The Road to Kickstarter

Hello World,

With National Game Design Month over and Trials of the Magi released it is time to look at the path going forward, and what a path it is.

As I discussed in my previous post, Trials of the Magi was developed under a time restraint and in my opinion has a lot of room to grow. At its core the game is unique and entertaining but some of it’s execution doesn’t convey the theme as well as it should. With that in mind I have been looking to grow TotM into the game I know it can be. Though play sessions reviews and comments I am refining the mechanics and polishing the text.  All to create a game that I can be proud to put my name on.

With this improvement I want to take the game to print, with an improved layout, more art and a small print run. But with my current budget as a designer this isn’t possible. This is why I am going to be taking Trials of the Magi to Kickstarter in the upcoming year. This leaves me with a lot to get done between now and the launch of the kickstarter, and I will be working tireless to deliver the best product possible.

In other news I am currently finishing up the paper work to licences my own game development studio, Sproutli Games. I look forward to delivering countless quality games to you all in the future under the Sproulti moniker. But this new name isn’t the only big development at Sproutli, we have been working hard to create a developer website. This website hopes to allow you to stay up to date on the company’s latest projects, communicate with other players and act as a centralized location for all of our products. You can expect this site to be up by mid-January so look forward to that!

The road ahead will he arduous, but with your support I know that we will take Trials of the Magi to heights that I couldn’t even Imagine!

-Patrick

Game Design Month - What I Learned

Hello World,

As some of you may know, over the past thirty days I have challenged myself to enter National Game Design Month (NaGaDeMon). It was a brutal and grueling month but I managed to pull through it and I am so happy I did. Not only did I develop my skills and endurance as a designer I also now have another game under my belt which I am proud to put my name on.  In today’s post I would like to share some of my experience with you.

So without further ado, here is what I learned from developing Trials of the Magi.

The idea for Trials of the Magi started with one simple word, a word that sent me down a thirty day rabbit hole.

“Mathemagician”

A simple word, but with a big goal, make and educational RPG in which players cast spells through the use of mathematics. It sounds cool on paper but the execution needed to be perfect if the game was to be fun and educational. I wracked my brain for days trying to execute this without being ham handed. After a lot of experimentation I couldn’t come up with anything I was happy with. However in this development period I did come up with the Magi Paradigm Matrix. This little chart was a clever way to track a character’s affinity to each of the eight standard schools of magic. Rather than beating my head against a proverbial wall with the mathemagician angle I decided to see where this arcane placement chart would take me. This is when TotM started to get the form you see today. I associated each of the axis on the graph with two polar attributes, both within the game and in real life. This connection to real mental traits allowed me to determine placement based on a personality test, opening the door for the game to travel into alternate reality game [ARG] territory.

I have always liked ARGs as the have this sense of immersive mystery within them that other genres seldom achieve. And with ARGs being such a good tool for education, it was something I wanted explore within my game. This exploration lead to the game’s central premise. TotM is an ARG, in which you play a tabletop RPG, in which you play yourself. It’s a crazy premise, and I was curious to see if it would work. So I did tons of research on both educational games and ARGs, This itself actually took a hand full of days to complete. (If you are interested I recommend Extra Creditz’s videos on the matter which can be found HERE, HERE, HERE and HERE)

With a good amount of ARG research done, I progressed forward, now looking to tie in an educational aspect to the game without being obtuse or ham handed.  After a number of failed ideas I came up with “Understandings”, which is one of the key tools within the game for character individuality. Because players would be playing themselves, Understandings could be used to shape their character around their own personal knowledge and experiences. This was great because it encouraged players to go and educate themselves about a topic without flat out saying ‘Go learn something’. The self-directed nature of the Understandings promoted learning without taking away from the fun of the game. I continued to develop this to the point where the game was ready for playtest.

My main playtest group for NaGaDeMon was comprised of players who had never met or played together before. After some minor introductions we got down to making characters and one thing immediately jumped out at me. Understandings were an amazing icebreaker. Getting each of these strangers to share interesting facts and trying to impress each other with what they know really got people open up to one another. This is something I didn’t even consider when designing Understandings, but it was such a great side effect, and I was so happy with its occurrence. Game mechanics can be surprising like that and this is another reminder of why playtesting is so important.

