So, this year I'm going to be working on doing the Forge Booth Menu, to help the Forge Booth better tell people who's games are there to be demo'd, and who's games are there to be bought.

But I want to go beyond that. This marks the first GenCon following the "Forge Booth diaspora" -- lots of indie designers are striking out this year and starting up booths of their own. The Forge booth, however, has been a focal point in the past, a way to draw the GenCon crowd in to one place so that they can get maximum indie exposure. With the diaspora happening, I have a real concern that the focusing value of the booth needs to be replaced with something else.

That's where the Indie Games Passport comes in. The concept's simple:

• There's a passport -- a single sheet of paper folded in half, this logo on the front, a place for someone to put their contact information on the back.
  
  
• It acts as a map, telling people what other Forge diasporites can be found around the dealers' hall, and more importantly, where to find them.
  
  
• It provides incentive for people to visit all of the booths by being part of a prize drawing -- turn in your passport, stamped by all of the booths listed on it, by (say) Sunday morning, and you get entered in a prize-pool drawing. Prize drawing would occur at some point on Sunday, and if you're not there, we use your contact info to send you the prize.

To make this work, each booth would get a stack of the passports to hand out to people who don't have them already, and a self-inking rubber stamp from something like IPrint.Com. When someone drops by with a passport, use it as an opportunity to tell them about your stuff; then stamp it and send 'em on their way.

If you're part of a booth that's interested in being a part of this, participation is easy:

• Mandatory: Let me know BEFORE July 1st that your booth wants to be a part of it, by emailing me at evilhat AT gmail DOT com, with the subject line Indie Games Passport.
  
  
• Mandatory: Let me know what you want on your rubber stamp, and what color of ink you want it to use (black, red, purple, green, blue, I believe are the options).
  
  
• Mandatory: Let me know what your booth's booth number is, so I can provide that info in the passport and (if I can work out an easy way to do it) try to show where you are on a micro dealer hall map for the back cover.
  
  
• Optional: Donate something as one of the prizes for the prize pool. Creativity here is a plus, but please make sure it's something a gamer would find of value, and one that won't cause huge headaches if it turns out I need to ship it to the recipient.
  
  
• Optional: Toss me some cash to cover the expenses of the rubber stamp and many photocopies of the passport.

That's it! I'm hoping to hear from the Ashcan Front, Play Collective, Collective Endeavor, and others I'm not even aware of. I'm also hoping to make this a "Divided, We Stand" opportunity to build a strong presence that permeates the hall this year, where everyone helps everyone else get the traffic they need to get off the ground.

If you're not sure if you're "indie", please don't let that hold you back -- my use of the term here is very, very flexible. So if you're feeling like you're a questionable entrant, drop me a line, explain why you think it's iffy, and we'll reach a conclusion!

Who's with me?

As someone who is part of, but spending no money and selling nothing at, the Play Collective, I'm in favor.

So does this mean that since I'm a working boothguy I can't win? Damn!

Posted By: JuddWe have to engage our crotchetocracy in order to decide on stamps and the like but I think this idea is nifty as hell.

Just make sure y'all get me the basics in email before the end of June!

Fred, thank you so much for doing this. I was trying to find the time to do it myself.

Those stamps make fun ideas happen in my head!

Posted By: Joshua A.C. Newman

Fred,thank you so much for doing this. I was trying to find the time to do it myself.

Those stamps make fun ideas happen in my head!

Ideally, I'd like to get a black and white logo from each booth and go for one of the square self-inking options for each one -- something to give a fun visual distinctiveness to each one, rather than boring old words.

Man the prizes would have to be really good, I want the passport itself.

Both Games On Demand and Indie Games Explosion need to have stamps. That is where I will be living.

Posted By: Jonathan WaltonAlso, can I vote we NOT have the hammer-and-anvil guy representing indie games? That screams Forge to me and indie games are more than just the Forge (I <3 the Forge, but it's true). Can we have the Go Play arrow instead?

Jonathan,

Could we talk on the phone. As per my whisper, this pisses me off but rather than have some kind of posturing contest online, I realize that we can just talk it over.

Thanks,

Judd

Posted By: Jonathan WaltonAlso, can I vote we NOT have the hammer-and-anvil guy representing indie games? That screams Forge to me and indie games are more than just the Forge (I <3 the Forge, but it's true). Can we have the Go Play arrow instead?

I want something that says "Hand-Crafted" in terms of its visual. I think Go Play is actually better for something like Games on Demand's stamp; if you'd like to browse CilpArt.Com and find me a nice, evocative, silhouette image that communicates the vibe, I'd be all for it.

The hammer-and-anvil Forge connection isn't entirely accidental, though, given that this is the year of folks getting out of the Forge booth nest. I'm not sure I see what's wrong with giving a nod to where folks've come from, but I'm also not married to the idea.

