OK, what went on at Ropecon and what was it like?
I'll spin off threads about individual games (AP, etc.), but keep this about the con in general.
It was a good con. It was well attended and had a laid back feel to it. I would say the male/female balance was about 50-50, which is astonishing to anyone used to a heavily male dominated con.
They had a beach volleyball court set up, plenty of LARPs, CCGs, Wargames and RPGs too. A really high percentage of the attendees were in costume too, a lot of it computer game oriented, or anime.
I guess it was like a large LARP event in some ways, but there are also many different types of LARP (some with boffer weapons, some more like UK freeform, etc.).
As for us? We played a lot of games over the 3 days: Kill Puppies for Satan, A Reason To Murder (playtest), Dead of Night (demo), Contenders (demo), Labyrinths & Lycanthropes (2 playtests), Entropy & Enlightenment (playtest), Best Friends, Sign in Stranger (demo), Zombies At The Door!, "Builders" (playtest).
We also discussed some games in small groups too: a Finnish Mythological game, Dragon Versus The Gun, a Finnish Philosophy/Concept Game, and Dead of Night.
And we saw some talks: Gender in Roleplaying, Design Patterns in Games, Non-Cooperation Between Electronic Games Designers, and Design Pattern Analysis of "Builders".
The building is huge and full of gamers, but the part we were in didn't get huge traffic (you had to want to find it to find it I think). Some of the games that interested browsers were slightly different from the UK too. Dead of Night got thumbed a lot and seemed the first stop for a lot of people coming to the table. Mob Justice was looked at a fair bit too, while Cold City which was the main target at Games Expo seemed to interest the Finns less (perhaps the subject matter doesn't make much of a hook for them?).
Sales were OK (given the traffic) and Eero took a pile of books for his shop. I think they will do OK as, for instance, the Contenders demo guys didn't buy the book but indicated they'll pick it up from Eero.
From memory (and Joe has the numbers and so on) the sales were as follows (sold at con, sold to Eero):
Best Friends: 2, 8
Cold City: 0, 4
Cold City Companion: 0, 2
Contenders: 0, 12
Covenant: 1, 0
Dead of Night: 1, 6
Mob Justice: 1, 2
Swansong: 1, 3
So, yeah, Sami and Olli were good to us. Markus and Eero Tuovinen looked after us a lot too, and we're really grateful for that.
Definitely worth going to for the experience.
Also the games game us a lot of interesting talking points and feedback, which I'll flag up in other posts.
Briefly I thought that L&L looks finished and ready to go, A Reason To Murder needs some thinking from Graham but is solid and fun, and E&E has some pretty fundamental problems that might prevent it ever being realisable as a game.
Oh, also it is a "dry" con with drinking not allowed in the con areas (it seemed only the Cantina could have beer in it). This initial fright was soon wiped out by us demolishing cans of beer and a litre bottle of Jim Beam at the hotel over the con. ;)
How many games designers can you fit in a taxi?
Submitted by Matt on Tue, 14/08/2007 - 12:36.
I think that's a great overview.
It's a varied and interesting convention, with lots going on (and that can cause clashes, I didn't get to jeepform in the end).
I think we could also have grabbed people for demos more, and been more pushy in general, but I think the language barrier makes that harder.
E&E has some pretty fundamental problems that might prevent it ever being realisable as a game.
I did warn you it was rough! I actually think Dragon vs Gun handles similar issues in a more interesting way, so there's much to think about... Maybe in another thread.
-Matt
Realms Publishing
Sounds like you had a really
Submitted by Iain McAllister on Tue, 14/08/2007 - 14:02.
Sounds like you had a really good time, one for next year for me I think. The talks sound interesting too so i will be looking forward to hearing about those.
Would you be interested in doing a review for the e-zine Gregor. Impressions etc.
Cheers
Iain
Mob Justice now available!
'The Giant Brain':Small games, big ideas.
Sounds like you had a great
Submitted by Andrew Kenrick on Tue, 14/08/2007 - 14:17.
Sounds like you had a great time, and played lots of great games. How was SiS? I'm very intrigued by that.
I'd be interested in hearing what you thought of DoN too.
Oh, superb. Tell me about A
Submitted by Graham W on Tue, 14/08/2007 - 14:21.
Oh, superb.
Tell me about A Reason To Murder when you get a moment.
Graham
A reason to murder
Submitted by Matt on Tue, 14/08/2007 - 14:23.
Tell me about A Reason To Murder when you get a moment.
It is awesome and needs publishing!
-Matt
Realms Publishing
Sami, DON, SiS, ARTM
Submitted by Gregor Hutton on Tue, 14/08/2007 - 14:53.
E-zine
More interesting for the e-zine might be getting something from Sami Koponen in Finland. Maybe how he sees us from outside? Sami is also going to start a thread here and interview us.
The DoN demo needs shortened for GenCon, but I can do that. I found that getting through survival points to kill something was taking time. Really people just need to see them being used/taken away and tension being altered. They can join the dots quite well once they see the game playing.
Joe can tell more about SiS.
I plan to have a long thread detailing ARTM. Essentially it was solid but with a few problems: Turns 1 and 2 were great we could maybe have done with a third one; the detective effectively watches the others play in Act 2; turn order becomes important in Act 2, maybe the Detective should set the order after the Victim is killed; we found Compulsion scenes problematic; the black die was perfect the white die was problematic -- what exactly is heroism?; 0 influence wound up being quite common in our relationships and after two days of thinking about it I wondered if each player could get a red "desperation" dice that they could give to another player during that round? Detail of the game to appear in AP probably after GenCon unless Joe, Matt or somebody jumps in with a thread first. Fun game, solid, needs tweaked.
Ta!
Ropecon
Submitted by JoE PrincE on Tue, 14/08/2007 - 16:46.
Gregor is right with the sales figures.
How was SiS? I'm very intrigued by that.
I'd be interested in hearing what you thought of DoN too.
Shared Imagined Space? Oh Sign in Stranger. Took me a while to work that out.
I only played a very brief demo with Emily and a couple of others, basically we went through chargen and world creation.
It's very simple, for a character you invent a name, where on earth their from and what their old job was. Everyone writes down a reason for leaving earth and these are distributed randomly.
Then you choose what new profession yor character learns at the moonbase before heading off to Alien worlds.
I was Charlie VanHousen an ex moblie phone salesman from South Africa. I was leaving earth because of money troubles and retrained in trade and economics.
World creation is lots of fun, it's like Consequences or Eat Poo orwhatever you call that game where you write a line, fold the page over it and pass it on. This creates the size of planets names and traits of Aliens and what they're looking for. We came up with some really funny things: flying berserkers looking for masseurs (Gordon's alive!), insectoids who existed in several places at once - they needed psychotherapy (well wouldn't you?), altrustic absorbers of organic matter looking for plant farmers.
Mercifully it was 100 times faster than world creation in Burning Empires. Yet you still got a good feel for the worlds.
From my quick first impression the game looks very interesting, with a wider scope and more structure than Emily's previous titles. I reckon it'll do well at Indy.
Oh as for DoN that poor vampire keeps getting his ass kicked by those pesky kids and their little dawg too! Is there any way to toughen him up? In a shorter demo this won't matter I suppose.
+++
JoE
+++
Prince of Darkness Games
Rock N' Role-Play....
He always gets beat in my
Submitted by Andrew Kenrick on Thu, 23/08/2007 - 21:16.
He always gets beat in my demos too!