Wannabe game designer seeks help from good people of the Forge

[Lethe]

Hi.

I'm actually a little nervous to make a post here, is that stupid or what? There's not even an audience that I can imagine in their underwear, so that's not any help. On the plus side, it's fairly hard to stammer when you're typing on a forum. I'll try to be short and to the point.

I've been on the forums at RPG.net for a long time, have been gaming off and on for 11 years, but have just taken an interest in game design during the last year or two. I have a have a handful of games that I've created. Well, three, really. And one of them is rather short at three pages. And another hasn't been playtested all that much. The third game, though, I've been working on for a good amount of time, and although not revolutionary, I've had a lot of fun with it so I think there are some good things in it, at least.

I had plans to get some artwork together for that game, but things haven't panned out. If I could get some art in the next month or so, that'd be great, but I'm actually anxious to put this game out there and get some feedback.

I'm looking for a relatively cheap way to promote these games. I don't plan on charging for them, although anyone who felt like sending me a dollar or two would be more than welcomed.

I thought about setting up a MySpace page. Does anyone think this is a good or bad idea? Have any better suggestions?

Also, are there any existing sites out there that would distribute free games? I know there's a site (and I'm going to say this wrong) called 1k1 or something similar. Anyone have any information on that, or any other, sites.

What are your thoughts on copyrights? Since I'm giving this stuff away, is it necessary to copyright them? 

This next one is a really stupid question, so I almost didn't ask it, but how are systems copyrighted? For instance, Chaosium doesn't own the bare bones of the percentile system they use, do they? I would assume not since WFRP uses a similar basic system. Not sure how this works, however.

Appreciate any and all advice and comments even if it's "You're retarded, you're doing this all wrong and haven't got a chance."

[Eero Tuovinen]

Welcome to the Forge. Sounds to me that you're in the right place.

Some comments on your various issues:

• A game does not need art to be published for free in the Internet. It might not get as much attention without art (or it might; nobody understands the web yet), but you're not exactly losing anything even then as long as your game finds even one interested and committed player. So no reason to delay because of that.
• The king of cheap and effective promotion methods is building community contacts by writing about your game and yourself in a constructive manner on community websites. Remember to help others as well, and they'll help you out. This is how grassroots attention is generated. Works only if your game has genuine worth for the target audience, though.
• I wouldn't invest in a MySpace page for distributing a roleplaying game, but that's just internet identity politics with little enough real reason behind it. Use whichever web service offers the functionality you need. I'd pick a Wordpress blog myself at this point, probably, if I needed a free website for distributing a game.
• 1 thousand monkeys, one thousand typewriters is a fine choice as a web host for a free game. It's used extensively by all sorts of indies. Read more on their own site.
• As regards copyrights, you'll either need to stop worrying about the topic as a marginal interest, or get some real information. Which you pick would depend on your interest, level of seriousness and capability for learning new stuff. You shouldn't trust in advice of strangers blindly, but in your stead I'd just stop worrying about it altogether until there comes a time when you feel a natural interest in reading about the topic at length.
• Regardless, some short answers about copyrights: you don't need to "copyright" anything as a verb, your stuff is already copyrighted automatically if you created it and published it in a Berne convention signatory state (which is most countries in the world, nowadays). In the US they have this archaic registration procedure as well that apparently allows you to sue for more money if somebody flaunts your copyright, but that's a pretty marginal concern here, and most US-based indie designers seem to not bother.
• Game systems and copyright: the general consensus in the internets (and the real world as well insofar as I know, backed by a couple of court cases as well) is that game rules systems are not copyrightable content, because they are composed of mathematical rules and social procedures that are not unique enough to copyright. Thus only the specific expression of rules, insofar as it's unique enough to be considered a new work, is copyrighted by a given rpg company. In practice this means that you can legally (insofar as copyright law is concerned) use rules from other games as you will as long as you don't copy the actual text word by word. In practice you need to also care of trademark issues and simple courtesy: the line between influence and plagiarism is easy to cross if you don't have a sense of the artistic standards of your chosen cultural field.

Also, just because Ron will come soon and say it anyway: asking for legal advice at a rpg website won't result in actionable and trusty advice. If you really need to know something instead of just suspecting it, don't ask us, ask a lawyer.

[Selene Tan]

Hi Lethe!

No need to be nervous, you're in good company here.

If you're already known on RPG.Net, a simple way to start promoting your games is to put up a website for them and link to it in your signature. Show Your Game is a demonstration site that explains how you can put up a game website for free.

There's a wealth of material about promoting games in the Publishing forum.
Getting the Word Out - tips on establishing a presence in the indie RPG community
How do you promote? - some links to useful topics from the Publishing forum
looking for advice on RPG promotion - a list of several promotion methods and some pros/cons for them
Guerilla and Viral Advertising Tactics - interesting discussion on advertising

The Publishing Wiki is a collection of links to helpful articles. Sadly, it hasn't been updated in a while.

If you want to learn about copyright, there's a sticky thread at the top of the Publishing forum that's entirely links to copyright resources, including official resources like the US Copyright Office.

[Lethe]

Thanks for the advice so far.

Regarding copyrights, I'm not overly concerned about it; I was just wondering if I should be. Your answers have led me to believe, that no, no I shouldn't be. The chances of anyone actually liking any of these games is slim, let alone the fact that anyone would be willing to pay for it, and yet another level of unbelievability for someone to actually care enough to try to rip it off.

If I set up a blog, is there any compelling reason to set up a Web site as well?

The only negative I can see about a blog is that I don't think you can put up PDF files for visitors to download, but I could easily post an email address and send the files that way. Or do you think that'd be too cumbersome?

Thanks again for all the advice.

[Eero Tuovinen]

Blogs are essentially websites as it is; pretty much the only advantages to a self-controlled website are security, a better url (provided you get a domain, which costs a bit) and being able to do a wider array of things, such as hosting whatever you want.

If you set up a blog at a dedicated blog server, you indeed can't host a pdf file at most of them. The way around this is to transcribe your game into one or more blog pages. An excellent example of how nice a result this might get is one of the best free games out there, Legends of Alyria, which is available as a Blogspot blog.

The other option would be to simply ask a friend with a server to host it. The cost is negligible, provided that the file's not humongous and you don't suddenly get super-popular. And if you do, then it's time to set up your own website and start charging for admission or advertisements.

If I were in your stead, I probably wouldn't set up an email arrangement for getting the game. It's a bit awkward and will drive away most of the potential audience these days. The advantage is that you know exactly how the game's doing out there, though.

[Lethe]

What about creating a blog, hosting the rpgs on One Thousand Monkeys, One Thousand Typewriters, and linking the blog directly to the .pdfs hosted on that site?

Are there any drawbacks to that approach?

[Eero Tuovinen]

Seems like a plan to me! The only weakness is that you won't have complete download statistics at your disposal. That's partially offset by reading the blog visitor statistics, of course, which list link clicks as well to a degree. And, of course, download statistics are not that useful overall, so you can probably live without them.