[Web of Shadows] Packaging an Odd Game

[Josh Roby]

For context, [Web of Shadows] Power 19.

This is a game that requires for play a pile of tokens, a holepunch, a whole lot of index cards, and lengths of string, but needs no dice.

It's supposed to deliver the kind of stories that the World of Darkness books promised but failed to provide -- scheming supernatural demihumans manipulating the mortal world to their own ends.

It is not a traditional roleplaying game; players roleplay multiple characters over the course of a single game and GM duties are distributed and shift through play.  Whether or not it is 'complex' or not probably has more to do with your background than the actual complexity of the rules text.  It also plays in one session.

The target audience is sort of gothy, clever, experimental folks who can handle taking adversarial roles within a game and enjoy social maneuvering and games of speculative trust.

Now.  How the hell can I package this abomination?  Here's some possibilities:

The Microgame Option - publish as a booklet with a 5" x 4" profile, 48 pages of rules.  Have players find tokens, cards, holepunch, and string on their own.  Free download used to boost name recognition and website hits.  Cost: nothing.  Chance of ever actually being played: slim.

The Little Game Option - publish as a booklet at 5.5" x 8.5" profile, 32 pages of rules.  Have players get their own damn items again.  Sell for five to ten bucks.  Minor revenue stream.  Cost: low.  Chance of Play: low.

The Card Game Option - publish the rules in a booklet that can wrap around a stack of pre-drilled index cards, bind with lengths of string.  Players supply their own tokens.  The game is consumable -- you'll be able to play it five or six times but then you'll need to get and punch new cards (or buy a booster pack -- haw haw).  Sell for ten to fifteen bucks.  Minor revenue stream.  Cost: relatively high.  Chance of Play: an actual possibility.

The Boxed Game Option - package pre-drilled index cards, lengths of string, tokens, and published rule set in a box.  The game is still consumable.  Sell for twenty bucks or so.  Cost: high.  Chance of play: high, assuming it ever gets bought at that price point.

The Better Boxed Game Option - as above, but laminate the index cards and provide dry-erase pens to make it non-consumable.  Increases the cost pretty significantly.

On the other hand, I may be missing some tricks or shortcuts or clever little things that might simplify or streamline the package.  Any thoughts?

[LordSmerf]

Joshua,

Note that in your Better Boxed option it's still probably consumable: the string is going to be used.  Unless you can find some clever way to easily re-use the string, you're still going to have people needing to buy replacement materials.

I sort of like the idea of a booster-pack system myself: pre-drilled cards + string.  Sell a starter set (or whatever) with the rules, the tokens, and a booster-pack.  Then people can choose to punch their own cards and buy their own string when they run out (if they want to save cash) or buy more booster-packs as needed for the convenience.

(Note: I also dislike the laminated, re-usable option because one of the things I find really cool about Web of Shadows is that it generates artifacts.  That is, once the game is over you have this web that sort of maps the game you played.  The laminate option means that it's not all that practical to try to save your webs to look over later -- for whatever reason you might want to do that.)

This has the (to me) interesting advantage of providing some sense of how many people are playing how often.  If you keep getting booster-pack orders from the same person you know that they either play your game a lot, or keep losing their materials.

Of course, this is a fairly expensive option.  You would have to get your booster-packs down to a reasonably inexpensive price-point.  It would probably be something of a stretch to try to sell them at a price that works out to more than $2~$3 per session played (and that would include shipping costs).

Thomas

[TonyLB]

I've been wondering how you plan to turn the system that you have into a physical artifact that people can play with.

Can you explain exactly what things the props will need to represent, in order to run the system?  The webs of string seem (to me) to be the sticking point.  Certainly I haven't had any trouble in other games telling people to go buy 3x5 cards in order to run a game.  If there's a more portable/reusable way to represent the same information, maybe you can get the same effect without the huge production costs.

[Josh Roby]

Sure, Tony.

Firstly, note that this project is mostly interesting me as a feasibility test, to see if it works to create an interesting game, and only secondarily as a real, live product.  It very well may be too kooky to really be a viable product (and if so, I just make it a microgame and move on).

In any case, each card has a name and four 'slots' for characteristics like "Coward" or "Witness to Murder" or "Fed on by Tony."  They also have holes punched in their corners (or their sides or tops for Facades and Others, respectively, but whatever) and players use short (4" to 6")  lengths of string to tie them together to represent relationships.  Said characteristics and relationships are changed throughout play.

I'm sure you could just write relationships on the cards, but then you lose the "Web" aspect of it, or lay them out in a grid, but that loses a lot of flexibility in how to connect things.

[Luke]

why not just lay them out on a piece of butcher's paper and have people draw lines to their various connections? Very visceral and much more flexible than tying bits of string. At the end of the game, the butcher's paper would look like a web.

[Josh Roby]

Well, the connections shift and change throughout the game.  So unless you're erasing the lines connecting them as you go, that wouldn't work out too well.  That, and packaging butcher paper is about as easy as packaging little bits of string. ;)