do you guys have stock to sell?  Or the provision to at least get stock in a reasonable manner?

Because if the booth doesn't have a cash register and a substantial number of books waiting to be put in the cash-paying hands of those who have just had a wonderful demo then that seems like a lost opportunity.

At the same time, shipping a substantial stock of all these games to Europe and then shipping anything that doesn't sell back to the U.S. seems like a logistically challenging and perhaps-expensive operation.  Have people got that under control?

I would like to see Death's Door as part of a greater indie/forge presence at Spiel, and I'm willing to provide product, educate (remotely) booth monkeys, share in booth cost, and contribute to costs above and beyond.  I can't be present physically.

What I need to know is what/how much I need to contribute, and when it needs to be done by.

thanks,

James

TonyLB wrote:
I'm a bit hard-headed (perhaps thick-headed) on the business side of things, so I'm gonna ask:  Do you guys have stock to sell?  Or the provision to at least get stock in a reasonable manner?

Because if the booth doesn't have a cash register and a substantial number of books waiting to be put in the cash-paying hands of those who have just had a wonderful demo then that seems like a lost opportunity.

At the same time, shipping a substantial stock of all these games to Europe and then shipping anything that doesn't sell back to the U.S. seems like a logistically challenging and perhaps-expensive operation.  Have people got that under control?

Crosspost with Eero, I'll let it stand anyway:

Tony, there is no stock of Forge games yet. That would have to be organized. The problem of possibly having to ship stock back to the US may be resolved by the perspective of taking a reasonable amount of books "on tour" with PrO to sell them on later conventions and fairs, and have Eero take however much he can handle with him to Finland to sell there. I could also offer to store a reasonable amount with me, so when you receive an order from Europe, you don’t ship it from the US, but send me an email so I ship it from Hamburg. We’d need to figure out some procedures for that, but that could be done.

I don't know what's the cheapest way to ship considerable amounts of books, but that can be found out until October. The required stock will probably be more than what I can just store in my flat and drive to Essen in my car, so we need to work out some logistics. There will surely be a way, but the costs of the shipping would have to be borne by the authors initially, so that’s on top of what you pay for the booth, as Eero already pointed out.

As I see it, we would do sale or return (hopefully sale). So there would be a sales agent contract between each individual author and, well, probably Nexus e.V. Or Wilde Lande Verlag (meaning: me), if you like that better. That contract would be something like: You provide the books shipped to Essen for the fair, we try to sell the books, we’ll replace them at print costs if they get damaged or lost due to our gross negligence, we don’t charge anything beside your share in the booth costs, any Dollar we make on sales goes back to you, we will provide you with accounts so you can check how many books we sold by when. If there is stock left, you tell us what to do with it: Ship it back to you at your expense, or take it with us at our expense to sell it on later occasion and then return the profit to you.

If you like, I can draft a contract. That’s what I do for a living, after all.

- Frank

P.S.: We also need to figure out how to handle VAT, but as I happen to be a tax lawyer, I think I can see to that. VAT on book sales is 7% in Germany (it’s a privileged good).

Eero wrote:
James, answers:
- How much you need to contribute: we will find this out within a week, as we tally any interested people. What WE need to know is how much is your maximal contribution; that way we can include or drop you from the calculation, depending on how many others we get. Remember that the actual decision about whether this will get off the ground at all happens when we see if there's enough financing available to pay for the booth.
- When you need to contribute: I suppose we don't know the exact deadline at this point, but I imagine it's not the end of May or anything. Perhaps Nexus knows when the money is needed? In any case, we'll set up somebody to collect the cash (Nexus probably, if they have the means and the trust) and make the payment to the convention organization (definitely Nexus).

Oh noes, we have a lawyer in our midst. No, seriously: I find it a good idea if Frank would, indeed, write a common document for the deal, spelling out what we're doing (a suitable moment could be the coming weekend, when we have the framework tightened some more). I don't find that it needs individual subscription (signatures), but having something definite to refer to would be good in case of disagreement; the kind of project we're proposing here requires a magnitude more of trust and coordination than the Gencon one, as the unity of publishers and salesmen will be practically nil. Also, such a document ensures that we don't drift the agreement without explicitly finding a concensus on any changes later on; I imagine that we'll find a lot to be tweaked between the end of May and the convention.

VAT: I'm no tax lawyer (so my opinion might be ridiculous, even if logically sound), but here's my argument for why it's not an issue: the actual party doing the sales is the American authors and their companies, we're just working as free work-force, not as retailers. Like any other international sales, the seller pays his VAT in his own country; in other words, it's business as usual for the Americans. The contrary argument would be that there is actually some European party doing the selling. Who might that be? I suspect that the tax office would nominate Nexus, if they'll take care of the booth. Because this is patently preposterous (as they have no trace of any sales in their own finances), the only other possible target are the American designers, which brings us back to the above; if they pay VAT in US, they can't be forced to pay it in Germany, am I right?

To illustrate, here's how I'd handle this if I did have a game of my own to sell: I go to Germany and sell some games, but because I'm a Finnish company, I don't submit a VAT breakdown for the German government; it's business as usual, and will be handled in Finland. In our case, no VAT would be paid, because this year we're most likely still exempt from paying it. But that has nothing to do with the fact that the games were sold in Germany, the procedure would be identical if I sold them at a convention in Helsinki.

The whole situation changes, by the way, if you, I or Nexus indeed makes an array of official retail contracts with the American authors, as then the retail sales would possibly be made by a German (or Finnish, in my case) party, who'd pay VAT in Germany. Of course, the amount would possibly be 0, if the price of the service rendered is nil (that is, we work for free), but then you might have to prove that to the tax office. I find that problematic on multiple levels, not least because of the hassle with getting everybody's agreement into some official contract.

