A friend of my is organizing what he is calling Geektoberfest, While this will most likely be in end July and not in October as one might imagine, he has asked myself and another friend to demo SWM. We will have out or own room as I understand it that people can come into and see the game.

Is there anyone who has done game demos in a booth or game room type environment, what made it go well and how did you run it? Any pitfalls to avoid?


Thanks for any feedback!

I did it once for Jim at Egyptian Campaign (the local geek gathering) several years ago.

Suggestions:
~Use older pieces, as they are generally less complicated. No worrying about Greater Mobile, Double+ Twin, etc)
~Make sure to use movie factions.
~Dont go too out there with squads (Vader and troopers w Tarkin or something like that, not BnB vs Slow Cannon)
~Have several main abilities represented (characters w/o melee, and with melee, double, grenades, healing, CE's, override, someone with FPs, etc)

Biggest suggestion is that ive found it immensly easier to teach people to play the game if they have played any sort of rpg by wotc(dont know about other companies stuff).
Alot of it links up. Most characters can move 6sqs and attack once, or not move and use their extra attack, etc. Attack roll to meet or beat defense. Cover. Crit on 20.

Hope that helps lol. Good luck.

I would suggest that you come up with about a dozen 150 point squads. Foucus on jedi with clones, Vader with stormies, that sort of thing. Having reconizable characters is a key. Make sure you have Fett out there for people to use and see. I would suggest the RS version since it is fairly simple.

Avoid meta concepts like tempo control, door control and the like.

If you make it fun, people will have a good time.

I have always found that teaching people to play with Dynamic Dou squads also works well. If you have the custom Nar Shadda map it supports 5 Dynamic Dou squads easily. Plus you get to play characters people know.

Very good point about Dynamic Duo.

I was going to suggest 100pt squads, but I guess that depends on what all you are going to stick into the squads. Personally, I think if you are giving them a 15 activation 150pt squad to learn from, that is a little much, but if you wind up with 10or fewer, thats probably not so bad.

Could be hard though, depending on the faction.

Thanks for the suggestions!!

Dynamic Duo was something that I had considered, as it is usually how I introduce friends to the game as there is very little to keep track of, I think based with your suggestions I might move forward with that.