ON WITH THE SHOW

CONFESSIONS OF A
MUNCHKIN DEMO PRO

Randy Scheunemann

I play games for a living. There’s more to my job than that, but the rest of it is tied up in everything else that publishing games requires. Since 2005, a big part of my time has been spent playing different Steve Jackson Games releases, Munchkin foremost among them, and teaching them to people around the world. It has been informative, frustrating, and even liberating.

As it turns out, people love Munchkin. Tons of people – millions of people – love Munchkin. The game is everywhere these days, in all kinds of stores, from the smallest hobby shop to the largest retail mega-chain. So it’s understandable that I sometimes forget there are folks who aren’t familiar with it. These are the people who cautiously walk up to our booth at a convention and, after eyeing all the colorful banners and the stacks and stacks of new games, ask, “What is Munchkin?” It’s always a bit of a shock, that question, but I recover quickly and begin my spiel.

More often than not, the players I introduce to Munchkin are newcomers to the world of hobby gaming. This makes me an ambassador of sorts, and demoing a game like Munchkin means opening people up to something new. I let them know that boardgaming doesn’t have to be about shoes and top hats trying to bankrupt their friends, or players arguing about whether or not sheeps is a valid plural of sheep, because that extra S would mean a triple word score.

The key to running a good demo is familiarity, knowing a game inside and out, and my time at Steve Jackson Games has certainly made me familiar with Munchkin. I’ve shipped it to people. I’ve fought through new release days, the madness of the holiday season, and long-awaited reprints. For inventory checks and warehouse moves, I’ve counted and carted more boxes than I care to remember.

Then there’s playtesting. Wow, have I playtested a lot of Munchkin sets. For those of you unfamiliar with game design lingo, playtesting is when you get people together to try out a design that’s not quite finished. The goal is to find weaknesses, broken rules, or elements that bog down play. When it comes to playtesting, I possess the gift of destruction. More than one Munchkin set has a “because of Randy” rule thanks to some flaw in the design I discovered in the playtest.

I have also toured the country promoting Munchkin. During those trips I’ve seen every kind of local game shop imaginable. There are as many different kinds of game shops as there are cities and towns across the globe. Quite a lot of them carry Munchkin, though their opinions on what the company can do to help them sell more copies and make their customers happy vary almost as much as the game stores themselves. But I’ve learned to value every shop owner’s opinion. Their perspective on the game helps me expand my own.

I’ve even worn the Munchkin mascot costume. Donning that thing means sweating more than you ever thought possible. Oh, and you have to maneuver with your vision confined to the carpet directly in front of your feet. (There was a time when I could identify convention venues by their carpet patterns.) On the upside, I’ve been photographed more often than some movie stars. But all that nonstop attention is tough to take. So much so that I’ve developed a deep respect for people who spend their daily lives in the public eye, now that I’ve walked a mile in oversized Boots of Butt-Kicking.

Most importantly, I’ve demoed Munchkin. A lot. I have let people win. I’ve had novices crush me, and I’ve passed that pain along to overconfident veterans. It’s always a little sad when players can’t stick around long enough to finish a game, particularly the ones that have gone in interesting directions. But con-goers are busy folks. They have other places to be or things to do at the convention, so they hurry off, leaving me to wonder how the rest of the contest might have played out. Sometimes the convention floor is so loud that I have to pantomime instructions. Other times, it’s quiet enough that you can hear the players’ laughter all the way across the hall.

Every single one of those demos, whether a complete game or just a round or two, has helped further my understanding of Munchkin.

KNOW YOUR AUDIENCE

Before I delve into the role of conventions and more details on the nuts and bolts of running a demo, let me take a minute to talk about the types of demos I’ve done over the years. Demoing a game like Munchkin is not a one-size-fits-all activity. Audience is everything, and there are several different audiences for any game.

Playing with game designers is not like playing with normal people. (But in a good way, of course.) Because I work at Steve Jackson Games, I participate in demos that involve men and women who make games for a living. These can be demonstrations for playtest purposes, to gather feedback for a design’s revision, or for educational purposes, to give everyone a working familiarity with a new release or a refresher on a classic before convention season. Typically, I know the people gathered around the table for these events far better than I know the game itself. In this case, that’s acceptable, as designers tend to want to reference the precise wording of the rules as they play, to make certain they understand the mechanics. Until recently, Munchkin was the only game I demoed in-house at SJ Games that I hadn’t playtested for its original release. With the new edition of Ogre and the reprinting of a few of our older games, such as Car Wars and Knightmare Chess, that’s no longer true.

