Trip Report
                    1993 GAMA Trade Show, March 1993
                             Peter D. Adkison

The GAMA trade show is an annual event where gaming manufacturers,
distributors, and retailers have the opportunity to gather together
and discuss business, make deals, and see what other companies in the
gaming industry are up to.  While open to gaming companies of all
types, a majority of the companies represented come from an adventure
gaming background and roleplaying products are heavily represented.
This year's show was held in the Tropicana Inn in Las Vegas, Nevada,
USA from April 9th through April 11, coming on the tail end of the
Game Inventers of America show on April 8th and 9th.

Representing Wizards of the Coast at this convention were Lisa
Stevens, our vice president in charge of sales and marketing, and
myself, Peter Adkison, president of Wizards of the Coast.  We arrived
late in the morning on Monday the 8th and left early in the evening on
Thurseday the 11th.  Our booth was set up easily since we had a very
modest display this year, and we staffed the booth from 1pm to 6pm on
Tuesday and Wednesday, and from 10am to 1pm on Thurseday.  The rest of
the time was spent "schmoozing," partying, making contacts, and
generally having a lot of fun.  Accompanying us through much of the
convention was Jose Garcia from Toronto, who is considering starting
his own gaming company and came along to "learn the ropes."

Very little went wrong at this convention.  It exceeded our every
expectectation.  Yet it's always good to take a moment and see if
there are some things that we could do better next time.  What follows
are some ideas along those lines:

* Booth.  We couldn't find our company banner and as a result our
booth was very poorly displayed.  It was the single thing that made us
look less professional than we really were.  Next year more time needs
to be put into this aspect of our company's presentation.

* AOL.  We had hoped to promote America Online a bit, and took some
disks to do that.  But we forgot about them and therefore failed in
this objective.

* Company presentation.  Since we didn't pay our dues early enough we
were not given a time slot in the company presentations series where
the major companies stand up and briefly discuss what their company is
doing.  These presentations were a lot of fun to watch, more people
showed up to see them than I thought would, and I really wished we
could have done one too.

* Company representation.  Having only two people to work the booth
made it difficult for both Lisa and I to go out and meet up with all
the people we wanted to meet up with.  Next year I'd like to have
three people there at least, and four would be ideal.

Okay, now that all of that is out of the way, it's time to discuss
what went *right.* In no particular order:

* Lisa was able to score our company some points with Game Shop News
and with GAMA by suggesting that Game Shop News distribute through the
GAMA Hotline, thereby solving a distibution hurdle for Game Shop News
and bringing in revenue for GAMA.

* We made some excellent contacts for potential investing, both for
Wizards of the Coast and Garfield Games.

* I met a woman named Joanne White from Toronto in Canada.  She is
starting up a small company who's initial product will be a gaming
magazine named *Cryptick.* She seemed very enthusiastic, professional,
and determined, and I was impressed enough to decide I wanted to help
her out.  Also, when I told her about Envoy she really freaked out and
decided she definitely wanted to use Envoy for articles in her
publication.  After explaining to her the problems of selling a
magazine on your own to distributors we came up with a plan for
Wizards of the Coast to act as a supplier for her magazine.  The
tentative plan is for her to ship magazines to our warehouse after
they are printed and for us to handle the selling of them to
distributors.  With our extensive distribution network we could
virtually guarantee a level of distribution far exceeding what a new
company could hope to achieve in less than two years worth of
marketing.  The advantage to us is that it makes our company appear
more active, we get a percentage of the profits, and we have an
opportunity to promote a magazine that has made a heavy committment to
supporting our Envoy concept.

* We held repeated discussions with Dave Miller of GMA about his
science fiction roleplaying line, *Interstellar Elite.* IE is an
excellent game judging by the reviews we've seen and the quality of
the presentation--haven't read it myself so I can't vouch for it
personally--yet Dave is plagued with the typical problem of small
companies who are having limited success because they lack the
resources to promote their product, lack the staff to support it with
regular releases, are too small for distributors to take seriously,
and are suffering from a president/owner who is also heavily committed
to another business.  Dave asked us if Wizards of the Coast would like
to become involved in IE in some way and we came up with a tentative
plan for GMA to focus on product development and for Wizards of the
Coast to take over the editing, production, and marketing of the line.
We'd redo the entire product as a Wizards of the Coast line and it
would be jointly owned by both parties, similar to the Hero/ICE
arrangement.  All the plans are tentative though as another company,
Global Games, made him some sort of similar offer.  If Dave decides to
go with us Wizards of the Coast will most likely be launching this new
science fiction game, in a revised and improved format and
organization, sometime in the summer of 1994.

