Marketing a Heartbreaker

[visioNationstudios]

Hey gang,
We've had a rough go of it with our first release, Broken Swords & Battered Shields.  It's a system/setting that was about 12 years in the making when I came aboard.  It took another 2+ years after I pushed for the creator to really see it through to the end, and the system took quite the turn toward a modern, open-ended, creative feel, since that's my style.  However, it still kept its grounding in the old school structure.  The book has been out for about a year and a half and has seen weak-to-mediocre sales, at best.

I read through Ron's and others' articles regarding Fantasy Heartbreakers about 10 months ago and realized right away that BS&BS fit the criteria almost completely for a Heartbreaker candidate.  It took until about 6 months ago for the rest of the team to come around and come to the same conclusion (mostly because I forced them to sit down while I read them a few of the articles Ron had written).

During that time, we also received a couple of reviews on the book that pointed us in that same general direction.  So, since that realization, we took the time to rework a good bit of the book, lay it out better, cut out some of the glut of pages (379, down from 436), and re-released the book in what we felt was a more streamlined edition just yesterday.  This time, we made sure to focus on the unique, integral parts of the mechanics that stood alone from traditional games- as Ron mentioned, finding the diamonds in all the rough, and spotlighting those.

Already, through google searches, I've found forum trolls throwing out the "heartbreaker" moniker on the new book like beads at Mardi Gras.  And, while I know trolls will be trolls, and the vast majority of those people never had any interest in the book and are merely there for the joy they get out of mocking other peoples' work, I also came to another realization.

A horse is a horse.  You can dress it up, you can train it.  You can even teach it new tricks.  But at the end of the day, it's still a horse.  And a heartbreaker is always a heartbreaker.  So, how do we market a product that we know does, in fact, carry lots of the tell-tale signs of a heartbreaker?  While I know the system will never become our bread-and-butter, I also know that this line holds a lot of gems in it, and the few people who have purchased the game have been pretty pleased with what they found.

Is there a way to take a perceived weak point like this and turn it into a selling point?  Has anyone had any experience in a heartbreaker selling well despite its origins?  Or is it best to scrap the product and move on with whatever we can salvage from the wreckage?

Thanks for any ideas, I'm truly at a loss.

[visioNationstudios]

Forgot we can't edit posts. 

My apologies if this is in the wrong forum, mods.  I was running with the whole "Not sure where to go from here" deal.  Feel free to move it appropriately.  I suppose it might be better in Publishing.

[David C]

Here's all my thoughts on this.

1) Fantasy Heartbreakers don't sell because D&D is such a huge product.  In its own way, I think D&D is a fantasy heartbreaker, a parody of itself, as it were. 4th Edition exemplifies this, it claims to still be "all about roleplaying" but moves in a clearly gamist direction (to the point where all non-combat conflict is resolved through a series of rolls where you erode the encounter with enough successes to win in time.) 

2) Your game can't be a fantasy heartbreaker if it different enough from D&D.  For example, (I've heard) that Shadowrun was/is a pretty marginal game.  At release, it would have been a Heartbreaker... except the trolls and orcs work for megacorporations and the point of the game is to raid them, instead of dungeons.

3) I would have changed the game's name if the first one killed the market for the revision, which it sounds to me like it did.  (All those "trolls" probably looked at your 1st game, and assumed it was 1.5 edition.)

4) Even if you scrap it, the lessons you've learned will make your next game better.  Even if those lessons are "Read enough about RPG design to know what's out there and what to do, or not do as the case were."   It's not a complete loss, but my gut says to start fresh. 

[greyorm]

Is there a way to take a perceived weak point like this and turn it into a selling point?  Has anyone had any experience in a heartbreaker selling well despite its origins?  Or is it best to scrap the product and move on with whatever we can salvage from the wreckage?

