Hi,

I'm back with some information on how the Essen project, previously discussesd here, is making progress. To recap, Spiel fair at Essen, Germany, is Europe's largest game fair and the place to be also for role-playing presses. We are colaborating with Projekt Odyssee and Nexus e.V. in Germany to set up a shared Forge/PrO booth. Initially, we wanted to book two spaces of 5x2 m each, to use one for a booth and one for demo tables. As we were moving pretty late, however, we only got the very last space left, which is a corner booth of 5x2 m.

The booth rent is EUR ... total, half of which Nexus e.V. forwarded already to the fair orga. Additional costs are some tickets for booth monkeys, and some throwaway equipment for the booth. Also, we thought it would be nice to supply mineral water at the booth (for the monkeys) out of the budget. Those additional costs can only be estimated so far, since the prices for tickets have not yet been released. 3 tickets are included in booth rent, and we think we should buy another 12. If we don't get quite as many booth monkeys together, we can always get rid of those tickets on short notice.

One more thing we are thinking about is doing a website with a brief introduction and links to all presses represented at the booth. We could use that for promotion before the fair, and we could also print little sample cards with the url on it to distribute at the fair, so people who don't want to spend money there and then can maybe order a game online later. The printing costs of the cards would go into the budget. I can do the text for the website, but not the hosting and web design. I was planning on ambushing Harald with that last Sunday, but forgot.

The preliminary budget (without printing sample cards) looks as follows:

EUR 840 booth rent
EUR 100 throwaway equipment
EUR 100 mineral water
EUR 180 booth monkey entrance
EUR 1,220 total

I specified the conditions for authors and booth monkeys to participate in this post. I have thus far received emails form the authors confirming the following participation (all games sell and demo):

Ben Lehman / Polaris
Ralph Mazza / Universalis
Paul Czege / My Life with Master
Jason Morningstar / The Roach
Tony Lower-Basch / Capes
James Brown / Death's Door
Brennan Taylor / Mortal Coil
Justin Jacobson / Dawning Star: Operation Quick Launch
Ron Edwards / Sorcerer
Michael Miller / With Great Power...
Emily Care / Breaking the Ice
Greg Porter / Infinite Armies (if we can arrange the logistics, see the other thread for that)

That's a pretty good ensemble there, but I think we can handle a few more, so authors are welcome to join in. As already specified, we could cut the shares per author down if we can get more authors on the project. I would be especially sorry not to have Dogs, PtA and TSoY around, since we have some kick-ass GMs present for those three, and I hear they sold Dogs and PtA on LindenCon like nothing. So, Vincent, Matt, Clinton and everybody else: If you want to join, email me at frank at tarcikowski dot de. We will not take on an unlimited number of games, though, since we want to make sure that every game gets the attention it deserves.

Stefan told me there will be four PrO authors with their games being demoed but not sold (since they are free). Nexus e.V. will put in another 8 shares, and Ron is taking 2 extra shares for the good cause. So we are at a total of 36 shares right now if I am counting correctly. That comes down to EUR 35 per share (rounded up a little), so EUR 70 per author since all Forge authors are taking two shares (demo and sell). We’ll need you to pay this money to us in August, since the second rate of booth rent is due on 1 September. If other authors join in, or the costs (of which we will give detailed account) turn out to be lower, we will lower the shares and get any overpayment back to you together with your profit from booth sales.

I do not have a PayPal account, but I know some of you have, so using that is probably cheaper than just doing a standard international bank transfer, which is pretty expensive. Maybe it’s best if someone in the states volunteers to collect the money from all of you and forwards it to me in one sum. However, as the Euro/Dollar exchange course is varying, you will probably have some minor course differences if you do it that way. Here is my bank data:

Frank Tarcikowski
[for bank information, PM Frank]

We will demo and sell your games at the fair. I will open another thread for the booth monkeys to distribute responsibility for the various games, making sure that every game is represented properly. However, we do need your help.

1) We need demo material.

I have copies of some games, as have others, but not in every case. Please see the booth monkey thread (coming soon) for more detail. Maybe some of the booth monkeys wanted to buy some of the games anyway. Maybe you are thinking about offering, say, to send someone a free pdf version to work with. That should be figured out from case to case.

More importantly, we need the actual demo scenarios. As most of you run demos at GenCon, you should have that material ready already, so it should be no problem getting it to us by email/download link. Please do not use the above mentioned email address to send me huge amounts of data, though. Use this instead: vermi77 at yahoo dot de.

The sooner we can get these, the better, since we want to be well prepared when we arrive at the fair in October.