* Lisa was asked to join the gaming industry committee (the name of
which escapes me) that is responsible for the Origins Awards.  The
committee doesn't actually decide which products get what awards, but
it does manage the nomination and voting process and the awards
ceremony.  Congratulations Lisa!

* At the request of Winston Hamilton, the Executive Director of GAMA,
I presented to the GAMA board of directors the situation regaring the
lawsuit filed by Palladium Books and Kevin Siembieda against Wizards
of the Coast.  Since GAMA board meetings are open to the gaming
industry "public," many more people than just the board of directors
were there, including influential manufacturers, distributors, and
retailers.  Overall the board was extremely responsive to our
situation and Winston Hamilton in particular supported us strongly,
commenting on the host of letters, faxes, and phone calls he's
received from Wizards of the Coast supporters, most of whom are people
who have seen our press release on Internet.  Unfortunately GAMA is
prevented from becoming directly involved financially, but they agreed
to help make sure the gaming industry at large is made aware of our
plight.  I believe that this presentation was influential in leading
some key people to helping us out on a number of fronts.  Mike
Pondsmith of R. Talsorian Games volunteered to try and mediate this
suit with Kevin Siembieda.  Most felt that this had little chance of
success, yet Mike underscored the fact that he had experienced some
success with dealing with Kevin in the past.  I told Mike that I
considered each of the settlement terms that Palladium demanded as
"negotiable," with one exception: I will not sign an admisison of
guilt.

* For our upcoming Envoy project we have decided to only print
integration notes for game systems who's companies gave us written
permission to do so.  This of course has left me with the unenviable
task of going from company to company to request such permission.
Fortunately this turned out to be much easier than I thought it would
be as I learned that most companies understood the value in the
advertising that such additional coverage would provide for their
products.  The following companies agreed that they would send me
written permission to publish integration notes for their systems:
White Wolf, Stellar Games, Mayfair, Flying Buffallo Inc, FASA, GMA,
Columbia Games, Atlas Games, Steve Jackson Games, R. Talsorian,
Chessex, Leading Edge, and West End Games.  Before attending the
convention I had already received a committment to such from BTRC and
Ragnarok.  ICE/Hero and Game Workshop were receptive but told me I'd
have to discuss it with someone in the company who wasn't attending
the convention.  The only rejection was, not surprisingly, from TSR.
Hmmmm, maybe we'll have to do integration notes to RoleAids.  I wasn't
able to discuss this with every company in attendence, notably GDW,
Chaosium, or Avalon Hill, and there are a host of companies, like
Pagan Publishing and Palladium Books who weren't at the convention and
will have to approached separately anywah--yes, we will be fair to
Palladium Books by extending this offer to them as well, although I
acknowledge that there is very little chance of them accepting our
offer.

* In general we were encouraged by the degree of recognition and
positive support we've earned in our one year as an active member of
this industry.  Most everyone knew who we were, most of the retailers
we talked to said that they do carry our product and that it moves
moderately well to very well.  We were able to reinforce many of the
friendships we made at previous conventions, and we were able to make
some good contacts with companies that we previously had not had as
much contact with, such as FBI and West End Games.

* Several companies who we are currently doing advertising with agreed
to give us generous payment terms to support us in our lawsuit against
Palladium Books and Kevin Siembieda.

