Cool day in Tampere, as I teamed up with the Arkkikivi people to come on up to the con. They displayed what they called the largest selection of indie RPGs in the world, and I had a wide variety of OSR products, although the full shipment from the States has yet to arrive.
I did a Game Designer panel with a few Finnish designers and one Norwegian guy (not wanting to name names because I'm low on time and can't spell any of their names by memory :P)
It's a soft sales convention, as I had been warned about, since these days it's 95% anime kids.
Still, there was some interest in my stuff. Death Frost Doom was my biggest seller of the day, and while I did sell far more of my stuff than anyone else's at my table, and a decent amount of people were well amazed by the box (I brought it along as a teaser, release will be at Ropecon) and said they'll buy it, none of that actually got the interested people to my table.
What brought the people there and made them realize that "Old School Is Here" was the cover of The Pod-Caverns of the Sinister Shroom. That, with its bright blue cover, Poag artwork, and such a evocative title, got people's attention and gave them the right idea about the whole table.
An interesting thing to consider for all of us not wanting to ape old TSR graphic design...
After the convention, 10 of us went out to eat at this nice pizzeria and then we hung out on the patio of a bar, split up into two groups to play games.
The group I was in...
We played Maid.
I did a Game Designer panel with a few Finnish designers and one Norwegian guy (not wanting to name names because I'm low on time and can't spell any of their names by memory :P)
It's a soft sales convention, as I had been warned about, since these days it's 95% anime kids.
Still, there was some interest in my stuff. Death Frost Doom was my biggest seller of the day, and while I did sell far more of my stuff than anyone else's at my table, and a decent amount of people were well amazed by the box (I brought it along as a teaser, release will be at Ropecon) and said they'll buy it, none of that actually got the interested people to my table.
What brought the people there and made them realize that "Old School Is Here" was the cover of The Pod-Caverns of the Sinister Shroom. That, with its bright blue cover, Poag artwork, and such a evocative title, got people's attention and gave them the right idea about the whole table.
An interesting thing to consider for all of us not wanting to ape old TSR graphic design...
After the convention, 10 of us went out to eat at this nice pizzeria and then we hung out on the patio of a bar, split up into two groups to play games.
The group I was in...
We played Maid.
James,
ReplyDeleteI can think of things more disturbing than you playing Maid.
But in general I don't want to.
What brought the people there and made them realize that "Old School Is Here" was the cover of The Pod-Caverns of the Sinister Shroom...
ReplyDeleteAn interesting thing to consider for all of us not wanting to ape old TSR graphic design...
Which I think proves that while the desire to move away from such artwork in old school products is admirable - in an effort to reach a younger audience for instance - there are likewise good reasons for using it as a "brand" identifier. I guess it comes down to whether such artwork attracts more customers than it repels. :-)