October is the month of colorful trees, cold nights, autumn holidays… and SPIEL. The world’s largest consumer fair for boardgames takes place in Essen, Germany (in fact many visitors just call it “Essen” instead of “Spiel”). I’ve been manning the ProFantasy booth there since 2002, and it’s always a great opportunity to see old friends and many new games – though I rarely get to play any of the games.

Setup at SPIEL is usually quick, but there tend to be “surprises”. This year the convention center introduced a a new parking ticket system. It had a great advantage for setup, as we were able to get much closer to the booth with the car, but it would prove chaotic on the visitor days. Exhibitor parking got swamped and you had to be there very early to get into the garage under the center.

“We” is usually me and Gordon, a stalwart friend and old-time CC3 user who always helps me with setting up and running the booth. His lovely wife and daughter use it as a base to tour the show – for the whole four days! It is so amazing to see what energy a six-year old can muster when she is surrounded by the wonders of the show. This year she didn’t even take a nap below the tables.

SPIEL is different from GenCon in that is more about shopping and less about actually playing. Basically it’s one gigantic exhibitor’s hall without the events, seminars and gaming halls surrounding it. It’s also not so much about role- but about board-gaming, which is huge in Germany. Still we have a nice little corner of the even stocked with German and other (mostly British) rpg publishers.

But the amount of visitors that shuffle through the halls on the weekend is staggering. In the bigger halls it can be really tough to get from one place to the next. Compared to that it was positively peaceful on our booth on Saturday – a bit surprising because it also tends to be busier for us. I am not sure why that this year – all days were pretty much as expected except for the Saturday. I wish I had a way to view measure the visitor paths through the halls – perhaps the “currents” got diverted from our place this year.

But enough old and new customers showed up for us to have good business and great fun! I demoed CC3+ a lot, and especially the city and dungeon features caused many astonished and delighted comments. One very interesting development started last year: Chris, a lecturer from Brunel University (London), picked up CC3+ at SPIEL and introduced it to his Games Design class. It looks like that was very successful, meaning the university will pick up more software licenses – and I might get to give an introduction to CC3+ to the students myself. I’m excited and a bit scared, but very much looking forward to that.

Concerning my own gaming, I was positively frugal in my own shopping, but I did have a big piece to carry home: I picked up Perdition’s Mouth by Dragon Dawn Productions as payment for a little map I created for Timo Multamäki and his crew. I haven’t played it yet, but it does seem intriguingly different from your usual crop of dungeon crawlers.

And then the four days were over again. The halls close at 6pm on Sunday and our booth was all packed up 10 minutes past that – the advantage of easy-to-carry software over heavy books and huge boardgames. Luckily there are no flight that I can miss or be delayed on the way back from SPIEL, only a 1.5 hour Autobahn drive.

[Photo by Karl-Georg Müller (schlenderer.de)]

You know the summer is over and fall is coming in the Northern hemisphere, when we head over to Essen for the International Spieletage, or SPIEL for short. 4-days packed with board and role-playing games on the world’s largest consumer fair for board games – what’s not to like?

Come on over and check out the latest add-ons and updates for CC3+, have a chat with me (Ralf) about mapping, and wander the halls for the latest and greatest in boardgaming. What are you waiting for? See us in hall 2 at booth C-117.

The “Internationale Spieletage 2014” in Essen (short version: Spiel’14), the second big convention of the year (after GenCon) is over and we had another great and busy show. Many new CC3 users were added to the fold, and I talked to a lot of users, answering specific questions, helping with technical problems and demoing new stuff (yes, including CC3+). Here’s the report I prepared for Simon and Mark on my return.

I arrived at Spiel on Wednesday as usual, and picked up Gordon on the way to help me set up. Unfortunately the tables I had ordered from the Messe where not there - apparently some other exhibitor nicked them for their own booth - so we had to leave part for Thursday morning when the replacement furniture was there. Not a big problem, we were quickly done before the show opened.

Gordon and Carsten were a great help as always. I even had a third helper on Saturday (Michael), but since it was a bit quieter than usual, that wasn't really necessary at all. Take down on Sunday evening was done in lightning speed. As the exhibitor parking was right below the halls, we just carried the stuff to the car. I was out of the halls and away 20 minutes after closing time.

