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Despite the constant effort to turn out good RPGs, rarely is the question asked, “What is a good RPG?”. You would think this would be a central concern, since nothing can be more important in making a good RPG than knowing exactly what you are trying to accomplish. This article will *attempt* to answer that all-important question.

Ultimately, everyone expects something slightly different from an RPG. This may be why there are so many RPGs out there. Everyone who is competent enough to do so makes an RPG which will fit their preferences.

From this, we can deduce that it is impossible to create an RPG which will be good in everyone’s eyes. It is safe to say that it is impossible to please everyone, and therefore impossible to make an RPG everyone will enjoy, especially with many people having mutually exclusive desires in an RPG.

Despite this, I believe it is possible to make an RPG that will please most people. How, you ask? It takes some cleverness, to be sure. Despite everyone having different specifications, there are a number of points which most people can agree on (should be simple, should be realistic, should be balanced, etc). Therefore, make an RPG with all of these traits, and you have made a pretty awesome RPG. Of course, anyone who has ever made an RPG before will know how hard it is to make these traits coincide. I will now go on a brief tangent to elucidate on this point.

Fabien Ni?oles’ System Color: A typology of RPG mechanics states that all RPGs can be measured on the basis of Fluidity, Consistency and Immersivity. Fluidity is the speed of resolution, angle of the learning curve, adaptability, and general unobtrusiveness of the mechanics. Consistency is the game balance, realism, and general solidity of the mechanics. Immersiveness is an abstract concept not related to mechanics, so we will leave it out of the discussion. Anyway, so we have the criteria of solidity and unobtrusiveness. Making the rules lightweight and fewer adds to unobtrusiveness, but detracts from solidity. Making the rules more precise and comprehensive adds to solidity, but detracts from unobtrusivness. Thus, we are still stuck with mutually exclusive goals! Countermanding this rule is the challenge of the RPG designer; cramming in as much solidity as possible without pushing out unobtrusiveness, and vice versa. This requires clever and innovative mechanics. Thus, originality is a virtue in RPG design, not just because of copyright issues, but because creativity in mechanics design truly makes the RPG better.

Our tangent has wandered back towards a solution! But the question remains unanswered: what makes an RPG good? The answer is pretty obvious; see if you can figure it out.

The more people an RPG pleases, the better it is. There. We have a general, neutral, blanket statement defining a good RPG.

Now let’s take it one step further and figure out what will make the most people happy. In order to do this, we will refer to the GNS player model. For the benefit of those who have never heard of it, let me go on another tangent to summarize it. The GNS model described three types of players; Gamists, Narrativists and Simulationists. Gamists play the RPG like any other game; their sole goal is to gain wealth, power and fame. They see their character as a collection of powers optimized for the acquisition of more powers. They will take advantage of loopholes in the rules for power. Gamists are usually not picky about mechanics, but, as with everyone else, solidity and unobtrusiveness are virtues. Narrativists focus on the storytelling and roleplaying aspect of the game more so than others. They are the type who is least concerned with the mechanics. Ironically, they also tend to be the pickiest about their systems. Unobtrusiveness is an enormous concern for Narrativists, but solidity is also important, though never at the expense of unobtrusiveness. Narrativists also tend to be very picky about any rules which limit their actions (such as the combat system in D&D). Simulationist is a much more abstract and complex category. Simulationists essentially want to do something in the RPG that they can’t do in real life, such as have a gunfight with aliens and robots in a dark alleyway on a space station. This is a huge and diverse category, so it is impossible to generalize as to their rules preferences.

Okay, now we have the GNS model defined, we can continue with our discussion. In order to please as many people as possible, you have to make rules which will accommodate each of these three styles. You have to have mechanics which have enough solidity to them to put focus on to please Gamists. These rules also have to be unobtrusive and open-ended to please Gamists. Finally, the rules have to be able to handle extremely unusual situations and be unobtrusive and solid to please Simulationists. Not possible? In the immortal words of Johnny Depp, “Not impossible- just not *probable*”. Still, it’s quite a challenge. So how do we do it? A recipe for a really good RPG:
# Start by identifying your goals. If you can specify exactly what you want, it will be that much easier to achieve.
# “Borrow” things that worked in other RPGs. If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.
# Where nothing works as well as you want it to, make up your own rules that other RPGs will want to borrow.
# Once you have perfected all of the things other RPGs do, add more features!
# Having achieved your objectives, make some harder ones and redesign the RPG to achieve them; an RPG is never completed; only abandoned.

Remember, we don’t truly need an RPG that works for everybody. It’s worked fine so far having an RPG for every group of roleplayers. But it would be nice to have a banner which everyone across the GNs model could unite under, wouldn’t it?

