A thought aside: does anyone have any statistics on how experienced gamers usually are when they pick up a new product?

I have been reading the Frozen Dawn thread and don't have a great deal to add. The one thing which I thought of is that it appears to demand quite an experienced GM who is a talented storyteller. A lot of GMs might be looking for a bit more help and guidance. Is that something you want to think about, or are you quite happy with the niche of GMs who can take a negotiation mechanic and run with it? Do you need some standard 'spells' for the Solar Psionicists in order to help out people who mightn't have the same vision of what that means as yourself, the designer?

Maybe it would be worth playtesting the system with someone else as the GM to see how easy it is to transfer the game system to someone else who is coming at roleplaying from a different perspective? It seems like a game needs to not only play well, but be something that a GM can use easily.

Just my 2c,
-Tennessee
(I'm designing a game. See www.mythology-rpg.blogspot.com)

Good points.

I think I'm fine with the GM needing to be somewhat experienced. It's so free-form that I think modules would be hard to write for it but I certainly provide some example stat blocks, plot seeds and short unconnected scenarios.

Solar Psion spells would be cool because I've realized I had a very specific vision of what kinds of stuff they can do and it's rather hard to explain clearly without examples. I would love to allow one of my players to be the GM (mainly because I'm kinda running out of ideas.) Not that I couldn't pick up the game again later, but I tend to have trouble running long campaigns that don''t get repetitive. So a break would be nice.