Has anyone tried writing up a standalone teaser for their game?  I'm contemplating doing this for Domus, in development - here -.  My agenda is two-fold:

• use it as a tool to tantalize potential playtesters
• eventually refine it as a marketing tool

What sort of stuff is grabbiest?  And before you ask, the target audience is "people who would like my game".  And before you ask, no, I don't know who else would like Domus.  I like Domus, but I have a hard time figuring out "what sort of a gamer am I?"

Suggestions?  Pitfalls?  Smacks upside the head?

First thing you need to figure out is, once you have this thing, how are you going to get it into the hands of other people so that they can be tantalized?  Is this a flyer you'll hand out to passersby at Cons, or is this a pdf that you'll somehow get people to download?

the latter -- I live in "the land that cons forgot", and don't spend a lot of time away from home.

Alright, so if this will require action on the part of the people downloading it, it needs to be something that (you think) they (think they) want.  In other words, it needs to have some value to them.  Ad copy has value for you, so don't expect other people to download something that's just a flyer explaining how keen your product is.  A playable game might have value for them (maybe a handful of pregen characters, an abbreviated resolution system, and a situation?).  Keen art, if you have it, might have value for them (desktop images, branded, with ad copy and references to your site, maybe?).  Get where I'm going?

I'm with your drift 100%.  Content in the forefront, ads snuck into the background.  Makes perfect sense.

Ta
D

A thought I've kicked around a bit is a one page highlights of NPCs, locations, or events in the game.  A cool picture, some game info, and background/color matereal so that they think it looks cool, sounds cool, and that's the game I need to play it.

I'm not sure if this is what your going for but White Wolf has teaser PDF for its new line of games. See here for an example near the end of the page.

At the risk of stating the obvious, I've had 498 unique downloads of Shock: over the last six weeks and my publicity has been a blog entry, a change in my .sig (both here and on RPG.net), some AP threads here, and a discussion on the glyphpress forum.

The blog entry is the source of many of the downloads, but most come from here at the Forge. RPGnet threads get hits, too.

You'll have to do some early publicity for your publicity. So I recommend that you make the download playable. If someone likes it, they'll buy it, so don't worry about losing sales to your promotion.

And remember: as long as you're doing something decent, there's no such thing as bad publicity. If people on RPGnet don't like your game and rant against it, that's great. It make sales. Same if they like it. Make sure you've done a good job with both your publicity and the game itself and make sure your audience doesn't forget you. Post on relevant threads on RPGnet and keep the moral high ground.

Luke's ("abzu") had some good advice for a guy named Darrick, I think. Search that out.