From the article archive
Episode 37: Part Three
I know, I know. I’ve been a very bad boy. I should have gotten this done while at the con. I should have stopped by the booth and written it out while the show was still going.
Bad John. No biscuit.
So, let’s get back to business, shall we?
I fly out of San Jose airport, arriving in Los Vegas an our or so later. On a lark, I drop a quarter in a video poker machine.
And I pull a Flush.
Fifteen dollars worth of quarters fall out of that machine.
I resist the temptation to see how much I would have won if I put three or four or even five quarters in.
For about five seconds.
You don’t wanna know.
An hour later, I’m on a flight to Milwaukee, reading Orkworld as I go. I found the errors, know why we went two pages over, and circle typos.
Funny, but I remember catching most of those circled words. I wonder for a moment if I sent the wrong file to the printer. Most of the typos appear in the Culture Chapter, the source of most all my pains.
Gotta remember to check that when I get home.
The flight touches down with a bumpy landing. Off the plane, down the corridor, through the very familiar Milwaukee airport. I’m beginning to remember how all this goes. I know where the luggage will show up, I know where to ask to get a shuttle and I know how long the drive will be to downtown. I also know if I take a cab, it’ll be about $20 out of my pocket.
Another expense.
However, at the luggage pick-up, I bump into an old friend. It’s Ben Peck, artist extraordinare, with his huge monster height and build, and huge monster smile. I get a big, bad Ben hug and I find out he’s here with an LA company doing a card game. Then, I see a whole bunch of other guys I know from the LA con scene (hey Matt!). I ask ‘em if I can split a cab with them and they’re all sooper cool with it.
Ben points at the boxes. “Is that Orkworld?” he asks me.
“Sure is,” I say. I hand him a copy I’ve got in my bag (for just an occasion). He looks through it, says a lot of very complimentary things about Tom’s art and asks me how much it is. I tell him we can swap later.
He’s got prints, I’ve got books. Make no mistake, the gaming industry is a bartering system. The whole reason to design a game is so you don’t have to pay for the games you want. At least, that’s what I tell people.
Some people.
We pile into two cabs and get to the hotel. Eric (Rowe, that is) has got the whole Wizard’s Attic gang (including us Wicked Press guys) shacked up at the Hilton. It’s a big, spooky place that reminds me of King’s Overlook Hotel. Jenny and I went wandering around one night and found a big, empty ballroom with moonlight coming in through a single window. The rest of the room was black as pitch. If you walked across the room, no-one could see you until you stepped in front of that window, making it look like you just stepped out of pure darkness.
For all you L5R fans, the Living Darkness was born that night. Blame the wife and her evil imagination.
I tip the porter to help me carry the boxes upstairs. I’ll be tipping him again in the morning.
Just then, I realize something. It’s already five in the morning. The dealer’s room opens at ten.
When I’m in the room, I set the alarm clock and fall on the bed. I’m out before my head hits the pillow.
Thursday. Opening day.
I’m at the booth with 88 copies of Orkworld. They’re all on the table. I’ve also got ork jewelry The Wife prepared. They’re little stones with runes written on them (The Five Virtues – Courage, Cunning, Endurance, Prowess and Strength –, Love and Trouble), tied up with leather strands. They’re a buck a piece. I’ve also got slightly more ornamented necklaces that have mushrooms (for those who survived their initiation) and toads (protection from Gorlam).
I don’t have the Game Designer’s Journal. It would have cost me thirty dollars to print, and I didn’t want to charge that much for it. I have the Orkworld Companion, but I haven’t had a chance to photocopy it yet. That’ll be for tomorrow.
Eric drops by to say hi. He’s wearing his kiwi hat (you have to see it to believe it). He’s got folks to take the money for me. All I have to do is pitch the book. Like I said before, he’ll handle the cash, the checks and the credit cards. He’ll even handle the sales tax. All that for just 12%. Three bucks a book. It’s a steal.
Just then, the announcement comes over the loud speaker. “FIVE MINUTES! FIVE MINUTES TO THE OPENING OF THE SHOW!”
I take a deep breath. I’ve heard a lot of people tell me they feel the internet isn’t as big as everyone says it is. They say the media’s all caught up in it, so the real numbers are exaggerated. I’m relying on internet presence to sell this book. No magazine ads. No distributor ads. No ads of any kind.
Just me, you and the internet.
We’re about to find out.
The doors push open. A mob of gamers shoves through. They’re all powerwalking down the center isle. They go right by AEG, they go right by Obsidian Studios, they go right by everything, all in a desperate dash to the TSR castle.
Why?
Because D&D3 might sell out before they get there. And they must be first. They must be the first one to buy the new Dungeons & Dragons.
I turn to Dustin Wright, Chaosium’s resident Spider God and make a joke. I pitch my voice up high and start hyperventilating.
“Must – get – the book!!! Must – get – the book!!! Before – before – it’s – gone!!!”
He chortles.
I realize that in all the years I’ve known him, I don’t think I’ve ever heard Dustin laugh.
Chortle, yes. Laugh? Ain’t happenin’.
I look away from Dustin and the crowd, and there’s someone standing in front of my booth. He’s completely out of breath. He’s got his wallet in one hand and a fifty dollar bill in the other.
“Are you John Wick?” he says, looking at my badge.
“That’s me,” I tell him.