Posted By: iagoYeah. Forge is a given, and I've gotten an email from Play Collective, but haven't heard from anyone else yet.

I've sent you an email on behalf of the Collective Endeavour, but it was more to say that we're not actually there as a unit this year. Malcolm and Gregor will be though, with the Play Collective and the Forge respectively, and IPR has all our books. But no need for the passport - next year maybe!

Posted By: shreyas

I just uh want to parrot what Jon said. The Forge is a place but it's not the only place, and I don't think that branding other people with that symbolic iron is very fair to their individual identities.

And to parrot myself -- do the work to find the replacement per my above spec, and I've got no problem.

I can make you a vector-y logo when I get home. Any specs or suggestions, Fred? Do you like "sculpting hands" as a general theme?

(Also, that hammer-and-anvil pic is on the back of my copy of The Shadow of Yesterday, as the icon for Clinton's Anvilwerks).

Also, are we going to invite booths to join the passport that, like the Code of Unaris guy in 2005, are selling indie games but aren't a part of the larger pan-Forge/IPR community? If we are interested in doing that, I would be willing to put in some research to figure out who those booths might be and contact them.

(Trying to be productive instead of critical).

Very nifty idea, Fred.

If there's space... would it be possible to put in a list of indie game titles with little checkboxes next to them? So they can check off what demos of these games they've played?

I dunno, just sounds passporty to me. Like others are saying, it sounds like a cool memento. Maybe the entry form part can be tear off or something? Or they just show the completed passport, and then their name is entered?

Just some ideas.

Mike

Posted By: iago
That's where the Indie Games Passport comes in. The concept's simple:

• It acts as a map,telling people what other Forge diasporites can be found around the dealers' hall, and more importantly, where to find them.

[snip]
If you're not sure if you're "indie", please don't let that hold you back -- my use of the term here is very, very flexible. So if you're feeling like you're a questionable entrant, drop me a line, explain why you think it's iffy, and we'll reach a conclusion!

So, just to be clear--you looking for Forge-derived games, or indie games? 'Cause we're unquestionably the latter, and unquestionably not the former (kinda hard to develop a game with the Forge's help when we developed it before the Forge existed).

[Though, i suppose it's a moot point, in our case, since we won't have our own booth--though i can at least tell Brennan that i vote for IPR to be included, in case for some bizarre reason he's on the fence. Unless there is a specific list of games, rather than publishers, in which case, we'd probably want in.]

[And, yeah, add me to the list of people that gets ticked when "Indie"=="from the Forge", or vice versa--not that i think you intended to say that, Iago.]

Hi, Fred. I'm going to send you the requested stuff for The Ashcan Front.

But, first, a couple questions.

We're going to give an Ashcan Front t-shirt for a prize package (the shirt is actually pretty damn cool and badass looking). We also want to offer up that Ashcan Front participants will all critique the game of the winner's choice (which we hope would be their own game). Hopefully, that's workable?

Also, what are the costs, and how much should we chip in? I have no idea. Is it $10? $100? What?

Wow. That people have that much of an axe to grind with the Forge is weird. I sorta get the whole reaction against the Forge subsuming the definition of Indie. But, I don't get the reaction where people say "I'm indie, but I'm not a Forge guy, no no no!" as though that's like raising the stars and bars over one's capitol or something.

From my view, I'm all for creator-owned publishers who have little or nothing to do with the Forge. That's great!

At the same time, I just think the cottage industry is too damn small for anyone to dismiss anything out of hand because it has an anvil associated with it somehow. Weird.

Posted By: woodelf

Posted By: iago
IPR is one of the primary sponsors of the Forge Booth, so it's getting included there.

Oh? I should really just ask Brennan, but does that mean they're sharing a booth again?

That's how I understand it.

(snipped the rest)

Go ask Brennan. :)

Ok, Fred, understood on all counts (both replies). Thanks.

Hey Jonathan,

If you're scouting around for other indie publishers, you might check out Relentless Publishing:

http://www.relentless-publishing.com/

Their booth will be diagonally across from The Ashcan Front. They're releasing an old-school boxed-set-with-dice fantasy game at Gen Con.

A couple of posts to their forums suggest they may not be commitedly indie:

http://www.mickcathey.com/relentlesspublishing/forum/viewtopic.php?t=14

http://www.mickcathey.com/relentlesspublishing/forum/viewtopic.php?t=60

But it couldn't hurt to have a conversation.

Paul

He doesn't have an RPG out (yet) that I'm aware of, but it's worth tapping Ken Burnside/Ad Astra to see if he's interested.

James

Troy, there's a not-current version under the Exhibitor's info section of the gencon website.

The 'current' version was sent out to exhibitors and it's a preliminary one that hasn't been finalized yet, because not all booths have been sold. Once it's locked in, they'll publish it on the website.


James