2) We need some grabby sales arguments.

Please answer these questions about your game:

- 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?

(Brennan, I still have your answers you emailed me in June.)

Go!

- Frank

P.S.: Ron, you mentioned something of sending us the Forge flag from the GenCon booth, which would be neat.

edited by RE to keep bank information private

Frank,
I volunteer to do the web hosting. My web design skills suck ass, so maybe someone else should do it.

I do have a certified business paypal account for some reason, and would offer to use that (I can transfer the money to Frank without any additional cost). The only thing I need to figure is how to collect the shares via paypal.

Good going, Frank! Nothing to add at this point, but I'm following with keen interest. I instructed my valet and co-monkey Markku to get us tickets and rooming at Essen, so that pretty much means that I'm fully committed to going. Most awesome, if I may say so myself.

Paypal really is the easiest means of transferring money.  If there was a paypal email address to send the funds to I could send them to you today.

Probably the easiest thing would be for a website to be established that just had a paypal "buy now" button that had the price per share given in euros built in.  Then the only thing participants would have to do is click the button, select 2 units (if I understand correctly those wanting demos buy 2 shares), and enter our paypal passwords.  The funds would automatically be deducted from our accounts in our domestic currencies, converted to Euros and transferred into the paypal account.

Of course the "seller" pays the paypal fee, so you'd most likely want to gross up the price to account for the fee.

The fees are 3.9% plus 0.30 EUR for US$ payment. So, the final price would be 36,66EUR per share. I'll setup a paypal button and have it in a convenient, public place. Frank: Is it OK if I try to get the nexus people to put it up on their website? Or do you want me to setup something on http://forgebooth.mausdompteur.de ?

Hi guys,

I know, I edited another person's post. But James Brown rightly pointed out to me that the bank information ought to be kept private. So, Frank, I hope it's OK for people to PM you for the transfer information rather than have it posted right out here in front of God and everybody.

Best, Ron

Should these be answered in thread or in PM?

- What is your game about?

Short: Fairy-tale Apocolypse
Longer: It is about a beautiful civilization of beautiful people, perfect in every way, and the simple human mistakes that bring about their destruction.

- Who is your target audience?

Freeformers, Amber players, and Nobilis fans who are frustrated by certain shifts that happen when they actually play their games and can never quite "get it right."

Girlfriends of gamers or burnt out old gamers who are into romantic poetry and the fantasy novels of the 1970s.

Forge fans who like strange, pervy system ideas.

- What is special/unique about your game?

The setting is short, simple (nothing to memorize!), and evocative.

The game is structured around key phrases, which are a verbal means of invoking system: when in other games you might roll a die, spend a token, or play a card in Polaris you will say some words.

There is no GM.

- What might people not like about your game?

The most frequent complaints I've had is that it's too "girly" and that the system is too "arty" or hard to understand.

yrs--
--Ben

Well, if we're doing it here:

- What is your game about? A mass evacuation of Earth goes awry. One of the evacuation ships encounters a fractured gateway network and ends up on the other side of the galaxy. The humans must rebuild society in a system with a deep, dark history they can't even dream to understand.

- Who is your target audience? d20 sci-fi players, fans of Earth 2, Firefly, Aliens, Starship Troopers, etc. Gamers who are pissed that WotC gave Star Wars the short end of the stick.

- What is special/unique about your game? It is the only full-scale science-fiction campaign setting built on d20 Modern and powered by d20 Future.

- What might people not like about your game? It's died-in-the-wool d20.

Ron: No problem, that's okay. I'm not overly worried about someone hacking my bank account, but you are probably right that one shouldn’t take chances.

Ben & all: Yes, in this thread, please!

- Frank

The paypal button is up at http://forgebooth.mausdompteur.de/ - real content is missing, but I'll happily take input from you, Frank. Presentation will either be bland, but functional, or cool if someone comes up with a nice design.

Eero wrote:
I instructed my valet and co-monkey Markku to get us tickets and rooming at Essen, so that pretty much means that I'm fully committed to going. Most awesome, if I may say so myself.

Markku, please say that you just wrote September and meant October, because Essen in September may be nice, but, well, there will be no Spiel...

- Frank

Yes, of course October ("lokakuu", Oktober, the tenth month).

It's wonderful to have all of the services (flight and hotel reservations) in one's native language :) Fortunately the dates are selected by using the numeric format, so there is less change to make an error :)

Damn, it seems you got the last room. Whatever possessed me to wait this long with booking? Well, I'll figure something out.

Frank wrote:
Damn, it seems you got the last room. Whatever possessed me to wait this long with booking? Well, I'll figure something out.

