Whispers from the front

Hey, folks! For those who might enjoy hearing a bit about what’s going on here at Origins …

We have been fighting the daunting DOCTOR DISORGANIZATION!

Origins for some reason thought there were two separate booths – one for Greater than Games, then another for Sentinels of the Multiverse. Then they gave us too many chairs. Then they took all of our chairs. Then some cool people at the Catalyst booth let us use some of their chairs. Then those chairs got taken. Then the cool people at Catalyst gave us some more chairs. Then all of Catalyst’s chairs got taken! We spent a lot of time fighting the chair wars. In the end, the evil chair fiends were thwarted … for now.

We had the booth set up early and proceeded to do some playtesting there. That attracted some nice attention from the convention staff and other exhibitors. All of the decks are playing really well. Christopher has done a few small tweaks to them, particularly to Apostate, as he moves towards finalizing them. A short while ago we finished a game of Unity, Argent Adept, and Bunker versus Apostate in the Tomb of Anubis. It was a thrilling nail biter that came down to the wire.

Christopher, aside from leading the setup, dealing with the chair fiends, and running the playtests, has also been making connections – talking to retailers, reviewers, and other designers. He has been a very, very busy man. Even now he’s down at the hotel business center doing more work.

The booth looks awesome and there’s a lot of buzz about the game. I am expecting we’ll be mobbed. Which should
be interesting given that we have very few Core games to sell. We’re hoping people will be placated with pre-orders of Enhanced Edition.

Signing off for now. I’ll try to post further installments, as time allows.

You think Doctor Disorganization and that chair army are bad? Just wait till the horde of crazed con-goers shows up demanding phat loot!

Tweaks to… I’m crying with happiness over here. You have no idea.

Also, does Christopher ever sleep? Man, he’s going to pass out so hard once Infernal Relics and the Enhanced Edition go to the printers, only to get up a half hour later and start preparing all the Kickstarter rewards. XD

No.

He’s killing us! The guy’s a taskmaster! :-X

(Kidding - but he really never stops, always moving, always doing. Seriously, the man is a force of nature, and I mean that in a good way. :slight_smile: )

Rabit

The Trial of A Newbie

Today the hordes descended. Well, sorta.

If you were one of those people, please give us a shout here!

We got to the booth early for some last minute prep and shenanigans. As I walked toward the booth I saw the back wall falling over and being caught at the last minute. The setup people were taping down carpet as late as that afternoon!

Then came the waiting, and for me, some anxiety. Would I be able to make a demo fun?! For eight hours over and over again?! Would the congoers be bizarro weirdos who asked strange questions and couldn’t understand the game?!

It all worked out great. People seemed to really enjoy learning the game. Traffic was steady, if intermittent. We’d often have both tables running demos and even have a person or two waiting, but sometimes have lulls with no one. Those were nice, actually. A welcome rest.

One of the games we played, instead of being just a demo, was for Christopher to show Galen how Absolute Zero can be effective when there’s no Legacy, Obsidian Fields, etc. to do boosts. We set up Expatriette, Legacy, and Tempest vs Baron Blade in Megalopolis …
… and got our butts kicked! Blade had 20+ HPs at the end when we died. A sad, ignominious loss.

Sales have been slower than I expected, frankly, but it’s only Thursday. The crowd was quite sparse. At GenCon, even on a Thursday, it can be hard to get through the crowds. No problem with that here.

I had dinner with some friends from Columbus, but Christopher and Russ camped out in the open gaming area, both playtesting and letting the occasional passerby see the game. I joined them for one game at the end and found to my surprise that even after playing Legacy all day long, I was still happy to play Legacy again, though I did switch to Young Legacy.

Good night and good luck.

These updates are fun. Keep them coming. :slight_smile:

Story Time & Brushes with Fame

A definite uptick in traffic today, though still not particularly busy.