After a week or two more of typing up the rules and play testing, the system was beginning to develop into a full fledged game. It was at this point  I could pass around the game and get opinions on it. While I got a number or responses back, only a few people were able to give me a critical view on the games strengths and short comings. This was so important because it directed me to enhance aspects of the game that were weak, and drive focus to its strong points. While I wasn’t able to address all of the concerns before my deadline there were plenty I was able to get to.

During this review phase I also began editing my rules. oh my god, am I ever happy that I did. I went through 5  personal revisions and 2 external revisions in order to get out all of the spelling mistakes and to make the game make sense. The number one thing I learned here is that you never realize how important editing is until you start doing it. Through all of these edits, playtests and revisions the game became what you see before you today [and I am sure there are still things I missed].

While I have enjoyed playing the game and think that it is a fun and interesting system, I think that it can be so much more. The games shortcomings proved to be a valuable teaching tool, and in my opinion the greatest shortcoming the game has is its lack of focus. Throughout the design, there was a lot up in the air until the last minute, as a result the game wasn’t able to cater the full experience to its target audience. In future projects I would like to ensure that this catering happens better.

This also leads me to my final thought with the game. At its core, this game has some really interesting ideas and if I am able to polish the experience and really focus on my target audience I feel that it can become something great. That is why over the next several months I will be developing the system further and taking it to print. You can stay up to date on those updates by following  me on Twitter or by following this blog.

With developing the game further I would love to hear from everyone who reads/plays Trials of the Magi. Any thoughts, ideas or concerns you have about the game, I want to hear them. The more I get back from you the better the experience I can deliver in the future. Please contact me using the form on the right hand side of this blog or by email at patricklapienis@gmail.com

As always thank you for reading, without people to play the games and  read the blog posts I make, there would be no reason to create them. Thank you.

- Patrick

[Design Talk] The Power of Inventory

Hello World,

Equipment, items, supplies, phat lewts, whatever you want to call them, they make an appearance in almost every RPG system. From the heavy inventory focus of D&D and Pathfinder to the narrative importance of Fate or Heroquest the methods of item representation can be done in countless ways. I am noy going to debate about which game handles inventory the best because each has its strength and weaknesses. Instead I would  like to talk about the importance of how you handle items when designing a game. But first, a story.

About a year ago I was running a Pathfinder game in which one of the players had grown fond of his characters pair of bolas. These weren’t special bolas, just the simple kind which you could buy and any store, but they were his favorite piece of equipment. This attachment developed from a number of encounters in which a good bola throw got the team out of a jam. He could always rely on his trusty bolas. But tragedy stuck...

One fateful night, as a thief was making off with their valuables, a lone bola toss stood between the thief and her escape. The bola flies true, entangling the thief’s legs and knocking her to the ground. The group begins to run up to the downed thief. Seeing her foes approaching the thief begins to panic, she pulls out her dagger and cuts the rope of the bolas. Dropping the stolen goods, she is barely able to make it out of their alive.

In that moment a minor unnamed enemy became the most hated villain of the game. The player was heartbroken at the loss of his trusty weapon, and for some time the campaign became focused on tracking the thief down.

I was trying to make one thing clear with this, stats don’t always make an object important, interactions with that object do. Whenever you are designing a system, always ask yourself, what objects result in the most impactful interactions? I know that may seem like an odd question to ask, but hear me out. Items only matter when they have some form of major impact on, or connection to the player. Unless players within the game are going to be stranded and hunting for resources chances are, things like rations, tents and encumbrance don’t really have a big impact on the game, and may be better left out. In fact a lot of game masters choose to drop these rules because all it adds is needless micromanaging to their game, taking away from the experience they are trying to deliver.

Same goes for weapons and equipment. Ask yourself, what do you want to have a larger impact in your game, the player’s connection to the weapon or the weapons qualities? Do you want your player to use the sword that is passed down from their father or the enchanted blade they plundered from a perilous dungeon? These are all questions which should be asked, and the mechanics of the game should be designed around those answers. Don’t just put in an item list because other games have item lists, put one in if it makes your game better. A good comparison you can do when looking at this is by comparing the Dungeon World fighter with a Pathfinder fighter.  Pathfinder fighters are always on the lookout for the next best piece of equipment, while Dungeon world aims to have the fighter develop their skills with a single weapon. However you go about handling equipment and items within your system, ensure it improves your game. Never add mechanics just for the sake of having them.

