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One of the reasons I go to Gencon is to play games I like, but don't get to play the rest of the year - such as 7th Sea. I don't do much tabletop gaming; my on-call schedule makes that a dicey thing (forgive the pun; it wasn't intentional, but I hate to remove it) to inflict on other people.
The other reason is to see what's new that I might want, and there as with the other, it's the roleplaying games that draw me. I often try to sign up for things that I have not played before - just as often fail to get in or sacrifice them in order to play something I want.
This year, there were four games that particularly drew my attention this way (and I know there were doubtless others at the con). They made a surprisingly good example of doing it right and doing it wrong. Doing it right is, of course, more important to less well-known games, less well-known companies. They do not consistently put more effort into it, but they tend to.
This year's groupings were dramatic enough to actually solidify in my mind a conscious, spoken understanding of what I consider good and bad in the realm of getting your stuff out there:
1. Do it. The biggest sin of demos is not to have any.
2. Do it via the scheduled events, in time for pre-registration. Why? Because a lot of us, myself included, try to block up all our time well in advance. If you don't do this, you've already lost us, many years. And when I fail to get in pre-reg what I want, I do it at on-site event registration. I hate lurking for games with generics, because so often it means doing nothing for two hours, or four. I hate having big open patches, because it means that money spent to get to the con was partly wasted. I will do it - it beats doing something you'd hate, as witness the game I walked out of this year - but I am not fond of it and I try to avoid it.
Most importantly, many people play demos they hear about in the dealer's room, and many don't bother. Don't assume you'll get everyone there; you won't. See my previous statement about scheduling myself up as tightly as I can; I'm in the dealer's room to buy. (Actual demos in the room may work for some games, but not for roleplaying due to noise. However, I'm addressing demos elsewhere, primarily promoted through the booth, as well.)
3. Have a decent demo. No, seriously - this is not snide, because people miss the obvious points in this one all the time. Put a little time into thinking out the game. It does not have to be the best game of the con, but it should showcase both the setting and the rules that you think make your game worth buying. If you're selling a game that's all system, usable for different settings, let the setting be fun but generic - focus on the system. Otherwise, bring both of them out a little. Either way, your handouts should be clear, relevant either to the demo or to selling me the game, and you should have had them proofed for spelling, grammar, and sense. There should be enough character sheets / setting notes / posters that you can send one away with each person who plays the game. Whatever it is you're handing over, you want them to look at it again later and remember things!
4. Make sure your game fits the time slot it belongs in. Having extra time after is better than having players remember you as the game they had to flee from, or miss points about the system because you had to rush them.
What brings these to mind for me? The four games I looked at at this con, one of which hit the demo mark solidly and the others of which missed it in varying degrees. Out of all of those, only one did I immediately know I was buying when I left the demo...without even cracking the book, I bought it. Of the other three, I bought one after asking some questions (though calling that game a demo may be stretching the intent, as it wasn't billed as such). The games were:
A. GURPS 4th Edition. Missed the demo boat completely. Violated either rule #1 or rule #2, I'm not sure which. There were some GURPS games at the con, but they did not explicitly state that they were 4th Edition, so I ignored them. I am annoyed at Fourth Edition; I like GURPS 3rd Edition just fine, and I feel they're fixing something that isn't broke. I have, however, loved GURPS a long time and I trust this company. I wanted to play in a demo game of the new system to see if what they'd done was, in fact, an improvement - and at that, an improvement worth $75 just for the core books. I was not able to find such a demo game, and as a consequence, I am still of the same opinion I originally was - that they are fixing something that doesn't need it, and it wouldn't be worth $20 to me, let alone $75 - and have added that they have a complete contempt for the need to show gamers what they did. They will tell us, but they won't show us. *shrug* I learned on GURPS. For a long time, it was my favorite game. But I think it is being supplanted by other games, now, because they have moved on to an edition I won't buy without convincing, and they don't want to convince me. And I don't want to be convinced so badly that I will do the job for them.
B. Deliria. Laughing Pan has every reason to want to promote their new game well. It's therefore a complete mystery to me why they did such a poor job of it. When I searched the Gencon site at preregistration for Deliria games, I saw a single one listed. Scott and I grabbed the last slots in it; it was this game I played in. I'm not clear on whether it was an official game or not, but it had as many experienced players as not, as far as I could tell. It was not billed as a demo that I recall. Nor did I see any other Deliria games. When I was filling in my empty slots for the weekend, I saw no Deliria games. Yet when I walked by the Laughing Pan booth, they discussed games that Phil would be running. I still do not know what, when, or where these mythical games were. If they were in the event book, they were not in the sections I looked at while filling in my time. If they were on the site when I preregistered, they did not contain the word 'Deliria' which I used as a search term.
This is a game that has a lovely setting and tone and would heavily benefit from demos. Instead of having lots of visible demos, they weren't even really a presence. Phil's commented on only having a 10x10 booth, but to me, it was far more the lack of visible demos than the size of the booth that bespoke a minimal, somewhat amateur presence. This is a book that you could sell strongly by simply running the game for people, a world and a story that almost sells itself...and yet, if two other people had beaten me and Scott into that game, I do not know if I would have bought it or not - and I had already heard of it and wanted to be sold on it!
