Reference The Game Group

I'd actually be seriously interested in whatever ya'll have to say on this topic, as I currently attempting to work on an RP set during the Crimean War (1853-1856), and I'm a little worried about whether I'll get any players, and if they'll stay.

 

I really, really think soomeone has one day to do something about this Indy-phobia we seem to have

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Anyway, to the topic at hand. Despite my limited GMing experience under my belt I felt I should say something about it, because these are the game I admire and enjoy most. [i]Original Games[/i], as I call them. Also [i]Games in an Original World [/i] would probably be more fitting. Well, first of all I wonder if it is true those games have historically failed more often than other games. Examples like [b]Legio Angelis[/b] (Saintheart), [b]Aria of the Soul[/b] (darthRAMZA), [b]A Breaking World [/b] (Chukles38) or the still running [b]The Darker Tides [/b] (Spycoder) come to mind. There is obviously also [b]The Sins of the Saints [/b] (Fin) and it´s sequels. In a way even [b]ManCubs [/b] (Winged) belonged into the category of Original Games, as it really borrowoed little more than the framework of Star Wars. So there are quite a few games that were made out of nothing and nevertheless very successful. Arguably the most artistically respected games actually came from this sub-group of games around here, I´d say.


[i]So: how do you sell an unfamiliar setting to prospective players? [/i]

I can only guess: But idea, genre and creativity? I think in these cases an awesome OP is more effective than anywhere else. When I choose to enter one of those games, I usually fell drawn to the concept and the uniqueness. That is sold to me in the OP.

[i]How much backstory do you need to give in the opening posts?[/i]

You need to explain what the world is about, I´d say. Or you run the danger of players feeling cheated when they expect something else. How much description that needs is hard to generalize, as I really, really think different worlds cannot be compared.

[i]Are there some principles to it? How can people do it better? [/i]

I really think that one must be answered by those who went through this process.

[i]At what point do players lose interest in a setting, whether because it's too complex or it's all TL;DR?[/i]

Well, the thing you first need to catch their interest. Vampires vs. Werwolves or Future War must be pretty awesome to manage to do this.

[i]The End of the World and you do not even know why with a modern take on religion[/i] (SotS) or [i]a murder-mystery as a soap opera played fast and dirty [/i] (The Darker Tides) . . . those two are unqiue concepts and seemed to have no problem at all to find an audience. Again, I judge this from the POV of a player.


All in all I think like most the game itself needs to be good, but with an original gaming world you really need to catch your players and ignite their interest. As you lack the big Keyword to catch them.

I hope Fin and Spy will comment on this, as they seem to have embraced and championed this sub-genre these days. Considering how few games within SW or in general we have, I would like to point out that with three running games original content makes quite much of our games here, these days. And I love that!

 

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On the other hand, though...worldbuilding can be fun

 

Therein lies the interesting paradox: if your franchise is well-known and captures the imagination, in the initial period of its popularity it'll bring large groups of players interested in recreating the experience in RPG form -- even if it's a franchise that's waaaaay out there. I don't think there's that much difference in plausibility between, say, High Devil Sands and the Matrix. Yet those three franchises you're talking about (IIRC) had pretty decent player rosters or interest -- Matrix had 20+; LSA's old Lord of the Rings drew an initial player roster as big as IBOP; Harry Potter RPGs also start, at least, pretty well and IIRC it's a Harry Potter RPG that had the highest post count at Imperial_Hammer's 500,000 posts celebration.

Now, much of that is reputation of the GM, presentation of initial first post, and the fact our userbase has shrunk over the years, but I'd suggest the capacity's out there. I would tend to adjust your first category as follows:

1) those which are set in either the Star Wars universe or a franchise which has had comparable popular success or the contemporary world.

Harry Potter AU RPGs, for example, seem to fail. Dismally. (And we've had at least one or two). And possibly that's because for the fanbase of that franchise the RPG falls into your category (2). It isn't a familiar setting to them, and consequently it doesn't appeal.

This adjustment also allows (I'd say) for the success of D&D play by post -- at its heart, I suspect most D&D is people just wanting to recapture a Tolkien book. As Stephen King says, "these guys out there writing fantasy -- Steve Donaldson, Terry Brooks -- just can't let Frodo go to the Grey Havens to rest once the last page of the book has turned." Fair enough, you could make the argument that Lord of the Rings itself is "Medieval Europe WITH MAGIC", but taken to that extreme, all RPGs are set in the contemporary world, since you have to give a human reference point somewhere. And now I'm disappearing up my own bottom, so let's get back to relevance...