The people who make up the next audience aren’t designers, but they take their gaming just as seriously. These are the thought leaders. They want to learn the game in ways that allow them to talk about it, and perhaps even teach it, to a wider audience. Some are super-fans. They already know about the latest releases and they’re at the SJ Games convention booth to give them a try. (The super-fans are often easy to spot. They’re the first ones to show up at the booth at any major convention, clad in their Munchkin T-shirts, which are, of course, already signed.) Others are stalwarts like the Steve Jackson Games demo team, the storied Men In Black (or MIBs), as well as bloggers, reviewers, and other gaming trendsetters. For this audience we create special Internet videos, stage game-launch events, and even run special seminars so they have everything they need to spread the good word about Munchkin far and wide.

Game distributors and store owners share some similarities with thought leaders as a demo audience, but they also have special concerns. They want to know if Munchkin is fun and easy to learn, just like any demo audience. They also have to consider a whole raft of other details, everything from the potential appeal of the box cover art to the product’s retail and wholesale prices. A successful demo to these folks can mean thousands or even hundreds of thousands of copies of a game making their way to store shelves, but they’re typically mulling over new releases from a lot of different companies. Time is at a premium for them, so their demo needs to be fast and efficient.

Last, but certainly not least, are the individuals who might spend their money on a copy of Munchkin, whether for themselves or as a gift. A demo to someone from this audience may only sell one copy of the game and that sale might not even occur until days or weeks later, but we still put a lot of effort into it. In fact, these demos are the trickiest to pull off with any consistency, since the participants can be so varied. And as hobby and media conventions continue to attract ever wider audiences, the potential demo participants will only get more diverse.

CONVENTIONS AND CONVERTS

Earlier I mentioned demoing games at conventions. I’ve had the good fortune to attend some of the largest game, comic book, and media conventions in the world. I can tell you from experience that every convention is different. Each and every one has its own soul, which can’t be replicated. My role at each show is a little different, too. Sometimes SJ Games staff sells products to the attendees. Other times we have companies such as Adventure Retail handle sales while we focus on demos. At some shows there are no sales at all; we only run demos and hand out promotional items.

It’s hard to say whether I find it more exciting to work at a convention where many of the attendees have never played Munchkin before, or one where the vast majority of attendees know our games well. It’s great to talk with players familiar with Steve Jackson Games, who want to learn about upcoming releases and share their enthusiasm for our product lines. On the flip side, demoing Munchkin with someone unfamiliar with the game means giving them the chance to kick down that door for the first time and being there to see their smiles after they do.

Either way, the ability to spend time face-to-face with people is what matters. At a convention, I can show potential customers what’s inside a box before they buy it. They can see the rulesheet, feel the cards, and even roll the die for free. And if they stick around for a demo, they can play the game itself. If it’s not a regular Steve Jackson Games employee guiding them through that experience, chances are it’s one of the Men In Black. Members of this elite support team are experts in the games they demo, trained to make your convention experience a great one.

Cons are also a great place to highlight gaming’s social aspects. If the people gathered around a demo table are loudly laughing, cheering, or even groaning, new people are going to stop to see what’s going on. This plays right into Munchkin’s strengths. The game elicits strong reactions from players; one of Munchkin’s major design victories is that each card presents a sharp-edged little joke to be enjoyed and shared as it is revealed. The game’s heart beats each time a new card is drawn. And since the game’s mechanics are easily understood, the onlookers drawn to the cheerful ruckus are often quick to declare, “I’ve got the next game.”

At a show, Munchkin veterans are typically quite happy to welcome neophytes to the fold. These longtime fans frequently amaze me. They’re the lifeblood of the world I live in. They come from all walks of life and just about every corner of the world. They are everyone and anyone. It can be humbling to meet someone who exhibits an intense passion for a game you’ve had even the smallest role in publishing, all the more because they’re usually quite vocal about their devotion. That’s the point of the convention for me – to get the chance to introduce the game to new players, and chat a few minutes here and there with the fans that come to the show, sometimes year after year. They’re the first ones to let me know I’ve been missed if I can’t attend a convention for some reason. When we do get a chance to talk, they want the newest news, the newest product, the newest promo – and we love them for it.

A DEMO IS BORN

The convention or store demo for a new game or game expansion starts life in pretty rough shape, even if the person running the demo has the rules down pat. In theory, you know the system. In theory, you should be able to deal with any questions a player might raise. In theory.

In practice, situations can arise during a demo early in the convention season that the rules don’t cover, no matter how carefully they were tested. Demo players, especially novices, have the uncanny knack of playing cards in a way that challenges that one rule that might have been written a little more clearly. It usually takes a few sessions before the most obvious of these problems reveal themselves, and they’re solved easily enough. But there’s also the question of the demo’s optimal number of players, as well as the range of players it can accommodate. Too many people at the table will create lag between each player’s turn. Too few and the demo master might have to act as an additional player. I find taking on that extra role diverts my focus from the overall gaming experience and limits the attention I can give each player.