The game I was in managed to follow all the other rules. It was perfect. It was only the relative lack of such games that made this company's presence flawed. And that's the reason that they were the game I bought...after making sure I really wanted to. If the game itself hadn't raised questions for me, I might well have been ready to buy it without questions or review, as with the others. But they needed more visible games.
C. White Wolf's new World of Darkness. These guys had the "lots of demos" right. They had the convention saturated with demos to a degree that a smaller company cannot afford and does not really need. They had multiple demos going on when I played 12-2 on Sunday - the second-most-dead slot of the whole con, with only 2-4 being worse! (Given that the con ends at 5 pm Sunday....) And while some of them were only partly full, none of them was cancelled due to lack of players, as far as I know. Ours was completely full.
They failed to sell me on the game because I think it sucks. But they made it easy for me to get in and form my own opinion, and I suspect they sold to a great many people they would not have, without those demos. They broke some of the key demo rules, though, largely regarding quality of demo and material. A demo with pregenerated characters cannot have any character who is substantially irrelevant or helpless, if played according to the writeup. Any con game, and especially a demo, has a 'path' to follow, but our characters were literally locked in a single room for most of the demo. Sheesh! Their handouts were crap and could have been improved if proofread by an enthusiastic child. And they did not have any handouts you could take away with you; they took them all back. (Always a mistake with character sheets, which people will write on anyway. They were not even cleaning them between the sessions. At least one person in my group had to erase wounds from a character they got who was already 'dead' from her last game!)
D. Fantasy Flight Games' Fireborn. The folks who got it completely right, the folks who ran the one demo I walked away from knowing that I would buy the book without even looking inside. It is also the only game that I had not heard of prior to seeing it in the Gencon listings! They had demos throughout the weekend, not at the density White Wolf was running theirs, but present. As a consequence, I saw it again and again while browsing preregistration. I was curious; I was intrigued. I put it in a slot that had nothing I wanted more (though there were things there I would have otherwise played). I went. They had a kick-ass demo that showed off the flavor of the system really, really well. And the system itself. They had character sheets, and they had enough that players got to leave with their sheets. They had little writeups with the character sheets, properly punctuated. Every character was capable of doing something interesting; every character had, in fact, options within the scope of the module. They had posters for the game - enough, again, for every player. The poster-proper was a full-page blazon of the game cover, basically, but the back-sides had been done so that as you unfolded it, you got flavor text, the basics of the system, a summary of the character sheet. The poster alone was incredible advertising, and the game was better.
The other reason is to see what's new that I might want, and there as with the other, it's the roleplaying games that draw me. I often try to sign up for things that I have not played before - just as often fail to get in or sacrifice them in order to play something I want.
This year, there were four games that particularly drew my attention this way (and I know there were doubtless others at the con). They made a surprisingly good example of doing it right and doing it wrong. Doing it right is, of course, more important to less well-known games, less well-known companies. They do not consistently put more effort into it, but they tend to.
This year's groupings were dramatic enough to actually solidify in my mind a conscious, spoken understanding of what I consider good and bad in the realm of getting your stuff out there:
1. Do it. The biggest sin of demos is not to have any.
2. Do it via the scheduled events, in time for pre-registration. Why? Because a lot of us, myself included, try to block up all our time well in advance. If you don't do this, you've already lost us, many years. And when I fail to get in pre-reg what I want, I do it at on-site event registration. I hate lurking for games with generics, because so often it means doing nothing for two hours, or four. I hate having big open patches, because it means that money spent to get to the con was partly wasted. I will do it - it beats doing something you'd hate, as witness the game I walked out of this year - but I am not fond of it and I try to avoid it.
Most importantly, many people play demos they hear about in the dealer's room, and many don't bother. Don't assume you'll get everyone there; you won't. See my previous statement about scheduling myself up as tightly as I can; I'm in the dealer's room to buy. (Actual demos in the room may work for some games, but not for roleplaying due to noise. However, I'm addressing demos elsewhere, primarily promoted through the booth, as well.)
3. Have a decent demo. No, seriously - this is not snide, because people miss the obvious points in this one all the time. Put a little time into thinking out the game. It does not have to be the best game of the con, but it should showcase both the setting and the rules that you think make your game worth buying. If you're selling a game that's all system, usable for different settings, let the setting be fun but generic - focus on the system. Otherwise, bring both of them out a little. Either way, your handouts should be clear, relevant either to the demo or to selling me the game, and you should have had them proofed for spelling, grammar, and sense. There should be enough character sheets / setting notes / posters that you can send one away with each person who plays the game. Whatever it is you're handing over, you want them to look at it again later and remember things!
4. Make sure your game fits the time slot it belongs in. Having extra time after is better than having players remember you as the game they had to flee from, or miss points about the system because you had to rush them.
