what are the resources/relationships needed to sell an RPG

OgreBattle · Post by **OgreBattle** » Wed Aug 01, 2012 4:46 pm

Like how Pathfinder has done.

How were they able to get their name out so well? How easy is it to find a physical copy of their book?

Think of this like "how to make a successful RPG", but instead of talking mechanics we only talk about getting the product out

The printers, the distributors, the marketers, that kind of thing. Obviously WotC has the most powere here, but you still have paizo giving them a challenge.

If you know how much it costs to do all this too that'd be great to add.

Voss · Post by **Voss** » Wed Aug 01, 2012 5:19 pm

Paizo is a pretty bad example, and one you can't really replicate. They were a pre-existing company with relationships to D&D, explicitly as printers and distributors. They did Dragon and Dungeon back when they were magazines, and a large chunk of their senior staff were tied to D&D for years.

So they were already in the business, knew 4e was coming, and knew WotC was burning all sorts of bridges to its existing customer base. So all they had to do was stroke a few egos of the disaffected player base and tell them everything they wanted to hear (and since those people were openly ranting about what they wanted, this wasn't even hard). And since WotC pulled Dragon and Dungeon on them, they had to shift their business model _anyway_, and tied shit in with their existing 'adventure paths.'

So the key to Paizo's business model was 'already be a successful part of the industry, and sell virtually unchanged material to people who already like you'

hogarth · Post by **hogarth** » Wed Aug 01, 2012 6:14 pm

If you're interested in the history of Paizo, Lisa Stevens has been posting an interesting blog series about their history (since it's the 10th anniversary of Paizo):
http://paizo.com/paizo/blog/tags/paizo/ ... sStoryHour

As Voss said, they had an unusual position in that they already had close ties with hobby distributors long before they published an RPG. Even if you don't count Dungeon and Dragon magazines, their first RPG book was published in 2005, 3 years before Pathfinder came out.l

MfA · Post by **MfA** » Wed Aug 01, 2012 8:30 pm

Something like Mouse Guard is probably a better example ...

tussock · Post by **tussock** » Thu Aug 02, 2012 2:49 pm

Like most things, you have to sell something that people already want to buy, which no one else is willing to provide them in similar quality for substantially less money.

Once that happens, people will walk into shops and ask random people there why they cannot spend money on your product already. Shop keepers hate that shit, and up the chain the message goes. If you look and sound professional enough for distributors and such to sign contracts with, it will happen.

Paizo had a lot of trust with distributors already, but not enough to have Pathfinder sitting on the shelf at Toys'R'Us like Wizards could do with 5e if it's any good.

hogarth · Post by **hogarth** » Thu Aug 02, 2012 2:57 pm

MfA wrote:Something like Mouse Guard is probably a better example ...

According to Amazon and Wikipedia, Mouse Guard's publisher is Archaia Entertainment, which was founded by a comic book creator who presumably had some knowledge of comic book and hobby distributors.

Voss · Post by **Voss** » Thu Aug 02, 2012 3:26 pm

tussock wrote:Like most things, you have to sell something that people already want to buy, which no one else is willing to provide them in similar quality for substantially less money.

Once that happens, people will walk into shops and ask random people there why they cannot spend money on your product already. Shop keepers hate that shit, and up the chain the message goes. If you look and sound professional enough for distributors and such to sign contracts with, it will happen.

Paizo had a lot of trust with distributors already, but not enough to have Pathfinder sitting on the shelf at Toys'R'Us like Wizards could do with 5e if it's any good.

Not sure if any RPG sits on Toys'R'Us shelves anymore, though admittedly that is where I picked up the Red Box back in 85 or 86. But Pathfinder does sit on Barnes and Noble shelves as well as game/comic stores, which is really the limit of brick & mortar presence for RPGs these days.

