Aethermon at PAX Aus 2022 – part 2

This is part two in a series breaking down our process as first-time exhibitors at PAX. This section addresses what we brought to the convention.

What we brought

Our demo game, plus an entire demo backup kit. Each included:

• More than 350 cards
• Spinner
• Neoprene game board
• Character standees
• Dice

29 acrylic standees, ranging from 6cms to 15cms in height.

Two full copies of Aethermon professionally printed, arriving just days before we left.

• Unfortunately this was a big let-down. Although they were beautifully printed and looked really good, in the few weeks since we had ordered them, the game had already gone through some big adjustments and they were no longer representative of the game and mechanics we wanted to show off, so we effectively couldn’t use them. There’s not really a way around this, except not to be iterating or be at the point that you only need tiny adjustments – but hey, that’s what our self-made demo game was for.

A tablecloth with our name Aethermon printed on it.

• We made it black and only had details on the part of the cloth that isn’t on the table, so that the game itself and all the game pieces would stand out in photos.
• Also tablecloth clips to keep it in place.

 Two extra chairs, foldable.

• Our game fits up to 5 players, PAX provided us with 4 chairs, and hiring extras for three days was going to cost eight times as much as buying them ourselves.

Two magnetic whiteboards, twenty magnets, and a canvas.

• The whiteboards were for our tournament – each day’s highest scoring team won enamel pins. The magnets showed who played which character. They came with a marker and an eraser.
• The canvas displayed our merchandise. The merch could be won or purchased, and we had prices and examples pinned to the canvas. It worked okay, but half the time people ignored it in favour of asking us to repeat the same information to them for the thousandth time.

A flatpack set of drawers, on caster wheels.

• The top provided just enough space for a tablet/laptop to sign up visitors to our email list.
• Inside the drawers we kept our merch, our point of sale gadgets (no cash sales), and our staff/fix kit.
• Also damnit K-Mart, if your furniture says it comes with all necessary tools, it really should come with all necessary tools. We fortunately managed to source a philips head screwdriver.

A spin-the-wheel prize wheel on a tripod.

• This was for our giveaways. To spin the wheel visitors had to join our mailing list, or share our social media post, or join our discord server. People really seemed attracted to the interactive element of this, and it worked great to help draw a crowd.

About three boxes of merch.

• Enamel pins, collector cards, tattoos, as mentioned above.
• Three printed ‘field guides’ so people could decide which collector card they’d like.
• Two boxes of baby wipes, to apply the tattoos. This didn’t work nearly as well as a spray bottle of water that we packed just in case the baby wipes weren’t quite damp enough, and we entirely swapped to the water spray method within three visitors.

An assortment of tech, cables, and importantly – battery packs.

• A tablet and keyboard, to sign people to our mailing list. We had bought a super-cheap tablet so we wouldn’t have to be overly concerned about thefts, but on day two that stopped working so we had to swap it out for one of our laptops. Thankfully everyone was very respectful of our things while we were there.
• A phone to run a wifi hotspot, and to act as our point of sale.
• A square payments …thing, which allows you to scan credit cards and take payments, and interacts with the phone.
• USB-A and USB-C cables.
• Two hefty power bricks to charge the above devices.
• Getting approved for mains power at PAX is very expensive, it requires all electronics you want to plug in to be checked/approved, plus you buy the electricity itself at a big cost. Since we are a tabletop game, all our tech needs could be run from batteries so we brought some power banks and only used electronics that could charge from them.

Flyers, media kits, organisation, and other printed items.

• One clipboard for our email sign-up sheet in case the tablet/laptop didn’t work.
• One clipboard for our demo sign-up sheet, which worked great.
• 750 flyers on A5 paper. We probably gave away more than 600 of these.
• 50 printed media kits on A4 paper. We probably gave away 5 of these.
• Feedback forms on A5 paper. We printed about 150 and used about 30, but we didn’t push these hard, and many people were happy to share their feedback just by talking.
• Extra pens/pencils.

PPE.

• We brought a few bottles of hand sanitiser, and left one on the table. Almost nobody used this unprompted. Lesson learned.
• We brought two boxes of face masks, but had nowhere to put them, so only staff ended up using these. Still good.
• Quantity here was hard to estimate ahead of time and we way overcatered. People are weary of the pandemic and they don’t like masks, but on the other hand, one of our staff is immunocompromised.

A rubbish bin, 7L.

A staff survival/fix-it kit.

• For the staff kit, we brought throat lozenges, paracetamol, ibuprofen, tissues, antihistamines, sticky plasters, antiseptic ointment, hair ties, safety pins, hand lotion, breath mints, and muesli bars. This stayed at the convention the entire time. We also each brought our own backpack each day, with water bottles and mandarins, among other things.
• For the fix-it kit, we brought blue-tack, sticky-tape, cloth tape, scissors, a box-cutter knife, wire, wire-cutters, a cleaning cloth, rubbing alcohol, split pins, the aforementioned spray bottle, and extra pens and whiteboard markers. Basically if it could break we brought a backup, and we threw some extra stuff in there just in case. I should have added string.

Things to note:

• We were close enough to Melbourne that we could drive, and therefore could pack boxes of set-up gear. If we had been flying to Melbourne, our whole strategy would have had to change.
• Mains power is expensive at PAX. See if you can work around having to need it.
• Assume the free wifi isn’t going to work and plan accordingly, because once the place is buzzing, the wifi gets very slow.
• We really should have brought extra bottles of water.