The news from down under

General GTG Events
1

Not much to report yet, but we made contact w/ the GTG guys last night. Adam had succumbed to the need for sleep, but Christopher and Paul gamely stayed awake long enough for dinner.

 

I hear that they made it out to the Showgrounds yesterday, found the Tabletop area, found the booth, confirmed the pallet had been delivered, and did a first pass on setup. Final setup today is expected to be easy, so Spouse and I are taking the morning off to enjoy Melbourne some more before heading over in the afternoon.

 

I had an opportunity to hear about some of the super secret plans for the future of GTG. Wow. Now I have an even better understanding about why they are so busy. 

 

As has been the case for every single major convention, once again the guys don't really know what to expect from this one. How many people will want to play? How many will want to buy? Just how rowdy are Aussies? Who knows!

 

One expected difference is that since GTG isn't set up to take Australia credit cards, this will be a mostly cash event. Which reminds me, for those of you who may not have seen money from outside the US, US money is silly. It's all one color! It's all the same size! There are no dollar or two-dollar coins! How boring and hard to use.

 

Melbourne, by the way, is fantastic. It may be my new, favorite city. The public transportation system is great. Locals are bemused to hear me say that, as there are rampant complaints about timeliness of the system, but the trains, trams, and busses seem to go everywhere, pretty frequently, and be easy to use. The central business district is huge and vibrant. We went to the botanical gardens yesterday and they were gorgeous. We spent the rest of the day at the Melbourne Zoo. Besides the requisite native and African animals, it has some wonderful south american animals and small cats. Just gorgeous. It also has an INCREDIBLE aviary. A walk-in cage that is the height of a cathedral and the length of a football field, filled with beautiful and exotic birds. Yesterday we took a tour down to Phillip Island to see the famous pilgrim parade, a wonderful Koala park, an animal sanctuary where we hand-fed wallabies and kangaroos, and a working farm where I learned how to crack a whip.

 

Also amusing, as always when traveling internationally, has been checking out local television. Australian TV isn't quite as weird and wacky as TV in many other countries has seemed, but it's been interesting watching Australian Rules Football and trying to understand how it works. 

 

 

2

Fantastic. Very excited to hear!

It sounds like you are having an incredible trip! Thanks for taking the time to post about what you are doing and what you are seeing. Living in Philadelphia, I really appreciate the good public transport report since ours is one of the worst in the country. Not quite sure I agree with your need for one dollar coins, but it would sure make my pockets more musical. Not a terrible thing I guess!

Have a great rest of the time and enjoy yourself!

3

Thanks for posting. Very glad to hear things have gone well, to date. Looking forward to updates as PAX Australia progresses!

4

Glad to hear it's going well so far. I'll be there by this evening! Super excited to meet the GTG folks and anyone from the forums who'll be there!

5

Day before the con was pretty uneventful. The GTG guys had done all the setup work by the time that Spouse and I arrived at the Showgrounds. We went for a very late lunch (Who knew the Aussies could do such good pizza?) and let it be extra leisurely as a whipping rain storm barreled in and we didn't relish make our way through the wet. 

 

Christopher has a lovely white box w/ Vengeance written on it filled with lovely, lovely playtest cards. We did a playtest at the booth and got trounced. Christopher took notes throughout. He seems to have reached the stage of just making pretty small tweaks and cleaning up a few things. We're hopeful to get in another play before the con is over.

 

The guys have been very nice about answering my endless stream of questions about how they run their company and their thoughts for the future. One of the things we discussed was how much they read the forums. If I'm remembering correctly, they all agreed that their favorite part of the forum is when people discuss the world of Sentinels and speculate on things. Playtesters (or anyone else), if you had any doubt about whether or not Christopher reads every word of these forums, fear not. He absolutely does. 

 

It was interesting getting their thoughts on what it will take to make Sentinels sustainable. It's not my place to talk about their business strategy much less details of their upcoming plans, but it was comforting to hear all the ideas they have about moving forward and about some of their plans. Lots of companies don't make it. I'm rooting for them. One of the things we talked about was the lifecycle of games -- over what period of time does a game catch on and eventually peak? How much, if any work, has been put into gathering data about the sales over time of different games in order to help forecast future sales? 

