Would there be any interest in a small CE/indie games stall/demo programme at the next Concrete Cow in September?

We had a trader at Concrete Cow on Saturday, selling second-hand stuff, and they made a bit of money. Not a vast amount, but enough to make it worth their while coming. They also said that there would be room for another, complementary seller at the next Concrete Cow. Would the CE be interested in having such a presence?

I ran four or five Esoterrorist demos at Dragonmeet last year. They went OK but I didn't really get to the meat of the game, I didn't really show what it was about. We did get a few sales on the back of them, possibly because they were fun, but not because they really showcased the game.

So I've been reading up on demos, here mainly but a few other places too and I've written a rough demo outline that I think does a much better job of highlighting the different parts of play.

Have you got a 15 minute Best Friends demo handy, Gregor? Or can you explain to me how you demo it in 15 (or 20 or 30) minutes? I'd like to demo it at Conception and pimp your wares!

So we've talked about the art of the 15 minute demo, but all the talk about Conpulsion has got me thinking about the 1 hour games some of us are planning for the indie games track. So what should a 1 hour game do? How much should it show? How much should it be a game vs demo?

Dead of Night lends itself very well to 1 hour games (or slightly longer), as it easily possible to complete a whole adventure in that time, so players get experience a complete game.

But how do other games work in an hour slot?

I ran four 30 minute demos at Dragonmeet for Esoterrorists and played in Matt's 15 minute Covenant demo so I thought I'd post about my experience.

Esoterrorists has mechanics for plot, much more so than many Indie games and, as such, it's difficult to run a very short demo which is why I went for the 30 minute one. On reflection, I'm not sure I chose the best scenario for showcasing all that the system does because I think the focus may have been more on the adventure rather than the system. I'll have to think about this some more and would welcome any advice.

Matt ran his short demo which show very well how scenes work in Covenant. I asked loads of questions which Matt answered and I got a good idea of how play works in the immediate. I'm still not sure how this would transpose to longer term play but I'm not sure how that can be addressed in such a short demo.