Thanks for reading,

-  Patrick

If you would like to suggest topics for future posts, you can use the form on the right hand side to email me directly. You can also stay up to date on my latest projects and posts by following me on Twitter or Google +

Growing as a Developer

Hello World,

As those of you who follow me on twitter may know, I have entered the National Game Design Month Challenge or NaGa DeMon for short. Participants of this challenge are charged with the monumental task of designing, creating, and playing a game over the span of a month. I am currently two thirds through the challenge and it has been a herculean gauntlet so far. Fitting the countless hours of game design into my already busy schedule has left me stressed and exhausted, but truth be told. I love it.

I know it sounds strange that I love an action that is making my life more stressful. But I am both doing something I love, and improving skills as a designer. I have heard it said that a person only grows when they are pushed outside their comfort zone and I agree with this statement completely. In most cases we won’t force ourselves to grow unless we have to. We get complacent and we do what is easy, over what is right. But by challenging ourselves to do something difficult we are driven to complete a task which is beyond us. Growth is that moment when you complete the challenge and realize that it wasn’t too great for you to handle. With new found vigor and courage, you strive to take on the next challenge, which is even greater than the last.

But there is a dark and looming flipside to this mentality. The fear of failure. No matter who you are, there is always the voice which tugs at the back of your head, reminding you of all the consequences of failing. We get so caught up in this fear that we become too afraid to challenge ourselves. But fear of failure will only hold you back, with every new creation there are going to be flaws, with ever new challenge there is a chance you might not make it. Don’t take those as an opportunity to give up, see them as a tool to get better. Why ask someone to tell you where you need to improve, when your mistakes spell it out for you clear as day. Anyone who is successful has built their success on a foundation of failure.

Go out there and really challenge yourself, put the axe to the grind stone and push yourself every day. Only then will you create something that will leave its mark on the world.

Thanks for reading,

-Patrick

[Tabletop Musings] The RPG Wall

Back when I was in middle school I began to hear about Dungeons and dragons. Being the type of kid who likes board games and medieval fantasy, this seemed right up my alley. I looked at it and saw a board game in which characters persisted match to match.  To 12 year old me, this sounded awesome! I began to look into what was needed to play. It was tough because back then most of the TRPG products on sale at my local game store had the DnD name slapped on them, making it hard to figure out exactly what I needed. Eventually I was pointed towards the D&D red box. With the box being too expensive for my ten year old allowance, I wouldn’t get the game until my birthday.

There I was, a fresh faced 13 year old, trying to make heads or tails of Dungeons and Dragons. I was able to decipher the rules mechanically, but any time I tried to play the sessions just fell apart. There were a lot of aspects about the game that we had just never seen before. Things like Game Masters, and role-playing were completely foreign to us and after a few more attempts I gave up, letting the game gather dust in my closet.

It wasn’t until the following year that I tried an RPG again. Another student at my school tried to get a group together to play a tabletop RPG after class. Most of the kids who attended only knew about D&D through its depictions in media. The GM however, didn’t have a rules system, miniatures or a map. He ran a strictly theatre of the mind game in with a strong focus on role-play. The players were given total freedom, and whenever there was a conflict he rolled a d20 and told us if we passed or failed. This game only lasted a few sessions, as we the players weren’t exactly sure what the goal of the game was. Also with the lack of rules and total freedom, character actions began to border on the ridiculous.