This article by Nick, who thinks he may have made an RPG for everyone: http://wtism27.tripod.com/carps/ Don’t be afraid to tell him if he’s wrong. You can contact him at nw.thomas@att.net.

I was going through the 1KM1KT logs this morning – something I like to do whenever I get a chance – and I notice that we had a visitor coming to us directly from the Departmnent of Defense’s Space and Naval Warfare division based in Washington D.C.

Naturally, my first concern is that someone has uncovered my secret plan to use mass printing of open-source RPG’s to influence the economic development of a certain third world country so that I can corner the import market on tin and tin-products.

My second thought was that it’s just someone like me who’s into RPG’s, gets bored at their job, and has access to a computer. If you fit that description, drop us a line. We’d love to hear about what you do, what you’re into, and any suggestions you might have to kill time on a Thursday afternoon before five.

Don’t get me wrong, I like the underlying theme, and the ideas you express are very innovative. I just can’t get past your grammar. No, I don’t mean you’re not smart, you just ought to – why are you looking at me like that? What are you going to do with – ouch!

So you suck at writing. Does it really matter? Yes it does. Despite all your great ideas, fabulous stories, and background information, if you can’t put together a coherent sentence with two hands and a flashlight, your RPG isn’t going to be read by anyone. That’s not to say that a few people won’t thumb through it (like your mom and the lonely guy at the RPG store who makes fun of everything), but the majority of the audience you’re trying to reach will get a headache, put your book back on the shelf, or click the back button and move on.

Maintaining readability in your work isn’t the easiest part of the job, but it isn’t the hardest either. Pay some attention to these six tips on copy editing and you can turn an unreadable mess into something you’ll be proud to show the world.

1. Think about what you are going to say. Brainstorming is a great idea and is very effective. When it comes time to put fingers on the keys though, take a moment to organize your thoughts. Things like introductions and setting backgrounds go first, main concepts and rules second, footnotes and afterthoughts go last. Divide your work up into sections and categorize all of your ideas before you begin writing. You’ll be able to go back and add stuff later, but this will get you started. When you finish writing, go back rename the sections – call them chapters.
2. Spell check your work. Not just with the automatic spellchecker either. Go through and read your work just like you would if you had picked it up off the shelf for the first time. When you find mistakes, circle them, make corrections, back up a few paragraphs, and begin reading again. This will help you to not to not only make sure your spelling is spot on, but will also give you a chance to improve the readability of your work.
3. Check your grammar. Again, not just with the automatic grammar checker! Your computer may be able to help you with your spelling, but it’s horrible at grammar. Trust me. To check your grammar go back through your work from the beginning – the very beginning starting with the title – and re-read it for grammar mistakes. Do it just like you did the spelling part and pay attention to the organization and overall document flow. Do not try to do both spelling and grammar at the same time – you’ll miss something. If you just don’t feel comfortable editing your own grammar, make friends with a good copy editor.
4. In fact, step four is all about making friends with a copy editor. At the very least find someone else who will read your work and give you honest critiscm. Avoid your grandmother and anyone who works beneath you in your office. Find the guy who will tell you when your fly is open and ask him. If he knows nothing about roleplaying games, even better. Remember, your game my fall into the hands of the uninitiated someday and needs to stand on its own merit.
5. Re-read your own work. Read it again. Read it a fourth time and a fifth. Make minor changes and put it on the shelf. Re-read it after a few days. Put yourself in the mindset of your target audience and read like they will. Any good editor will look at your work in as many ways as possible before they let you release it to the world. If youvre trying to save yourself some bucks you’ll have to do it yourself.
6. This one is the hardest. Know when to quit. I can’t teach you how to know when your done editing, so you’ll just have to figure it out on your own. The goal here is to reach the perfect point of refinement in your work where any changes will just make it different, and not necessarily better. Experience is the only way to learn this one. If you do get stuck, drop me a line.

By the way, if you catch the obvious (read: not overtly technical) grammar mistake in this article, e-mail me for your prize.

Update 7/24/4 – Congratulations to Vicki P. for being the first one to spot the error! The official contest is now closed, but feel free to let me know if you find the mistake and I will bestow my props onto you.
Keeton Harrington is Director of the “one thousand monkeys, one thousand typewriters” online publishing group, where they accept open submissions and provide publication resources for artists and writers in the roleplaying game, fantasy, and science fiction genres. His site can be found at: http://www.1km1kt.net

So you're an internet diva and you want to take advantage of the web to leverage your newest work online? Here are some ideas to get you started:

Get it up. Find a home for your work ASAP. You can publish your own website, or you can submit it to a publishing group like 1KM1KT to put it online for you for free. Either way, your work needs to be posted somewhere where people can check it out.