Hi,

without consulting Daniela just a quick reply concerning the prices:
The prices depend on the location of the booth (in the row, at a corner or at the head of a row)
The wall at the back costs 17.40 Euro per meter (I will include this)

- a 5x2 m booth like the one we used is 
  row    680.92 Euro
  corner 723.84 Euro
  head 762.12 Euro

- base price for 20 square meters in a row would be
  2180.80 Euro 

corner and head are more expensive but I don't have these prices at hand right now.
I hope I didn't forget anything but these figures should be more or less accurate.

So two 5x2 booths are actually cheaper than a big one.

Andreas, do you think we could fit three demo tables into one 2x5 m area? I think if we had two slots that are in line of sight of each other, there would be no problem of walking people over from the booth to the tables for a demo. I’m already drawing sketches. It’d be pretty cramped, and we’d need tables exactly the right size.

- Frank

Frank wrote:
Andreas, do you think we could fit three demo tables into one 2x5 m area?

Okay, so we’d have to go actually book the space in order to find that out. What is covered with the costs above, do you know? Especially: What else do we need to run the booth, and how much would that cost?

- Frank

Frank T:  You're basically talking about a deal that is almost money-free though, yes?  You put no money up front and take no percentage?  I mean, don't get me wrong, enthusiastic sales-people charging nothing is a good, good deal for me but ... I'd almost rather you were making some money off of the thing, y'know?  First, because it seems fair and responsible and second because it would give you an incentive to sell even when it's no longer fun, fun, fun.

I will volunteer my services as the US shipping consolidator, if folks want. I have a lot of the games in question already thanks to IPR, and I ship packages several times a week already. We just need to establish two deadlines, one for slow surface shipping in June, and one for the more expensive last-minute air shipment close to the convention. I figure everyone involved can split the shipping bill.

to sell even when it's no longer fun, fun, fun

Tony: I can only speak for myself. I’ve got a decent income and selling ten more copies on Sunday for my share of another 10-20 bucks would be no incentive whatsoever to me. You can give it to me if it makes you feel better, but I honestly do not care about the money. I care about boasting on the Forge later how many copies we sold. I care about my own reputation in the German role-playing scene. I care about one day having an English version of Barbaren out and you guys selling it at GenCon with the same effort that I’ll put up at Spiel. Just my two cents.

- Frank

What Frank said, word for word. Also, however, the other side of the coin: while I don't care for the money, per se, the social respect it signifies is nice. But I'm reluctant to start discussing percentages when that might endanger the project. Considering how little time there is to get it together, I prefer to give the investors everything we can at this point, to make it as easy as possible to sign in. Of course: if Tony feels that he needs to give us money to sign in, then we need a provision for that, too.

My suggestion: I recognize the validity of considering our part of this project a financially worthwhile service, but the logistical schedule doesn't allow us the luxury of taking our time in finding some agreeable percentages for everybody. Thus I suggest that we leave it up to each publisher/investor whether they want to kick back any percentage of their prospective earnings. Purely voluntary, just like our coming to the convention in the first place. Being voluntary, this can be dealt with during the summer, instead of right today. (My principle at the convention will be to sell everything equally regardless of whether there's percentages involved with the product, but I won't mind if somebody thinks differently, as long as it doesn't devolve into lack of respect for the product.)

So, Tony: I suggest that you think about (and discuss in a new thread?) an appropriate kind of deal and just promise us that. We're OK with nothing, but I'll take any money if nobody else will ;) My suggestion is 70/30 in your favor after covering your investment; that's around normal retail percentages for selling on provision (which this is, because you still own the product), and your investment risk is covered by taking care of the investment first. 50/50 is IMO also defensible if you consider our expenses for travel and accomodations, but that's also more mushy, as we have our own reasons for coming in the first place, have different expenses, yadda yadda.

And to make it clear: if any designers feels it necessary to arrange whatever deal for sharing potential profit, the money will be shared equally between the booth workers, whether Nexus or Forge in origin. This being the case, the chances are that we'll be talking about pretty small sums individually; probably are we'll just pool it and buy food and drinks, or something like that.

Anyway, the situation: by my calculation we still need some designers. The annoying part is that we'll most likely get more interested parties before the convention proper, but that's no help now, as we can't guarantee the participants that more paying parties are indeed coming.

Brennan: excellent! That's one hurdle less, as doing those big consolidations can be a bitch (he says from the other side of the ocean).

Heja alltogether,

I'm Stefan Unger, the one who will organize the booth for Projekt Odyssee this year - Sorry, that I'm writing so late but I had to chill a week after NordCon and its 5.000 to 7.000 visitors.

Last friday I wrote a mail to the orga of the game fair, if we can get two 5x2m boothes close together or if we have to book a 10x2m booth what would be more expensive, but because of the public holiday last thursday they had company holidays and so I'm still waiting for an answer. When I have that answer, I can tell you the exact price for the whole booth and the exact deadline to book.

Greets from the always rainy Hamburg

Stefan

Well, in the interests of helping things move fast, I'll sign in as being willing to contribute 100E to the project.

Meanwhile I will continue my devious plans to make sure youse guys is recouping the financial token that you deserve to say "Look, you did work and we're only giving you a token!  Go buy some beer!"

I'm with Eero, by the way ... it's partly about the money but mostly about how such things inform the social connections and respect.  It's a strange kind of respect, but respect nonetheless, and I want to make sure you get it.

