Guest post at Stuffer Shack

[Onix]

I just had my first guest post put up on Stuffer Shack. I'd be interested in the opinion of the monkeys!

Some of you might recognize my general thrust of figuring out how to advertise RPGs in a word of mouth kind of way. If we can get that right, it will be easier to win over new players.

[kylesgames]

I liked it a lot. Shame I don't have any good solutions, but it's great nonetheless.

I like the deep analyses of how other things pitch themselves and how tabletop games have to adapt; I'm sure there's some degree of bonding that needs to be moved in; as a video gamer and a tabletop gamer I can say how much more bonding happens at the table compared to on the screen, but I don't yet have a clear way to turn that into a selling point. Part of what I focus on is pointing out the storytelling, which is something that tabletop games only have going for them for a short time as increasingly emergent games come about like Dwarf Fortress and GearHead that are just as good as tabletop games when it comes to making up stories; Dwarf Fortress does it more by accident and GearHead is intentionally designed to do this, but they're both a major potential threat to the tabletop's storytelling lead.

[Onix]

Cool thanks Kyle. I know dwarf fortress, I don't know GearHead. I have a choice, work on RPGs or play video games if I try to do both the wife never sees me and starts setting smoke bombs in my office trying to flush me out.

[kylesgames]

GearHead's an anime-inspired giant robot roguelike I'm technically supposed to be working on a tabletop conversion of. It's got a storytelling system that works by bringing in a ton of pre-made "episodes" to make up an overarching plot, and as a player you'd pretty much just have it work smoothly and seem to create a perfectly dynamic story.

It's not quite as good as the tabletop for versatility, but it's eerily close, only relying on players going along with what the game's giving them, which basically means it's a railroading GM.

[Rob Lang]

We've discussed this very topic here in the past and it is an important one that you give good ground to on the Shack. Verbal selling is very powerful indeed but I think that video speaks more to the younger generation than just blah-ing at them. What would a good RPG video look like? It would have to distance itself from its stereotypes and point out that it's more about the social aspect than the details of the game. Beyond that, I have no idea what form it would take.

[Onix]

I really want to do video but I think I'm going to start with audio as a warm up medium. It's always an issue of time management with me to get projects started.

I think the stuff Will Wheaton is doing with tabletop is interesting.

[J.K.Mosher]

Stuff Yourself you GIT headed parasite!