Tell your friends. Start with the people closest to you. Most of the time, they'll be happy to pass it on to anyone who may be interested. Think about all the people you know who have never met each other. Chances are you have a huge network of people at your fingertips that you don't even know about!

Give yourself credit. Take a moment to add credits and a link to your work as a signature line for e-mail, online forums, or anywhere else you may have that option. Here's what I use:

Keeton Harrington
Director – 1KM1KT
One Thousand Monkeys, One Thousand Typewriters
http://www.1km1kt.net

Get Googled. Take 15 minutes to submit your webpage to the big search engines. If someone else is hosting your work, just submit the URL where your work is located. It would look something like this: http://articles.1km1kt.net/expose_your_rpg_online.php

Here are some of the most popular search engines to get you started:
# Google

# Yahoo!

# Ask Jeeves

# AllTheWeb

# Hotbot

Read more about search engines here

Find the collectors. Lots of sites collect links to free RPG's, RPG's in a specific genre, RPG's based on movies or books, etc. Browse the internet and see if anyone is collecting your kind of work. Don't be shy about contacting these sites to be added to their lists. Most of the time, they're hobbyists like you and will be glad to post your link. Publish an article. RPG and publishing websites are always looking for fresh new material for their readers. Write and submit an article with a tagline linking the work you'd like to promote and a little information about yourself. 1KM1KT currently publishes a syndicated news feed that can potentially go to hundreds of websites. You can learn about writing for the 1KM1KT news feed here

Exchange Links. Contact other websites with similar content and ask them if they'd like to exchange links. Link exchanges can boost internet traffic and offer sites a chance to tap into new viewers. If 1KM1KT is hosting your work, just let us know who is linking to your work, and we'll add them to our links section.

With the examples above you can see that the internet offers a variety of free resources for aspiring authors. Using some of these simple techniques you can greatly increase public interest in your work and advance your career as an independent author. We wish you the best of luck and we look forward to seeing you online!

Keeton Harrington is Director of the 'one thousand monkeys, one thousand typewriters' online publishing group, where they accept open submissions and provide publication resources for artists and writers in the roleplaying game, fantasy, and science fiction genres. His site can be found at: http://www.1km1kt.net

You sat down at your desk and wrote a masterpiece. It’s the best thing since Tolstoy, and it’s going to be the cornerstone rpg for the next generation. You immediately sent it to 1KM1KT and they posted it online. Hours later with no response you start wondering if anyone has even bothered to read your masterwork. So what happened? Why aren’t people reading your work? Is there anything you can do to fix it?

The answers here are simple. People, especially those in the roleplaying community, are fickle. We have school, work, parties to go to, spouses, children, deadlines, tivo, co-workers, and puppies to deal with. In short, we have busy lives. It's a safe bet that most roleplayers would love to try out a new roleplaying game or talk about the latest RPG trend, but don’t have the time to track them down. Most of the time if these things don’t come directly to us, they get buried under the internet and are never heard from again. Here are six simple steps that will give your work a fighting chance on the internet:

Make it public. Unless you're a big time author with publishing contacts and backing, you're probably going to need to do some pro-bono work to get your name out there. Try posting free versions of your work for people to try. Once it catches on, use your existing fan base to leverage new ideas, go commercial, or sponsor an event.

Free is free. Take advantage of all the free resources on the internet to expose your work. Many of them come with few or no strings attached and can only help you. What have you got to lose? Check out this article from 1km1kt for a list of free internet publishing ideas: 1KM1KT: Expose Yourself

Don't make them come to you. If you make your audience seek you out, you'll wind up all alone. You have to go to them. Every successful organization uses some form of advertising to attract interest. Word of mouth, e-mail campaigns, search engine rankings, forum postings, etc. Something as simple as attaching a link to your work as your e-mail signature or forum signature can have a measurable impact!

Get involved. The best way to get people interested in you is to be interested in them. Take time to find people with the same interests as you and partner with them. Try asking other people for advice or talking to them about their work. They'll appreciate the attention and sooner or later they'll get around to asking you what you're into.

Stick together. There are lots of fish in the sea, and it can be very difficult to do everything yourself. Try to find other individuals or groups that can help you promote your work. If you can't find a group, try forming your own. People respond to initiative and leadership.

Be professional. Read your work. Think about what you say before you say it. Treat everything you release to the world – from e-mails to rpgs to forum postings – as though it will be the only reference your readers have to check you out. This is very often the case.