I'm counting 11 designers, some with several products (Ron, Brennan?). Four of these are from Nexus, a couple apparently with free systems. This allows us to start estimating the cost per product. If we take 1200€ as our working figure and assume that the free systems get by with half the full cost, we're already around 100€ per product. Most everybody agreed to at least this amount, I seem to remember, so it seems we have the financing covered, unless anybody gets cold feet. We could use a couple more investors; perhaps I should myself ask my favourite designers why they aren't participating.

The remaining question marks are therefore in finding out the exact expenses. No doubt Stefan will inform us about those soon, and find out the absolute reservation deadline as well. When we know those numbers, the booth reservations can be done. When the booth is reserved, I'll reserve my plane tickets.

I'd also like to emphasize that I think it more than likely that we're going to get more interested people when and if the booth is confirmed and we know exactly how much the total cost is. If we can keep the cost per product around 100€, it's quite probable that we're going to turn a profit for most products. We'll need to decide how many products we can efficiently represent at that level.

Eero, here's advice from the guy who invented this sort of booth.

Put aside thoughts of profit at this time. Yes, historically, the GenCon booth has made a lot of money. But that is GenCon, and doing the same thing at other cons or venues which are only a hair off, subculturally, has not been as reliable.

The issue right now is paying for the booth, not profiting from it. Once the booth is paid for, then start thinking about little black columns and little red columns. You cannot reasonably expect or predict any sales-rate at this time, so don't try.

Organize the buy-in process. Organize the stocking and staffing of the booth. Pay for the booth. Make sure it's a reality. That should be your only concern at this time.

Best, Ron

Ok - I'm back with news for you:

One booth with 5x2m will be 709,92 Euros (Including VAT).

We can book two of that boothes lying close together (2 or 3 boothes away).

So the whole price would be 1.419,84 Euros only for the boothes. Some additional cost would be a cheap carpet for the floor of the booth. Thats everything. One booth includes 3 tickets for the fair.

There is no (!) exact deadline for us to book - Up to now there is enough free space for our boothes, but they can't guarantee that the space will be there in fpur or five weeks.

So my suggestion is: Deadline Friday 9th June - 12 pm (Hamburg)

What I need now to plan the exact financing would be a mail or a PM by everyone who is interested.  Deadline for that would be Sunday 4th June. After I know, how many guys are coming, I can plan, how much money we need in average and how much everyone 'should' pay (Depends on 'demos of the system', 'selling the system', 'only lying at the booth to look at', 'free system', etc).

So far I'm counting 11 designers who are willing to give money and some other who are would like to be a booth monkey.

Greets Stefan

Well, Frank will surely compile the information from the threads, so no need for everybody to PM you individually about it. That's why we've had these sign-in threads. Frank?

Booths: two small booths will probably work just as well, with one being the demo area and the other the sales area. It'd be nice to get them on opposite sides of an aisle, even if not exactly opposite to each other. But even on the same side and with two booths between, it's not insurmountable, and apparently much cheaper.

I'm still vague about what kind of booth furniture is or is not included in the price. Tables? Chairs? Shelving? Nothing? We have to consider those for the budget as well. Two booths makes for 6 tickets - we'll probably have more crew than that alltogether, so we should probably just include those tickets in the budget and cover the tickets for all the sales people from the common pool. Seems like the simplest solution. How much are tickets to Essen anyway?

Stefan: how are you planning to calculate the expenses and shares? I suggest doing the calculations here in public, so everybody sees what they're paying and why. Especially so as we're apparently going to have several degrees of participation from free systems to full-on commercial endeavours. Being a shared project, we have to find some degree of consensus for how the costs will be shared.

I’ll do the compilation thing later this evening. I’ll also spend some thoughts on the VAT thing. Stefan, we should sort this out in German, that’s easier. Since we are doing commercial stuff, there should be a way to get input tax deduction. However, that could require someone other than Nexus booking the booth.

I’d also like to second Eero’s question about booth furniture. As I already pointed out, we would require tailor-made tables if we want to fit three demo tables into one 5x2 area. Where do we get those? And where do we get the desk for the sales booth?

Regarding fair tickets: I think getting all the booth monkeys into the fair for free, and maybe giving them a little time off to explore on their own, would be a nice way to show the respect Tony mentioned earlier on. If a little money for buying some beer comes in on top of that, fair enough.

Here’s a question to the veterans: How many people do we need to effectively run the booth and the three demo tables at any given time, and how many games can we sensibly represent with three demo tables and a five meter desk? What do you think?

- Frank

Eero wrote:
Well, Frank will surely compile the information from the threads, so no need for everybody to PM you individually about it. That's why we've had these sign-in threads. Frank?

I'm still vague about what kind of booth furniture is or is not included in the price. Tables? Chairs? Shelving? Nothing?

We have to consider those for the budget as well.

Two booths makes for 6 tickets - we'll probably have more crew than that alltogether, so we should probably just include those tickets in the budget and cover the tickets for all the sales people from the common pool. Seems like the simplest solution.

How much are tickets to Essen anyway?

Stefan: how are you planning to calculate the expenses and shares? I suggest doing the calculations here in public, so everybody sees what they're paying and why. Especially so as we're apparently going to have several degrees of participation from free systems to full-on commercial endeavours. Being a shared project, we have to find some degree of consensus for how the costs will be shared.

Frank wrote:
Here’s a question to the veterans: How many people do we need to effectively run the booth and the three demo tables at any given time, and how many games can we sensibly represent with three demo tables and a five meter desk? What do you think?

