I was one of the designers at the Forge booth at GenCon SoCal this last weekend.  I was there with Full Light, Full Steam, which was released at the convention.

In Brief: I ran three very successful games and one adequate game.  I ran ten or twelve ten-minute demos.  I wanted to sell 20 books, which would have hit my break-even mark; I sold 16.

In Day-by-Day Detail
Thursday, the first day of the convention, I did not have my books yet.  I also did not have any caffeine, which was killer.  I did a lot of watching and learning, taking the slow day as my training day to see how the booth and the con operated.  At 8pm, I ran my first four-hour game, which was very successful and nearly wiped me out on the first day.  Lack of caffeine and a dry throat nearly destroyed my voice.

Friday, I ran a 10am game, and fifteen minutes before it began, my books came in three hours early.  There was a lovely bit of scrambling as we shuttled the books from Luke’s hotel to the booth and then I ran upstairs to the game.  The game was awesome, with one player actually using her stats to create an NPC (thank you, Nancy!).  I had a nice column of caffeine thanks to Carl’s Jr, which helped me stay engaged and saved my throat.  I returned to the booth and enjoyed my best sales day of the con, selling ten copies.  Some of these sales were folks from the day before returning, some were from the players of the successful game, and some were new folks.  I put a copy of the game in Ken Hite’s hands and got to talk with him for a while about the book and upcoming projects.  At the end of the day we had the “Story Games” Dinner meetup, which turned out to be a handful of folks from the forum and a lot of other folks we just swept up into the mix.

Saturday, by contrast, was my worst day.  The morning saw increased crowds but little sales at the booth: the folks who had just arrived were doing the initial recon phase of con attendance, checking things out and getting a lay of the land.  I lost a few sales for lack of a credit card machine.  Then I had to run off at 2pm to run my third game.  I lacked my caffeine again and I feel the game suffered for it; one plot thread got forgotten and when it became essential its reintroduction felt forced.  I returned to the booth as it was closing to discover that no sales had been made in my absence.

Sunday I ran another 10am game; as expected, the morning game on the last day of the con saw only three of the six pre-registered players show up.  The three players knew each other, though, which meant that they helped each other learn the rules and took a lot of the weight off of my shoulders.  I had forgotten to grab a few books to bring with me to the game, so at the break I ran down to grab some, and one of the players accompanied me to buy one.  While we were downstairs, we ran into two of her friends, who we shanghaied into the second half of the game.  When that very successful game was done, I returned to the booth for two short hours of booth time.  In the last hour we made a “push” for FLFS and I was able to demo the game for Alexander who was selling at the booth, but the pickings were few as customers were doing the one last zombie-walk through the exhibitor’s area and had no cash on them.  One sale made and three sales lost to lack of a credit card machine later, the booth closed.

Numbers:
I sold 16 books at $30 each for $480 total revenue.  Books cost me $10 a piece, and my buy-in to the con ran me $230 (not counting gas and food), so my total costs were $390.  Total gross profit: $90, plus exposure which will hopefully lead to later sales.

Random Observations
It’s amusing to observe the differences between two players portraying the same character.  The young hotshot pilot character appeared in all four of my games and was alternately prim, stuck-up, gullible, and a loose cannon.

It seems like people either get FLFS immediately or not at all.  You say, “steampunk space opera” and their eyes light up with interest or they don’t.  No amount of pitching or explanation will get the latter folks interested, and if they aren’t interested, they aren’t willing to try a ten-minute demo.

I ran ten or twelve ten-minute demos, and with only one exception, every demo led to a sale.  Believe in the power of the ten-minute demo!

Seven Things I Learned
1) Make sure everyone at the booth can demo your game.  It takes ten minutes to run that ten-minute demo.  Run it for the other people at the booth so they can run it, too.  Play their demos so you can run them yourself.  If nothing else, you’ll be better equipped to pitch the game and then hand the customer off to the designer.  Next time, I will be trading demos with everybody who’ll let me.

2) Coordinate your event times with the exhibitor hours.  Booth hours at the con were a pretty slim window – 10am to 6pm – and I made the big mistake of scheduling my games during booth hours.  As a consequence, I wasn’t at the booth half the time.  Combine this with #1, and when I wasn’t at the booth, my game wasn’t selling.  Next time, I will be running games that only partially overlap with booth hours, rather than run through the heart of selling hours.

3) GenCon is four straight days of having no time at all.  There is no time to do anything that is not already prepared ahead of time.  This is actually somewhat comforting, as once the con begins, it’s simply time to relax and go with the flow.  Just don’t expect to get anything done if it’s not preplanned.