 

On another note, I'm so far underwhelmed by the Showgrounds as a place to hold this con. The Tabletop area is in a very large structure which is essentially a tent. The lighting is pretty awful. It's hard to find a spot where the lights aren't shining in one's eyes. The temperature is hard to regulate and on a day like today, windy and chilly, there was not only the wind and chill to contend with, but the noise of parts of that big tent flapping around.

 

The layout is also less than ideal. The Tabletop area is separated from other areas by a walk outside. They've put up an ostensibly nice tent tunnel to get from place to place, but it's not the kind of place where one would want to linger -- concrete floors and flapping walls. In the Tabletop section itself, the booths are all along a border with a field of tables in the middle. There's a chance that will work out, with people who are playing in tournaments being able to see all the booths, but I rather fear that the booths will become a forgotten edge of what's going on.

 

Also, getting from public transportation to the Showgrounds was a bit weird, with various gates closed off and having to walk long distances. Hopefully that won't affect the con itself as there are special trains running from the Central Business District straight to the Showgrounds. Another oddity about this show is that everyone in the Showgrounds during setup was required to wear a brightly-colored hazard vest. We got to buy those for $5 each. Oh. Gee. Thanks. Plus, I didn't quite catch the details, but it seems that GTG had to buy the more expensive chairs for their booth because the co. managing those sorts of things had run out of the cheaper chairs.

 

Due to the oddity of the sizes of the booth versus the sizes of the available tables, we only plan to run two games at a time in the booth, but we're hopeful that interested players will be able to spill over into the nearby tables that hopefully won't always be being used for tournaments. 

 

ok ... running out of steam ... that's it for tonight

6

Wow - that does sound like a very different kind of setup. Hopefully the weather will be better during the Con, itself, and things will go smoothly. Good luck!

7

Day 1 of PAX Australia complete!

 

Ow, ow, ow, feels my throat, though it is, at least, far better than it was four hours ago when we closed the booth. Eight hours of demo'ing in a smokey room (from the food service near us), trying to be heard over the din of the crowd had lead to much pain. I fell as if I have become one w/ the Halls cough drop.

 

The gaming and people have been great! No more or less great than people and games at other conventions. Just the same generally great, fun, enjoyable, enthusiastic gamers I've come to expect. The facilities? Cold, poorly lit, uncarpeted, layed out oddly, noisy, and smoky. So, boo.

 

I lost a demo game against Baron Blade! Granted, we were playing w/ only two heroes (H set to 3), but we were also only giving Blade half his hit points. The main reason we lost was because I was focusing on finishing the game quickly and having fun just hitting Blade and ignoring his stuff and the environment. It was loads of fun! And the person I was teaching immediately bought the game and vowed to bring his gaming group back. He'd dropped by after we'd decided to halt any new games for the day, but I decided to run something quick for him.

 

There seem to be a lot of Austrlian people named James.

 

The biggest excitement for me today was that despite the fact that I only follow two YouTube channels from Australia, the guy from one of them was selling a game in the booth next to us. SUR-REAL! (frezned, for those who may know the channel)

 

Hannah came today and volunteered! I had no idea who Hannah was today and, sadly, I still have little idea as I was focused almost exclusively on running games and I get seriously tunnel-visioned when I do so, but she seemed really friendly and sweet and I hope we have some chance to actually talk at some point.

 

The con has been a bit of a reversion, from my perspective, to earlier cons where we were running mostly demos to people who hadn't played, unlike PAX East where I mostly coordinated grouping together new players with an experienced player or two. Our two tables were full at almost all times and we often were able to sneak a third group onto a nearby tabletop tournament table. As I understand it (see tunnel vision, above) there were lots of people who decided not to wait for an open table. I have the impression that we could have kept four or five tables pretty full if we had them available.

 

Costumes! I saw people cosplaying as Wraith, Baron Blade, Mr. Fixer, and Tachyon! Didn't get any of my own pictures. I hear at least one was tweeted during the con.

 

Also grumpy inducing? Waiting 45 minutes for a train while being rained on. 

 

Now? bed!