The more sessions of a demo you run, the stronger it gets. In the early going, I tend to feel that a demo is missing something that will only manifest over time. It’s kind of like the difference between the first performances of a long-running play and the last. I do everything I can to make early-season demos great, but they just aren’t as polished as the ones I run at the end of the year. With practice, the phrasing I need to explain the game succinctly and elegantly rolls off the tongue. Over time, I discover initial setups that convey a lot of information and identify points in the game where a demo can end if time runs short. It’s better to play through to the end, but the point of a demo table is to give as many people as possible the chance to give the game a try.

I know I have the demo in peak form when I start hearing my lines repeated by the other staffers or MIBs running the game in our booth. They’ll never follow my script to the letter, and that’s a good thing. Everyone runs a demo a little differently. As the season wears on, they’ll develop their own scripts and pick up bits of other presentations, whatever will help them get the game in front of people and allow them to hit the key sales points.

I’ll admit, I used to get slightly annoyed by others deviating from the way I had shown them to run the demo. I had, after all, perfected it, so they had to be offering an inferior version. I soon realized, though, that the presenter’s comfort with the script is more important than the script itself. So when someone was adopting only the bits of my “routine” they felt comfortable with, they were really creating a better version of their own demo, not a worse version of mine. I should have been encouraged by the amount of my material they were saving rather than disappointed by the amount that they had discarded.

Once a demo has been streamlined, it takes a lot less mental energy and time to run. A good script anticipates questions about the game, leaving more opportunities for the demo master to engage the players and the onlookers while the session is going on. That, in turn, means more people pass through the booth with good information – and that’s the main reason to run demos in the first place.

BEYOND THE DEMO

When I can, I like to follow up a demo with a little gift that will help the players remember what game they just sampled. Munchkin, of course, is famous for its promotional items. Cards are some of our most common and popular promo creations, and when they’re available, I slip our newest ones into any demo I run. We’ve done lots of other types of items over the years: T-shirts, coins, bookmarks, even cookies. As with the demos, it’s “practice makes perfect” with promotional gimmicks; each new item teaches us valuable lessons about how to make them work more effectively at conventions or trade shows. Some venues, for example, don’t appreciate it when you give away water labeled “magic potion” because it cuts into their concession sales. It’s also a bad idea to hand out stickers with your company’s name on them, because they’ll end up stuck all over the place and the maintenance staff will know precisely who to blame.

The occasional small misstep aside, all the little promo items SJ Games releases for Munchkin add a wonderful level of chaos and absurdity to the game. In fact, I’d go so far as to say that it’s impossible to separate the Munchkin promotional and auxiliary items from the game proper. And all you need to know to use them is whatever text comes with the item. If the item is a shirt, wear the shirt and get the bonus. If it’s a card, do what the card says. There’s even a special rule for this essay and for the book in which this essay appears. As a Munchkin player, you get a bonus for reading about getting bonuses with auxiliary items. How fun is that? The most faithful Munchkin fans collect these items ardently, and they’ve been known to bring a smile to the face of even the most casual player who pauses for a quick demo at a show.

Looking ahead, I cannot predict the future of demos. I’m sure that some technological breakthrough will revolutionize the way I do things, adding new methods by which I can connect with players and potential players, but my crystal ball is a bit foggy. I suspect it will have something to do with the massive communication abilities we have at our fingertips every hour of the day. Perhaps we’ll get a virtual reality setup where a person could play a demo with me without having to leave home. That seems farfetched and yet realistic at the same time, where Munchkin is concerned.

I hope to have a place in the process no matter what the future holds, and I know that Munchkin is strong enough to survive and thrive, making people laugh and bringing them together around whatever passes for a gaming table in the strange new world to come.

 

Randy Scheunemann grew up as much as he was going to in small-town Minnesota, and joined the Navy when he was 18. After serving six years on a submarine based in Hawaii, he moved to Baton Rouge, Louisiana, where he worked on a riverboat casino repairing slot machines. This career stop was brief, and Randy moved back to Minnesota for a short time before relocating to Austin, Texas, where he began working for Steve Jackson Games as a shipping clerk. Since then, he has helped to create and develop several games, including Zombie Dice, Revolution!, Mars Attacks: The Dice Game, and Mars Attacks: Ten-Minute Takedown. He spends much of his time traveling to conventions as a demo master and speaking with store owners about SJ Games releases.