presents his Intimidation Doubled contest entry.
Privateer also supported their Iron Kingdoms d20 ruleset by sponsoring several Introduction to the Iron Kingdoms games, along with other games for veteran players. These introductory games ran about 2 hours long, and have been played at conventions for the past year.
In the scenario, Professor Pendrake takes some students - including a human, an elf, a goblin and a trollkin among others - on a field trip for extra credit. Their assignment is to locate and infiltrate an Orgoth vault and retrieve a tome within. Naturally, there are several encounters on the way to the vault, including a bridge troll that must be overcome before they can enter the vault.
The goblin rogue was able to notice several traps within the vault and they were easily avoided. She determined that there was another, magical trap as well. Not being able to overcome the magic of the last trap, the trollkin player decided to just grab the book and run. The party attempted to escape... but they succumbed to the traps one by one, even as they tried to rescue their comrades. The trollkin managed to escape the vault even while burdened with another party member and the book, and managed to get back in and drag out the other characters before time ran out. The students regained consciousness in the clear air, and their professor informed them that they had each received an "A" in their course. As they set out back towards their ship they encountered one last obstacle. This threat was overcome, but the trollkin fell in the battle.
Privateer's campaign of promoting their product in this manner worked in at least one instance - as one of the players, a game-shop owner, returned to the booth to discuss carrying the product at her store.
Other companies were promoting their games in a similar manner, with another table in the same room hosting a variant D&D game using the Curse of the Moon sourcebook (which covers lycanthropy). It was put on by the publisher, Sean K. Reynolds Games.
Another table in the room was taken by a game based on the TV series Angel, while a second featured a fantasy "hack 'n slash" monster hunt.