A worry about free rpgs

[The Traveller]

[kumakami]

Viral marketing is free only in cost, not time or effort. In fact it requires a LOT more of both the just paying for it.

think of a pond, a single stone can not over come a boulder, but a thousand stones can!

[Chainsaw Aardvark]

Strangely enough, free RPGs have a very high cost. Time.

You need to read the rules yourself, then argue to use them with the group, and learn what you can do - often making up adventures and characters with few samples to guide you. By comparison D&D has a few dozen pages on Wikipedia alone - even some of its monsters are famous enough to get their own pages. You will find someone else who knows about it, or already has learned the rules, and has some idea of how to play.

Now, aside from that, there aren't any big indexes that really draw people in. We have John H Kim (where a lot of the entries are dead links now), Hombrew.net (Which isn't as comprehensive) and the updated list being compiled by Dr. Lang. So there is a time and effort investment in just finding one. Then a greater effort in browsing through each to find the game that suits you.

I suppose that many of these games are a labor of love rather than wisdom could be a part of it, but if the game is truly good, then one can look past lackluster presentation. Furthermore, there are plenty of professional looking games.

Lack of advertising probably has something to do with it. I've been working on Dead and back for nearly six years, have maintained a thrice-weekly updated blog about it for an entire year (as of July 19 anyway). In the time that I've been keeping track, maybe a hundred people have looked at the rules, twelve people follow the blog regularly, and it has links from four places (Rob's Blog, one or two other blogs, RPGBA as of two or three weeks ago, and my signature). Still, that is more than most free games have.

Does price indicate that a game has value? I've bought bad games, I've seen poor reviews of expensive games. Free stuff seems worth the risk.

So the question is, how can we be proactive about this situation. Could we implement a 1km1kt rating system based on either reader votes of a shadowy cabal like the MPAA? If we haven't already, a "your top five free games" might help to ensure a person's first contact with free is something good and not yet another attempt to re-write D&D.

[vulpinoid]

[John Michael Crovis]

If I may...

I'm still rather new to this community, but I would argue that the best way to combat these problems is the community. Free RPG writers need to help each other, not only in giving feedback (which is no small thing), but also in promotion. I think if we all actively promoted each other and gave regular feedback to other Free RPG writers, then we could over come the advantages that mainstream RPGs have over us.

I get the impression that is what Rob Lang, Chris Sakkas, John H. Kim, Eric Chris Garrison, and many other individuals have tried to do, but they have all attempted this separately instead of together. We lack a coordinated effort to promote free RPGs and the people who write them. We don't really network with each other.

I'm a big idea guy. I honestly think that if enough people wanted to pool their resources and time together, free RPGs could become mainstream... But what would such an effort look like?

[vulpinoid]

[Onix]

[Chainsaw Aardvark]

You can find political groups based around misunderstandings of economics, pure jingoism, or religious beliefs. But there really aren't any dedicated to college students, and what they want for either education or prospects upon graduation. This is because the label of college student and youth is quite transitory. Mind you, back in the 1960s there was an attempt to make a youth based political party, but it didn't pan out.

To some extent, being a free game designer is also a limited tenure. Games get finished eventually (unless you're me) and life begins to include more non-game elements. John H. Kim is a physicist, programmer, and teacher, and the free game list is updated less than once a month. Six years ago it was updated almost weekly - I'd check each morning before going to classes.

1km1kt.net has been around for a long time, the earliest game hosted is from 2004. However, there isn't really an easy way to skip between pages of the archive, so its hard to see that way back on (what is currently) is a few essays about promoting your game. Finding anything amongst the few hundred games hosted? But of course Mr. Keeton has other things to do, Our Glorious Benefactor posts here once every now and then in an event heralded by planetary alignments.

Now, I might suggest we try to recommend some policies for game sites.

Number one would be we ask for cross-promotion. Perhaps there needs to be a special page for links, and an area that included other free games you recommend and why - just like web-comics always recommend others. It would be wonderful if we could set up a formal network like the , , or .

Another policy might be to include some way to recognize those who give feedback. A small reward like those who write back get written up as an NPC, or can submit a village to the setting. Not too long ago, I added a small link to a on my blog.

We could try to declare August "Play a Free RPG Month". Wind down your summer with friends and a free game. Recommend them for starting a club at school - no books to store or high prices to prevent it from getting started. I chose August since people are likely returning from vacation but haven't started school just yet.

As a final idea, how about a review contest? A two or three month period to have people read or play free games, and write up an analysis. They can be graded on style, entertainment value, usefulness to a consumer, helpful comments to the game's author, and depth of annotation.

[Onix]

[kumakami]

I think we also need to take a page from other free web venues. having better reference, auther pages with there rpg's AND there favs of others, and sorry to say but...alittle more fash! think about it, rob has a wonderful article about rpg design astetics and the SITE does not follow any of it. Its not truely the best looking free site.


I was also thinking if we could set up donation to start having a table as a few con's it would be amazingly helpful. All it would do is show off other peoples games, the 1km1kt site, talk about the different compititions, and of course run a few free games all con long....many be if we had the charity book done sell that too.


just My 1.2358 cents