I don’t think anyone’s done an inventory, but I’d guess we’ve sold a couple dozen of the core game and as many as twice that of Rook City. We’ve also been taking preorders for Enhanced Edition and Infernal Relics and about fifteen people have done that so far.

It’s generally been lots of fun to demo the game. Amongst the best was when a young girl sat down with what seemed to be her father beside her. She didn’t really grok all the mechanics of the game, so it became much less about strategy and more about the exciting story of facing off against the vile Plague Rat. There were just two heroes and, in fact, we were vanquished, but she seemed to still have a great time.

Another interesting game was when a person rolled a die to see how many turns of the game he was willing to play. The result? Three. So he and I played Legacy and Tempest against Plague Rat (though with only 25 HP to start) in Insula Primalis. I cheated a bit and had us do three ROUNDS instead of TURNS. That proved enough for us to be able to vanquish the sewer fiend.

My biggest challenge, it turns out, has been handling sales. The main problem is that I so rarely do it and I’m so unused to using smart phones, that I have to stop and really think about it, which has been unexpectedly challenging in the midst of the maelstrom that the booth can become. Another thing I’ve noticed is how oblivious I become to what else is going on in the booth with I’m running a demo. Games might be being sold or restocked. People might be waiting to playtest. Christopher might head out to take care of something. All I notice, though, is whether or not Plague Rat needs to flip.

It’s great fun to say hello to people we know who come by the booth or that we see elsewhere. We chatted with Richard Launius today as well as a few of his friends from Atlanta. There was also some apparently well-known author who came by or was near us or something. Russ or Christopher will have to tell you who he was. I’d never heard of him.

Playtesting continues. Today GloomWeaver got some final tweaks. We were playing against him in the Realm of Discord when Richard stopped by!

Yeah, definitely an interesting day. For those interested, the author was Patrick Rothfuss (of The Kingkiller Chronicle fame. Christopher was really stoked to talk to him, as he’s a fan. :slight_smile:

Being used to GenCon, Origins is a much smaller, lighter event. I’ve never been able to speed walk my way through the Exhibitor’s hall at GenCon without stopping (and usually multiple times), but for lunch today I made it out and back without a pause.

And after the Exhibitor hall closed, we did some play testing of Infernal Relics, as Andy mentioned, above. The last game was amazingly hilarious: Christopher had us pick a “dream team” to take on DreamWeaver and see how it would play out. I won’t talk about who we used or provide details of the game, but I will say we did 148 points of damage in 4 rounds, completely annihilating him! It was an entertaining and hilarious game - and all the heroes were from the core set! :smiley:

Time to crash - these days really wipe me out. Christopher is still going strong back at the convention center, though! :o I have no idea how he does it…

Can’t wait to hear more about this new villain you mentioned, DreamWeaver. Obviously a negative universe mirror image of the GloomWeaver. :wink:

DreamWeaver is a villain that creates annoying websites. You have to destroy him before he buys up all the IP addresses.

[quote="“imprimis5"”]

DreamWeaver is a villain that creates annoying websites. You have to destroy him before he buys up all the IP addresses.
[/quote]He’s what’s happens when a writer doesn’t get enough sleep - and when he has the song “Dream Weaver” stuck in his head because he’s been playing GloomWeaver. ;D

Looooong days. 8)

Oh whoa-oh GloomWeaver. I believe you can get me through the ni-hight!

Fixed that for ya. :wink:

+1

I love the field reports. Keep them coming.

And how! I’m surprised he didn’t melt into a little puddle of fan squee :stuck_out_tongue: (Like I pretty much did when I got to talk to Gail Simone once OMGOMGOMG)

There’s a fine art to putting off the need for sleep for a few days (It’s called denial :P), but you still always have to pay the price eventually. Similar principle to being a techie for show week(s) in theatre.

Learning retail style multitasking is a challenge if you’ve never had to do it before. Especially if there are only one or two other people working with you.

Me too! Thanks for the updates guys!

Late, late night last night. I had no alcohol but feel like I have a hangover.

