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.

Bitten

This is a one-page game of being people who are halfway to zombifying. You got bitten, but medical science suspended the turning process. Now your survivor enclave wants you to stay outside and do all the dangerous jobs. They're not going to risk someone healthy, are they?

Click the image to download a copy.

Hungerling lake

A small dungeon in the Underdark for low-level characters using a Dyson Logos map. The big challenge here is not alerting the horde of hungry carnivores that some edible adventurers have entered their dungeon.You can download it from here. It's my entry for the Itch.io Dyson Logos Jam, which is all about grabbing one of Dyson's free commercial maps and stocking it with creatures and treasures.

How does Dyson keep pumping out top-tier dungeon maps every couple of days? He's some kind of prodigy. The Bruce Lee of map-making.

Speaking of Itch.io, I've made copies of anything from my blog that looks useful on an Itch page of my own. Download 'em, print 'em, scatter them on the floor and roll around in 'em. No charge.

Browsing the RPG authors on Itch, it seems like everyone's got a game or several, but there's considerably less in terms of adventures and add-on material. Maybe that's a useful area to focus.

Black science

Mention black magic and what comes to mind is curses, necromancy, blood sacrifice, summoning demons, making pacts with Things From Beyond. All of this is obviously bad and wrong. You can immediately recognise that magic is black because there's never any positive outcome from, eg., raising the dead. A curse is a nefarious thing, even if you're cursing for a good reason. 

I'd like to create a concept of black science. Not just science conducted by illicit means, but science that poisons its goals, offends the gods (if they exist) and generally gets the scientist chased out of town by a pitchfork-wielding mob. Which might turn out to be nothing more than magic with added blinkenlights, but if that's the case then so be it.

Science is often considered to be equal but opposite to magic, particularly in RPGs. If you're talking about black science, you're talking about:

• Re-animation
• Opening portals to the hell dimension
• Mind control
• Mutating victims
• Harvesting organs/fluids
• Killer robots
• Blowing up the moon. (Too specific?)
• Draining energy from intelligent beings
• Planarianism (learning by extracting the brain of someone who knows what you want to know)
• Altering history
• Biowar/chemwar
• Bargaining with evil aliens

(Note: Since assembling this list I've been informed that it's only black science if you don't know what you're doing. If you know exactly what you're doing, it's black engineering.)

There's obviously some cross-over here. You could imagine a guy in a labcoat and butcher's apron trading threats with a guy in a purple robe and butcher's apron over the top of a freshly filled grave. Elizabeth Bathory took blood from her servants to stay young, Alexander Bogdanov took blood from his students. In DC's old Captain Marvel comics, one of the villains was Dr Sivana, who could speak a scientific formula that allowed him to walk through walls.

What does a black scientist want?

Money, power, revenge, respect... the usual gamut. He may also be motivated by a pure but reckless curiosity about things that mankind were obviously Not Meant To Know. A willingness to sacrifice others in pursuit of forbidden knowledge is a given. You don't make a megalomania omelette without breaking a few egos. Black scientists aren't necessarily mad, but they have an intensity that smaller minds can't match.

 

Signs and portents

 

Evidence that there's black science going on should leak out in the form of mass headaches, deformed animal births, mass bird deaths. A hint that someone's messing with radiation and/or ultrasonics. Power drains? Stepford people? MIBs? Mysterious lights at night?

Stepfords could be people who've thrown their ambitions in with the scientist ("Dr Deathbringer is a respected member of our community! His portal to the vampire dimension will bring industry and business back to this town!") or actual smiling zombies ("Dr Deathbringer knows what's right. We should do as he says. Dr Deathbringer knows what's right. We should --"). In the latter case, they could turn into rage zombies if something takes them outside the parameters of their programming.

I like the idea that black science inadvertently summons or even creates Men in Black. Maybe they're observers from elsewhere. Maybe antibodies in a universal immune system. Always enigmatic. Sometimes working for the scientist, sometimes opposing him.

 

Witch marks

 

Lab coats, jacob's ladders, and cackling laughter are a bit on the nose, aren't they? So maybe we don't use those. Wild hair and a tendency to rant is fair game, though. Poor social skills. A general lack of patience for ignorant outsiders.

Question: is this just a reskinned magician? Mmm, possibly. Better question: what kind of game do I intend this for? Probably not off-the-shelf fantasy. Something pulpy? Something post-WWII-cold-war-red-scare-stranger-danger-ish.

The Why of Strongholds

It's a hazardous undertaking for civilisation to expand into wilderness. There are wild animals, monsters to contend with, hostile people who were there ahead of you, and other expanding kingdoms closing in. Everyone feels better knowing there are thick stone or wooden walls nearby they can shelter behind when they need to.

