My thanks to Friday's volunteers and looking forward to another good day today.
The con seems to be quite well organized. It's startlingly large for a first year con with some great entertainment (Paul & Storm, Harp Twins) and celebrities (Nicholas Brendan, Ron Glass, Joel Hodgson), but attendance was low compared to the space so everything looked really sparsely attended. When you've got a space holding 2,500 seats, the few hundred people sitting in there look lonely.
The tabletop gaming area was great -- row upon row of long or circular tables with padded seats. Who's Yer Gamers have brought their library. The gaming area is open 24x7 and games are free to check out. The only thing that's needed is more players!
We had a steady stream of interest to play Sentinels in the afternoon, but it was often the same people over and over. I had fun running games and it's great to get the variety you get when experienced players want to play again. I'm not sure how many people were playing in the evening when I was off having fun with the panels and concerts.
I'm very interested to see how much attendance picks up today. It's usually Saturday that's the most well attended of any con.
Well ... the con was quite nice today, but traffic in the gaming room was virtually nil. Still got in a few fun games.
My highlights were probably watching Nicholas Brendan be somewhat bewildered hearing the rules for Lords of Waterdeep and going to the Q&As for Ron Glass and Sylvester McCoy.
Muchas gracias tambien to everyone who has helped out! We may not have gotten a lot of players, but we were one of only a few games being run in the game room and I think our mere presence says something about how much people like this game.
To those still running games tonight and tomorrow -- good luck! have fun!
Final day today was not bad. We generally had games going most of the day, although the early part of the day was pretty light. Had a few new converts, but most of the games were with folks who were already fans - including one with a great Unity costume.
Many interesting games were played, though - including a brutal loss to (non-Advanced) Omnitron!
I think Sentinels would have done better if it was in the exhibition hall. That or if we had a giant sign saying to come play here. Overall I had fun but I felt like it was a tiny gencon.
Yeah, if this had been an official GTG event, it would have been very different. SInce it was really just arenson9 coordinating a bunch of folks to come and demo the game, we were a little more limited. It also didn't help that the gaming area was so completely divided from the exhibitor hall and the rest of the con activities (something we can provide the con folks as feedback). None of the gaming folks had much attention, including a huge video gaming area that was mostly empty for the majority of the con.
Some of the things I think would help us next time we do something like this:
Cards we can hand people so they know what the game is, with a URL for the game/company site, etc.
A sign on a stand (could be just on a pole taped to the table for all I care!) that says something like "Cooperative Superhero Game Demo - free promo cards for playing"
A card sleeve page to hold promo cards to choose from (minor - I just wanted to get it doc'd for memory's sake)
A handout/flyer that describes the company's products, specifically the SotM expansions / mini-expansions. There were a couple times where I was trying to quickly and simply explain the available expansions, but without anything visual to point at folks often just didn't consume it. (Expecially when I'd try to point out which promo card was for a character in which expansion, as there's nothing on the cards to indicate that.)
Contact vendors who are going to attend to let them know we're demoing the game, so they can bring product. (We actually did this with our friend Tim from Comic Carnival, but they didn't have much to bring; if we could get in touch with other vendors beforehand we might be able to help them sell more product.)
Definitely agree it was kinda like a tiny Gen Con, but it seemed to have more focus on artists and personalities. For example, the main stage area was used quite well to just do things, and Gen Con doesn't have anything like that. Getting Nick Brandon (Xander from Buffy the Vampire Slayer), who was there the entire Con, up onto the stage for an impromptu Q&A session Sunday was pretty shiny, and we don't get that kind of opportunity at Gen Con. Also, there were a lot of pro cosplayers, comic artists, comic writers, podcasts, and other such artists in the exhibitor hall, which we don't usually see at Gen Con. It definitely had a lot more comic-focus, also, with a lot of vendors having boxes and boxes of comics available to go through. I hope they were all able to make it worthwhile, so they return next year.
Many thanks arenson9 for coordinating this. He did a lot to make it happen and gave a bunch of us a great opportunity to help the game and enjoy a new and interesting con!
And also thanks to GTG for donating the promo cards and - of course - making a fun game that basically sells itself. The promo cards were really appreciated; we had a lot of folks who already had the game but didn't have the promo cards, but we also had a lot of folks we introduced to the game who fell in love in the first few minutes, and the promo cards gave them something to remind them when they left that they could look forward to enjoying.
It was great to see several people return from day one to day two. We didn't have much success either night, losing to Plague Rat and Dawn the first and a stalemate with Skinwalker Gloomweaver. (Matriarch was the sole victory at my table, at which there was much rejoicing). I wish I had more time to enjoy the Con, but it seemed to have a better variety than ComicCon earlier this year. Thanks to arenson9 and Rabit for spearheading getting involved in this.
Riffing on the aforementioned ideas, t would be cool if we could put together a kit that people could download to help them showcase Sentinels at a con, or maybe even better if GtG had a kit they could mail to people to do that sort of thing. Imagine if you got some business cards with a logo/url, a 1-pager listing various Sentinels products, and a tall flag/sign to put on the end of the table.
The promo cards were really appreciated; we had a lot of folks who already had the game but didn't have the promo cards, but we also had a lot of folks we introduced to the game who fell in love in the first few minutes, and the promo cards gave them something to remind them when they left that they could look forward to enjoying.