 

 

8

I really enjoy reading your Con Reports, it's good to get an idea of how Sentinels is doing in other countries, and to hear all the exciting tidbits that (inevitably) leak out through your narative.

Thanks for taking the time to write down your thoughts afterwards, they are appreciated.

 

Also

45 minutes? Bah! London can put that to shame sir!

9

A couple other things ...

 

The booth is the same size as the PAX East booth, but there's only room for two games, not four. The orientation is such that there's only one side where we can spill out a bit rather than three and the tables are too short for two games, but too long to allow another table somewhere. The good news is that, unlike PAX East, those tables are quite comfortable for the games that are on them, rather than cramping together to fit two games.

 

Poor Aussies! Shipping charges are murder. Of course, this is true for lots of other places (UK, I'm looking at you). The only difference is that I've now had a chance to see people in person grappling with whether they want to risk buying ALL THE THINGS, or risk that they want those things later, but they're not available.

10

Hey, just putting in my two cents. I'm Hanna, by the way.

Really enjoyed the first day, and about to head out to the second! Can't wait.

 

Maybe it's because I'm from the mountains originally, but I actually found the stall and the Big Top we were in rather warm. We are in Melbourne in winter so it rains all the time, but being inside, I'm ok with that. Bought a green umbrella on my way back to the hotel.

 

I didn't many Jameses, but helped out an awful lot of Nathans. Managed to get two of the people I'm sharing a hotel room to stay and help out too, and we'll definitely be doing again if there's another PAX next year! 

11

NO ENHANCED EDITIONS LEFT. Sold out some time in mid to late afternoon today (Saturday). I think they'd brought 96 copies. It's _so_ expensive to ship to Australia, I think they had to be conservative with how much was shipped. The promo cards are all gone. The oversize villains and token packs are also gone. There are only five playmats left, I think. I think each of the expansions are down to about 10-12 remaining. There are tons of mini-expansions left.

 

Today's standout game -- a group of four who all insisted on playing the most complicated heroes possible. We ended up with Argent Adept, Absolute Zero, NightMist, and The Scholar. Lots of fun!

 

The booth was alternately slammed and half empty -- a lot more of the former than the latter. A lot of the latter, too, was early in the day or late in the evening. Pretty sure we had at least five games going in the afternoon. My thanks to all the people who volunteered to help teach and/or use their own playmats and copies of the game.

 

We've gotten to be fairly chummy with the folks at the next booth other, selling Story Wars. I'm looking forward to trying it tomorrow morning. Sounds like tons of fun.

 

I've gotten to meet people from all over Australia (well, mostly -- not sure I've met anyone from the Northern Territory on this trip yet) and a few other places. I've not yet run into any non-exhibitors who traveled from outside Australia, but their have been plenty from as far away as Perth and other parts of Western Australia. We had one precocious kid (10, maybe?) from Canberra who was good enough to run the villain after playing just once. He was _really_ into the game.

 

Off to sleep ...

12

Woke up early, so I'll post a bit here.

Saturday was great, apart from the two times I went to get food and look around at some of the other stalls, I was either playing or talking to people at the stall. 

Two biggest highlights: Playing Sentinels with Jordan from Axis of Awesome (The guy in the middle here http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fSuIZ11JdUg ) and Christopher's reaction to free Tim-Tams.

 

I had quite a few people come by who had played yesterday and just wanted to try more complex heros, so that was a lot of fun.

13

Thanks for coming all the way to Australia guys, it was great to see the Multiverse and the crew.  Missed out on the limited number of Enhanced Editions so will definitely be getting one of these from elsewhere soon!  My games were certainly more fun than I expected!

14

 

Yeah! Glad you liked it. Mark, did we meet and play together? I know I met at least a few Marks.

15

WHAT. A. DAY.

 

Most of Sunday was a fairly regular con day as I've come to expect it. Lots of playing Sentinels and people really seeming to enjoy it. As oft happens on Sundays, the games sold out. The last expansion went at about 3:30 pm, I think. All that was left after that were the mini-expansions.