Stefan, I think we will mostly do 15 minute demos Forge style. For the demo tables, I’m not so concerned how they look, but I am concerned how they fit into the booth.

So, authors. Whom do we have so far?

At least 4 PrO authors with free games (demo, not sell) – can we get names, by the way?
Myself, also willing to demo, not sell, but with a commercial interest of selling the game once it’s published.

Ron Edwards (willing to contribute additional funding).
Ben Lehman.
Emily Care.
Brennan Taylor.
Jason Morningstar.
James Brown.
Tony Lower-Bash.

If we can cut the VAT out, we are very close to already there. If whoever books the booth in the end requires some sort of safeguard that he’ll actually get his money, I would be willing to step in personally in case of need. I’ll try to get the VAT part figured out whithin the next days and contact you personally about that, Stefan.

I am also pretty confident that we can gather more authors. Eero, I’d appreciate if you put up some support. I’ve PM’ed just about everyone, but maybe an email has a better chance of passing through.

All considered, I figure we can get moving this week.

- Frank

I don't know whether this got garbled in the works, but I figured I'd make it infinitely clear:  I am able to provide money and stock if that will help make this happen.  I am in no way able to fly out to Germany and be there in person.  No way, no how.

I don't know whether I'm alone in that, but that's my status.  Everybody cool?  Cool.

Hi!

I think the 2x5 m are not so small as it sounds. I think that it is easy possible to fit in 3 tables in that space (maybe. 3 "Biertischgarnituren") they are not so comfortable but for 15 minutes presentations it should work. These tables do have not to be bought neccessarily, but I am willing to decorate them, because without decoration they are looking really ugly.

Nevertheless I would favor if the 2 booth are directly adjacent to each other. This would be better for communication and presentation.The exibition is quite crowded, especially on the weekend. I would also pay a bit more for a larger booth to ensure this.

Best Regards
Yvonne

Tony, I think none of the authors named above will be there in Essen. I'm counting 10 Forge-related booth monkeys plus the PrO people thus far, and I'm working on some more.

Yvonne, I think that two adjacent spaces would be nice to have, but no must have, and since it would be additional costs of 600 Euro, I guess we can do without.

- Frank

Hi!

Concerning the tickets: There are three tickets included with every small booth for staff, but in the last years we were able to get some more at cheaper prices (6 or 7 I guess).

As for decoration you must have a carpet (we bought a very cheap one which did survive the fair but was thrown away afterwards). The new backwalls are okay, just plain white plastic. Chairs and tables for the demos would be the main problem, "Biertischgarnituren" are pretty ugly, even if decorated and the small table and stools we used the last times were far from comfortable.

Andreas

Frank wrote:
Here’s a question to the veterans: How many people do we need to effectively run the booth and the three demo tables at any given time, and how many games can we sensibly represent with three demo tables and a five meter desk? What do you think?

Ok, a little more substance. Regarding the VAT (sales tax in the US), I’ve exchanged some emails with Ron and come to the conclusion that it’s not worth the sweat, as Ron told me that most small presses don’t charge sales tax anyway. So we just pay the rent in the amount Stefan stated above and sell the books without charging VAT. I thought we might save some money on this, but it looks unlikely now.

Here is some proposal as to how we proceed:

1.
All authors who wish to sponsor the booth and have their games represented there send a confirmation email to me at frank@tarcikowski.de, which I will forward to Stefan. This email should include their your name, address, the name of your press, the games you wish represented and whether you are interested in us selling the game, demoing the game, or both. We will only accept to sell and/or demo a game if we can provide qualified booth monkeys to do that.

2.
If we get together enough authors in time, Stefan rents two spaces at Spiel for Nexus at the conditions specified above. Other authors can join in later, up to an amount we think we can handle properly. There is no possibility of withdrawal, unless all other authors and Nexus concur.

3.
Responsibility of PrO/Nexus is to arrange everything with the fair. I will be responsible for coordinating the Forge participation here in Germany. Together, Stefan, Daniela and me figure out things like booth staff, furniture and equipment, to make sure we can run the booth properly.

4.
The costs shared between the booth sponsors (“Shared Costs”) consist of booth rent, maintenance costs, costs for furniture and equipment (to be figured out), and fair entrance for the booth monkeys (as far as they are not included in booth rent).

4.1
The Shared Costs are distributed in equal Shares among the participants. You take a Share when (a) your game is demoed at the booth or (b) your game is sold at the booth. So a free game being demoed is one Share, a game just being sold is one Share, a game being sold and demoed is two Shares. These count per game, so if you have two games being sold and demoed, that’s four Shares total. The more games and authors, the more Shares, the lower the cost per Share.

4.2
Nexus e.V. volunteers to take a fixed number of Shares or a fixed amount of the Shared Costs (Stefan?). Same goes for Adept Press (Ron?).

4.3
One Share will be 50 Euros at most. We will assure before we book the booth, based on the confirmation emails by the authors and the estimated total Shared Costs, that this amount is not exceeded. The risk of ending up with higher costs will have to be borne by Nexus, so we’d better make sure we have enough authors onboard.

4.4
Collecting the money from the authors has to be organized in time. Since international bank transfer costs are pretty high and those would have to be borne by the author, we should try to figure out the cheapest way. Stefan will convey the deadline for payment shortly. In case of need, I am generally willing to step in and advance the money, but since I’m having some other major expenses this summer, I’m not sure if I can advance it all.

5.
Authors supply the booth with however many copies of their game they think we can sell. We’ll figure out the logistics later, but the shipping costs are the author’s responsibility. We sell the books for you, free of VAT/sales tax, at the price you determine. You have to decide whether you want to sell to customers only, or to retailers also (at special conditions).