First of all, anyone using a "heartbreaker = bad game" argument is an idiot and should shove a stick somewhere foul for being blatantly stupid. Heartbreakers are NOT definitionally bad games. They're just games that don't realize they're the equivalent of gaming pastiche, and just like pastiche in fiction, being so does not make it auto-bad (except to bed-wetting trolls who still live in their momma's cave and try to sound snide and detached in a patently desperate attempt to sound clever and cool using words they don't even grasp the meaning of. *ah-hem*).

So first, realize being a heartbreaker isn't necessarily a mark against your game, especially if you recognize the fact that it is a heartbreaker and you've rewritten it with that knowledge in mind, knowing your "awesome new skill system" or "most realistic combat in any RPG" (or whatever) aren't, and you don't go about pushing them as such and dumping ridiculous sums of money into publication and attempts to compete with established lines doing the same thing.

Second, keep in mind there's a large--possibly growing--market for the old school experience, though they are not completely old school. Identifiable alterations and rulings from the old versions are enjoyed and found throughout the market of the retro-clone games: OSRIC, Castles & Crusades, Labyrinth Lord, Mutant Future, and (many) more. And yet these games are not derided as Fantasy Heartbreakers because they are deliberate attempts to redo what was already done, with some changes--which is weird, because many of the retro-clones do qualify as heartbreakers in the sense of what the rules are and where they come from, but they KNOW what they are and so do their rightfully unashamed players.

So, you can either dump the game and take what you can from it, using the whole thing as a learning experience, or you could present the game as an old school fantasy clone with some new wave innovations, and ignore the trolls. Also, given the ease with which a person can leave their game on the market without putting any additional money into it (by letting customers print via Lulu and other POD services), I'd ask "why not leave it on the market"?

[Luke]

Hey man,

As Greyorm noted, one direction for you is to revel in your old school, fantasy heartbreaker status. Check out my friend Larry's WEGS game system here:
http://gamewick.com/
He's done very well for himself going to cons and running games. He always has a full table.

Have you hit the road with the game? Have you run convention games? That's what I'd recommend. Get out there and find your audience. Definitely don't expect success (or failure) on the internet.

-L

[Eero Tuovinen]

I want to look at this sort of thing from a customer's perspective, as I do buy games for indie retail and have to think about which games make sense for the customer and which don't. A fantasy heartbreaker is a very difficult game to sell to me due to how boring they tend to be, but there are some things you can do to improve your chances:

• Act and write knowledgeably about current game design and gaming culture. If a guy namedrops Primetime Adventures at me while selling his fantasy game, I pretty much have to assume that he's self-aware about the pitfalls of fantasy heartbreakers and his game is going to be better than that, even if it superficially seems like it was made in ignorance.
• Learn to pinpoint the unique killer application of your game and hammer on that as its point. Don't even mention the two hundred skills, the 20 unique fantasy races and the completely realistic combat system; the audience will assume that you have those anyway. If your game doesn't have this sort of sales point, then why exactly should anybody be interested? Because you do little things incrementally better than the other game? Roleplayers are adept at house ruling, nobody needs to buy a replacement for D&D because it's just incrementally more elegant, flexible or whatever.

Thinking about myself, what would attract me to a heartbreaker? I would probably drop my query pretty quickly at a feature laundry list, and it's unlikely that your fantasy aesthetic would match mine... I'd say that the best way of getting my attention with a fantasy heartbreaker would be to make a story of it: start by telling me that your game is a fantasy heartbreaker (define the term for me if I haven't heard it before), tell me that you realize this, but that you still feel that the game has value even for this older, wiser self that you are now. This way you prove to me that you are capable of being realistic/humble about your game and are self-aware enough to realize that it has strengths and weaknesses. After this confession I'm much more likely to take a serious look at the good things you pinpoint about the game: does it have interesting character optimization conundrums, pretty maps - whatever it has, I'm more interested in that stuff when I can count on your own honesty and perspective in presenting that content not as the greatest thing since Rules Cyclopedia, but as some modest tinkering you did on D&D.

