Rolling for Initiative is a weekly column by Scott Thorne, PhD, owner of Castle Perilous Games & Books in Carbondale, Illinois.  This week, Thorne previews the publisher presentations at GTS.

Since, as a result of car trouble, I got stuck at home a few extra days before heading out to Las Vegas for this year’s GAMA Trade Show.  I decided to take another look at the number of emails that hit my in-box promoting various manufacturer seminars at the show.

As usual, nothing from Games Workshop or Fantasy Flight Games.  From what I understand, Fantasy Flight doesn’t feel the return on the event justifies the expense in setting up there and Games Workshop considers themselves as separate hobby, not quite part of the gaming industry, so that accounts for nothing from those two.  However, there was also no announcement sent out regarding seminars hosted by Wizards of the Coast.  WotC will host several seminars on OP, Dungeon & Dragons and Magic and their weekly emails make no mention of them either.

On the other hand, several manufacturer/publisher went above and beyond in the amount of information put into the email.  Take Osprey, who looks like they are making a major push to gain retailer awareness of their product lines this year.  Last year, they had one sales representative walking the floor (whom Castle Perilous Games did work out a cop-op advertising promotion with) but this year they have a full seminar going with details on the Osprey line, including info on their new Science Fiction and Fantasy line, Angry Robot.  I am really interesting in their promised look at the buying habits of military history buffs since more information on my customer’s behavior is always useful.  They even have industry pundit Ken Hite discussing how to introduce fantasy games to Osprey and seven reasons way RPG players need Osprey.

According to the Tuesday WizKids seminar (which offers retailers an additional Giant Size X-men giant booster for attending), the company plans to make a huge push into boardgames this year, with more info on the long promised Star Trek Expeditions game, as well as a new dice building game from Eric Lang and Mike Elliot (shades of Dragon Dice) and other board game offerings.  The Wednesday seminar looks at the company’s bread and butter, the HeroClix offering for the rest of the year. Somehow, I think more retailers will be interested in the HeroClix seminar than the boardgame one, hence the offering of the free booster as an enticement.

Mayfair Games is once again hosting a series of Demo to Demo programs, wherein retailers get to try a series of Mayfair Games, then take demo copies home with them, along with sell sheets and demo outlines.  $150 worth of free demo games always draws a full crowd, plus last year, Mayfair provided one of the few meals offered during the day to GTS attendees.

AEG, Konami, Bandai and Sandstorm also host seminars but the emails don’t tell much about what will be covered.  Well Bandai’s doesn’t. Konami will pitch the benefits of Organized Play and becoming a Tournament Store for Yu-Gi-Oh!, while Sandstorm will talk about the benefits of selling family games with the promise of awesome swag (their term, not mine).  Their Marvel licensed games sound interesting too.

Finally, Paizo Publishing will discuss the Pathfinder Society (their OP program as if you didn’t know) as well as other programs that will help boost Pazio sales (again their words not mine.  I will certainly be interested in seeing what other programs they offer).  Paizo’s seminar also offers game retailer and industry success Gary Ray of Black Diamond Games talking about the success he has had in his store with Paizo products and the Pathfinder Society.

Looks like a pretty good set of seminars and almost, almost mind you, makes me glad I had car trouble so I could take another look at the list.  On second thought, no, not really.

The opinions expressed in this column are solely  those of the writer, and do not necessarily reflect the views of the editorial staff of ICv2.com.