GenCon 2011: at the booth
Ron Edwards:
Hey everyone,
It's going to be a little lonely at GenCon for me - not too many indie companies, and Vincent won't be there to share with me either. So ... if you are going to be at GenCon, consider coming by booth 1713 to say hi and maybe spell me for a bit if you can can.
I will have some drafts of the current annotations for discussion if people are interested, and will definitely be up for gaming right there in the booth, including Sorcerer boot-camp stuff.
No need to confirm or sign up or anything like that in this thread, but if you can make it, I'll be very happy to see you.
Best, Ron
Ron Edwards:
I lived!
1. As Vincent wasn't able to make it, as he'd told me a while ago in plenty of time to plan, I was by myself. Plus I didn't set up a posse of assistants or get exhibitor badges for anyone, or anything like that, which would have been a good idea.
2. I found myself a bit stuck on flooring and shelving. I was hoping for the all-black flooring we'd used last year, but it ended up buried deep in storage in Massachusetts, and then Greg Porter and John Kolb came through with the rest of it. So it was almost all black; I put the red ones toward the back of the booth. I was able to avoid the weird Goth Christmas effect of black and green draping with red and black flooring.
As for shelves, a few days before the con and just before I went shopping for some Target Special shelves, I was talking with the guys at Posthuman Studios (this is because they do hip stuff with the Germans, and I drive and room with the Germans, hence this is all a German thing even though PHS and I are Americans in Chicago) and they had bought some shelves which weren't quite big enough for their books. They were willing to let me take them off their hands for a nominal fee (and I owe you guys big).
And then there were the tables. Sick of paying GeoFern Inc ruinous fees for renting their cheap-ass tables, I figured I'd buy my own at Target. Target had some nice tables at a wee bit bigger than I wanted, and I didn't know if two would fit ... I bit the bullet and figured it was easier ignore one if necessary rather than wish for it if I didn't have it and needed two.
The point: it worked out beautifully. I and my little eye, if I do say so myself, put together the cay-utest little book-nook you ever saw. The shelves popped out my titles; they complemented the poster of the Sorcerer cover perfectly; they even had a high spot which served well for my long-standing square Adept logo poster. I was able to put the tables end to end and angle them perfectly to create a corridor for looking at the books and sitting down in comfort.
3. Of course, there was the placement. I have about a million GenCon "points," meaning whatever booth I name in the application, I get. Or have for a few years anyway. I chose a spot which was very nicely placed for traffic from one of the entrances ... but who knew that Catalyst Labs would buy up everything in front of it and block that aisle totally? So the artery I'd hoped for was entirely blocked.
Also, Luke and I typically name one another to be closely placed, and last year, for instance, we had a great three-booth aisle with the separating curtains taken down, creating a real indie alley. However, this year, he and the rest of the Burning Wheel / Memento Mori posse got a last-minute chance for a fancy spot somewhere else. I was near Pelgrane Press but they were around the corner. As for my immediate neighbors, the entire block of booths in front of me was taken by the t-shirt people, meaning an enormous cube of t-shirt displays right up to the aisle and proceeding 30 feet straight up, i.e., no real aisle of booths at all and absolutely no visibility from anywhere. My immediately adjoining neighbors were both very nice groups, who happened to have curving standup displays on either side of me.
You got it. I was a mole hole, completely invisible to casual glances, observable practically only from being right in front of me and not looking at the t-shirts. As in, fucked. It would all come down to my very brief contact with passers-by, my estimation of whether they'd be interested in my stuff, and my ability to strike up contact.
4. My Sorcerer titles were there, as well as four metal chairs, so that was great. But a software/communications screwup meant all my other titles didn't arrive until Friday afternoon. Argh!
5. My car battery died for no known reason at some point during the stay, meaning a stressful jump that almost didn't work in that crucial post-con breakdown and load-up phase. As with a few of the other logistic hassles, I owe getting through that to the inestimable Jürgen Mayer, my roommate of how-many-cons now, nine? who totally brought his Teutonic game forward and kept me sensible throughout.
Annnd, drum-roll please, what was the upshot? All by myself, in the situation described, working the booth eight hours straight for three days and six hours Sunday, I grossed more than I'd done in years, maybe ever with the exception of 2001. Helpful friends mattered a lot - both for occasional company and clearly for a lot of recommendations to con-goers. Thanks to you all, especially the aforementioned Burning crowd, who I think really went above and beyond.
Here's the real issue though: (i) I sold a bezillion book to people who'd never heard of me or my stuff before, which shows me my work is still relevant and not merely known to a niche; and (ii) due to some well-chosen phrasing on my white board, I discussed and playtested dozens of home-grown RPGs right out of people's backpacks. It was indie grassroots fucking awesome at my booth, all con long. In terms of internet page driven indie "scene," this GenCon was weak: hardly any indie companies with booths aside from Luke, Chris Engle, me, Posthuman, the OSR, and a couple others; a minimal presence for IPR. But that is not what defines the true indie scene.
Coalescing around the success of the moment is not what independent publishing is all about. That success of the moment, status and lauds, is NOT the guts, the teeth, the drive, the muscles of her pussy clenching on you, and the enemy's blood spattered away from the flick of your contemptuous fingers. Sure, I was the success of the moment for 2001-2004. Luke was the success of the moment in 2005-2006, and Evil Hat is now, or maybe it's Jason with the first two-time victory for the DJA (and more power to you, star of the morning!) ... or name whom you like! Vincent, John Harper, whoever, man, it does not matter. That is fun, yes, but it is not the point. It is not what I am here for.
The guts and the teeth and the et cetera are those gamer backpacks with those games in design sitting in them. I just spent four days in direct contact with them, answering questions about design, publishing, and promotion, talking to and listening about everything from haunted-house tile-based boardgames to post-Game Chef deconstructed Shakespeare to crazy-ass space opera with twelve races of aliens. And I will take that over all of it. Over my DJA in 2002. Over my Guest of Honor in 2003. Over any of the people who look a bit submissive and say, "Oh, Ron Edwards," when I remember to flip my badge around. None of that is any God damn thing compared to the guts and teeth and eyes of those people halfway though our conversations.
I made a lot of money and can now print Trollbabe and get that Sorc anniversary book out and do a bunch more stuff too. But what I really did, I think, was warm myself at the fire, yet again.
Get the fuck out my way.
Best, Ron
JamesDJIII:
It was a great pleasure to finally meet you and get a chance to sit in on a demo of Sorcerer. It was also very satisfying to put into a few spoken words and gestures what would have taken paragraphs to hammer out.
He's not kidding about the mole-hole status. He took me several attempts to find the booth. I just learned to look for the t-shirt booth across the aisle. But I did find the booth.
It was great fun to see people come up, play in the demo, and have Ron put screws to their PCs - because they looked as if they were really getting into it. It made me want to run Sorcerer again!
Thanks for making my first GenCon just that much greater.
James
Paul Czege:
Quote from: Ron Edwards on August 08, 2011, 07:14:50 PM
...and listening about everything from haunted-house tile-based boardgames...
Are you describing House of Whack? Did you meet Andre Monserrat?
Paul
Ron Edwards:
Hi Paul,
No, the guys I met with that game were very much in prototype/paper design phase. The thing is, they run one of those real haunted house things, every year, where people go in and get scared. So they had some design work for a game which corresponded to their event. I thought that was a pretty good crossover product idea. We talked mostly about how to phrase what a game's about and how to promote it.
Best, Ron
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