Noted: Written on day 3 but I didn't have Internet access because the hotel changed the code, so references to 'today' may seem a bit odd below ...
Day 3: The Longest Day
I'm not sure there was an advertised gathering of costumed heroes, but we got a sizable collection of them today. Great stuff. Always lots of fun to see people dressed as Sentinels characters.
I didn't hear any word about how sales went today. The SotM starter kit is sold out. Nothing else is, I think.
We were busy all day on every table in the room. I hear the same was true or close to true in the booth. We added a seventh table and had two, sometimes three SotM RPG sessions running simultaneously in the room, plus some 20 minute intros running sometimes in the booth.
The Envoy team were in the room for the morning and the evening shifts giving us plenty of people to run games so we could send some Citizens over to the booth, but in the afternoon we were scrambling a bit. I ran a few Fate games, and an attendee dressed as Baron Blade took an impromptu OblivAeon game (and got all the punches on his punchcard he wanted as partial thank you).
I didn't actually properly learn Lazer Ryderz until late in the evening tonight. I'd played in two GenCons ago, but hadn't refreshed myself on the rules. I'm really thankful for the sessions running Spirit Island and Fate of the Elder Gods at Whos Yer Con. Without those I would have been nearly useless in helping to run games.
We actually had nine demos going at once in the room at one point -- one on each table, plus I was using a nook at the front of the room to demo standard SotM and Chris Kirkman had claimed part of the counter in the back to show Sleepy Hollow.
Fate of the Elder Gods seemed to be a big hit with everyone I saw play it. Spirit Island and Lazer Ryderz continued to be nearly universally not just liked, but loved. People seemed to really like OblivAeon, too, despite the long play times.
Oh! Excited to share this. That demo of standard SotM we played? We lost! It was Haka, Ra, and Fanatic vs. Blade in Insula Primalis. My teammates enjoyed pushing their luck (like letting the Volcano burn everyone), so we were focusing on hitting Blade rather than worrying about HP. Fanatic was getting ready to use Wrathful Retribution to win the game when a Primordial Plant Life knocked her out. Even so, Ra and Haka got Blade down to mid single digits and nearly had the game won when Blade pulled out Consider the Price of Victory and took them both down. Despite that the players were very excited to get the game. And they hadn't even come over to the room. In a rare moment of a game not being full of players, I'd gone out into the hall to try to flag down passerbys to fill the game. By the time I'd encouraged this couple to come into the game, the game only had one spot, but I showed them around and encouraged them to at least try SotM. Reminds me of the olden times when we SotM was new. I get the sense that there's still a large market of attendees who could be tapped for SotM.
It's been interesting searching for the right way to interact with people who wander into the room. It's often people who are just curious what's going on in the room because unlike the rest of PAX, there's no signage explaining it. Unlike GenCon, where lots of companies have siderooms, GtG seems to be the only ones who have a sideroom.. Jodie explained that it was easiest to just reuse the GenCon setup so they asked PAX for the same size booth and a side room, but most other exhibitors seemed to have settled for a smaller presence. That means not only that GtG is the biggest booth at the show, but has this side room that doesn't fit the rest of the PAX signage.
ANYWAY, I evolved my approach to focus more on striking up a rapport with people rather than diving right in to see what questions about the game they had. Their first question, really, was what is this room for? Usually a bit of chatting about what they're wearing or how the rest of the con has been going was enough to get them comfortable and interested in what might be happening in the room. Then a little bit of description of the games could feel them out about which one they might be more interested in than others. Unfortunately, with full games going, there was rarely a chance for them to sit down and actually play a game, so the majority of these people probably just left the room and never came back, but a lot were interested enough to check in later and look for open spots.
Reading Terminal was even more packed on the weekend than during the week. I gave up at lunch time and walked a third of a mile to an inexpensive, highly rated Indian restaurant. I snuck in at 5:45, right before closing, and was the second to last person to get food at a Mexican place. Man, that Mexican food may have been the worst I've ever been served. It was cold.
I passed on some invitations to go socialize after the room closed in order to go to the Unpub room and meet up with Peter Hayward, who invited me to join him in a playtest of another designer's game and to playtest one of his games. Both were great experiences. Hearing these knowledgeable designers providing feedback about the games was a great lesson in and of itself. Peter's game (I failed to catch the name!) felt finished or close to it to me. He mentioned a Kickstarter coming up fairly early next year. He asked three of us to play the game with no instructions from him -- just learning it from the rules. We had no trouble and it didn't take an excessive amount of time (though it wasn't super fast to learn, either, as I read through all of the three pages of rules at a slow pace.
I've also enjoyed running into a few other people I know. It's been a bit annoying that I don't have enough time to go hang out with them each a whole bunch, but on the other hand I've really enjoyed being a part of the GtG crew. I've stopped bothering to correct people who assume I work for GtG unless it seems critical to what they're asking me. If someone asks, "When will you be shipping/doing/Kickstarting X", I just tell them what I do or don't know w/out bothering to first say that I'm not actually a GtG employee. I mean, what does it really matter if I am or not? I'm representing GtG and I either can or can't help with what they've asked. Still feels a little weird, but I think that's the right call.