Surely there must be some identifiable techniques for making an unfamiliar setting accessible to players. Authors do it all the time -- I mean, so much so that people think Gone With the Wind is close to historical fact when it comes to the Civil War. Watership Down is just about rabbits, fercryinoutloud. How do we do that in the context of an RPG? How does Richard Adams pull us into his world, makes us have big feet and big ears from basically the first word, but anytime I try and draft up a Watership Down RPG I'm reduced to gales of self-loathing laughter in anticipation of the reaction at large?

 

I think there's a lot of merit in the existing worlds vs new worlds categorization, but to say that all original worlds are inherently tl;dr is a bit of a fallacy.

It's all about leveraging existing knowledge, and (if that's not possible) drawing parallels/analogies to existing knowledge. Chukles' A Breaking World is a good example of a this: it was an original world, but borrowed heavily from common (i.e. familiar) fantasy tropes/mechanics and reframed them in an intuitive way as well. "Fire magic exists in the Fire Kingdom" is intuitive and easy to remember. So while the game was set in an original world, it had comfortingly familiar patterns and underpinnings, and that helped draw people in.

One can also depart too far from the framework and get bogged down trying to describe it. I've seen Star Wars games whose OPs I've passed over just because I didn't care to learn about what these half-dozen entirely original factions were and what areas of the galaxy they controlled, or details like that. (Especially if they are described with all the colour and flavour of a history text.) The comforting framework can become a hopelessly tangled array of struts and scaffolding if one tacks too much on to it.


It's also really important that the OP tells a story. It can't just be a collection of facts and figures about the setting. This is something a lot of GMs (and particularly those who like world-building) seem to do. It's an easy trap to fall into. I only realized this when BobaMatt said as much in critique of some game I've forgotten ages ago: "What you have here is a great setting, but there's not much story." The net result is tl;dr because it becomes an encyclopaedia/atlas/history book, rather than a the opening sequence for a game.


Also, I think a Crimean War RPG could be successful, if you had a good story and were able to draw simple and easily remembered parallels to things most people might already know. (That said, I have a passing interest in historical fiction, so take that with a grain of salt.) A Watership Down RPG, likewise, but you'd have to really work at it ... not because the setting is unfamiliar, but because once you get past the story in the book, it's a game in which you are a rabbit. I mean, really.

 

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First. There is nothing you cannot sell, if you really do your best and come up with a good way to do it everything can be sold to players.

Second. Posting your notes on factions, a map and a history essay is not even trying to sell me anything. That´s your homework as a world-builder, but it is not an OP anybody will care for.




So, first of all I cannot come up with a world that is not rooted in the real world. I simply cannot. The problem is, what do you emphasize when you talk about your game-world? The typical world-creator wants to tell me what is different in his world and fails to catch me. He should tell me what is familiar in his world. I need to identify with something. Is it a medival worlds with robots? Renessaince where dragons exist? Victorian age with steam instead of elictricity? All these idea before base their world on known ages of man. A look and social ideas included.

You simply need to pick up the player at the bus station at home and take of not driving too fast. Not at the third stop and certainly not anyhwere near the final destination you pick him up! You need to pick him up at home!

And you have to keep in mind for who you are doing it, for players, for an RP. AND you must not think that you can get away with things in an RP nobody else gets away with anywhere else. I strongly believe if Tolkien forced us to read an encyclopedia on Gondor before Chapter 1, Lord of the Rings wouldn´t have been read by anyone until today. But this guy begins in a village with sweet little people and from there he expands the world. Look how little we see of SW in ANH. Or what do you know about the Matrix in Matrix before minute 30? If you create a world - Think hard, REALLY hard about how you present it to your player. Don´t give him your notes and hope he figures it out!

And I can short cut the thinking process of how to sell a game. The clue will be you find what is known to players from the real world or through media already and then you build up on it! They will relate to it, identify with it and through that they will create a character in your world that feels real to them. If your firemages are called Mages of Holy Fire or Maxantiloipop will not help anybody to learn anything about that world. And certainly the area they control is a total useless info, if I do not even know what the damned world look like!