 

As Hannah mentions above, part of the fun of the later days is getting to play the more difficult villains and more complex heroes with returning groups. Today's highlight for me was a couple that showed up with just 30 minutes left in the con who'd seen Baron Blade already, but wanted to see something different. I'm not entirely sure why, but I pulled out the Ennead. We had a blast. The game was over fairly quickly and the Ennead were pushovers because I only gave them each ten hit points, but the players really seemed to like them. 

 

Since we started the day with no EE at all, Hannah had the great idea to do demos with only decks from the various expansions, so people could get excited by decks that they would actually be able to purchase. That lead to lots of games with Chrono Ranger and Omnitron-X. Love those heroes. It was tons of fun.

 

BUT what really made the day was the end. The GTG guys did not want to have to ship _ANYTHING_ back to the US, so decided to auction off everything left in the booth at the end of the day. That included the price list, a big Sentinels banner, an extra set of tokens, a nearly pristine copy of EE that had been opened to fix another copy, but then had the missing cards replaced, and TWO full playtesting sets that had every one of the 48 decks that have been released. 

 

Christopher stood up on a table while a crowd of about 40 people gathered. The crowd payed rapt attention as Christopher encouraged people to outbid each other for various bits and bobs. The price list went for about 15 dollars, I think. The big banner went for about 45, I think. The tokens went for around 10 or 15 dollars. (That was because a fair number of people had bought just expansions and mini-expansions, so didn't have any tokens). Then came the main events. The nearly pristine EE copy went for 53 dollars, if I recall correctly. Finally, Christopher got down to what everyone was waiting for -- the 48-deck boxes. All of those cards would retail for 128 dollars, but they were opened and in some cases heavily used. A many-sided bidding war broke out. There was lots of back and forth. The final prices for the two sets were somewhere around 180 each.

 

Then, just as the auction seemed to be over, Christopher decided to do one last auction. He pulled out his own personal copy of Young Legacy and offered it up to the crowd. This is from a very small stash of copies, numbered in the low single digits, that he has held on to for special occassions. The only times I know about him having parted with one of these in the past have been to close personal friends. The bidding was intense. There are probably no more than a few copies of this card in the entire country. The eventual winner paid 66 dollars, and got a big round of applause.

 

Even with selling all of their merch, GTG will lose money on this convention, but the goal is a long term one -- to build recognition and set the stage for sustainability. GTG has already decided they will return to PAX Australia next year (assuming it doesn't conflict with anything major). By then there will be more products, they can get a bigger booth, and move towards sustainability. Perhaps more importantly, lots of people will go back to their homes across Australia, show the game to their friends, and hopefully generate more demand. 

 

There was only one other booth of a game creator selling their own game and it was right next to us. We all got chummy through the show and went out for drinks afterword. I'm an old man who has to get up early in the morning, so left before the others. For all I know, they're still at the pub. The creator of the other game (Story War) had at least one suggestion for selling Sentinels that I thought was really useful. He observed that the game can easily look like it's really complicated, but in fact it is very eay to learn how to play. He suggested that the booth should have something that clearly shouts that out to passerbys, so they will be less likely to think they wouldn't want to take the time to learn the game.

 

Well, that's about it. I've got some pictures and will probably share them eventually. From down under this has been Skippy the Kangaroo reporting. May all your days be Inspired and Galvanized.

16

I think Andy has covered pretty much everything, just wanted to say that I had a great time meeting everyone, and I'll be seeing you next year!

 

17

No, though I did have a couple games on Saturday, and was there to see the last game finish and the exciting auction yesterday, but didn't come away with nothing from the auction.

 

And was great to come away with great signed prints too!

18

I just wanted to say thanks so much to the guys for making their trip out to Australia for PAX AUS. A friend of mine has had the game for a while but I only got to play when I visited him (He cosplayed as Baron Blade at PAX). Getting to the booth to snap up everything on the Friday of the covention was the best decision I made and I'm taking it to a gaming meetup this weekend. Can't wait to PAX next year and hope to see them there again.

19

Yeah hopefully PAX will make better use of the Big Top tent next year, they could fit in more tabletop space!  Also ordered a couple hours what I missed after boxes sold out at PAX!

20

Well if they make it bigger next year that will probably need to take over another building or two, or possibly move it to the Melbourne Expo Centre.