lumpley games' 2010
Moreno R.:
Quote from: lumpley on February 20, 2011, 07:18:37 AM
I don't know what "traditional gamers" means.
Oh, in my question meant "gamers that played only traditional rpgs before", with "traditional rpgs" meaning the ones built around the traditional "way to play a rpg" (all-powerful GM, rule zero, stats + skill, task resolution, you know the list, from AD&D 2 to Vampire to Ars Magica to GURPS...)
The question, thinking about it, make more sense talking about DitV sales alone, seeing that it's the game of yours that explicitly "talk to one of them" in the game text (I am thinking about page 140, for example, and "If you’ve GMed other games..." that almost assume that DitV is the first game the readers meet that is not like that), and for this reason it's one of the first games I suggest to traditional gamers when they want to understand "what all these new games are about"
But this answer, below:
Quote
Maybe this answers: I don't think I'd sell even 300 games if I were relying on story-games.com as my sole market. Maybe far fewer.
.. suggest to me a more nuanced and interesting question: from what you can say from your interaction with them, who is your public? Not in the sense of "who you are writing for", but "who buy your rpgs". And it changed from, for example, some years ago?
I am asking because, as you already said, you obviously broke out of the story-games specialized market (I thought it was bigger that 300 copies, though...), reaching out to a different, much bigger (but still too little to be be "any gamer") public,Who are they, from what you can see?
lumpley:
Hm. The fact is, I think the whole trad-vs-story-games line of thought is bogus, misguided. Insofar as there's some "story-games specialized market," which I maintain is not very far, my games have always contributed to its growth, never been within its bounds. Dogs in the Vineyard, along with some half-dozen or so other games, MADE that market (such as it is). It's kind of nuts to talk about my having broken out of it.
So my audience is the same as it has always been: roleplayers who happen to get into what my games promise and how they make good. It's never mattered a bit whether they'd call themselves story gamers, trad, or what. My games don't have universal appeal, but let's be real, of course they don't: they're odd & perverse little games about niche subjects. Mormon gunslingers, Satanist pirates, sexy postapocalypticans. Universal appeal is off the table.
-Vincent
Devon Oratz:
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Devon: The best question! But you're right, very broad. I don't really know where to start or how to tackle it. Can you maybe narrow it down for me? Ask me something more specific to start me off?
Sure thing. How about if I break it down into four categories of questions with multiple questions in each category?
It would be especially awesome if you could try and answer these for the first, second, and third games you completed. That way I can see how your process changed over time and the entire discussion won't be in the unique context of, say, kill puppies for satan. I don't actually care at all about philosophy here, if that helps narrow down the answers. I don't even care about game design as far as these questions are concerned. Personal context is good, though. How old were you at stage x, what were you doing to eat, etcetera. Those sales numbers are impressive, I want to grok in fullness how they were accomplished.
I bolded the one category of questions that I thought was really important.
1) What was the next step following completion of the game draft?
A) Was it playtesting? If it was something else like fasting for forty days or immediately printing it at kinko's, stapling it together and selling it on street corners, I'd be interested in that too.
B) Who was the playtest group? How did you find them? How many people?
C) How long did playtesting go on? How many sessions? How much real time?
D) What did you learn?
2) After playtesting, what was the next step?
A) Revisions and more playtesting or...
B) Publication Process.
If you went through multiple repetitions of A before moving on to B, how many?
3) Publication process. So, you've got this game, right...?
A) Where and how did you publish or sell the game? At first, and then how did you expand later on?
B) If you sold or advertised the game at any third party venues (conventions, something like Drive Thru RPG)...which venues?
C) And at what cost? Monetary or otherwise. If you visited conventions, I'd assume you had a printed book...
D) Where did you get the money to print the book from? Startup capital. Where did you get the money to actually visit conventions to sell your wares?
E) What was your process going to the first few conventions, assuming that was part of your initial sales drive?
F) If at any point your website was the primary place you were selling from...how did you get people to visit your website? Be specific.
4) How and in what ways and how much did the Forge* help you at each step of the process? Be specific.
*I am using "the Forge" here as synecdoche for the indie RPG community as a whole, so assume that includes story games and other sites/scenes/crowds I am less familiar with.
Oh and if you actually take the time to answer these in full, I will be very grateful. I recognize it would be a very generous use of your time, and some of them probably aren't easy questions. If there's anything you want to know about uh, my situation (say, to give this barrage of interrogatives some much needed context) I would say that would be only fair.
Thanks!
-Devon
lumpley:
Devon, this is fantastic! Thank you.
kill puppies for satan, 2001
No playtesting whatsoever. I made 50 copies on the copier at my workplace and took them to the local print shop for binding. I abandoned them I kid you not on the doorsteps of the local game stores with a note that said to sell them, give them away under the counter, or toss them, it's out of my hands. I mailed unsolicited copies to a handful of well-known game designers - Jonathan Tweet, Robin Laws, I forget who else - with notes that said "hey, I'm a big fan, here's what I think of your work."
My startup capital: In 2001 I was dirt poor. My wife and I were working per diem with two little kids. I sat down and figured out that I was probably going to spend $60 on rpgs that year - I think there was a new edition of Ars Magica due out - and screw it, I'd see how far $60 could take me in self-publishing instead. It's not like the new Ars Magica would satisfy me anyway. Binding those 50 copies cost me, I dunno, $25, so I had the remaining $35 to spend on postage and let's see what happens.
At some point it occured to me that other people might be making rpgs and giving them away too, so I did a Google search and wound up here at the Forge. The Forge was brand new then; I think I was in the first wave of non-founding newbies.
At first, I sent a copy of kill puppies to satan to anyone who asked, with a note that said "if you like this, send me $5!" A few people did, but lots of people talked online about how much they liked it. Here's an early one: killin' puppies for you-know-who [October 09, 2001]. I also put excerpts of the game up on my blog, some of the funniest and meanest bits, and when we were talking theory here I'd link to them to illustrate my opinions.
Then one day Clinton R. Nixon told me the thing I needed to hear, and I started selling the thing for up-front cash instead of for pay-me-later. I charged $10 for a book that cost me $2.50 to produce and ship, so my margin was nutso good, and I sold PDFs too - I forget what I charged for them then, but of course it was pretty much all profit. A year later - 2003, now - I'd made enough money off the game to take it to the Forge booth at GenCon. I sold 90-some copies there, at my nutso margin, so I made a profit at the con. Eventually I bought that Ars Magica book anyway, with lumpley games money, and nope, it didn't satisfy me.
So at this point we're talking about, oh, a couple hundred games sold, for a couple thousand dollars. It was a hobby that paid for itself, not an income. My startup was just my $60 rpg budget, repurposed, and I haven't spent a cent of my own money since. The Forge was the only thing that made it possible.
Right after GenCon '03 I got the idea for Dogs in the Vineyard, so I'll talk about that next. I'm happy to answer any followup questions about kill puppies for satan, too, meanwhile!
-Vincent
Ron Edwards:
I was one of those people who got a copy on the pay-me-$5-or-not model, which was also the model I used in 1996 for the first version of Sorcerer. It was fun to read it on the train along with a game in playtest written by a friend of mine, called "Sin," with an extremely graphic cover.
Before the Dogs talk, don't forget Otherkind and your other posted game projects, Vincent. You've never sold them for money, but having them up at your website really helped generate a play-and-talk community for you.
Best, Ron
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