Now that I’m safely back home, had a good night’s sleep (or two) and have sorted out all the boxes and stuff I brought back, I’m happy to report that it was another good year for ProFantasy at SPIEL. Games were played (few by me), fun was had (lots by me) and software was sold (by my stalwart helpers Gordon and Michael was well as me).

Spiel remains the huge affair that is has been with well over a 100,000 visitors (if not beyond 150,000). I’m sure they be announcing a new visitor record shortly. I get to see the usual mix of familiar faces and new people. It’s fun to hear “I wish this had been around when I was a GM!” from 30ish people. I can heartily assure them that our software WAS around when they were GMing.

We keep getting very good feedback from people using the software. One customer specifically congratulated us on the “excellent work with Symbol Set 3”. I am happy that the Annual Vol 5 was very popular (we almost sold out). Having a Jon Roberts Style map on the wall was one of the major drawing points and quite a few people took an Annual Vol 5 together with their CC3 purchase. Interestingly the popularity of DD3 and CD3 switched from last year, where City Designer was more popular. This time it was Dungeon Designer – perhaps in part because I had the big “Tendrils Oak Inn” poster not back on the wall, but lying on the table as a main display.

We did sell some fewer core programs this year, but made up for it with more add-ons. Dioramas was more popular than usual, which have to do with me having the Dungeon Diorama from the January Annual on the table. SS3 Modern didn’t do quite as well as I had hoped because interest in modern settings seemed generally lower (fewer Shadowrun players than usual). In contrast, we did get several inquiries about Steampunk artwork – a genre that is apparently still on the rise. Some customers purchased the new Tome, but generally customer at the booth prefer a hard copy to a download only which I can’t put into their hands immediately (same as the current Annual subscription). Both are much more popular in our web store in comparison. We sold two of our posters (the Kuslik city and the Tendril’s Oak Inn) on Sunday to a very keen customer (he kept coming back and asking me for my display posters).

Demoing was mostly confined to CC3, DD3 and CD3 (more DD3 interest this time), with some Fractal Terrains, Dioramas and Cosmographer thrown in. While I switched to the Annual styles (e.g. the Jon Roberts style) a few times for demoing, the CC3 default Structures catalog is always good for a “Wow, that is VERY nice!” comment.

I was especially impressed with a perhaps 6 years old boy who created the map on the right. I demoed Cosmo 3 for his (much) older brother and he insisted on giving it a try as well. I gave him some pointers for the first few steps, then left him alone for 10 minutes or so. When I came back he had created this. I didn’t touch CC3 myself for this at all, except for exporting the map.

Overall I still think that the rpg part of Essen is slowly shrinking. The rpg hall (Hall 6) was definitely a bit smaller than last year (again), although most of that seemed to have been due to less LARP booths – the usual suspects of German rpg publishers and vendors were still there. Miniatures are also still strong, but a lot of “utility stuff” is creeping in, like card protectors for magic cards, carrying cases for miniatures and so on. Sunday had some rather quiet stretches, and the last hour before closing time is slow every day. I’d prefer a closing time of 6pm instead of 7pm (like at GenCon).

This year – due to it being school holidays – general attendance was high throughout, with a significant drop only in Sunday. Saturday of course remains the busiest day. This mostly affects the larger boardgame halls. While it was busier on Saturday in our hall too, we never had the kind of press that you get in the bigger halls. There are rumors that at least some of the halls will be torn down and rebuilt over the winter, but I’m not sure how much truth there is to this. It would certainly be nice for Hall 6, as it is getting a bit scruffy – and it is also rather dark compared to the other halls. And it would certainly benefit from easier access. Currently you have to walk quite a long way from the main entrance to get to the rpg hall.

I had Gordon at the booth to help me from Thursday to Saturday and Michael on Saturday and Sunday (giving me two helpers for the busiest day). They were invaluable as always. Apart from some strange problem of my usual adhesives not working on the booth walls anymore, setup and take down was smooth as always. If the Autobahn hadn’t been closed on my way home I’d have been home early.

I’m looking forward to next year’s SPIEL. See you there, boardgamers of the world.

It’s time again for the world largest boardgame fair in Essen, Germany. This Thursday Spiel’12 opens its halls – and ProFantasy will be there.

See us in Hall 6, booth 6-711. Stop by to say hi, chat, get a CC3 demo, check out our new releases (Symbol Set 3 – Modern v3, Tome of Ultimate Mapping v3) and get a preview of the upcoming Perspectives 3 and Character Artist 3 artwork. See you there!