[visioNationstudios]

Thanks, all of you.  It's at least some confirmation/consolation that we're moving in the right general direction.  Eero, I particularly appreciate the thoughts about laying it all on the table up front.  Makes me think I should go back to some of the things we did previously out of naivety - things like including the book's foreword in RPGNow's full-page preview section.  It tells a lot of the story, and at least to one reviewer, endeared her to the book a little more after reading.  I went away from that after hearing generic comments by many that people want to see actual meat in their previews, not introductions/ToC/etc.

I'm still processing everything, but know that you all have my thanks.

[Eero Tuovinen]

One other thing you might wish to consider when marketing a heartbreaker: if your game doesn't stack very favourably against the field, that might be because you're marketing to the wrong people. This is true for the internet roleplaying crowd in general simply because we're each and every one of us gamemasters who are committed enough to the hobby to actually visit forums, webstores and publisher webpages. This is doubly true for the "indie hardcore" who visits sites like the Forge - we're jaded, high-performance gamers who have very specific demands of the products we endorse.

Now, the problem with heartbreakers is not that they are objectively bad products. To the contrary, each heartbreaker should in some sense be better than the D&D background it comes from, one would imagine. This makes the game already quite good! However, that quality is nothing for the jaded customer who already has D&D and three homebrew alternates sitting on his shelf, not to speak of the multitude of other games with radically different approaches. It's like trying to sell a low-end car to a high-end audience; they'll think that the car is bad or mediocre even if it's actually perfectly serviceable and cheap to boot. It's all in the context.

Looking at it from this viewpoint, a person marketing a fantasy heartbreaker would probably do well to focus his marketing on audiences who will be quite happy with a well-made roleplaying game whether it's the new coolness or not - in other words, newbies. This might be problematic for those heartbreakers that have been created to be the "gamer's game" with impenetrable rules, gamer fetish fiction and the full monty in equipment, spell and other lists; however, if you think that your game is reasonably newbie-friendly or could be made so with the proper teaching and context, then you might actually have more chances with a new audience. This is not even selling substandard product to a clueless person, really (which comes to my mind, you know; don't know if others react this way): what you're doing is introducing new people to a great hobby, with the fact of the matter being that a new guy doesn't need the high-performance specialty tools old-timers use. You're making a service to both the community and the individuals if you manage to create a positive entrance into the hobby, even if the game used for that is not the best and the brightest by expert standards. For example, I love both the LotR Adventure Game and Mentzer D&D as excellent introductory products while still fully recognizing that they are not the be-all, end-all of roleplaying game design.

It would be useful for this sort of approach if you rewrote the game text to account for the specific audience, but even without doing that you can do many things to attract new gamers: market the game outside gamer venues, design inspiring web pages, offer free introductory adventures, focus on personal marketing and grassroots programs (sponsor GMs who start new groups for your game, for example), offer yourself as a guest speaker and performer at community events and so on and so forth. It's a lot of work compared to letting the committed gamers create buzz for you, but for the latter to happen your game has to wow those gamers. If that's not happening - well, it's no use to cry over spilt milk, better to focus on creating value-adds that can be combined with the product you have; marketing and customer relations are just such a value add, one that can have so much value that people choose the slightly less impressive game over the other competitors due to the value of the marketing. Many old and established mid-level rpgs such as the Chaosium products, Hero System and GURPS, gain a lot of leverage from the sort of long-term audience commitment that can be built by focusing your efforts on marketing in lieu of game design.

(Note that this vision is sort of shitty if you were wanting to focus on being a game designer rather than game marketer. For example, I can't make myself do very much marketing work when I could be writing a new game, so I do everything I can to make use of low-commitment marketing that doesn't require me to do anything. Still, your choice.)