But Paizo is also a weird entity that sells other people's stuff, too. You can get on Paizo's website and buy warhammer or warmachine minis, or comics, or a fuckton of other random shit for no reason. As well as other people's rpg prodcuts, which directly compete for Paizo's own. I'm not sure how much of that is a legacy thing of when they were loosely affiliated with WotC (in the sense that they produced Dungeon and Dragon), or how it really came to be, but they are a really strange business entity with dicks in a lot of different pies, to varying depths.

hogarth · Post by **hogarth** » Thu Aug 02, 2012 4:10 pm

Voss wrote: But Paizo is also a weird entity that sells other people's stuff, too. You can get on Paizo's website and buy warhammer or warmachine minis, or comics, or a fuckton of other random shit for no reason. As well as other people's rpg prodcuts, which directly compete for Paizo's own. I'm not sure how much of that is a legacy thing of when they were loosely affiliated with WotC (in the sense that they produced Dungeon and Dragon), or how it really came to be, but they are a really strange business entity with dicks in a lot of different pies, to varying depths.

In one of the blog posts I linked earlier in the thread, they explain that their web store is an outgrowth of the software they developed for handling subscriptions on-line.

Lago PARANOIA · Post by **Lago PARANOIA** » Thu Aug 02, 2012 6:47 pm

OgreBattle wrote:If you know how much it costs to do all this too that'd be great to add.

Well, first of all, you need to have some kind of crossover appeal. If you don't want to be spending the next decade going to cons and relying on word of mouth and good reviews to grow your customer base, you should woo your fans from an unrelated project. Brian Clevinger for example would have never gotten Atomic Robo off of the ground as quickly as he did were it not for his fame from 8-Bit Theater. Aaron MacGruder would have never produced a Boondocks cartoon without his comic. The Brothers Chaps would have never gotten Nintendo to promote Strong Bad's Cool Game For Attractive People without Homestar Runner.com.

My advice to you would be that if you don't want to suck on some celebrity or publisher's genitals, use the power of Internet 2.0 to create and promote a project completely unrelated to tabletop gaming, unless you think that you have the zazz and zeitgeist to hook people onto your product by the strength of tabletop gaming alone. And considering that the combined efforts of Penny Arcade, Robot Chicken, and TGWTG.com couldn't keep 4E D&D afloat, I think you're fighting an uphill battle.

sabs · Post by **sabs** » Thu Aug 02, 2012 7:19 pm

There are some amazing RPGs out there that basically get no love, because very few people play them.

Arcanis and Fading Suns come to mind as two examples.

ishy · Post by **ishy** » Fri Aug 03, 2012 9:15 am

Never heard of them, what makes them amazing?

Prak · Post by **Prak** » Fri Aug 03, 2012 9:20 am

Pathfinder probably also had an advantage in that they were touting the fact that they were going to "save" D&D 3.x before any product actually hit customer eyes. Paizo, being already a publisher of game stuff and linked with D&D, sent out "Here's what's coming out so you can order it" brochures to stores, and used the opportunity to get Gaming Store employees interested and excited, who would then in turn tell customers. I'm sure that I at least once told a customer who was buying 3e stuff about 4e coming, and that Paizo wanted to "save D&D 3.x." Of course they then cocked it up, but they had an advantage.

MfA · Post by **MfA** » Fri Aug 03, 2012 10:17 am

hogarth wrote:According to Amazon and Wikipedia, Mouse Guard's publisher is Archaia Entertainment, which was founded by a comic book creator who presumably had some knowledge of comic book and hobby distributors.

I think the latter was less important than having an existing franchise with an audience, a significant amount of which would consider roleplaying.

I think that in today's crowded and small market it's the most likely route to success.

hogarth · Post by **hogarth** » Fri Aug 03, 2012 12:59 pm

MfA wrote:
hogarth wrote:According to Amazon and Wikipedia, Mouse Guard's publisher is Archaia Entertainment, which was founded by a comic book creator who presumably had some knowledge of comic book and hobby distributors.
I think the latter was less important than having an existing franchise with an audience, a significant amount of which would consider roleplaying.