5.1
The copies remain your property until we sell them. If we damage or lose them, we shall replace the print costs (shared between Nexus and myself) unless it is a case of force majeure.

5.2
We will provide you with accounts of the books sold and the books remaining, and transfer the money we made on the sales to the author. Again, the cheapest way to transfer the money remains to be figured out. I will be in charge of the accounting. The author can decide to donate a certain amount per book to a Booth Monkey Pool that is used to buy drinks and stuff for the booth monkeys. I will also be in charge of the Booth Monkey Pool. Furthermore, you might think about a discount for booth monkeys to buy your games.

5.3
If any copies remain after the fair, we will see how we can make use of those copies in Europe, depending on their number. They can be used as stock for Eero’s shop in Finland or for Nexus on later fairs and conventions, or stored somewhere for next year, or sold via your websites and shipped from Europe, or shipped back to you, but that remains to be agreed upon with the authors individually.

6.
Booth monkeys will travel to the fair at their own expense. We will try to provide as much free sleeping places as possible through our connections, but any costs of accommodation and meals arising are borne by the booth monkeys themselves.
_______

So far. What say you?

- Frank

Frank wrote:
1.
All authors who wish to sponsor the booth and have their games represented there send a confirmation email to me at frank@tarcikowski.de, which I will forward to Stefan. This email should include their your name, address, the name of your press, the games you wish represented and whether you are interested in us selling the game, demoing the game, or both. We will only accept to sell and/or demo a game if we can provide qualified booth monkeys to do that.

4.1
The Shared Costs are distributed in equal Shares among the participants. You take a Share when (a) your game is demoed at the booth or (b) your game is sold at the booth. So a free game being demoed is one Share, a game just being sold is one Share, a game being sold and demoed is two Shares. These count per game, so if you have two games being sold and demoed, that’s four Shares total. The more games and authors, the more Shares, the lower the cost per Share.

4.2
Nexus e.V. volunteers to take a fixed number of Shares or a fixed amount of the Shared Costs (Stefan?). Same goes for Adept Press (Ron?).

4.4
Collecting the money from the authors has to be organized in time. Since international bank transfer costs are pretty high and those would have to be borne by the author, we should try to figure out the cheapest way. Stefan will convey the deadline for payment shortly. In case of need, I am generally willing to step in and advance the money, but since I’m having some other major expenses this summer, I’m not sure if I can advance it all.

5.2
We will provide you with accounts of the books sold and the books remaining, and transfer the money we made on the sales to the author. Again, the cheapest way to transfer the money remains to be figured out. I will be in charge of the accounting. The author can decide to donate a certain amount per book to a Booth Monkey Pool that is used to buy drinks and stuff for the booth monkeys. I will also be in charge of the Booth Monkey Pool. Furthermore, you might think about a discount for booth monkeys to buy your games.

So far. What say you?

Just a quick two:

Sure, the Monster Burner or Sex and Sorcery don't count as a game of their own.

I think the cheapest way for international money transfer is PayPal. Someone in Germany would need a PayPal account, but I was thinking about opening one anyway for Barbaren, so maybe I'll just open it a little early. Gotta check on that. But I think this doesn't have to be figured out right now.

More later.

- Frank

Just finishing up an American-style overtime-filled month and catching up on my Forge stuff. Incarnadine Press is in, up to 100 Euros. I'll rely on Brennan for shipping.

Hi!

I already talked with the responsible Persons from Nexus eV about the money. They are willing to provide some. 500 Euros should be no problem, but if this is less it would be great. For me it sounds resonable, that Nexus pays at least the money for the furniture needed and keeps this afterwards for further booths. For the exact numbers we should discuss further If we know exaxtly how much money we need...

Kind regards
Yvonne

Half Meme Press is in for up to 100 euros. Would love to have both My Life with Master and Bacchanal for sale, since Eero can demo both games, but if that's 200 euros (four shares?), then it's just My Life with Master.

Paul

Paul: Sad to do without Bacchanal, but we have to be fair. Maybe you can throw in a few copies on booth monkey orders (I want one). Also, I want to play it. After hours?

All: Okay, here's some more substance. I talked to Jörg (my sales expert) on Skype yesterday and to Stefan (in charge at PrO) today in person. First thing first: We have enough participants right now to finance the booth. As soon as I have the confirmation emails by all of you to frank@tarcikowski.de, we get going. This should be ASAP, but at the latest by Thursday next week, since we don’t want to have our booth in the last corner of the hall.

Now, here’s some important info and also some homework:

Costs and payment

Booth rent is roughly 1400 Euros. We don’t figure we need electricity, but we will need some throwaway equipment like carpet,  table cloth etc. Make that another 100 Euros. The sales area will be equipped with a desk provided by PrO plus some shelves and one standing table that we hope to borrow. The demo area will need three tables and 12-15 stools, and they need to be exactly the right size to squeeze them in there. We will probably have to buy those, and PrO will keep them for next year. We estimate another 200 Euros for that. We have cars enough available to get everything to the fair without additional cost. This is just a rough calculation, but I think it figures.

On top is the fair entrance for booth monkeys. As stated, there are 6 tickets included, and the others come at a special price. However, we’ll have to order these with the booths. Our suggestion would be to buy another 20 tickets so we can get in plenty booth monkeys to keep the booth running smoothly at all times. We will certainly get rid of those tickets if we don’t need them all. Stefan will tell us shortly how much those tickets will cost. We estimate about 15 Euros, which would make another 300 Euros to a total of 2000.