This stronghold protects a:

1. A ferry or bridge
2. A forest
3. A trade road
4. A border route
5. A mountain pass
6. A temple
   

An advantage is:

1. An underground stream below the castle.
2. Extensive cellars, cool and dry. 
3. Good farming land nearby.
4. Vantage points overseeing all approaches.
5. Old-growth trees for timber.
6. Protected from weather by a rock outcropping.
   

A problem is: 

1. Crumbling masonry.
2. Too small for the numbers it needs to shelter during a siege.
3. Top floors of the keep were destroyed by fire.
4. An infestation of vermin.
5. The building is cursed.
6. The lord is deathly ill.
   

Money raised by: 

1.  Charging a fee to passing merchants.
2. Taxing the local community.
   
3. Operating a silver mine.
4. A provision of the king.
5. Contributions from wealthy landowners.
6. Pillaging locals and kidnapping for ransom.
   

A historical fact is:

1. A previous lord was killed in a mutiny.
2. A previous siege was broken by attackers catapulting diseased corpses over the walls. 
3. Troops here won a famous victory against enemy forces.
4. The current lord's family were murdered by a witch he insulted.
5. A demon was imprisoned in the dungeon for many years.
6. The stronghold was used to test a new magical weapon. It failed.
   

An outside threat is:

1. Bandits making hit-and-run raids on locals.
2. Monsters preying on isolated people.
3. Enemy forces just across the border.
4. Seasonal weather will soon make the terrain impassable.
5. A plague is spreading through the area.
6. Raging fires.
   

An inside threat is:

1. A tunnel from the outside has been dug into the cellars. 
2. The priest is a secret member of a heretical sect.
3. The farrier is an enemy agent prepared to poison the horses.
4. Most of the stored grain has been stolen.
5. The guards' discipline is lax.
6. The lord is mad.
   

Cultist collector

A B/X compatible monster inspired by this image. Which might actually be intended for an RPG sourcebook, the artist has done work for Pathfinder. It's probably intended to be a cultist who is a collector, but I choose to read it as a collector of cultists. Bits of cultists, anyway.

The Collector is a summonable intelligent undead creature typically used by cult leaders to punish followers. It loves to hunt and inspire fear in its prey, so it turns the killing into a chase drawn out over hours or days. When the prey is too exhausted to run any further, the Collector will saw their hands off to keep. Then it torments them with its spears until they die.

When first summoned, the Collector is just a cloud of mist. In that form, it can inflict nightmares on a sleeping victim, gradually using their fear to manifest itself in a physical form. From that point it can take mist form at will and uses it for fast travel. In a chase, the prey finds the Collector manifesting ahead of them when they run in any direction other than the one the Collector wants. If the prey loses their fear of the Collector, it has only its stored reserve of fear to call on. When that's used up, it can no longer manifest physically.

The Collector enjoys its job, and even while bound will usually respond to summonings to see if there's another hunt to be had after this one.

AC 9 [13], HD 5 (23HP), Att 1 x spear (1d6), THAC0 12 [+5], MV 120' (40'/100' in mist form), SV 10 11 12 13 14 (F5), ML 8, AL Chaotic, XP 550, TT - (1d4-1 magic items)

Specials:

Undead: Make no noise, until they attack. Immune to effects that affect living creatures (e.g. poison). Immune to mind-affecting or mind-reading spells (e.g. charm, hold, sleep).

Holy undead: Cannot be turned by someone of the same religion as the summoner.

Mist form: The Collector can transform into mist or back as a standard action.

The Why of Ghosts

Is no-one making horror movies about ghosts at the moment? We've had a glut of vampires, zombies and demonic nuns, but I can't remember the last time I watched a good ghost movie. Or a bad one for that matter.

This ghost appears as (1d6):

1. A soldier
2. A bride
3. A child
4. An old woman
   
5. A knight
6. A hooded figure
   

It haunts (1d6):

1. A family home 
2. A castle or stronghold
3. A manor house
4. A market
5. A crossroads
6. A bridge

It died of (1d6):

1. War
2. Disease
3. Murder
4. An accident
5. A curse
6. Neglect
   

A sign of its presence is (1d6):

1. An eerie cold
2. Animals show fear
3. All present feel the same intense emotion
4. Insects and all manner of vermin appear
5. Blood or water dripping
6. Faint sounds of conflict
   

It has the power to (1d6):

1. Hurl objects
2.  Snuff out light sources
3. Steal warmth
4. Curse items to break
5. Start fires
6. Walk through walls
   

And also the power to (1d6):

1. Confuse the mind 
2. Appear as a living being
3. Make friends appear to be enemies
4. Possess people
5. Read minds
6. make people see their fears
   

Its unfinished business is (1d6):

1. Revenge
2. A message to a loved one
3. An unfulfilled promise
4. Atonement for a crime
5. Guarding something that was important in life
6. Proper funeral rites