* Robo Rally.  First, some background in case the reader is not
familiar with this situation.  A couple years ago Richard Garfield and
Mike Davis approached us about publishing a Garfield and Davis game,
Robo Rally (RR).  We immediatley fell in love with RR and agreed to
publish it.  However, due to delays in getting our company started,
under-capitalization, and the higher-than-anticipated cost of
producing a table game with lots of components, we still are not in a
position to publish RR.  Because we'd like to see RR get published,
and also because we feel bad about leading the game designers on for
so long, we received permission from the designers to approach Mayfair
Games about publishing RR either as a joint venture or to do just do
it on their own.  Before the convention we sent it off to Mayfair and
it was very positively received by Ray Winninger (head of development
at Mayfair) and Jerry Dickerson (CEO).  However, Darwin Bromley
(president and owner) had some "concerns" and suggested we discuss it
in person at GAMA.  Accordingly, Darwin and I got together early in
the show and discussed it.  Darwin was concerned because he couldn't
figure out how to market the game.  Try as I might, I was not able to
convince him that the game was very marketable.  A couple of times
during the convention I tried to convince him again in different ways,
but to no avail.  He did agree however that the game had "play value"
and maybe if we got in a group we could get some synergy going and we
could collectively come up with some ideas on how to market it.  So,
Thurseday evening we got together with some friends of his from a
spectrum of the industry, got very loose, and asked them for some
advice.  Interestingly enough these people thought the game's concept
sounded great "as is" and Darwin pretty much became convinced.  My
only concern is that Darwin is viewing this as a bit simpler of a game
than it really is.  When asked by one retailer if the game could be
played by 10 and up he said "it will be by the time I get done with
it."  This lead me to question how much respect he would have for the
game's designers and I hope this doesn't lead to a problem.  The
obvious warning to Mike and Richard (who I'm updating by sending them
this trip report) is that if they care how this game looks when it's
published, they should make sure their contract includes an approval
step.

* More Robo Rally.  In case things break down between Mayfair and the
RR designers, we continued our research on collecting competitive
quotes for publishing RR ourselves.  We did find that Hobby Games LTD
in England is working with a manufacturer over there and they have
extremely competitive rates on plastic figures (which, by the way, the
people in that Darwin Bromley round table insisted we use) and we
wouldn't have to pay for it up front, but could simply take it out of
Hobby Games invoices (they distribute our products in the UK).  This
naturally would be a Very Good Thing.  One of my current action items
is to coe up with a revised production plan for a Wizards of the Coast
RR.

* We talked with Escape Ventures about demoing our products at
conventions and doing playtesting.  We explained that our playtesting
network is pretty decent with our electronic setup, but having them
run games for us at GenCon might be good.  Unfortunately we've got to
move on this fast, and the game I'd really like them to demo is
Manaclash, yet I don't want to commit to that until we have our
financing locked up.  Aargh!

* Lisa established a good contact with someone named Niki (last name
escapes me) about doing video productions on a shoestring budget.
This could be a potential resource for us in producing a promotional
video for Manaclash or some other new product line we decide to lauch.

* We approached White Wolf about licensing the Storyteller games for
our Deckmaster series.  They were very positive about the
possibilities.

* Lisa and I both independently discovered that our Deckmaster series
might be elligible for a patent.  As soon as financing permits we will
be pursuing such a patent.

* We picked up a new distributor, TM Games out of the UK, and they
placed an order that may be our largest single order ever (I still
need to check our database).  This alone paid for our trip by a factor
of seven.  This also has lead us to alter our distributor policy
simply because Lisa made him a couple of deals and now we need to
offer the same deals to their competitors.  Mostly this would modify
our distributor policy only in regards to foreign distributors or
large volume orders.

* Lisa attended a roundtable discussion on manufacturer/distributor
relations that was headed up by Don Rents of Chessex.  Don presented
several excellent ideas on how to improve these interactions and Lisa
will be working on how to implement some of his plans.

* I was interviewed by Steve Jackson games regarding the lawsuit filed
against us by Palladium Books and Kevin Siembieda.  This interview
will be published in the first issue of *Pyramid,* their upcoming
roleplaying magazine.

Quote of the convention: Jim Ward of TSR after announcing that they
were releasing yet another version of the Buck Rogers and the 25th
Centurey roleplaying game, "We're going to keep making it until you
buy it."

Respectfully submitted,
Peter Adkison
President, Wizards of the Coast
3/12/93