Some RPG pre-release questions

[BadgerTemplar]

Hey all,
I am working on preparing a new RPG for release and I have some questions to sound out.
The RPG is called Lefrin the Role Playing Game, and you can find a tad more information at:
http://www.rpggeek.com/blog/921
     and/or
http://www.facebook.com/Lefrin

Here goes:
Lefrin is intended to be free to play, the plan is to gain some start-up capital using Kickstarter.com
However, because Lefrin will be released in PDF format only it's been difficult to come up with decent
rewards for those who donate. Something I was thinking of doing was taking the names of people who
contribute and using them within the world for NPCs, items, places an such. Is that a fun, interesting,
and worthy reward? Does anyone else have any ideas for potential rewards?

As an unknown newby publisher I have no audience. What are some ways to get people to view what
I have so far?

One of the driving forces behind Lefrin is the idea of opening up an RPG so that players can integrate
their ideas (new NPCs, places, items, scenarios, custom campaigns, etc) into the official cannon. Do
you think a forum an effective way to achieve this? What should a forum that tries to do that look like?

[Cedric]

Hi BadgerTemplar,

Some ideas which popped-up in my mind, feel free to take them or ignore them.

1- About rewards: I personally would fancy seeing game elements (such as important NPCs, locations or artifacts) be named after my nickname or, in case I'm creating my own game, be a reference to the latter.
Another way to reward donators can be to let them get premium access to some material. For example, upon new material release, you give it first to the donators, and release it to the rest of the world a few weeks later (or as you released another piece of material, so that the donators always have something the others don't)

2- About the community: maybe a platform like Facebook would work? There you can right away 'like' other's ideas, and you can propagate virally as friends talk to and invite other friends.
However, keeping this whole thing living looks like a daunting task. Unless you regularly update the forum / material / webpage, the community will tend to wither. So: looks interesting, but be ready to invest a lot of time into it !

Hope this helps,

  Cédric

[BadgerTemplar]

Cédric,
thanks for posting, some of the questions you have asked on other topics have been very helpful,
so thanks for that too. I have no problem referencing another game within Lefrin (With permission of
course).

I saw on another topic that you were considering releasing a beta-ish version of you game. Have
you done so? Where did you find hosting? Have you had any methods of getting information about
you game out work particularly well?

[Cedric]

Hi Badger,

Well I'm not sure I did it as everyone else, but here goes for my limited experience:

- For storage, I use google docs for sharing documents or dropbox for sharing links to e.g. PDF files. Other people here use wordpress.
- I also run a website which was provided 'for free' by my ISP, but since this is specific to this french provider you'll have to check if yours provides the same service.

About playtesting: I'm part of a LARP community, I ran a 4-years campaign, each time with ~80 people involved. This was an excellent way to gather feedback and to polish the universe (when some guy asks you a weird question at 4 AM, you really need to be creative )
Now that the campaign is over, I befriend lot of these people. Some proposed to playtest the 'paper' version of the rules, but this is still on the TODO list.
I also count on my group of close friends for doing some playtests with me. That should be 3 or 4 groups of people ready to help. I did not ask them yet as the rules still need to get some clarification - this is ongoing in another thread of the forums.
Then off I'll go !

But again, I'm new to this, so feedback from others is not to be rejected

  Cédric