I think that in today's crowded and small market it's the most likely route to success.

I was specifically referring to his question as to how to get your product out to printers and distributors and how to get a physical copy of your product into stores. I think the most popular route is to work for another company that handles all that (e.g. become a staff or contract writer for WotC or Paizo or Green Ronin or whatever) until you build up your own reputation and contacts to start your own company and do your own thing.

How to make a popular product is a separate issue, and one that encourages a lot of vague guesswork.

sabs · Post by **sabs** » Fri Aug 03, 2012 2:38 pm

ishy wrote:Never heard of them, what makes them amazing?

Arcanis has an interesting character generation/advancement system.
It has an interesting skill passive/active system. They do this thing where they allow you to combine basic maneuvers together into advanced maneuvers. And they let you do the same thing with basic spells. This creates a fun setup for some uniqueness. They have it built into the spell system, that you can raise your DC(They call it DN) by a set amount in order to enhance some part of the spell. They use an interesting initiative system.

Your initiative is Xd10 where X is your passive quickness score (somewhere between 2 and 5, 3 or 4 being most common) You roll the dice, and keep the lowest number. That's the 'tick' you begin movement on at the beginning of the fight.

Actions, Maneuvers, Spells, Abilities have costs. There are actions that let you push your clock for an intercept, or spell that let you push the enemy clock. There is also the concept of strain, keeping you from being able to just spam special maneuvers or spells all day long, and having to think about it. Spellcasters end up doing either ranged, or melee combat as well as spellcasting. Fighter types mix in special maneuvers and regular attacks. Semi will switch back and forth between spells and maneuvers. It actually makes for an interesting combat.

It is lacking in spell and maneuver options, and also multiple path options per character types. But it's a good game, that's starting to get splat books that are going to help with that.

Fading Suns is just an incredibly fun game. The background is interesting. It's Feudal In Space. There's noble houses, guilds, the church, merchants. There is a mixture of magic, psionics and tech. There's a lot to do and play in that game. But, I've pretty much never met anyone who actually played it(outside of conventions). Which is sad.

Username17 · Post by **Username17** » Fri Aug 03, 2012 4:21 pm

sabs wrote: Fading Suns is just an incredibly fun game. The background is interesting. It's Feudal In Space. There's noble houses, guilds, the church, merchants. There is a mixture of magic, psionics and tech. There's a lot to do and play in that game. But, I've pretty much never met anyone who actually played it(outside of conventions). Which is sad.

Space Feudalism is extremely retarded and I am genuinely insulted that people are still writing shit using it. Science fiction was pretty much required to be Space Feudalism a lot during the height of the Cold War, because harsh rules about what you could and could not print anything that had Capitalism replaced by anything better in the future. John W. Campbell Jr. would personally ensure that you never worked again if you tried to publish science fiction where the future was Communist and that was OK.

So until 1971 or so, it was actually mandatory that the future described be either ultra-Capitalist or have "regressed into barbarism" and be feudal or tribal or something. There was no other option.

For a few years after that, people published more crap in that vein simply out of habit. But in the 21st century there is no fucking excuse for that garbage. The Cold War has been over so long that the people born from the over exuberance of Berlin Wall parties have graduated from college. You aren't being censored, and you are allowed to write post capitalist or capitalist dystopian settings without being blacklisted as a Soviet sympathizer.

-Username17[/td][/tr][/table]

OgreBattle · Post by **OgreBattle** » Fri Aug 03, 2012 4:36 pm

sabs wrote:
ishy wrote:Never heard of them, what makes them amazing?
Arcanis has an interesting character generation/advancement system.
It has an interesting skill passive/active system. They do this thing where they allow you to combine basic maneuvers together into advanced maneuvers. And they let you do the same thing with basic spells. This creates a fun setup for some uniqueness. They have it built into the spell system, that you can raise your DC(They call it DN) by a set amount in order to enhance some part of the spell. They use an interesting initiative system.

