Comicon Aftermath

I had a great time at Comicon - not least because it gave me a chance to meet in person a couple of people who have been friends online for a bit, now.

As you probably remember from last week, I was there to run 13th Age demos.

The game area at Comicon was ... my good friend +Wade Rockett joked that they should call it "Mom's Basement" - because we were not very visible at all, and so if you weren't looking for games, you would never accidentally stumble across them.  Which was a shame. And we were in the basement.

But traffic down there was surprisingly steady - I think Wizards of the Coast and Paizo had made a big push to get the word out. And that push was greatly appreciated by everyone in the area.

The tables we had were apparently gifted to us by Gamerati, which was nice of them.

The tables were land-locked (not along an aisle), meaning it was that much harder to get players. But we did what we could.

The first demo on Saturday morning started when a man stopped by and asked, "Can you play a dragon in this game?"

I think the best way to highlight how much fun people had at the con with the demo is to list the One Unique Things which I saw and/or heard about:

• I was raised by a family of zombies (The character's name was Graaaaaaaar).
• I have the Mark of the Black Heart, which leaves visible marks on my face.
• I am the only housebroken dwarf (My response to this was, "Really?"  to which was told, "Well, they live in caves, don't they?").
• I use mathematical equations instead of rituals to cast spells
• I was born with a wooden thumb.
• I am an embarrassing bastard of the Dwarf King.
• I once spoke with Gorogan's Maw (it's a face that appears on the map).
• The Great Gold Wyrm revived me as a being of light after my body was destroyed when the Abyss opened.
• I have an iron cast on my left leg which slows me down so my heart doesn't explode.
• I'm too old for this shit.
• I can't tell the difference between dragons.
• I am slowly turning into living iron, starting with my feet.

So you can tell people had fun.

I didn't run a ton of demos, but I gave a ton of spiels.  We had a number of players who were Pathfinder Society DMs or who were official Wizards of the Coast Demo Folk. And they referred others to our tables, which was nice. And it told me that the game was on target.

I know we made some sales, too.  One guy came in on Saturday with his Escalation Edition PDF on his tablet.  "After last night's demo," he said, "I knew I had to own this one."

Sunday evening, after the convention, most of us headed out for dinner with Rob Heinsoo, one of the designers.  We had a great time and talked about a bunch of different games and the industry and just generally had a great time.