QUOTE (Semerkhet @ Apr 13 2011, 02:31 PM)
I'd be curious to hear your anecdotal evidence on the demographics of your demo players. Age range? New to gaming? New to Shadowrun? New to GenCon? Et cetera.
Really varied, for the most part. I didn't really keep track of these things, but...
The Demo was a quick and dirty game, played on a small table. We had a handful of old Ral Partha mini's (Some painted, some not, the mini's were a last minute plan) and a small building we were using as a Stuffer Shack. You can see the set up
Here. The demos were very short, maybe 10-20 minutes long. I gave a very brief overview of the SR world and what Shadowruns were, then ran a quick "Stuffer Shack" scenario, with a handful of gangers attacking the PCs, keeping it as simple as possible.
A lot of the folks who stopped by were younger, probably early 20's (I'm 36, so... Younger is subjective
). I'd say that probably 60-70% of those who stopped by were in that age range.
I had a surprising amount of kids. I personally demoed for probably a half dozen kids I'd guess were in the 10-year old range, all of them accompanied by a parent (For which I was very glad, both because Shadowrun is a little more a mature themed game, and because it was good to see a parent being hands on. I would have been completely unsurprised to see parents using demos as brief "babysitter" sessions).
A large percent were new to Shadowrun, though maybe 1/4 of the demos I ran were for older players who'd played earlier editions, hadn't played in years, and wanted to check out 4th ed.
A few were newbies, but were dragged over by experienced players to get an introduction to the game. A couple of these were for newbies that had signed up for ticketed Shadowrun events with their friends, and wanted to get the basics of the game rules before they got to the table. I applauded these players, because despite the games being listed as "Some Experience expected" in the reg books, we frequently get complete newbies that sit down at a game and have to be taught the system, which really slows things down for the others at the table (And sometimes makes it very difficult to get through an entire Missions game in that 3.75 hour block).
At least three times that I know of, someone went right from the demo table to the sales table and bought the SR4A main book. One of those also bought all the core books we had in stock (I think we were out of Street Magic by that time).
A few times I just gave folks an overview. They didn't have teh time (or want to spend the time) bellying up to the table for 15-20 minutes, but were willing to spend 5 minutes listening to the basics and asking questions.
The miniatures helped. I had a few people stop by just to check out the minis, and I suspect that Iron Wind Metals got a few sales out of the deal as people were asking where tehy could find SR minis. Since Mike at IWM and Brent, CGL's art director (Not to mention me and Jason) have been trying to get a new mini's line going, I'm sure the interest helped that along a little. If you're at GC this year, be sure to ask at the booth about Miniatures. Show interest, and maybe we can finally get the process rolling.
We had a fairly constant stream of players for the demos. I ran mostly nonstop (With short breaks here and there) all day Thursday, Saturday, and Sunday. ABout 22 hours of Demos all told (And standing the whole time. Lemme tell you, whoever had the bright idea to do standing demos needs to be shot. My knees ached for a week after the con). During that time, there were only a couple instances where I went longer than 5 minutes without someone at the table. Friday I had off to see the dealer hall and be at the CGL seminar, but the demo table looked pretty full all day there as well.
All in all, they were a big success. Simple, quick demos were enough to give folks a taste for things, at the least. This year we're supplementing the booth demos with full fledged 4 hour Introductory games you can register for, something to give anyone interested a way to sit down and really learn teh game a bit more in depth than a 15 minute demo can provide.
Bull