How to sell me on your game

20% more mayhem.

A brief primer on what should go in a sales pitch for your game.

Lately I've been giving the indie publishers on itch.io a lot of attention. Itch is a marketplace where the consequences of failure are low. Creators are willing to be a little braver about what they offer up for play. There's also a lot of first-time game designers wearing all the hats and doing their own editing and layout.

Between my Itch queue and the recent DrivethruRPG D20 sale, I've concluded that a lot of RPG design newcomers don't know how to pitch their games. It's no surprise, pitching is a different skill to designing. But it's not hard and it's an important tool for success as a game author, whatever that might look like. Here are my suggestions for a pitch that would intrigue me, if no-one else:

1) Tell me what the characters do. What kind of game were you thinking of when you wrote this? Delving? Investigation? Monster-hunting? Espionage? If you don't spell it out, I'm going to guess it's dungeon fantasy. But I'd still prefer to know what your assumptions were. 

1a) If it's a generic system, what supplements come bundled with it?  What supplements are available right now, and where can I find them? What are you planning on releasing later?

2) Dice and resolution mechanic. If it's roll one die + bonuses vs target number, tell me that. If it's roll a dice pool and count successes, tell me that. And let me know what dice and/or cards I'll need. If your game needs custom dice and the players don't know it without buying the book? I hope all your future rolls are critical fails.

Wow, okay. I guess I'm invested in that one.

3) Tell me what's special about it. Now when I say 'special' I don't mean you need to have invented the next obsession of the RPG world. Tell me what you like about it. Does it do something different? Is it condensed? Clarified? Rules-light? A really nice layout? Classes adjusted in a way that works better at your table? If you just had fun making it, that's good enough but think about reflecting it in the price.

4) What support do you give it? Do you hold Q&As? Can I email you with questions? Is there a fan forum or a subreddit?

5) This is more of a personal preference than a must have, but pagecount. If it's up around 100 pages, I'm going to assume there's some complexity and player choice in it. If it's around 200 pages then complexity, character creation examples, a setting and optional rules. At 400 I'm convinced you're padding it. At five pages, I'll assume it's a very simple game that relies heavily on GM fiat. There's nothing wrong with that, it's a style.

6) Last, spellcheck and grammar check. If your pitch is full of errors and sentences that are difficult to parse, I'll assume your game is hard to read. The content of your pitch might be enough to move it over the line anyway. But not usually.

Here's an example of a very good pitch. It's concise and informative.