“Am I the first one?”
“The first one?”
“The first one here?”
I nod. “Yup. Doors just opened. You’re the first one.”
He hands me the fifty dollar bill and picks up two copies of the book. Then, he jumps. He whoops. He hollers. I’m suddenly reminded of myself, seeing the book for the first time, doing my happy ork dance on the docks of Wizard’s Attic.
“I’m the first one to buy Orkworld!!!” he screams at the top of his lungs.
Then, he turns back to me and shakes my hand. “Thanks, Mr. Wick. I’ve read all your columns on Gaming Outpost and on Pyramid, and I’m an old school L5R fan, and I’m running a 7th Sea game at home.”
“Thanks,” I say, just a little startled.
“I’m a big fan,” he says.
“No doubt. Thanks for buying the book.” I remember he’s got two. “Twice, even!”
“Would you mind signing them?” he asks.
“Of course not.” I sit down with a pen and open the cover of the first one. Then, I look up at the masses still pouring in to the TSR castle.
Gotta. Be. The. First.
I’ve still got the fifty dollar bill in my hand.
And that fifty dollar bill is mine.
It doesn’t “go back into the company.” It doesn’t pay someone else’s salary. It doesn’t buy someone else a new car, a house or even a DVD player. It doesn’t go into someone else’s project to keep it from sinking into oblivion.
It goes back to me and Jenny.
It helps pay off some of that debt we’ve been accruing since I decided working in the game industry was a good idea. It helps pay off my car. It goes into a bank account to earn interest so I can get The Wife that house she wants, so she can have that baby we both want.
It’s my fifty dollar bill.
I look up at his badge. “Jim or James?” I ask him.
“Jim is fine,” he says.
I don’t remember what I wrote in his books, but I remember his name. And if you know me at all, you know how hard it is for me to remember names.
When I’m done, I stand up and shake his hand.
“Thank you.”
He dashes off to buy something else. The Great and Mighty Stafford pops into view. Once again, we’re pretty much next door neighbors.
“It’s pretty cool, isn’t it?” he asks. I nod my head silently. Then, I hand him a copy of the book. He shakes his head. “No. Sell them. Earn your money back. Besides, I can just walk down the hall and pick one up.”
Then, he walks back to his Hero Wars booth. He’s already got a crowd gathering.
I turn back and see about ten people standing in front of me. All of them with money in their hands.
And all of them want Orkworld.
I sign every book I sell. I try to make each signiture unique, but sometimes they overlap. There’s L5R banners and 7th Sea t-shirts everywhere I look, and every one of them stops when they see Orkworld and drops down cash.
Before I know it, my pile of 88 books has shrunk down low. Before I know it, I have twelve books left. I look to see how the jewelry is doing.
Out of the twenty-five pieces I brought, all for a buck, only two remain.
I’m almost sold out. And it’s only noon. On Thursday.
I want to grab Eric, but he’s busy and there’s a group of five L5R players making their way to the booth. I know this because they’re wearing L5R t-shirts, Clan buttons and have banners tucked into their backpacks. They must be playing in the tournament downstairs.
They rush up to the booth. I know at least three of them. We shake hands. They ask how I’m doing. They tell me the game isn’t the same since I left. I thank them.
Then they say, “So, this is Orkworld?”
I start to give them the pitch, but one of them already has his money out. “I’ll take one,” he says.
“Great! How ‘bout someone else?”
“No,” says one of them. “He’s our GM. We’ll just read his copy.”
“You know, in the electronic gaming industry, that’s called ‘piracy,’” I tell them. “And it’s the reason the adventure game industry will never come out of the basement. Because there’s a whole ton of gamers out there who don’t support their favorite authors or game lines because they won’t shell out the cash because they’ll ‘just read their GM’s copy.’”
They look stunned. I’m just getting started.
“Do comic book fans think like this? No. They don’t borrow copies of their friend’s comic books, they go out and support their favorite publisher. Do music fans do this? No. They go out and buy every single last album, single, B-side and rarity because they want to support their favorite band. And even the one’s who do borrow tapes and books go out and get the CD if they like it. But do gamers? Hell, no! They’re very happy to let their GM shell out all the money and enjoy my book at his expense.”
Some of them start shifting their feet.
“You know, I’ll probably sell 3,000 copies of Orkworld. Let’s pretend for a second, and say that half of those 3,000 people are Game Masters. That means 1,500 of them have a gaming group of around four people. That means there’s an additional 6,000 players who won’t buy the book because they’ll borrow it from their GM. That’s an additional 6,000 books I could sell, and at $22 a copy, that’s one hundred and thirty two thousand dollars in my pocket. But instead, I’ll sell 3,000 copies, barely cover my expenses and never do another RPG because there’s no [expletive deleted] money in gaming because gamers are cheap!”
That’s when I realize they’re all looking at me like I just but a bullet in Ghandi’s head.
I’m about to apologize when a guy steps out of the crowd and up to my booth. He drops twenty-five bucks on the table and says, “I don’t know who you are, and I’ve never heard about your game, but you’re [another expletive deleted] right.”
Then, he walks away.
I look at the L5R fans. They look at me. That’s when the laughter starts.
I love Gen-Con.
That’s it for today. Tomorrow, more misadventures from the Show either tomorrow morning or tonight, depending on how fast I can make my fingers fly. See you then!