Your initiative is Xd10 where X is your passive quickness score (somewhere between 2 and 5, 3 or 4 being most common) You roll the dice, and keep the lowest number. That's the 'tick' you begin movement on at the beginning of the fight.

Actions, Maneuvers, Spells, Abilities have costs. There are actions that let you push your clock for an intercept, or spell that let you push the enemy clock. There is also the concept of strain, keeping you from being able to just spam special maneuvers or spells all day long, and having to think about it. Spellcasters end up doing either ranged, or melee combat as well as spellcasting. Fighter types mix in special maneuvers and regular attacks. Semi will switch back and forth between spells and maneuvers. It actually makes for an interesting combat.

It is lacking in spell and maneuver options, and also multiple path options per character types. But it's a good game, that's starting to get splat books that are going to help with that.

Fading Suns is just an incredibly fun game. The background is interesting. It's Feudal In Space. There's noble houses, guilds, the church, merchants. There is a mixture of magic, psionics and tech. There's a lot to do and play in that game. But, I've pretty much never met anyone who actually played it(outside of conventions). Which is sad.

In Arcanis, does magic and swording use different mechanics? About how much dice rolling and math work is tehre in a typical action?

With Fading Suns, is it mostly the setting or is there something nifty n' special they do with the rules too?

sabs · Post by **sabs** » Fri Aug 03, 2012 5:44 pm

Fading Suns is really about the setting. The game system is playable, but not really anything super innovative.

Arcanis:
Spellcasting and Combat work basically on the same skill resolution system.

So you have stats
Each stat has an associated passive stat number and a stat die.
and you get the passive bump and the stat die bump at different points.

so you could have a 4 charisma which is a passive 3, and a d6
or a 6 charisma which is still a 3, but a d8, or a 7 charisma which is a 3/d10 or an 8 which is a 4/d10.

skill checks are basically:
2d10 + stat die + skill ranks
you crit when the 2d10 are 0's
you crit fail when the 2d10 are 1's AND your total is less than the DN.
your stat die is open end up.
Critting in combat basically lets you do wound damage.
Passive totals are basically:
10+passive stat modifier + skill ranks

For spellcasting:
Spells have a base DN, and then modifiers based on feats or as part of the spell, that let you add DN for effect. If the total spell DN is lower than your PASSIVE Spellcasting score then you cast the spell without rolling. After that, it depends on the spell effect, you usually have to roll if the spell goes against a defense.

Your spell also has a speed cost and a strain. You add the speed to your clock, and that's when you can go again. Strain is the number of 'ticks' after that.. that you need to wait before casting a spell again. You can cast a spell inside the strain count.. but then you take damage.

So lets say you cast Lightning Bolt.
DN of 19, +3 DN to bump the damage die. You're passive spellcasting is a 23, so you cast it. You roll 2d10+stat die. If you roll higher than the targets defense. You hit. Then you do damage. Damage is usually a Dsomething + primary casting stat die. Sometimes it's more. The stat die is always open end up.

Martial Maneuvers work basically the same way.
Except there's no base DN. It's always against the target's passive defense. Usually avoidance. (but not always)

Wesley Street · Post by **Wesley Street** » Thu Aug 09, 2012 4:22 pm

Fading Suns pulls its tone from popular SF books where the focus is on collapsing stellar empires, like in Dune and The Hyperion Cantos. The closest comparison you can make is WH40K but it's less gothic, less bad heavy metal.

Neurosis · Post by **Neurosis** » Thu Aug 09, 2012 5:02 pm

Man, I wish I knew. I don't see any answers in this topic besides "be Paizo" and "have existing ties to the hobby industry".

hogarth · Post by **hogarth** » Thu Aug 09, 2012 5:09 pm

Schwarzkopf wrote:Man, I wish I knew. I don't see any answers in this topic besides "be Paizo" and "have existing ties to the hobby industry".

Is it really surprising to you that "How can I be successful at doing X?" is answered with "You should have some prior working experience at doing X"?