4) Subtlety is lost at a con game, especially an everybody-in-one-room con like GenCon.  When it’s one or maybe two groups in a hotel conference room, there’s a little more opportunity to delve into the game and appreciate subtle details and differences.  When you are one of ten games in the room and everyone is jabbering around you, you get lots more mileage out of flashy, high-color, high-action proceedings.  Next time, my games will be of the latter variety.

5) Credit cards are key.  Early in the con, folks have cash.  Later in the con, not so much.  I lost four or five sales to the lack of a credit card machine, and if I had made those sales, I would have hit my sales target.

6) John and Jared’s slim-line RPGs are genius.  People will drop $45 for three games way quicker than they will drop $30 for one.  Also, Cat is a license to print money.

7) Caffeine is fuel and caffeine is god.  Do not skimp on the dread god caffeine; do not attempt to run at full throttle without the blessed, blessed fuel.

In Conclusion
I am still waiting to see if online sales pick up after GenCon SoCal.  Assuming the least bit of a response to bring me over break-even, I will be returning to GenCon SoCal next year, quite possibly with both FLFS and Sons of Liberty.  My thanks go out to Luke who coordinated the booth and my boothmates for their ecouragement and support.  I'll see you next year.

I'll tack my mini-after-action report on. I was only present for the first two days of the con. (Had to get back for the wife's and daughter's birthdays.) Since I only had two days as it is, I eschewed scheduled events altogether. I think that was a good thing. I was doing a lot of damage in the booth. I got a lot of positive response to the pitch for Passages and made a few sales on the force of that alone. Ironically, I only ended up demoing for Luke, Dro, and John (on Friday morning). That, in and of itself, paid off in the form of more informative pitching on their parts. I am informed that sales were a good bit slower for Passages the rest of the weekend. I'm not surprised--a game always sells better with the designer their to pimp and answer questions. (Sounds like maybe the dynamic was a good bit different on the last two days as well--Luke, John, Jared, what were your sales like on those days?)

Couple of final points:

1) Very happy with the performance of Passages. I'm getting a lot of good response to the premise and a lot of appreciative looks about the system. I'm hoping that bodes well for future performance.

2) My incalculable thanks to Joshua, Luke, Dro, John, and Jared. The booth was a lot of fun. It was great to shoot the breeze during the slow parts and watch you guys work your mojo during the rushes. And special thanks for tips on improving the demo.

As mentioned above, Cat is a license to print money. But if I did not have a good pitch for it, nobody would buy it.

The key to selling your game at a con is having a pitch. If you cannot pitch your game to someone in 15 seconds or less, the chances of them buying your game decrease significantly.

Cat Pitch: "You roleplay housecats who protect their owners from monsters their owners cannot see."

Whenever I gave someone that pitch, they wanted the game. If they didn't, it was because the game wasn't made with them in mind.

Once you've made them laugh, once you've made them curious, you can start explaining the details of the system and setting. But at a place like GenCon, if you do not get their interest in fifteen seconds, you've lost them.

I'm not saying you can't sell a game without a pitch, but having it makes selling your game a whole lot easier.

All my games (except for Thirty) have a pitch. Get one for your game.

Jesse Burneko was kind enough to post an actual play report for the Saturday game of FLFS.

On the topic of credit cards, Luke or anybody else in the know, does anybody recall how much internet connection and electricity would have run the booth?  Cause if we had a laptop there, we could have processed credit cards via our already set up websites, and then just handed the product over instead of shipping it.

John wrote:
As mentioned above, Cat is a license to print money. But if I did not have a good pitch for it, nobody would buy it.

The key to selling your game at a con is having a pitch. If you cannot pitch your game to someone in 15 seconds or less, the chances of them buying your game decrease significantly.

Cat Pitch: "You roleplay housecats who protect their owners from monsters their owners cannot see."

Whenever I gave someone that pitch, they wanted the game. If they didn't, it was because the game wasn't made with them in mind.

I was either the prim or gullible version of the pilot.  I played in the Sat. game, btw.  I was not at the top of my gaming 'powers' having spent most of my energy: 1) Driving in to make the Burning Wheel game at 8 AM; 2) Engaging in what I found to be some deep RPing in said game.  If Gen Con's in Anahiem next year, I'll be sure to bring extra caffine to your games, Joshua.  I must be the person to whom you gave the demo who did not buy the game :(

Justin, you game had a great pitch.  I wish I had a chance to play in your demo.