What brings these to mind for me? The four games I looked at at this con, one of which hit the demo mark solidly and the others of which missed it in varying degrees. Out of all of those, only one did I immediately know I was buying when I left the demo...without even cracking the book, I bought it. Of the other three, I bought one after asking some questions (though calling that game a demo may be stretching the intent, as it wasn't billed as such). The games were:
A. GURPS 4th Edition. Missed the demo boat completely. Violated either rule #1 or rule #2, I'm not sure which. There were some GURPS games at the con, but they did not explicitly state that they were 4th Edition, so I ignored them. I am annoyed at Fourth Edition; I like GURPS 3rd Edition just fine, and I feel they're fixing something that isn't broke. I have, however, loved GURPS a long time and I trust this company. I wanted to play in a demo game of the new system to see if what they'd done was, in fact, an improvement - and at that, an improvement worth $75 just for the core books. I was not able to find such a demo game, and as a consequence, I am still of the same opinion I originally was - that they are fixing something that doesn't need it, and it wouldn't be worth $20 to me, let alone $75 - and have added that they have a complete contempt for the need to show gamers what they did. They will tell us, but they won't show us. *shrug* I learned on GURPS. For a long time, it was my favorite game. But I think it is being supplanted by other games, now, because they have moved on to an edition I won't buy without convincing, and they don't want to convince me. And I don't want to be convinced so badly that I will do the job for them.
B. Deliria. Laughing Pan has every reason to want to promote their new game well. It's therefore a complete mystery to me why they did such a poor job of it. When I searched the Gencon site at preregistration for Deliria games, I saw a single one listed. Scott and I grabbed the last slots in it; it was this game I played in. I'm not clear on whether it was an official game or not, but it had as many experienced players as not, as far as I could tell. It was not billed as a demo that I recall. Nor did I see any other Deliria games. When I was filling in my empty slots for the weekend, I saw no Deliria games. Yet when I walked by the Laughing Pan booth, they discussed games that Phil would be running. I still do not know what, when, or where these mythical games were. If they were in the event book, they were not in the sections I looked at while filling in my time. If they were on the site when I preregistered, they did not contain the word 'Deliria' which I used as a search term.
This is a game that has a lovely setting and tone and would heavily benefit from demos. Instead of having lots of visible demos, they weren't even really a presence. Phil's commented on only having a 10x10 booth, but to me, it was far more the lack of visible demos than the size of the booth that bespoke a minimal, somewhat amateur presence. This is a book that you could sell strongly by simply running the game for people, a world and a story that almost sells itself...and yet, if two other people had beaten me and Scott into that game, I do not know if I would have bought it or not - and I had already heard of it and wanted to be sold on it!
The game I was in managed to follow all the other rules. It was perfect. It was only the relative lack of such games that made this company's presence flawed. And that's the reason that they were the game I bought...after making sure I really wanted to. If the game itself hadn't raised questions for me, I might well have been ready to buy it without questions or review, as with the others. But they needed more visible games.
C. White Wolf's new World of Darkness. These guys had the "lots of demos" right. They had the convention saturated with demos to a degree that a smaller company cannot afford and does not really need. They had multiple demos going on when I played 12-2 on Sunday - the second-most-dead slot of the whole con, with only 2-4 being worse! (Given that the con ends at 5 pm Sunday....) And while some of them were only partly full, none of them was cancelled due to lack of players, as far as I know. Ours was completely full.
They failed to sell me on the game because I think it sucks. But they made it easy for me to get in and form my own opinion, and I suspect they sold to a great many people they would not have, without those demos. They broke some of the key demo rules, though, largely regarding quality of demo and material. A demo with pregenerated characters cannot have any character who is substantially irrelevant or helpless, if played according to the writeup. Any con game, and especially a demo, has a 'path' to follow, but our characters were literally locked in a single room for most of the demo. Sheesh! Their handouts were crap and could have been improved if proofread by an enthusiastic child. And they did not have any handouts you could take away with you; they took them all back. (Always a mistake with character sheets, which people will write on anyway. They were not even cleaning them between the sessions. At least one person in my group had to erase wounds from a character they got who was already 'dead' from her last game!)
D. Fantasy Flight Games' Fireborn. The folks who got it completely right, the folks who ran the one demo I walked away from knowing that I would buy the book without even looking inside. It is also the only game that I had not heard of prior to seeing it in the Gencon listings! They had demos throughout the weekend, not at the density White Wolf was running theirs, but present. As a consequence, I saw it again and again while browsing preregistration. I was curious; I was intrigued. I put it in a slot that had nothing I wanted more (though there were things there I would have otherwise played). I went. They had a kick-ass demo that showed off the flavor of the system really, really well. And the system itself. They had character sheets, and they had enough that players got to leave with their sheets. They had little writeups with the character sheets, properly punctuated. Every character was capable of doing something interesting; every character had, in fact, options within the scope of the module. They had posters for the game - enough, again, for every player. The poster-proper was a full-page blazon of the game cover, basically, but the back-sides had been done so that as you unfolded it, you got flavor text, the basics of the system, a summary of the character sheet. The poster alone was incredible advertising, and the game was better.
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