Distribution Question

[jburneko]

Hello,

Well, the unthinkable has happened.  I was struck by inspiration and I suddenly found myself designing and writing a game.  Originally, I thought I was going to end up with two or three pages of rules and I was just going to throw it up on my webpage.

However, I just hit page ten and I'm no where near done.  The thing has just suddenly evolved into something really much more interesting and involved than I had originally envisioned and I'm thinking I might want to try to publish this thing.

I'm assuming it might be between twenty and thirty pages when I'm done with just an initial draft.  At that point I'd like to start distributing it in some controled manner so that I can get feedback and start making revisions and the maybe go for publication when the thing is suitably fleshed out and well playtested.

So what are your recommendations for controlled distribution?  Is there some kind of 'shareware' method I can use to get the game out to people and try and get feedback from people?  Advice would be appreciated.

Jesse

[Ron Edwards]

Hey,

The easiest, of course, is just to pop it up on the website, direct Forge members' attention to it, and wait for the fur to fly.

Or you could get all commercial right away. Back in the day, what I did was put a little "send it to me" button on the Sorcerer website. The deal was that if the person liked it and felt like paying me, they could snail-mail me $5.

(News flash: it worked.)

Best,
Ron

[FilthySuperman]

What I've done, with my current project Any Town, U.S.A., is skim it down and remove all the filler (and unfinished sections) to the point where it's got a little theming, some (in my opinion) nice writing and the full scale mechanics. Then I drew some attention to it and offered it up as a "playtester" version. I've already got some awesome feedback from a few people (if you can get Moose to look at your unfinished game.. he's awesome and very helpful) Just from a few reviews and a bit of feedback I've totally revamped alot of the aspects of my game, and reinforced some of the already functional ones.

I understand what you want to do..
When I got to a point with Any Town where I realized it was going to be more (in my opinion) than just a bunch of house rules with a cute theme I started thinking in terms of "this is going to be a real rpg". Not to sell or make money off of (though I'm not against the idea :razz:) but something that I wanted to be proud of. So I didn't want to write it up and say "here it is" then go back and say "okay I fixed it here's version 2" and so on. I wanted to get something out there for everyone to pick apart, then fix it then put it out finally. (of course I'll probably put it then get picked again and have to revise. heh ;-p)

At any rate, *I* would be more than happy to take a look at it for you.

T

[Clinton R. Nixon]

I hate to pimp myself (right), but check out the way I've got it working over at http://www.heartburngames.com">Heartburn Games. Basically, anyone can create a user account and log in, and download free games. If you want to download games that cost money, an admin has to add you to the list of people allowed to download that game.

It's quick, easy, and pretty much no trouble for the admin.

[ephealy]

Clinton R Nixon wrote:
I hate to pimp myself (right), but check out the way I've got it working over at http://www.heartburngames.com">Heartburn Games. Basically, anyone can create a user account and log in, and download free games. If you want to download games that cost money, an admin has to add you to the list of people allowed to download that game.

I've got an account on Clinton's site and I have to say it's very easy to use.  I'm not sure what bells and whistles the admin has, but from the 'customer' side, it's very efficient.  Hopefully, as more people use his set-up, Clinton will be able to tell us more of his thoughts on it.

The one issue I did think about was people having to make a new user name and password for each site they wanted to use.  Clinton, is it possible to have multiple sites tied into the same user dBase?

[Clinton R. Nixon]

Clinton, is it possible to have multiple sites tied into the same user dBase?

You know - this is exactly what the indie community needs, actually: a central user database where if someone had an account on the Forge, they'd use that same login at sorcerer-rpg.com, heartburngames.com, and anywhere else that signed up.

Each website would probably have its own database as well (for the Forge, it would have a 'posting name,' at sorcerer-rpg.com it would have the user privileges there, and at heartburngames.com it would have the programs a user was allowed to download), but the logins would be the same.

This wouldn't be that hard to implement and would benefit people immensely.

(Just to let people know - if you want to publish something and want to use the same technology I am, I will host your game for free.)

[Misguided Games]

Fiction-fantasy.net has a mySQL setup like this now for its various sites (GIDFA auction site nonwithstanding).  You have to login to each site seaprately, and they each have their own cookies, but they share the same database.