By this point I had two very different experiences with tabletop RPGs, neither of them very successful. I went on for a number of years without giving the medium another chance, choosing instead to stick to my video and board games. In high school however, my interest in tabletop RPGs began to rise and I was looking to give them another shot. I downloaded the PDFs for the core D&D books and began to read through them, doing my very best to get a good understanding of how to play. After a week or so of studying the rules in my spare time, I still wasn’t sure how to run a game. So I began to ask around, to see if anyone at my school knew how to be a Game Master. Although my search for a GM was unfruitful, I did find a lot of people who had always wanted to try D&D but have never known how. Not confident enough in my own GMing ability I wasn’t willing start a group at the school. Instead I looked online, and it wasn’t too long till I found a local gaming group who played on Friday nights. I contacted them, and they were gracious enough to let me join. The group was made up of guys in their thirties who had been play tabletop RPGs since they were in high school. These guys were veterans of the medium, and even though there was a lot I didn’t know they were willing to teach me. I played with this group for many years, learning a lot of the subtle and unspoken rules of tabletop RPGs, as well as trying my hand at a large assortment of games and characters.

Now you may be asking yourself, why am I sharing this story? Well it’s to prove a point.  Tabletop RPGs are a very unapproachable as a medium. Here I was, a kid who was willing and eager to get into this hobby, but with so few resources to help me. There are a large amount of rules and nuances that are just not addressed within the majority of rulebooks. All these little techniques build up to a large wall of misunderstanding for a beginning player. This junction becomes even more apparent when we see that the majority of players were taught how to play tabletop RPGs by someone who has been playing them for many years. There is a lot added to tabletop RPGs, things beyond the basic rules that people within this hobby have developed and practiced over the past 40 years. Unless you are able to experience it first hand, or talk to someone who has, it is impossibly hard to play a tabletop RPG.

But this topic isn't all doom and gloom, with the widespread nature of YouTube, podcasts, forums and blogs there is a great well of resources available for players to see these techniques in action. The fact that I can go and watch someone play an RPG online allows me to see these techniques used in real time, providing a great educational tool for new players. But play sessions aren’t the only resource that has become available. These nuances have begun to be looked at in an academic light, allowing for a better understanding of the intuitive nature of RPGs.  Rickard on the story games forums has actually done a great job of highlighting these implicit practices as well as explaining them in depth. I strongly recommend that anyone who is looking to design games gives that thread a read. It is chalk full of great information and is updated often. I do also feel that some responsibility needs to fall onto the designers as well. We already have a brief section on how to play a role-playing game in pretty much any book, but this section merely skims the surface.  I believe that its something that should be expanded to the extent that a player, who has never played or seen an RPG before knows how to play the game. No other game medium does this, you don’t see board games that skim over the rules and expect the players to fill in the blanks, why should RPGs be any different.

The interest is there, people of all ages are exposed to the idea of tabletop RPGs through the media they consume. There interest is peaked, they want to play, we just need to let them. If we make this medium as approachable as video or board games, we could reach an audience greater than this industry could have ever imagined.

Thanks for ready,

-Patrick

If you would like to suggest topics for future posts, you can use the form on the right hand side to email me directly. You can also stay up to date on my latest projects and posts by following me on Twitter or Google +

[Design Talk] Reward Systems Within Your Game

Hello World,

I have heard it said that games are like mind control. They convince somebody to overcome unnecessary obstacles and act in an anomalous manner. From the view of an onlooker it would seem as though a gamer was crazy. Why would any sane person spend their already limited time and money, doing extra work in which there is no apparent reward?  To most gamers the innate gut reaction to this kind of question is because games are ‘fun’, but why is a game fun?

 At their core games are built on rewards. The medium has been engineered over the decades to be as engaging and fulfilling as possible.  Everything from the thrill of overcoming a boss, to the challenge of figuring out a puzzle are all activities which are innately satisfying. Although games are built on reward systems it is very important as a designer to implement them effectively into your game. And this first step to doing that is to understand the two types of rewards, extrinsic and intrinsic.

Extrinsic rewards are some kind of payment received for performing a task. While generally referring to physical payouts, such as money in a poker game, or a salary at a job, games most capitalize on this phenomenon through in game rewards. Think about all those times you have grinded in a game to get the best gear, or unlock the next part of the story.  In a game like Dungeons and Dragons, these extrinsic rewards are seen in the form of items, gold and experience. Loot and XP may not be the only reason you risk your characters life exploring ancient ruins, but it sure as hell helps.

