This is the second booth monkey thread for the booth at Spiel Essen in October. This time, it’s not about “I’d like to be there and I possibly could demo X.” This time, it’s about “I will be there at X o’clock and I will demo Y and Z.”

Only post to this thread when you know you will be coming to Essen, please. (And of course, the authors are also welcome to post here.) I would also like a place to discuss this stuff in German. For lack of a better alternative, I have set up a channel at my own Forum, Wilde Lande. It’s not as comfortable as the SMF, but it’ll do.

Now for the games. Hopefully more than one person will be running demos of each game, but I need one person responsible for and in charge of each game. If you are in charge of a game, it is your job to get the demo material from the author, possibly along with a copy of the game in the first place. It is your job to run demos for the rest of the staff on Wednesday and Thursday, so we can learn to demo the game as well. It is your job to know the game well enough to be able to answer most questions about it.

That’ll be easy with the games all of us have already played several times. However, I think we have some games that none of us have more than a remote idea of. The fair is in 2½ months. Time to do something about that. Here’s what we’ve got right now:

Polaris
I have a copy, as does Nicolas and some more. Plenty people know it and have played it.

Universalis
I think Nicolas and Agata have the PDF and know it well enough, from AP also?

My Life with Master
Same as Universalis?

The Roach
Same as Polaris.

Capes
Nicolas has a copy, as has Harald. I believe Nicolas also has some actual play experience? Or maybe Stefan (1of3) will be coming along, who is our Capes crack.

Death's Door
No copies and AP experience here in Germany as far as I know.

Mortal Coil
Same as Death’s Door.

Dawning Star: Operation Quick Launch
Same. Plus, the person running it should probably have solid knowledge of d20 and d20 modern, right?

Sorcerer
I have copies of all supplements, as do others. I also have some AP experience, notably with Ron himself.

With Great Power...
Nicolas and Harald both have copies. Nicolas also has plenty AP experience.

Breaking the Ice
I have been wanting to order a copy since that IRC playtest, but somehow never got around to it. Anyway, there are enough people with copies and AP experience.

Infinite Armies
No copies or AP experience as far as I can tell. Plus, there is a little logistics problem. Infinite Armies is a card game that is being sold online. So the people who buy it have to print and cut the cards themselves. Greg has offered to send us a couple of demo decks that he will prepare for us. But the game itself would have to be sold on CD-Rom. Greg told me that they did it on GenCon using a laptop with a CD burner hooked up on a car battery. Which is awesome, but also totally beyond me. So whoever takes charge of Infinite Armies would also have to take charge of the laptop/battery thing.
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Please volunteer now. Myself, I would like to take charge of Sorcerer (since I’m jazzed about it anyway right now). I’ll take some more, but wait first which games other people volunteer for. I have only remote knowledge of d20 and no knowledge of d20 modern, though, so Dawning Star would probably be best handled by someone else.

- Frank

I don't speak German, so I can't be the main and only guy for any of these games. But between me and my valet Markku we have all of these games down, except for
Death's Door
Mortal Coil
Dawning Star: Operation Quick Launch
Infinite Armies
... which I'll make a point of learning before Essen. So yeah, if you have no better idea, our role will be to handle the possible foreign customers and act as back-up for the German-speaking folks in whatever manner necessary.

I'll have more time for this after Gencon, so each of the above authors can expect me to come calling about sample pdfs and demo material around then.

Also: if it so happens that some of the authors do not have ready-made demos for whatever reason, I'll volunteer to put something together for our purposes. I have plenty of experience with creating demos.

M'yeah. I read German passably (I play German board games, and I've studied a total of 6 years of Germany back in 19mumblemumble), so if you could write up brief summaries of each game in Germany, I'll be able to learn those and get by with explanations if none of the natives are available. Of course, that sort of a thing (a game information card in German) might titillate the original authors, as well...

I was actually thinking about you guys running English demos for the German booth monkeys, thus teaching them so they can then run the demos in German for the customers.

- Frank