We're back from Indianapolis and the fantastic Gen Con 2009. We had a great four day show with help from Stephen Helleiner (Lead Designer), Craig Ham (Lead Playtester), Karl Ham (aka "Jim Morrison"), Connor "the Shark" Ham, and yours truly, Mike Wills (President). Here we are at the very sparse Booth #1439 inside the Indianapolis Convention Hall:
Luckily we had lots of help to go from sparse to WOW! Although the five convention attendees set things up we couldn't have done it without the support and assistance of our stay at home development partners, Rob Franklin and Scott Jack. A special thanks to Nathan and Sue at the
http://www.writersoftheroundtable.com for the stand up banners, information handouts, and booth signage. Their contribution made our presentation special and we are pleased to report that everything was on site the morning of day 1. Here is how it all came together:
We were ready when they opened the doors - but we had NO idea what was coming. For four days we talked and played and talked some more. The Herobits booth was always busy with people learning about and playing the game. We had players young and old come over and try Herobits:
When we were not talking and/or playing we were probably wandering around the convention to check out all the other great games, like
http://www.heromages.com Hero Mages from D20 Studios LLC. Not just games though as Craig discovered some of the most amazing gaming tables on one of his recon missions. The tables are by a company called Geek Chic
http://www.geekchichq.com and they're second to none. What's more, the Geek Chic team invited us to display Herobits cards on one of the game tables in their booth; we said, "hell yes" and here they are:
One of my favourite parts of the show was finally meeting Ed Greenwood in person. I still can't quite understand why Ed has been so helpful nor can I say enough good things about the man. On Saturday he wore his Herobits golf shirt around the show and to fan signings (his fans that is). Thanks Ed! We also had a number of other writers and artists come by the booth. We're anxious to work with them and will be focusing on getting our first Herobits short fiction writing contest rolling soon.
Was Gen Con a lot of work? Yes. Was it worth every minute of it? Absolutely!
In fact, we've already got our first official review of the Herobits game, and we scored an impressive (in my humble opinion) 8.5 out of 10 - so go check it out at:
http://geekspective.com/2343/herobit...-a-bit-of-fun/
Michael Wills