A world is a breathing thing and not a collection of factions and titles and maps. Therefore I believe the presentation of most worlds itself is already wrong. The plot begins as if they tell a well known story, the GM expects the players to make themselves familiar with it and they lack exposition. Of ALL GAMES in the RPF these games jump over the exposition! No, that won´t work.

So what if the world is so complex I cannot describe it in a scene or dialogue or anything but a description at all? Again there is a simple answer I believe. Then you got not a world that is a fit for RPing. Probably not even a novel. Try a computer game or a full conversion Mod of Morrowind or something like that, it might work. Not everything can be made a RP.

Somewhere around here someone once made a damned good article on selling games and attract players, I believe. But hell we got so many groups nowadays. I could not find it in a quick glance over some. I think selling a world is like selling a game. Same thing. If someone summarizes the actual political situation within the Rebellion-era and then explains to me the command structure aboard a Rebel Cruiser I won´t be with him in a game, either. If he tells me what the mission is, I probably am.

 

That is a very insightful point.

Perhaps Imperial_Hammer's Market Theory?

 

No, it wasn´t the market theory, which I know and love and consider essential reading for GMs! Probably something by Fin or you Winged or Saint? It disputed the "reputation is everything" theory before practice showed us that rep gets you into the restuarant, but not a table . . . I thought it was in the old GDG but I did not find it. Would add nicely to the discussion, I believe.

That is an actually very interesting point.

Actually I think the basic techniques of storytelling works great when applied here. It is just that we are delitantes. Amateurs with a passion and some creativity. We haven´t studied these things. If someone accidentially ends up here who is doing it to some professional degree we usually find him able to sell anything, because of stuff we do not even realize until a lot of posts later. So I believe I am actually more willing to give an RP a chance than any TV Show or movie that isn´t highly recommended to me. Let´s face it, we miss most stuff in Cinema and TV. Almost all of it.

So is it true what you say Winged? Does an unfamiliar setting demand greater trust? Well, certainly it does if your OP says: Hello all. Now follows my unfamiliar setting! Point 1: Factions. Point 2: Map. Point 3: Magic System Which isn´t the way this stuff would ever be sold professionally to an audience out there. If you would imply that, you would not even get near a cheque or camera!

"Hey guys, I got an idea for a TV show, you know what? First we sell people a 900 page sourcebook in bookshops with dry background info and a lot of fantasy names. Second. We get a map online and a list of all crazy names and spells and weapons. Third, we cast our actors for the TV show." Nope, that isn´t the way they do it. Not even most ambitious TV Shows write their bible before the season call, actually.




There is a perfect example of how a totally inaccessible game was sold to us all as easy to join and became one of our greatest successes, despite really being . . . nothing people expected and totally left-field with a plot that is between crazy and abstract. But I asked the GM to say a word about it, so I probably won´t spoil the fun before he answers. It is a good example of how to sell your own worlds, though. A really good one.

 

I've been trying to find a way to adequately phrase my opinion, but luckily, LordT did it for me.

God damn I cannot agree with this enough. A good hook will grab people no matter what the setting is. A bad hook will require a lot of setting familiarity - this is why I've always had something of an implicit preference for the NSWRPF, as the "screening process" is much, much more difficult since the prospective GM has to ask themselves if they should even bother. And the answer, of course, is "Yes, but" where the qualifier is that I'll only read a bunch of setting crap - because that's what it always boils down to for a prospective player: crap they have to dig through to join the game - if you can convince me to join before I read said crap. Or, to use Lord of the Rings, since that's becoming our go-to example for some reason: hardly anyone reads the Silmarillion before they read The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings proper, but a lot of folks read The Silmarillion after.

 

First off, thanks for the award. I was blessed with an amazing crew of players who are faithful and ready to play!!!

Okay, now the discussion. I think the main tip would be, as LordT said, is not to bog down your OP with factions, maps, etc. A little brief section, on a second post, telling a bit about the people who populate this world, might be helpful, but if you overload it, people will immediately see how intimidating it looks with all the facts, and run head over heels the opposite direction.

Also, leave a bit of your "world" open. When I first created Riverview, I had a few basic ideas. But, I left some room for the players, who create and add places that I would never of thought of. Players are very creative people, and they like to know that they had a little part in "adding" to the world. They feel some what connected. So, say you have a world. You can let people know about the populations, and perhaps a some of the landscapes. What about a hometown? A player could create that, which would allow them to fabricate a whole story for their history, and even some history for their town. And, when the GM incorporates that town into the story, taking the players ideas and showing how they used them, the player would naturally be ecstatic. I know I would. That's just my ideas on it all though.

