[GenCon 2007] Ashcan Front: Who's giving the discounts?

[Andy Kitkowski]

Quick question, I was wondering who at the Ashcan Front was giving discounts/refunds on final products and the like?

IIRC, Kevin Allen Jr's project is going to have a price tag of like $5-$8, with a voucher where when the final game comes out the purchaser will get that full $5-8 back.

I was wondering who else was offering this kind of partial or full incentive?

-Andy

[Paul Czege]

For reference, the complete list of ashcans expected at the Front:

44, by Matt Snyder
A Penny For My Thoughts, by Paul Tevis
Acts of Evil, by Paul Czege
Galactic, by Matt Wilson
Giants, by Jeff Lower
Kingdom of Nothing, by Jeff Himmelman
Know Thyself, by Ryan Macklin
Psi Run, by Chris Moore and Michael Lingner
Sweet Agatha, Kevin Allen Jr.
You Brought This On Yourself: The Roleplaying Game Of Slasher Film Morality, by Jason Walters
Zen: There Is No Spoon, by Ram Hull

Paul

[Kevin Allen Jr]

Andy's a little mistaken about what exactly it is i'm doing.

Sweet Agatha: Preview/Ashcan edition is going to cost $10.00 @ the ashcan front. It is 16 B/W pages, and provides you with enough materials to play the "trailer" of Sweet Agatha. It comes with a mail in form. If you mail in the form (and very hopefully offer some critique/advice) you will receive for free the Final Edition of the game come early September.

The full version is 36 full color pages on glossy heavy paper (the same kind of paper burning empires is printed on by and by), comes with a poster, and gives you everything you need to enjoy the complete Sweet Agatha experience a couple times over. If you were just going to buy this when it comes out it will cost $12.00. Therefore:

Buy the cheep preview, send in the form (please offer some critique, although you aren't required to), get the full game a little later for free.

Some of the materials and story presented in the Ashcan will NOT re-appear in the final, so you get a couple little bonuses with that as well.

[Andy Kitkowski]

Buy the cheep preview, send in the form (please offer some critique, although you aren't required to), get the full game a little later for free.

Thanks for the explanation, man!

I remember back in... was it 2004?  When With Great Power and Robots and Rapiers were released in Ashcan. WGP was $8-10, and Michael offered the price of the ashcan off of the final price of the book.  Ralph did a similar thing with R&R: R&R was never released, but that was a risk worth taking nonetheless.

Anyone else with the Ashcan booth doing anything similar to Kevin, or Michael/Ralph from before?

Thanks!

-Andy

[Ryan Macklin]

I'm planning on doing *something* for people who actually participate in helping out my game.  I don't know what that "something" is yet, so I don't want to declare it prematurely and regret it later (since that could become a disincentive for me when it comes to actually producing the final game).

[Paul Czege]

Just to be clear, participating designers at The Ashcan Front are welcome to give these kinds of discounts if they want. I'm not planning to do it myself for the Acts of Evil ashcan. I think a discount casts the transaction as a payment of faith in me as a designer, and as such it's not going to get me the feedback and playtesting the game needs. I think folks who would be motivated to own an ashcan by a discount are probably the wrong customers.

Here's me reaching out to the right ones in the Invitation that opens the Acts of Evil ashcan:

An Invitation

This book is an unfinished game of occult horror. You will grasp reality and bend it to a mythology of your own chthonic godhood.

I know it's playable and fun, and disturbing, because I've had fun, and I've been disturbed, playing and running it. But the game isn't quite delivering on some design goals that are important to me, and so I don't consider it fully baked yet.

You've noticed the splatter-painted cover and copy-shop aesthetic. Well, I'm a big fan of homemade indie comics, and so I've borrowed those same aesthetics as a way of clearly saying the game isn't store ready, and of getting productively out of the producer/consumer paradigm.

There was a time when the landscape of gaming was less divided into consumers and producers. And still today, playing hobby games requires you to think like a designer, make rule decisions during play, and solve design problems.

So this "ashcan" edition of Acts of Evil is inspired by my desire to connect with you, not as producer to consumer, but as designer to designer. If the idea of a game about the competitive pursuit of chthonic godhood is appealing, or if my deranged, splatter-painted iconography suggested the book could be a garage edition of an occult Bible, then consider that you're probably the game's eventual target audience, moved backward in time by my magic, so your insights and play feedback might move the game forward.

The text is written with single-minded focus toward that end. When I know from playtesting that a rule isn't delivering on my purpose for it, or needs validation or refinement, or if it's a new rule that aims to solve a design issue, I've flagged it with questions. When I'm unsure if my text is clear enough to effectively create the intended play dynamic, I've included design notes. The game is a more complex snarl of interconnected resource pools than My Life with Master, and so very much needs the feedback of general playtesting, but there's also a playtest scenario that aims to focus attention on an intended emergent property of play that has been elusive in prior playtests.

Personally, playtesting and providing feedback on games is probably my favorite thing in the whole hobby. Buying an ashcan doesn't make you a consumer, it makes roleplaying a hobby of design.

Paul Czege
June, 2007

Paul

[Matt Snyder]

Andy, as you've probably figured out here, Kevin's preview edition of Sweet Agatha is the only Ashcan Front game I know of giving a discount of some kind.

Here is a link to the booth catalog to get a sneak peek at the very nice selection of games.