Keep moving. Don't make one big push for exposure and wonder why your response was lukewarm. Instead, make your efforts constant over a long period of time. You'll regarded as a stable author with something to offer instead of a flash in the pan.

Take these concepts and make them your own. With a little creativity and effort, you can put yourself out there and take a shot. You may be surprised where it takes you.

Keeton Harrington is Director of the 'one thousand monkeys, one thousand typewriters' online publishing group, where they accept open submissions and provide publication resources for artists and writers in the roleplaying game, fantasy, and science fiction genres. His site can be found at: http://www.1km1kt.net

People have been asking what 1KM1KT does to promote the work that our authors contribute. Hopefully this article will give everyone a better idea of what 1KM1KT is all about – spreading free RPGs around and promoting their authors.

Directories ' The first thing we do when we get a new submission is to submit it to the major directories. Those are the Looksmart Directory and the Open Directory Project. We’re a member of the Looksmart Directory and a contributor to the ODP, so our submissions are reviewed and posted pretty quickly.

Search Engines – This one we don’t mess with too much because we don’t have to. If you’re familiar with Google Pagerank system, you know that the higher your pagerank, the more importance Google (and most other search engines) places on your page. Our site ranks pretty well which means that most of the search engines out there scans the site regularly to see what’s new and add it to their search results. That means that any work posted to 1KM1KT is almost immediately reviewed and made available to the general public!

Link Exchanges – These are our favorites. We take the latest submissions and forward their links to our favorite RPG websites who then make the links available to their audiences. We target only the websites we think are cool, and it’s all done in a very personal way so we can maintain the quality of the sites that represent our authors and vice versa. This not only increases your exposure, but improves the 1KM1KT pagerank which means your work gets a lot more general traffic as well.

The RSS feed – This one is pretty cool. If you’re familiar with RSS technology (used in weblogs and news engines throughout the internet) you know that instead of sending out a weekly or monthly e-mail newsletter, a site with an RSS feed can simply update their feed and have their content distributed to anyone with an RSS reader or syndicate it to every site carrying the 1KM1KT feed. It’s really cool technology, and it’s changing the internet. Trust us on this one.

Those are the big ones. Of course, we’ve been doing this for a while now, so the industry contacts don’t hurt. Frankly, what we do can be reproduced by anyone looking to self-promote their stuff, and we encourage our authors to do just that! Just get your work posted, either on your own or on our website, and get cracking! If you find a good way to promote your work that we should be doing, please let us know!

The internet is by far one of the cheapest and most accessible forms of marketing available to authors of independent roleplaying games today. With one web-post, authors and artists can have full exposure of their unedited works to a potential viewing public of thousands. In the time it takes to publish a single piece in print, authors can post dozens of their works online for the world to see. But how do artists find an online home for their masterpieces?

When submitting a work for online publication, take a moment and decide what you are trying to accomplish. Among other things, the choices you make should reflect the audience you want to attract, the control you’ll have over your work, and the type of exposure you’re looking for. The big points to remember are this:

• Content is King. No matter how much traffic a site may be able to offer you, if it’s not the right kind it does you no good. Don’t bother submitting articles to websites that have nothing in common with your work, or that are overly generic. A good rule of thumb is that if a website doesn’t interest you, it probably won’t interest anyone who would want to look at your work.
• Rules of the Road. Be sure to carefully consider a website’s submission policies before committing yourself. Although most online services will allow you to maintain your copyright privileges, they may ask for permission to resize and reformat your work and in some cases even edit it to reflect the theme of their site.
• Pick your battles. Choose from online newsletters, ezines, and web catalogs that will present your work in a positive light. Although any exposure is good exposure, invest your time in submitting to sites that promote artists and their skills rather than the products they have to offer.

Examining yourself is the first step, but the submission process will be the most difficult. Use a popular search engine to find websites that deal in your particular genre. Look over the work they currently have on display, and submit carefully according to their instructions.
Websites like: deviantart.com, breedart.org, and digitalart.org are well designed sites that promote conceptual and graphic art while rpg.net, sff.onlinewritingworkshop.com, and thealienonline.net are geared toward the written fantasy/science fiction audience.
Used with care, the internet can be a powerful tool to introduce an artist to the public. Exposure on the internet can lead to job offerings, commissioned work, valuable professional criticism, and resume building. More importantly it can be a source of pride for any artist trying to make an impression and leave their mark on the world.

Keeton Harrington is Director of the “one thousand monkeys, one thousand typewriters” website, where they accept open submissions and provide publication resources for artists and writers in the fantasy, science fiction, and role-playing genres. His site can be found at: http://www.1km1kt.net