Post-PAX
Originally published at xenoglyph: the alien writings of designer joshua a.c. newman. Please leave any comments there.
[This post was sitting here, unpublished, because I was so tired when I got back from PAX that I got taken out by a cold for a week.]
PAX was wonderful. Got to rock some good science fiction at the table, ran into a guy from my college RPG, sold more than I’ve ever sold at a con before.
Christian, AKA Father Fletch, the dude who runs the tabletop area, made us feel very, very welcome. A bunch of us are trying to figure out how to get to PAX Prime in Seattle for August now.
The two panels I was on: How to Use Kickstarter to Fund Your Project with Evan Balster, Andrew Plotkin, Max Temkin, and me (modded by Cindy Au), and How To Get What You Want Out of Your GM with Jack Graham, Luke Crane, and me (modded by Thor Olavsrud) were astonishingly, knee-knockingly well-attended. Hundreds of people. The latter one was at an awkward time: as the con was closing. I’m hoping that doesn’t happen again. It didn’t seem to dramatically affect attendance, but it did shut down a lot of post-seminar discussion that could have led excited people to our booths to see what we were talking about.
Our Indie Bazaar grossed about twice what we made the last time we hit up Gen Con, too, and at a lower cost. We’re still sorting out the money, and if the other publishers want to, I’ll publish the numbers here.
PAX is a wonderful crowd. They’re at the expo because they want to learn about new ways to play. We talked and played with a lot of people who had never played RPGs before and gave a bunch of them very strong first impressions. It’s a beautiful thing when someone’s first time playing an RPG is Apocalypse World, Misspent Youth, or Shock: We get to go straight for the meat of the game and don’t have to worry about explaining that it’s different than they know.
And then there are the experienced D&D players who are looking for other kinds of experiences. They’re eager to see other things, to look in other directions. Those guys are fun, too. I’m particularly excited when it’s someone who loves D&D but wants to add other techniques to their experience. Those people are our people srsly.
So thank you PAX, thank you Father Fletch, and thank you PAXketeers for making it a fantastic weekend.