With the authors we have on board right now, and Nexus taking on 8 Shares also, we already have almost 40 Shares together. Stefan thinks he can get NordCon in for another Share if we promote the event at out booth. We will set the Shares at 50 Euros for now (so 100 Euros if you want one game sold and demoed). Nexus will bear the risk of this not quite sufficing. If, on the other hand, we get a few more Shares, we’ll have that as a buffer to buy better booth equipment or cover up unexpected expenses. If we get significantly more Shares because more authors jump on the moving train (which I actually expect), we will lower the Shares. However, we do think that 20 Forge games sold at the booth are about the maximum we can handle properly.

Time limits for payment are: First half of the booth rent within two weeks after receiving the invoice (somewhere around the end of June). Second half on September 1. That’s roughly 700 Euros each. We don’t know yet when the extra tickets for booth monkeys are due. We will also need the money for booth equipment and so forth by September 1.

I will be on vacation the second half of June, but I think we can arrange for advancing the first half of the payment. However, we still need to find a way to get the money to Germany. I hear some of you guys will be around Berlin in July. Maybe that figures?

Booth and sales

At the sales booth, we will create an open area for customers to enter, where the products sit on shelves and there is the standing table, but we will also have the desk behind which to keep stock, cash boxes, accounts and stuff. We will do our best to sell your games, but ask you to consider the following:

- The fair is pretty international, but still, most of the customers are Germans and speak German. I guess we can put our English-speaking monkeys to good use anyway, but having products in English language only will be a handicap.

- German customers don’t like aggressive selling techniques. At all. Plus, the PrO booth has built a reputation of being a place where you can just have a chat or a game without constantly being bothered by people who want you to buy something. We will have to find a way to (a) sell as many copies as we can and (b) still keep up the good spirit and make the booth a place where people like to come. You’ll have to trust us to find a “German solution” here.

- We will keep different cash boxes and accounts for PrO and Forge parts. Some of the PrO authors coming to the fair have no idea of Forge games and are not (yet) bought into this whole idea of actually selling stuff. So I will provide a sufficient crew of Forge booth monkeys that can demo and sell Forge games, and the PrO authors will help as best they can. This will be a joint booth, but still, we will have a clearly distinguished Forge crew and PrO crew, with demo times split roughly according to the share in Shared Costs.

- Stefan guesses that sales of 10-20 copies per game might be possible, but this will vary widely and he may be dead wrong. Personally, I have no idea how many copies we can sell. We can ring the bell on the internet, and there will be people coming to the booth with a shopping list, but that’ll probably not sell more than 5 copies or so per game. Well, maybe you have some better ideas on this than us. I’ll talk to the people of Sighpress within the next days about selling to retailers.

- Regarding what happens to left-over stock: Stefan figures that PrO cannot take very many “on tour”. They might sell a handfull at Stuttgart, if at all. Eero, how many copies can you take to Finland, in total?

Sales arguments

Not all of the booth monkeys know all of your games. Apart from running demos with the booth monkeys, we want to prepare some short info material on every game present at the booth. This info material will be in German. We will also put it in a folder for people to flip through. There is already a “PrO folder” of PrO games which is always very popular. For this, we need your help. Please email me some short bullet points to answer the following questions:

- What is your game about?
- Who is your target audience?
- What is special/unique about your game?
- What might people not like about your game?

Also, we had the idea that people enter their email addresses into some sort of mailing list which we forward you, and you send them some additional stuff via email, like links or PDFs or I dunno. Got any ideas on that?

Demos

We like the idea of 15 minutes demos and are willing to do it. You need to provide us with material for this, and some instructions would be nice also. This concept is entirely new to German role-players, and many will certainly be attracted. But we think that we should not rely solely on 15 minutes demos.

PrO has made some very good experiences at Spiel and other fairs with running 1 or 2 hour slots. There are a whole lot of people at the fair that are really hot to play. The big presses offer only very few rounds to play in, so PrO has been an address people turned to. These people are queueing to sign in for a two hour game, so these have a potential of really drawing people. My suggestion would be to reserve one or two tables for those longer slots and the rest for 15 minutes demos, depending on how much interest people show in the 15 minutes demos as opposed to, say, a 2 hour game. If need be, we can always use the standing table in the sales area for an additional quick demo. No need to sit down if you only play 15 minutes.

Decorating the booth

We have two booths to decorate. Each has 9 metres of ugly white plastic to cover. It’s gotta look like something. We need tons of posters, flags and stuff. Maybe you can send us your GenCon decoration along with the books. Or some Germans attending GenCon can take the stuff right back with them. Anyone got any thoughts on this? If need be, we could also print some posters here in Germany. You’d have to send us some files then. PrO has one big flag, but we need more. If we get more authors on board, we can buy more shiny stuff to make our booth look good.
______

That’s it for the moment. I will go to bed now.

Best,
Frank

Hey Frank,

Stefan guesses that sales of 10-20 copies per game might be possible, but this will vary widely and he may be dead wrong.

Just to clarify, this is his estimate for an English-language game? Would his estimate be higher, lower, or the same for a German-language game?

Paul

Hi!

If you need help to translate the "sales arguments" to german for a "Forge Folder" I could help. This would train me to get familliar with the games. It would be maybe helpful to give the translated version back to the authors for further use.

Kind regards
Yvonne

Paul: This is the estimate for a game in English language. A game in German language might sell a little better, but probably still not in GenCon-like numbers. This is very hard to say beforehand, since we’ve never done anything like this. There might be games that sell 30 copies. There might be games that sell only 3. We just don’t know. All we can say is that we’ll try to demo and sell them all as best we can.