[Egonblaidd]

As someone working on a heartbreaker myself (though I hope it will be different enough to merit some attention), I'm wondering about the effectiveness of writing stories (that may or may not be based on actual play) about your RPG and posting them somewhere, or perhaps making and posting a video on youtube to advertise, or something similar.  Would these be good ways to introduce people to your game and what sets it apart from other games?  Of course, it would have to be a good story or video.  After all, everybody enjoys reading a good story, and if they like the story they might decide they want to check your game out.  On the other hand, there's no guaranty that your game will play like it reads in the story.

[Eero Tuovinen]

I think that actual play accounts can be very powerful marketing tools for the hardcore audience. It's important to find the right balance between entertaining fiction and informative mechanical stuff, of course. Bonus points for posting on a forum and engaging people in a discussions of some points about your actual play. Analysis is also important: let people know what your game does better than anything else.

[Falc]

I think that actual play accounts can be very powerful marketing tools for the hardcore audience. It's important to find the right balance between entertaining fiction and informative mechanical stuff, of course. Bonus points for posting on a forum and engaging people in a discussions of some points about your actual play. Analysis is also important: let people know what your game does better than anything else.

I read this and my immediate thought was: put an actual play experience in the book, very first chapter, first thing people read. 9 chances out of 10, the biggest question on people's minds about your game will be how it's different from all the others, so show them the answer to their question, right away, before telling them anything else about your game.

Of course, when I say 'actual play experience', I'm actually thinking more of one of those screenplay-like write-ups, you know the type:

DM: You enter the cave and there's a dark tunnel ahead.
Thief: I light my lantern and check for traps.
Wizard: I detect magic!
DM: Okay, both of you, draw a card from the 'Random Results' pile.
Both players draw a card from the pile. The Thief gets a 'Miserable Failure' and the DM decides he fell down a pit trap he had failed to notice. The Wizard gets a 'Medium Success' and the DM tells him he notices a magic aura coming from further in the cave.

So basically, if it's based on an *actual* actual play, that's excellent, but something you just made up would do fine too.

[Vulpinoid]

You could always market the game by simply saying it's the best, and that players who don't think it's the best are obviously inferior gamers.

Like this sci-fi heartbreaker they've been talking about over on story-games...

http://www.mentalwinds.com/page351.html

But honestly, I wouldn't recommend this method if you actually wanted to sell your game.

V

[visioNationstudios]

As a semi-aside, but certainly on topic- minor buzz continues to be made about the game's name itself being a turnoff.  "Broken Swords & Battered Shields" becomes BS&BS, which some interweb minds claim as the reason they don't want to touch the game.  While the abbreviation was a running joke in good fun back a decade ago back with the original creators, I didn't expect to see such harsh backlash against such a thing by the general public.

[visioNationstudios]

Gah, I guess I never followed that though up with the actual question-

Do you think the name itself is a potential gamebreaker, or are these comments likely being made by people who wouldn't touch the game with a 10-foot pole anyway?  Or is there some middle-ground truth?

[Eero Tuovinen]

That sort of thing can influence your situation considerably, I imagine, but only if you're selling a pivot product (good luck getting through my economese, I've no idea what these are really called in English) - a product in a highly contested marketplace that is very similar to the competing products. For example, toothbrushes experience considerable sales fluctuation based on the brand name, packaging and perceived feature set. They also can't be sold with deep technique, as they're simple and superficial products.

However, roleplaying games are not pivot products for the greatest part. The games have widely varying purposes and approaches, individual players will seek some definite values from their games and so on. In these conditions something like the game's name will have a very minor influence on the sales, as there are so many more important features that influence the buying decision. An off-putting name or cover will certainly affect first views, but that will only be significant for a shallow market strategy, which I think hasn't historically really worked too well for roleplaying games outside D&D. Most games become successes due to long-term support from committed fans who like the game's deep qualities, so even if the game looks slightly ridiculous on the surface, that doesn't become an insurmountable problem.

Of course, that's not to say that you shouldn't make the product look good. Those first reactions are still something you have to surmount when your game hasn't become a familiar presence for the audience.