Neurosis · Post by **Neurosis** » Thu Aug 09, 2012 5:56 pm

It's not really easy to get that experience from the creator side. And as a creator-owner-publisher, that's frustrating. For instance, I have not-inconsiderable working experience freelancing for a major RPG publisher, but that doesn't help me much as a creator-owner-publisher trying to get my own game's sales off the ground.

Y'dig?

hogarth · Post by **hogarth** » Thu Aug 09, 2012 6:03 pm

Schwarzkopf wrote:For instance, I have not-inconsiderable working experience freelancing for a major RPG publisher, but that doesn't help me much as a creator-owner-publisher trying to get my own game's sales off the ground.

It doesn't? I would have thought that cultivating relations with your existing contacts at a major RPG publisher would give you a big head start compared to Joe Blow off the street.

Neurosis · Post by **Neurosis** » Thu Aug 09, 2012 6:14 pm

Have you worked as a freelancer? I think Frank or Bobby could attest to this but the contacts you're making as a freelancer...*sigh*

I don't have time to discuss this, I've got a thingy to write.

Username17 · Post by **Username17** » Thu Aug 09, 2012 6:25 pm

Schwarzkopf wrote:It's not really easy to get that experience from the creator side. And as a creator-owner-publisher, that's frustrating. For instance, I have not-inconsiderable working experience freelancing for a major RPG publisher, but that doesn't help me much as a creator-owner-publisher trying to get my own game's sales off the ground.

Y'dig?

The Paizo experience is not generalizable. They were sitting on a decade of high quality art, they had well developed relationships with printers and distributors, and the most popular RPG system in history had just become abandonware for no discernible reason and they were able to hire a bunch of well-known names from that system as consultants for pizza and beer. They had an ideal perfect storm to take over the mantle of RPG big dog, and it is only epic failure on their part that it took them a couple of years to get acknowledged as number 1.

The writing was on the wall the very moment it was clear that 4e was going to be kind of lame, and the writing was on the wall in giant flaming letters the moment it was clear that 4e was very lame indeed. Recall that K and I offered to do QA work for them for free because it was obvious that they were going to be number one with a bullet and we wanted them to have a higher quality product. Turns out they didn't want dedicated and skilled QA testers, because "math is hard" and they wanted to reserve the right to publish shit off the top of their heads and either fix it later or not. But even without making any demonstrable improvements to the 3e system, they are still number one now because the deck was so blatantly stacked in their favor.

If you want to follow an example of struggling to the top without being handed the keys to the vault by the biggest fish in the pond before it covers itself in shit and jumps off a bridge, you're going to want to look at the story of White Wolf. And by White Wolf, I mean Lion Rampant, because that is where it starts.

So for that, I suggest:

Inherit money that allows you to maintain higher production values than your rivals (this was shit simple in 1987, when even the products of the big fish looked like this, today it requires that you have professional-grade art and layout.)
Have an on-staff editor (note that Lion Rampant's on-staff editor went on to become the CEO of Paizo).
Get large amounts of outside funding from people wanting you to make vanity projects move forward who don't give a fuck whether they receive a return on their investment.
Make stuff that happens to tap into the "next big thing".
Still spend 5 years in obscurity before becoming a big fish in the RPG industry.
Hopefully the current biggest fish will screw up their core business model and you can overtake them while they are covering themselves in feces and jumping off a bridge.

Oh wait, that required TSR to commit messy sepukku in order to work as well. But it still involved coming out of essential obscurity to become the industry leader in the mid nineties. You know, almost ten years after they started the company.

The core events that made all that possible of course were:

Johnathan Tweet inheriting money.
Lisa Stevens being willing to work as an editor for years without pay.
Dan Fox showing up out of nowhere and giving giant cash infusions for nothing except ego boosts.

If you follow that completely luck-dependent model, you can keep your company afloat long enough that you might randomly make something that becomes the next big thing the way Vampire was in 1991.

-Username17