- Frank

Frank wrote:
- German customers don’t like aggressive selling techniques. At all. Plus, the PrO booth has built a reputation of being a place where you can just have a chat or a game without constantly being bothered by people who want you to buy something. We will have to find a way to (a) sell as many copies as we can and (b) still keep up the good spirit and make the booth a place where people like to come. You’ll have to trust us to find a “German solution” here.

- We will keep different cash boxes and accounts for PrO and Forge parts. Some of the PrO authors coming to the fair have no idea of Forge games and are not (yet) bought into this whole idea of actually selling stuff. So I will provide a sufficient crew of Forge booth monkeys that can demo and sell Forge games, and the PrO authors will help as best they can. This will be a joint booth, but still, we will have a clearly distinguished Forge crew and PrO crew, with demo times split roughly according to the share in Shared Costs.

- Regarding what happens to left-over stock: Stefan figures that PrO cannot take very many “on tour”. They might sell a handfull at Stuttgart, if at all. Eero, how many copies can you take to Finland, in total?

Also, we had the idea that people enter their email addresses into some sort of mailing list which we forward you, and you send them some additional stuff via email, like links or PDFs or I dunno. Got any ideas on that?

We like the idea of 15 minutes demos and are willing to do it. You need to provide us with material for this, and some instructions would be nice also. This concept is entirely new to German role-players, and many will certainly be attracted. But we think that we should not rely solely on 15 minutes demos.

PrO has made some very good experiences at Spiel and other fairs with running 1 or 2 hour slots. There are a whole lot of people at the fair that are really hot to play. The big presses offer only very few rounds to play in, so PrO has been an address people turned to. These people are queueing to sign in for a two hour game, so these have a potential of really drawing people. My suggestion would be to reserve one or two tables for those longer slots and the rest for 15 minutes demos, depending on how much interest people show in the 15 minutes demos as opposed to, say, a 2 hour game. If need be, we can always use the standing table in the sales area for an additional quick demo. No need to sit down if you only play 15 minutes.

We have two booths to decorate. Each has 9 metres of ugly white plastic to cover. It’s gotta look like something. We need tons of posters, flags and stuff. Maybe you can send us your GenCon decoration along with the books. Or some Germans attending GenCon can take the stuff right back with them. Anyone got any thoughts on this? If need be, we could also print some posters here in Germany. You’d have to send us some files then. PrO has one big flag, but we need more. If we get more authors on board, we can buy more shiny stuff to make our booth look good.

There is very little free play space in Essen. Free play is reserved for the bars and hotels after hours.

In my long experience people go to Essen to play new games. Almost every stand selling games has space for playing a demo. Depending on the game this may be a full game or a 1 - 11/2hr introduction. Most niche sellers have demo session booking lists. Some of these fill up for the whole weekend on Thursday (or even before if publicised on the Net).

Given the nature of Forge style games I think people would look forward to  being able to play a game rather than just have a 15min example of play.

Martin

Personally, I don't mind doing nothing but 15 minutes demos. We can discuss the advantages and drawbacks of both approaches further, taking into good consideration what Martin said. I think that the booth sponsors should have the final say in this, since they pay for the booth space after all.

Please note, though, that PrO is a non-commercial endeavor. So their angle on this is somewhat different, which we should respect. Maybe a split solution is the way to go. Or maybe not. What do other people think?

For my part, I'm not viewing this as an investment to be paid off at the show itself (though certainly I'm not one to turn down money!)  I suspect that slanting things somewhat more toward making the booth a fun and exciting place to be will help people to see the fun and exciting things about indie games.  That kind of thing has measurable impacts in after-con sales, and (I strongly suspect) in year-to-year growth.

So, by all means, let's not go all soft-headed about the importance of abstracts like "mind-share," but at the same time I think it's fine to say that the booth's priorities are to have fun first, to make sales second.  It's a legitimate model that I (at least) would be willing to put my share into in order to speculate on its long-term worth.

I agree with Tony, as indicated by my earlier post.

Best, Ron

I'd like to talk a little bit about fun value and culture value versus demo length.

It seems to me that in terms of the goals of fun and cultural exposure, the short demo form is uniformly better than the long-demo form.

Say that you run a "full session" of Capes, which I imagine would be a complete scene.  It takes you 2 hours.  You've shown 4 people the game, maybe, in that two hours, and had fun.  Consider if you had run a fifteen minute demo.  You could have shown 30 people the game, in the same two hours and had fun.  Better yet, those four people who were in your game could have been going and finding other games to play.  This is especially key if they end up not enjoying Capes very much: a two-hour demo is a significant time commitment at a con, a 15 minute demo isn't.  They could have moved along and tried 6 other games, and found something that they liked.

This is really key to me.  I think that a booth environment (by which I mean: try our stuff!) is quite simply the wrong environment for long games.  It doesn't facilitate trying things out, outreach, or low-commitment draw.

yrs--
--Ben

Hey Martin,

Given the nature of Forge style games I think people would look forward to  being able to play a game rather than just have a 15min example of play.

I have to say, I'm with Ben. What the Forge is about is empowering people to have fun gaming. There's no doubt in my mind that folks would queue up for slots in full three hour games at the GenCon booth if we decided to do them, just the way the queue up for full games run by PrO in the dealer room at Spiel. And there's no doubt in my mind that many of the folks who played in the games would consider them in retrospect to be the high point of their convention. But...we'd have done these gamers a disservice.