Capes

What is your game about?

Superheroes with heart.

Who is your target audience?

Anyone with a green-lantern symbol on their shirt.

What is special/unique about your game?

Everybody gets to create the story equally.  They compete to engage other players better than anyone else.

What might people not like about your game?

Everybody has to be willing to step up and create.  If they're no good at it that becomes painfully obvious.  There is no way to stop people from narrating wacky, non-realistic superhero stuff of any denomination.

Eero wrote:

Actually, I think Markku booked us somewhere downtown. I refuse to remember the name of the place, that's what a valet is for.

I wouldn't mind having a funny guy like Frank under my bed, especially if he had Under the Bed with him. But that's Markku's call.

Oh, I forgot one piece of information that might be of interest: Because of the limited space, we will furnish the booth with two standing tables (for 15 minutes demos only), and leave a little room for displaying our games on a table and pitching the people for demos.

That means we'll be on our feet all day, but what can you do.

- Frank

Frank wrote:
That means we'll be on our feet all day, but what can you do.

Guys, I can think about this more after Gen Con, and I'll have a finely tuned demo then as well, but here's something:

What is your game about?
The Shab-al-Hiri Roach is like the Marx Brothers meet H.P. Lovecraft - it is funny and horrible at the same time. You play old-timey college professors on an up-tight campus infested with telepathic cockroach slave lords from ancient Sumeria, and they are totally bananas. The cool thing is that you can win this game, but to win, you can't be a slave to the Roach, but if you're not a slave to the Roach, everyone else can kick your ass.

Who is your target audience?
Indie gamer nerds, people in academia who see the humor in a comedy of manners about their profession, horror geeks looking for some silly fun. 

What is special/unique about your game?
You can play a complete game in one evening and there's no GM.

What might people not like about your game?
You can play a complete game in one evening and there's no GM.

Here’s something else. I figured we’d just go without sales tax. I figured wrong. We are importing stuff from outside of the European Union, so there is no way past import sales tax. Fortunately, it’s only 7 % because we are selling books and those are privileged goods in Germany. Receiving the first shipping from Brennan, Stefan had to pay a total EUR 69 of import sales tax. The question is: How do we handle this? Two possible solutions, one more easy, one more fair.

Easy: We include it in the total costs of the booth, period. After that, your books are safe and legal in Germany and you can sell them here without ever worrying about sales tax again*. However, it’s not really fair if some of you don’t get all their stuff sold, since they have already paid their share in the tax but don’t receive it back in sales revenue (at least not at once).

Fair: We calculate the prices for selling the books including sales tax, so every book sold pays for its own sales tax. However, for the books not sold, the respective authors would have to come up for the sales tax Stefan forwarded. If they sell the books later, they get it back in. This procedure makes sure everyone pays exactly the sales tax on their own books. However, it will probably generate additional transfer costs.

Your call.

Please note also that if we ship your books back to you, you’ll probably pay import sales tax again (depending on US law).

- Frank

*That’s assuming that you are a small business and don’t normally charge sales tax.

Death's Door

What is your game about?

Perfectly ordinary people who wake up one morning, and know they are going to die.  Maybe tomorrow, maybe in three months.  But soon.

Who is your target audience?

Humans.  More specifically, humans who aren't comfortable with the thought of dying.

What is special/unique about your game?

Everyone has to contribute what they want to do before they die, and those become what the characters are trying to accomplish before they die.  Also, there is no GM; everyone takes a turn at providing opposition.

What might people not like about your game?

It doesn't pull punches.  It is a straight up look at the death taboo that western society maintains.  I suspect this will be less prevelant in Europe than in North America, but still there.

Hello,

Could a master document such as this PDF be useful to document the key selling points about each game? I will try to bring something similar to the upcoming con in Stockholm.

TTFN,

Yoki

Hello,

I'd be happy to cover the sales tax.  Please feel free to add that in to the price I sent you, Frank (11 euro) for BtI.

Here is a link that I found useful in figuring out what prices might be.
http://finance.yahoo.com/currency

What is your game about?
Two characters going on their first three dates, and the romantic and wacky ups & downs that ensue.

Who is your target audience?
Folks who like romantic comedy movies or stories.

What is special/unique about your game?
Character generation involves use of free-association from the character's favorite color. The players work together to make the characters and tell the story & make a "switch": they each play a character like the other player in some way. For example, if a guy and a girl play, the guy could play the female character, and the girl would play the guy.

What might people not like about your game?
If romance is yucky, you may want another game!

best,
Emily