Hope that little insight helped. I really think though that LordT covered the major points.

 

This sounds vaguely familiar. I remember having a stoush with DarthCemeroX back in the GDG over the issue of "reputation is all". It wasn't an article as such. It was more a response to the proposition "lol nobody plays my games cuz i is not an oldbie!!11!!!!" I remember putting up the example of Phantasmagoria's "Titanomachy" opening post as an example of what happens when you come across as professional, regardless of whether or not you were a newbie or oldbie. That game pulled a full player roster in a matter of days, following which Phantasm disappeared off the boards for a year or two. I know I haven't written on the subject other than that, T, unless of course my Alzheimers' is kicking in early this year.

 

Yes! This exactly! That was what I was trying to say, except with (ironically) more tl;dr.

 

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Weeell, using Twilight's a bit of an easy point, since it's the only franchise that actually proves, on screen no less, that you can't polish manure, but you certainly can roll it in glitter.

 

That game might actually work as a satirical/lulz sort of production.

 

Honestly? It sounds pretty good XD

 

Okay, this will be long. But I see LordTs point and I think the key is, you will have to cut a bit of the concept to make it a seller, but if so . . . you can sell ANYTHING.

I think you missed LordTs point. What you describe above is a non-effective selling process. Twilight? Winged you seriously, seriously believe this board does not have Twilight fans? Sure, we don´t talk about it. I mean they . . . they don´t reveal themselves. But I think the point of LordT is, if you cannot sell it as a what it is obviously, you take detours. Or you rewrite the concept. Actually you wanna play Twilight? Call it FULL MOON and you have a game. You only need to get rid of the name and the cheesiness involved. The plot is old, tested and actually very, very good. Romeo & Juliet, where the move Juliet from one side to neutral ground. That´s it. Twilight is just terrible in it´s execution.

And the idea a romance game would not work is non.sense. In chats and PMs I talked sooooo much about it. I just think doing a good romance plot is the toughest challenge of all. It is so personal! Anyway . . . I get distracted and still got a bit to say . . .

And 17th Century South Asian religious practices? Seriously? We talk about the Shaolin here and the Boxer incident and such and you think there is no way, no, no way we could make this a game? Well, if you force us to speak chinese, certainly not. But . . . not even if we transform the incidents and practices into SW? Or you think a murder mystery in a buddhist monastery in the 17th century China named "Shaolin Murder Mystery" by Winged Jedi would NOT get players? Kung Fu pehraps as a selling point? You think if you add Kung fu you would not get players? But actually that is an easy sell. Make it a ManCubs-sequel and translate it into SW and you will not be able to save yourself from players. Seriously. [color

 

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Sirak, that was kinda funny also you describing interviewing me makes me think I need to see a therapist.

In my defense I wanna point out, I also wanted to make an apocalyptic game. So I flavoured one concept with the other and it kinda fit . . . but yeah, the only thing good that came out of the stupid idea of studying philosophy next to my job was probably . . . SotS

And Winged . . . could you reserve me a spot in Shaolin Murder Mystery if you ever do it?



So, to phrase the common ground of the two positions, which seems to be bigger than the differences:

You can sell anything, but it certainly has a price. Therefore consider radical changes in your ideas to make them more marketable and you might get through.

The old artists question how mainstream you wanna be. I agree totally with the common ground above, yes. If I had time I would tell a bit about the sujet-theory of Bordwell (how did I suddenly become such a scolary guy? I always have worked on the "wild-kid" image around here and now it get´s ruined on a single day!?!) and how a story and it´s presentation CANNOT be the same.

Anyway, as I said I´d agree with the presented above ideas, but just as I wanted to jump on Winged´s wagon . . . I remember My Little Pony. Could we label that one an anomaly? It kinda challenges a lot of ideas.

 

Okay, to remove a bit of the veneer of "WTF?!" regarding that last one, all the players there were pre-contacted. We all went in knowing full well it'd be a four person My Little Pony game.

 

I really wish that that game had continued! It was fun to do something different and, well, ponies!!

 

Real life is a cruel mistress.

Oh, and because I just noticed it:

Oi!

 

Whenever I try (and fail) to create a game, I try and make it around themes that interest me. If I find a cool idea I like, I throw it in - but my track record isn't exactly anywhere near "stellar," let alone "mediocre."