When I released My Life with Master on the first Thursday of GenCon in 2003, Ed Heil and his friends bought the game and played it that evening. They came back to the booth on Friday and raved about the experience. You can't think of the 15 minute demo as "just an example of play," as an unsatisfying hors'douvre when what you need is a meal. The 15 minute demo is the scent of awesome gameplay that creates appetite for the full experience. And it creates confidence that the experience isn't out of reach. One problem with running full games is that they send the opposite message, the message that great gaming experiences are had by travelling from your home and playing with a GM and players of uncommon skill. Forge games are about breaking that cultural perception; you absolutely can have awesome gaming with the talent you have laying around your own home base. The second problem with full games is that they fully release the enthusiasm that would otherwise drive a player to achieve an awesome gaming experience of his own making.

Other than the games themselves, the fifteen minute demo is the best gift we can give to a gamer. Because the awesome self-made gaming experience is more incredible and more energizing than a great game at a convention.

Paul

I'm absolutely on-board with the rest of the forge crew about short demos.

One of the best game experiences of the last year for me was Prime Time Adventures.  I ran it, because I hadn't ever tried the system before.  If I'd played it at Gencon, I would never have pulled it off my shelf.

I would have taken that two hour con experience - which would have been fun, I'm sure - and used it as an excuse not to play the game at home, for a full run of 5 episodes, over a couple months.  That's a lot of fun I would have cut myself out of.

The short demo culture works.  Don't worry - I'm sure Ron et. al. can assure you that it was new to Gencon when the forge started doing it, and they got "Thou shalt ne'er succeed!" predictions of doom, too.

thanks,

James

I realize that I'm incredibly late to these proceedings--but hopefully not too late.

If possible, I'd be willing to pony up for a share as well. My thought is to submit Dawning Star: Operation Quick Launch, which is a campaign setting for d20 Modern/d20 Future. Does this pose a problem either (1) because it's not in keeping with the spirit of the indie-game badge, or (2) because d20 is anathema to the German gaming experience.

As others have mentioned, I'd be doing this more for PR purposes, but I don't want to detract from the experience of others.

Justin wrote:
If possible, I'd be willing to pony up for a share as well. My thought is to submit Dawning Star: Operation Quick Launch, which is a campaign setting for d20 Modern/d20 Future. Does this pose a problem either (1) because it's not in keeping with the spirit of the indie-game badge, or (2) because d20 is anathema to the German gaming experience.

Thanks. So I guess my tardiness in and of itself is not a problem? Excellent.

As for the inherent issues with the product, it seems worth the effort. As for demo materials, I'll figure out something that will work. Wost case scenario, I've done a small part to support small-press publishing abroad and given myself a good excuse to get some product overseas. Once we have the details about the booth, I'll publicize it on my site.

If it matters, I've sold a pdf of the book to someone in Germany. :-)
(I'll make sure to keep my stock relatively low, since it's a bit bigger/heavier than most of the other offerings as well.)

I'd like to get the surface shipment off by the end of next week. Everyone who is an IPR member, let me know how many books you'd like to send. Everyone else, get your books to me by June 15 so I can put the package together in time. Contact me by e-mail or PM for the address.

Any books that arrive after June 15 will go in a more expensive air mail package closer to the convention date.

Brennan wrote:
I'd like to get the surface shipment off by the end of next week. Everyone who is an IPR member, let me know how many books you'd like to send. Everyone else, get your books to me by June 15 so I can put the package together in time. Contact me by e-mail or PM for the address.

Eero wrote: Uh, do you know where you're shipping? Frank? I'm a bad choice, as it's quite a trip to Essen from here.

One short comment:

There is no (!) free space to play at the fair. The German publishers alltogether (!) have at most five tables to play - not more. So the Odyssee booth has been unique the last years....or - in other words - indie.

Greets

Stefan

Heja,

some good news and some bad news.

The bad one first: Last friday (The date of the deadline we set for authors to touch base) a big German publisher booked a booth with 80 sq.m. After that booking there was only one free booth left: A 10 sq.m. corner-booth. Ten publishers and exhibitors on a waiting list had to trash for it.

The good one: Luckily I got phoned by the orga of the fair short after that: We've won the fight. So now we have only one booth, but we have it. Frank and I will meet in a pub within the next days and make a new conzeption for the booth itself (Maybe no bar but shelves, etc)

Greets

Stefan

Hey Stefan,
maybe you'd want to invite me to the meeting at the bar as well.

Regards,
    Harald

Hi,

as already stated in the thread, the week after Spiel in Essen there is a smaller game fair in Stuttgart (~400 km / 250 miles south of Essen). Its a mixed fair with (mainly board) games, model making, handicrafts and computer and electronics, 26.-29.10.2006

This year, Nexus coordinates a rather big booth there (~150 qm) with a LARP tavern, three to four tables for P&P-demoing, creative demonstrations (sewing, painting, yarning, ...), together with an other gaming club presenting board games and table tops (Blood Bowl etc).
This fair is rather a devoloping country for role-play games, so we mainly plan to present the hobby itself.

However, good news for left-overs from the Essen booth: we have the OK from the fair organization to sell small amounts of role-play books (even if we do not pay for the booth). And we have the space to do lots of demos (if we can round up some players :-))

So, if anybody from the Essen staff wants to stay longer in Germany and come to Stuttgart, you're very welcome! We'll find free or cheap acommodations here, give you tips for sightseeing and would be happy to have you at the booth.

Also, we can try to demo and sell left-overs from the Essen fair.

If you are interested, please let me know.

  Daniela, Nexus e.V., Stuttgart (dani@miracle-solutions.de)