Saturday was busier, but still just not so busy. Cutest moment was when a young kid who’d demoed the game wanted to have their picture taken with me.

Saturday night we shepherded a group of people in the board game room who’d checked out SotM from the CABS library. The Columbus Area Boardgame Society (I think) has a ridiculous number of games. They keep them in half a dozen rolling cabinets. Their games get so much usage that they sleeved two entire sets of donated SotM on the spot. Since being donated a couple of days ago, both copies have been almost constantly checked out.

The people playing last night were active members of CABS. Their very first game was with AZ, Bunker, Ra, and The Wraith against Dawn in Atlantis. With some guidance, they had a hard-fought game but pulled out a victory with an incredible last round blast of damage and Dawn being chomped by the Kracken. They wanted an easy game for their second game and ended up with a cakewalk against Blade. They invited a fifth person who they thought would love AZ for their next game and since there were five of them were worried that it would be too easy, so we recommended they play against Advanced Voss. Imagine the poor guy who is playing his first game of SotM as AZ versus Advanced Voss. Unfortunately we couldn’t stay to see how well they did …

(Edit: Apparently they just barely pulled out a win! The guy playing AZ came by the booth today to ask some rules questions)

Christopher and I hung out in the area where people w/ unpublished games could show them off to each other, with Christopher making contacts with other designers/publishers. While there I played a game besides SotM for the first time in seemingly forever. As the rules were being explained and I realized that I was going to be playing AGAINST someone else, it just felt so strange …

One more day in the booth, today, so we are packing all of our stuff up and checking out of the hotel before going off to the con.

I understand this feeling completely. :slight_smile:

WRAPUP – Scattered thoughts

Folks, the best time to demo a game is NOT on the last day. Voices shot, overtired from lack of sleep, and loopy from the same game over and over again, I sometimes simply failed at making words and/or said some of the craziest things.

Hmmm … maybe last day is the best day to do a demo …

The con was a success. Perhaps not a roaring success, but still quite good. The first edition of the Core game is now completely sold out except for a small stock of scratch and dent available from the website. I enjoyed the raised eyebrow from the patron to whom I mentioned that I was selling the 4,999th copy of the game. You know what else is getting rare? The art print for Fanatic. There are less than ten of those left.

Silliest demo I did? One person said they were really short on time so I said I could demo the game in 30 seconds. I took 15 to explain the characters and another 15 to do a bunch of very fast play. They were suitably impressed.

Hey, I’ve been a con-goer. I’m jealous of my time and snooty about what games I do or don’t like. I don’t want to waste my time playing some crap I don’t care about. I understand when someone is reluctant to commit to doing a demo, risking being sucked into some interminable experience. Luckily, SotM is made of awesome. I saw a lot of hesitant people get really engaged and totally lose track of time. THAT was awesome.

After four days straight of demos, followed by playtesting and/or helping SotM players in the board room, it’s hard to remember a time when I wasn’t constantly playing SotM. I know Baron Blade’s deck REALLY, REALLY well now.

SotM occupies an odd place, it seems to me, in the pantheon of games. On the one hand, it is a smashing success. 5,000 copies of the core game sold in less than a year! Two successful Kickstarters! Lots of great buzz and press. On the other hand, it is still a very small game compared to the big players. The people who make up GtG are not rolling in dough. Quite the opposite. They have pushed all of their income back into the company to keep things going. We drove to this con, all shared one hotel room, and ate cheap. So the other independent publishers are amazed at what GtG/SotM has achieved, but companies like Mayfair probably spend more on marketing for a single con then GtG spends on everything combined.

This is very much an experiment in progress, folks, and we all have the opportunity to join in on the ride. Can our heroes find a path to sustaining themselves and this small company, navigating murky waters and endless challenges? Stay tuned!

30 seconds?

I know I can explain the game flow in 15 seconds, but how do you ‘play a bunch’ in the other 15?