The other day at work my friend (who is both my co-worker and fellow role-player) approached me about an idea he had. He knew I had been working on RPG design for quite some time know, and knew I would listen. He wanted me to help him create a series of RPG's that were small in size and simple in game-play. Games that people could play that didn't require superb amounts of thinking about little details. Oddly enough, I had just read a post up here the night before about giving names to similar types of RPG's.

What he was exactly thinking about was an RPG that would be the size of a brochure (like something you would get at a travel agency or a rest stop on a highway). It would be to easy carry; and durable enough to face things like spilling drinks, tearing, small children, and the like (I was thinking lamination). The rules would be simple and easy to learn, but still be able to immerse one into the world enough to enjoy. (I also thought it would be nifty to put them in long envelopes or something, but that's just brainstorming)

I had thought about this idea for a bit and I am now quite intrigued. I did a search here in the Forge and found only one example of something similar, the 1PG RPG's at Deep 7. Now my question of course, is about the format. Would gamer's buy this? Would they think it's not a real game by it's size (this might not happen with the pressence of Cheapass Games...)? Do you think it'd be better to use a basic 11"x8.5" size (three panels per side) or maybe something longer? They wouldn't include any adventures (unless I made them longer in size), and would probably be sold for around $2 or $3. It would be a full game with dice resolution and combat and skills and everything (if any of it's neccessary). I even have a few concepts to use as starting points (one involves deli meats and demons..heh hehe). So what do you think about this idea?

-Bryan-

Bacchanal is twelve pages long, saddle-stitched, 5.5" wide x 8.5" tall. I sold over thirty copies at GenCon at $4 each, and a few more through the mail since then, despite that a mostly similar pdf of the game is available for free.

Paul

You might want to look at Daniel Solis's PUNK. He made sevral design posts in Indie Design here, and at least for a time wanted the rules to be the size of CD liner notes. The rules are currently here: http://www.luchacabra.com/punk.html

We talked about something similar in We Need a Term, and I'm looking into publishing Conquer the Horizon in a 5.5 x 4.25 format (quarter page profile).

I'm skeptical of the marketability of microgames -- mine will be racking up to 24 "pages" in this format, which is three 8.5 x 11 sheets, front and back, cut in half and saddle-stapled.  It will fit into your back pocket.  It will be floppy, and feel rather insubstantial in the customer's hands.  Depending on how they're constructed, I'm guessing they'd only cost me a couple cents a piece, and even at a buck retail that's some significant markup.  Thing is, if I make ninety cents a copy, and I sell fifty, all I've really made is forty bucks.

What I do think they'd be useful for, however, is as freebies handed out at Con with my website on the back, maybe a little ad copy to boot.  I can drop forty bucks on manufacturing a thousand, which would be a simple matter to get rid of into convention-goers' schwag bags.

I test marketed a laminated fold out game allong the lines you've described at GenCon. The only difference is the size - my "Folio Matrix Games" include eight 8.5x11 sheets printed front and back, with maps rules and characters that folds up like a GM Screen - retail $9.95. I sold out the twenty I made.

These folio games are not brochures but they are inexpensive to make and with color laser printing are a lot nicer looking that Cheap Ass games for only a couple of dollars more.

I'm hopeful that this format will work well for Engle Matrix Games because you really don't need a lot to have a complete one of these games. As the format proves itself I have a seires of RPG like Matrix Games and a different series of war games. The cool thing about this packaging method is that it takes little equipment to do. A Color laser printer, a Black White laser pirinter, a paper cutter, packing tape (to assemble the thing) and a 25" laminator.

If you do do a smaller laminated brochure then assembling the pages will help with your folds. Lamination can fold but not very well and doing so tends to pop the lamination off the paper. If you attach your sheets with a thin piece of tape before laminating it the gap thus made provides a natural fold.

Chris Engle
Hamster Press = Engle Matrix Games

Even the 1PG RPGs are longer than one page when you take the whole package into consideration - the rules do only take a single page, but setting and plot information usually bring the total count up to ten or so.

I tend to think that a simple brochure size will just be too small to carry enough information for a complete game.  Even most card games and board games have instructions that require more space than a single brochure would. 

One idea that I've been tossing around, which might work for you, is a GM Screen RPG.  You'd sell a typical three or four panel RPG, with the entirety of the game's rules on the GM-side of the screen (and possibly some on the front for players to look at while they play).  The packagine of a GM screen also gives you space to include an insert adventure.  This format does eliminate some of the advantage and cheapness of printing, but it's my experience that gamers are very visual creatures (their own claims to the contrary).  People really like glossy color, hard covers, etc. so that a brochure-sized product would probably be hard-pressed to get any attention.

http://www.hinterwelt.com/Squirrel-Ref.html