Taking our TTRPG to Origins, part 1
This week my brother Nick and I are taking our TTRPG The Magical Land of Yeld to Origins Game Fest in Columbus, OH.
This is a big deal for us. It's the first large show we've taken our game to. Here's what we had to do to get ready:
1. We applied for Origins nearly a year ago and were accepted last Fall. The booth space is expensive (about $1000? I don't remember exactly). Booths come with absolutely nothing. Just an empty 10 X 10 space surrounded on 3 sides by black drape. The con facilitator sells booth packages from $500 to $17000 (in addition to the cost of the booth). For real. The cheapest option gets you a 6 foot folding table, 2 folding chairs and a small trash bin. That's it. We can't afford that, so instead our plan is to stop by Walmart when we get into town and buy a table and 2 chairs for 60 bucks. We'll return them after the show.
2. We don't live in Columbus. We live across the country in Portland. So we had to get all of our stuff to the show, and us too. We're coming to Origins to sell, so that means transporting a LOT of product. 100 hardcover books. 180 softcover expansions. 200 resin miniatures. 30 GM screens. Are we expecting to sell all that? IDK. But Origins is a huge show, so our hopes are high.
We also need to transport our display. That's a large wire book rack. 2 banners, a display case and a box of odds and ends. In total its nearly 500 pounds of stuff. So, how do we get it to Origins?
Option A: Drive to Origins. We load everything in Nick's car and spend 3 days driving to the show. This means 3 days of gas, 3 days of lodging and 3 days if food (and the same back). Plus we show up to the show exhausted.
Option B: Ship our stuff, fly our bodies. We originally thought we'd pack everything on a pallet and ship it to the convention center. That's a service offered by the con facilitators. But we priced it out and the cost was about $4200!!! The shipping itself is expensive, but half the cost is just the fee for the convention center to accept the package, store it for a day or two and then cart it to your booth. We couldn't afford that, so we looked for other options.
We found that FedEx could ship all our stuff (14 boxes) for about $1200. We could ship it to a FedEx location in Columbus and pick it up the morning of the show and cart it to our booth ourselves. Good deal! We'll also have to pay to ship everything home, but our hope is that we'll sell most of what we bring.
And of course plane tickets cost money too.
We decided on option B. The costs were similar, but flying/shipping saved us 6 days of travel.
3. On the ground in Columbus. Since we're flying we need ground transport in Columbus. Once we arrived we rented a Uhaul van. This was MUCH cheaper than renting a car. We used the van to pick up our table and chairs at Walmart (as well as some cheap groceries for the week).
Tomorrow morning we'll pick up our boxes from FedEx, and deliver everything to the convention center. The van comes with a hand truck, which we'll use to move everything inside. After we're done we'll return the van. We can save money and parking fees by taking the city bus each day. We'll rent the van again on the last day to load everything out and return our tables and chairs to Walmart.
Thats it for today. Were in Columbus now. Right now we're relaxing in the apartment we've rented for the week. The last big show we did we just rented a two bed motel room. This is a bit mire expensive, but we have our own rooms, an air conditioner space yo relax snd a kitchen to cook in. This is a big 5 day show, and having a comfortable place to relax will help us get through it.
Origins is a huge investment for us. Will it be worth it? IDK. We'll see, I guess.
Tomorrow I'll post about setting up our boothand day 0 of the con!
- J
Part 2 here