Hey everyone. I'm heading off to GenCon this year in August. A friend of mine (owner of Radiance House publishing) and I are going to be getting a booth, theoretically in the entrepenuer section. It's freakin' expensive! Anyway, I've never been to a convenstion before so I was wondering if anyone had any tips for me about ways to get people's attention. For decor I have planned a 3' x 4' full color map of the Realms of Twilight world and a table covering (about 3' wide) that has the Silver Crescent Publishing logo hanging down on the front of the table.

Also, I'm going to be writing a few relatively short adventures (approx. 20 pages each) set in various places in my world at the request of Dungeonmastering.com. If anyone has any suggestions for professional appearing mapping software (primarily indoor settings with the square grid) please let me know. Anyone who wants to try these adventures once they are written, also let me know. They will be in the Pathfinder rule set, so bear that in mind.

Thanks a lot everyone.

Steelight

Is there anyone else here who is planning to go to GenCon in Indianapolis?

I found some map making software. It was on the dice rollers top 100. Number 2 i think. Dinnjinni, it costs $40 if you want to save and print your maps though.

Thanks for the tip. Any other suggestions from anyone?

It really depends on what's your objective in having the booth. Spreading awareness of your company and it's products? Then an attractive both is nice, but what will draw people closer? Who are you trying to meet? Do you want them to linger? Live demos and/or author chats at pre-announced times will bring people back, and give you time to deliver your message. Giveaways with your logo can remind people of your company website and name after GenCon, but the important thing to anything you try is make it relevant to what you want to achieve with the big expense of being there.

I was just at retail's biggest show (aptly called The Big Show) in NYC and the company beside us had Jabberwockee performing live on a huge stage every hour on the hour. Hideously expensive, attracted huge crowds, but in the end, not too many CIOs were impressed. The convention maintenance crews loved it, however.

My purpose in getting a booth is two-fold. First is spreading awareness of my company and my products. Second is to actually sell my merchandise (i.e. my books). T-shirts (as far as I've found thus far) are kind of expensive, though if a professional such as yourself thinks that it might help, I'll have to put a bit more thought into it. The author talks is a good idea that I think I'll try to make work. We only have a 10' square booth, but I'm sure we could find a way to figure out how to do it. With me being the author and publisher, at least I know the author will always be available. Any other tips? I don't have much to go on so I appreciate any advice I can get.

RPTools has a program similar to dundjinni but is absolutely free. You can download a lot of free packages from their forums, including interiors. Also, if you have an existing map on your computer, you can import it. I know it supports square grids and hexigonal grids, as well as no grids, and you can use this for online games. I would highly recommend it.

It also has couple of other handy tools which are also free to download.

I'll have to download that and play around with it a bit. If it does everything I need that might be the perfect solution. Is it user friendly?

Relatively speaking, I could use it acceptably well after playing around with it somewhat and watching the tutorials (I recommend watching them) so I'd say they're user friendly.

If you are skilled in such things, it also allows you to program some macros to make your game more personalized and smooth. You could have a macro roll certain dice and add certain modifiers (I think), like for a Spot check. Personally, I don't use that part much because I'm not good with program languages. I'm not even sure if I'm explaining this in any understandible way.

Are the tutorials online or part of the download?

The purpose, as I'm sure you read, is to use the mapping software for the maps in adventures. From what you are saying it seems like this could be very effective for this once I get a handle on the layout and how it works. Would that be an accurate assumption?

I'd say so. I don't think it is very effective for printing but if you can link a computer to a bigger screen it is very easy to switch between maps within the same campaign.

And the tutorials are all online, I'm afraid, and not part of the download.

I probably should mention that RPTools updates the MapTool pretty frequently (and the other programs less frequently) so I'm not sure what new features are with the newest update.

When I get off of work today I'll download the software and play with it a bit this weekend. I'll hold you to your recommendation though. If the software doesn't work I'll come looking for you.


So, about GenCon... is no one in the entire Inn planning on going?

Alright time to play stupid what the h*** is gen con and where do I find info on it because the way you discribe it, it sounds pretty neat

GenCon is the largest convention for RPGs, Sci-Fi, magic the gathering, etc. in the United States. It happens in Indianapolis, Indiana and is going on August 5th-8th this year. Go to www.gencon.com for details on it. If you plan on going, I would purchase your tickets and book your hotel rooms sooner rather than later. They have special rates for those with gencon tickets (which you can get to via the gen con website). They have games going 24 hours, and hundreds of booths dedicated to gaming (board games, video games, table-top RPGs, and general books) an author's corner and an entrepenuers section (which is where I will be). Basically it is the largest 4 days of gaming possible. Check it out. This year will be my first year going, so I hope I get some time away from my booth to explore a bit.

So no one from the Inn is planning on going to Gen Con? How depressing. I was kinda hoping to actually meet som of you guys and ladies there.