Upcoming Roleplayers Social Gathering, April 18

The Wichita Roleplayers are holding their next social gathering 7 PM, Wednesday, April 18, at Talliano's Pizza, 408 N Baltimore Ave, Derby. Come for pizza and chat with your fellow roleplayers.

Back from Gorilla Con IV

Well, I'm back from Gorilla Con IV, and I have to admit that it wasn't everything I'd hoped it would be.

I only got to play in one roleplaying game, and some of it has to do with my own bad planning or timing. It starts with my being scheduled to run a game at 8 PM on Saturday, but not being fully prepared when the con started... I still had character sheets to flesh out and a map to finish! So not only did I have the laptop, I lugged my printer to the hotel as well, and spent too much time in the hotel room working on the adventure. The real irony is that the game never happened... I couldn't scrounge up enough players.

I skipped the Saturday morning slot because I was up past midnight on Friday, and assumed I'd be able to pick up another game, so I voted for sleep over roleplaying. (Hey, I'm 38, I have a kid, and I like my sleep.)

I skipped the Saturday afternoon slot because I didn't want to play in the slot before running my own game. When my own game didn't get enough players at eight, there wasn't anything but Living Greyhawk going on in that slot. (And one Call of Cthulhu game which was full.)

I wish I'd made an effort to play in one of the other two slots on Saturday... I talked to GMs in both slots that didn't get to run their games due to lack of players. If my wife and I had showed up, their games would have run. And I would have played in more than one roleplaying game over the whole weekend.

All in all, I played a few board and card games, and one demo game of Against the Darkness by Tabletop Adventures, my only roleplaying session of the con. Most of the GMs trying to run non-D&D games didn't get enough players... there were only a handful of non-D&D games offered and a slightly larger handful of players interested in non-D&D. And we didn't manage to get enough of those players together in the same room at the same time.

It wasn't a total bust. I didn't find a single roleplaying game I wanted to play last year (it was all D&D and one Vampire game, I seem to recall), so this year was an improvement in that regard. And this year my wife was with me, and we ate at "local flavor" spots for nearly every meal. Good food and lots of fun there. But I'm not sure I'm going to go back next year. If I do, I'm going to have to be more prepared and grab every opportunity to game as it comes along, instead of assuming that "something" will work out.

This has me thinking a lot about the local Roleplaying Game Days and the potential of a gaming con in Wichita, but they're not real concrete thoughts. But it does have me more anxious to get GD3 put together.

How to pitch a roleplaying game to potential players

When you're trying to recruit people for a roleplaying game, you really need to say more than "It's D&D" or "It's anime run with d10." You need to sell them on the game... even if it's D&D and they've played D&D before, they need to know specifically what your game is about and what kinds of things are going to be happening. There are a lot of different styles of play and types of stories to tell even within the framework of D&D. And if it's not D&D, the need for this is doubled.

One way to think of this is to compare it to inviting your friends to go see a movie that they've never heard of. You know they'll probably like it, but you need to convince them that it's something worth taking a risk on before they'll join you at the theater. So when they ask you, "What's the movie about?" you're obviously going to say, "It's an action-adventure directed by this guy you've never heard of."

No, wait... you're not going to say that! You're going to say, "It's a space opera about a young man who joins a rebellion to fight against the evil galactic empire, and along the way learns that there's more to himself than he imagined. There's lots of blaster fights, space battles, and a duel with light swords!" Or something like that. You might not use the word "opera".

Some hints about what you might say

• At a minimum, write a "back cover blurb" or a "teaser". This is like the description of the game on the back cover of the book. But don't copy the back cover of the book! You want to describe what your specific game is going to be about. You can borrow elements from the game's description, but you need to describe what's going to be happening in your game. You don't need to give away the plot, but you do need to make it detailed enough that players know what to expect.
  • One effective teaser, if you have a literary bent, is to write a first-person description of the game from an imaginary player character's point of view. This teaser for a Firefly game is a good example.

• Or write a full "prospectus". A prospectus generally goes beyond the teaser level and gives more concrete details. What the world is like, what kinds of characters are expected, what the subject matter of the adventures will be, etc. It's similar to the teaser, but there's more of everything. A sample prospectus follows at the end of this article.

• If you're putting together a new group from scratch (not trying to add a player or two to an existing game), consider offering more than one game. Develop multiple prospectuses for different games you are interested in running and shop them around and see which one gets the most enthusiastic response. Running a game a whole group is interested in is better than not getting to run anything at all. (Be sure you offer things you are interested in... don't stick yourself with something you don't like!)

Some other ideas

• Give links to the game's official website and important fan sites if it's a game your target audience isn't familiar with. If nobody knows what Fudge is, let them explore it for themselves.

• Provide sample character descriptions. Knowing what kind of characters are expected for the game goes a long way.

• Provide a list of "standard adventure topics" for the game you plan to run. (Not the kinds of things that other people might run, but the kinds of things that you plan to run.)

In short, tell them everything they need to know to say, "Wow, cool... I gotta play in that!" Don't expect the game to sell itself... you have to sell it if you want people to join up.

Sample prospectus

This sample prospectus is brief...

The End of the Line (Serenity Roleplaying Game)

The PCs are smugglers, but not without honor. They're trying to make a living out from under the watchful eye of the Alliance, but they find themselves torn between making a credit and doing the right thing. PCs may be ruthless to their enemies, but they should essentially be good people at heart.

Default adventures: smuggle cargo, fight pirates, rescue helpless women, investigate rumors of lost treasure, avoid capture by Alliance patrols, wheel and deal with the hardcore criminal faction, take on risky jobs you don't want but need the credits from

Assumes knowledge of the Firefly TV series, but no experience with the game system necessary. [link to Serenity RPG site]

Spring Great Plains Renaissance Festival, 2007

Just a reminder, the Spring Great Plains Renaissance Festival is coming up in a month.

http://www.greatplainsrenfest.com/

The spring renfest is special to me because it falls on my wedding anniversary. Fifteen years ago, we spent the first day of our honeymoon at the Kansas Newman renfest, which the spring GPRF has more or less replaced. So attending the spring festival, even when it's in a different location and run by a different organization, always brings back memories of my first day married to my favorite person in the world.