How to be a Good Demo Rabbit
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[edit] How to be a good Demo Rabbit
[edit] Setup
- Be professional and polite. You are there representing Looney Labs. If you are discourteous, it reflects badly on our company and on the whole Mad Lab Rabbits program.
- Give the Person Of Authority at your event location an Event Planner with your contact information. Contact them shortly before the event to remind them that you will be running an event at their location, and thank them after the event for letting you play games at their location. If you miss your event be SURE you call and apologize! (But please don't miss your event.)
- Arrive early. There may or may not be tables and chairs set up when you get there. Plus, you need time to get your area set up.
- Dress appropriately. While you obviously do not need to be dressed up in a suit and tie, it is important to look presentable.
- If you are giving out a prize - be sure to keep an eye on it (and the rest of your stuff) during the event. Hopefully, there won't be a problem with disappearing prizes, but thinking about the possibility beforehand can help prevent it from ever happening to you.
[edit] Sales
- You are not there to sell the games. You are simply there to teach and organize games. There should be no sales pressure: that's the store's job. If you are running an event at a convention, check to see if there are any vendors there selling our games that you can direct people to - or direct them to a local area game store that you know sells our games.
- Do Not direct players to our web site to purchase games if you are doing a demo at a location that sells our games! If the store you are in does not carry our full line, give them a chance to special order it for their customers (or better yet, to start carrying it) before you suggest their customers go someplace else.
[edit] Games
- You might get a group of completely new players and some who are experts of the game. Be ready for both, but especially make sure that the new players know what's going on and are having a good time. If you can, bring a friend... so you will be certain to have one person to start playing games with until you manage to draw a larger crowd.
- Set up new games as the situation warrants, based on the number of people. If you have enough people standing around interested, get a second game going if possible if the first game seems to be moving on its own. Talk to the store employees beforehand about the availability of extra decks to work with, if you do not have enough.
- As tempting as it may be, you do not have to crush the other players as soon as possible. If people are still learning the game and struggling to keep up, right then might not be the best time to declare victory and reshuffle. Sometimes, in a demo game, the best thing is to NOT play that card that would let you win. But there is nothing wrong with winning... if everyone has a good grasp of the game and knows what is going on, certainly feel free to win a game when you have the chance.
- Keep the game moving. A stagnant game will turn off many people quickly, so keep track of whose turn it is so the game may keep moving. It is ok if someone is taking longer than usual to decide his or her next card play, but when someone just doesn't realize it is their turn, this is when you step in.
- Explain what you're doing as you do it: "I'm setting up the timeline, which needs to be done before every game", "I'm flipping these Ripplepoints, because as you see here, it says that when this Linchpin is flipped, these get paradoxed", "I'm reshuffling the discard pile into the draw deck because in Fluxx when you run out of cards in the draw deck you shuffle the discard pile in and make a new draw deck", and so on. Hopefully, the players will be playing on their own later, and they're going to want to know how to play.
- Most importantly... have fun and make sure everyone else does too. If people see that everyone playing that card game in the corner are having a great time, they're going to come by and see what's going on. People are going to remember the fun, and tell their friends.
