Throwback – RPC 2010 Cologne Tabletop Demo Area

I somehow missed the proper opportunity for this throwback in 2020, as it would have fit the 10-year anniversary.

During my studies, while I was editor-in-chief for a German wargaming portal, I was approached by Michael Kränzle, back then with Leuchtameisen and owner / editor-in-chief at GamesOrbit, before being head of marketing at Pegasus Spiele and now fulfilling this role at Heidelbär. GamesOrbit was one of the media partners of the RolePlayConvention that moved from Münster to Cologne in 2009, and the show had its troubles to integrate tabletop wargaming into its portfolio.

Michael has a soft spot for miniature wargaming and wanted to push that hobby within the spectrum of tabletop games and was looking for somebody who could support that vision. And for that reason, he got in touch with me. He thought of some kind of christmas market, with small booths and lots of space for participation area. And that was kind of a problem, because usually you book a booth at a fair and depending on the pricing or the size of your booth, the venue may give you some space for that kind of activity. But it's usually pricy.

What were the challenges to begin with? When the convention was in Münster, it already covered tabletop wargames, but the main focus was on cosplay and video games. So, when the 2008 show was incredibly successful for its theme with 23,500 visitors, they moved to Cologne. The venue is more professional, but more expensive as well, creating a bit of problem for the exhibitors. Tabletop compared to the other industries is niche, the marketing budgets in other industries are bigger than the revenue earned in a full year for most of the companies and Games Workshop wasn't the steamrolling giant they are today (in 2008 they had 110 Mio GBP revenue, but didn't pay out a dividend, and sales went down due to the Lord of the Rings bubble after 2004). But maybe - just maybe - if we created enough interest, some people and companies would book a booth and grow a new branch at the show.

While 2007 and 2008 covered some painting competition and exhibition, and smaller tournaments with a few demo tables, which worked out for the size of the show, 2009 was heavy on tournaments. And that is a bit of a problem in points of interaction. Visitors of the show, may not be aware that a competitive game is running and may as well not be familiar with the do's and especially don'ts of our hobby. So interested people interrupting tournament gamers and in some extreme cases, picking up lovely painted miniatures (who am I kidding, it's a tournament, it was mostly three colours and a painted base...), didn't create the desired experience for neither party.

But, the move to Cologne brought a couple of advantages. First of all, space, lots of it and some cooperation with deep pockets. As mentioned above, compared to what we were used in tabletop wargames, the costs for the booth were peanuts for the bigger players like video game companies and such. Roccat was one of the main advertising partners and spend along with others so much money on the RPC, that it cross-financed other areas like tabletop wargaming completely. What does that mean? Well, we got 400m² / ~4,300 sqft area for our idea. And so, we began planning.

Where did I take the time to take of this projekt? Well, part of a study is a practical phase, where you usually work as an intern at a company for 3 to 6 months. And I decided to make the organisation and planning of this event my project for that semester. It didn't require me to be at some office 8 hrs a day, gave me a lot of flexibility and I could put a lot of the things that I learned as an apprentice as well as during my bachelor degree into practice. What did I get for that? Yeah, I wasn't in this for the money, but for the chance to create growth for both my portal back then as well as the hobby itself. They expected 40,000 visitors for the show and having the opportunity to show that many people tabletop wargaming, was just another level compared to everything else - even events like Salute with 5.000 visitors.

For 2010 the vision was set, get the people miniature gaming, so I talked to a lot of people in my network and after a few weeks, we had around 20 different demo tables and about 50 people hosting games and support staff. And it wouldn't have been possible without the incredible support by my local club as well as the editorial staff. I learned a lot about coordination, it was an exhausting weekend, as I had a lot to do as the "central node" of this operation. But we were able to cover tables for the following systems:

• Aeronautica Imperialis
• Arcane Legions
• Blood Bowl
• Epic 40.000
• Field of Glory
• Firestorm Armada
• Freebooters Fate
• Götterdämmerung
• Level 2
• The Uncharted Seas
• Warhammer 40.000
• Warmachine
• Wargods

Excuse the quality of the pictures, back in 2010 I only had a Powershot A530 and not a DSLR yet. Friday was a long day, preparing the setup of the area, preparing tables etc., we had a lot of helping hand to make it possible. The event was role play and cosplay focused, so you saw a lot of people in costumes, from fantasy to sci-fi and the outside area was filled with a renaissance fair, offering food, LARP weaponry and parading cosplayer.

Beside grabbing something for lunch, I didn't really have much time to see most of this, as I was coordinating our booth and helping out, if something was missing or anybody needed something. Along with being at our booth and talking with the visitors.

We had a cool main event at the T3G / Tabletop Demo Area and tried a world record in the most people playing Wings of War simultaneously. A long, very long table, with lots of printed gaming posters and about 40 to 50 people divided in two teams. We had fun, but it wasn't enough to break the record. If Wings of War sounds familiar, this was the World War 1 dog fight game, which would provide the later rule base for X-Wing and was re-branded as Wings of Glory.

Michael arranged contact to NOCH / Ziterdes and they supplied us with some displays for the show. Unfortunately, Ziterdes went out of business in 2022. Besides that, we had a lot of clubs and individuals hosting demo games and really went at it the weekend.

At this point I would like to thank Michael for giving me the chance to co-organise the event and a huge thank to the editorial staff, my club buddies from Koblenz (Bad Habitz) and all the clubs that participated to make T3G happen.

Further coverage on the RPC 2010 can be found here: McHenryArt (FlickR Album)