Intrinsic rewards on the other hand are rewards that come from within the action itself. These often take the form of psychological and chemical rewards within our own body. Examples of this are the camaraderie of spending time with friends,  the hope of being successful or feeling a part of something bigger. In short, intrinsic rewards are when the act of playing the game is its own reward.  This style of reward, while harder to create within a game, has a much more lasting effect on the player. It should be the goal of the designer to have every aspect of play be as intrinsically rewarding as possible. This is however much easier said than done, especially in tabletop games.

In a good video game, everything is working together to make that moment as intrinsically rewarding as possible, everything from the music, to the atmosphere, to the in game mechanics.  The developer acts almost as a conductor making these elements all come together to create one experience. This makes it much easier for the game to illicit intrinsic rewards on its own merits, rather than depend on how the player is feeling at that moment. Tabletop games on the other hand are a much more variable medium. The way in which one group runs a game could be completely different to the way another group approaches it. In either scenario, it is the group itself that has the largest bearing on the intrinsic rewards, rather than the system. I believe this is where the whole “System Doesn’t Matter” mentality comes from. That isn’t to say that systems can deliver their own intrinsic rewards, but these rewards are best received when approaching the game from a specific mindset.  I have seen no better example of this than Dungeons and Dragons. DnD is the most intrinsically rewarding when you play the game as a combat heavy dungeon crawler. While plenty of groups have lots of fun playing the game outside this niche, their intrinsic rewards are coming from the group itself.

One of the most effective tools I have found for managing reward systems is to have your extrinsic rewards encourage players to get into the mindset required to fully engage with the game’s intrinsic rewards. When you are creating your game you know the mindset you want your players to be in. You have a clear vision of how a session plays out, how the players act, the types of the decisions they make. While it isn’t possible for all players to be in that mental state all the time, you can encourage them to be in it as much as possible. A good way to do this is to make playing in the right mindset the best strategy for playing the game. If you look at Planet Crashers, I designed the game to be enjoyed in a comedic, beer and pretzels mentality. To encourage this style of play, I gave the players a better chance of success if they acted in comedic and cliché ways. This encourages the players to get into the right mindset to fully enjoy the game.

Some possible methods to implement extrinsic rewards are as follows. 

• Character Advancement
• Mechanical bonuses to actions
• Recovery of resources
• Loot

Although all of these methods and more can be implemented into your game, it is important to consider what kind of behaviors you are encouraging. Try to align encouraged play with the game’s most engaging play. If the best way to get loot and XP is to go dungeon crawling, your players will want to go dungeon crawling.

If you have any examples of how you have used extrinsic and intrinsic rewards , or have suggestions for future topics send me a message using the contact form on the right hand side!

And as always, Thanks for reading.

-Patrick

To stay up to date on my latest projects and musings follow me on Twitter and Google+

[Guest Post] Marker Jones - What I Learned Developing Worlds of Rage

Hello World,

A few weeks ago I was got the chance to talk with Marker Jones, Creator of the Worlds of Rage RPG. In our discussions I got to learn about Marker’s experience in publishing and his development process. I really wanted to pass on this information with you all and figured who better to share the games development story than the author himself. Marker jumped on the offer to share his story, and hastily sent me in a monolith of a story, about every step of this 5 year publishing story. What follows is what he sent me, I hope you enjoy it as much as I did.

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As with all things, we begin with a first step.

Hello, my name is Marker Jones. I am the writer of "Worlds of Rage," a brand new role-playing experience from United Sight studios, and the lead developer of the task resolution mechanic the game uses (likely the same dice mechanic all our games will use).

It's been a long time coming, as you, aspiring game designers, are about to find out. I began this project with a partner who left on good terms resting the whole thing squarely in my lap. Admittedly it sat there a few years collecting dust while I flirted with the idea of writing a novel or screenplay or anything that would get my name out in the world. In this time, I was running games, countless games; Battlestar Galactica, Vampire the Masquerade, Mage the Ascension, TMNT, Rifts, Beyond the Supernatural, Dragonlance, anything to give me that good game high I had experienced so many times before.

Creating my own RPG, I knew a few things before I even started typing. This would be science fiction, but it would have nothing to do with any previous IP with the word "Star" in the title; I went so far as to avoid the word for my title. It would have some of the usual trappings of an RPG such as some system of magic, but it could not be like anything ever seen before in game or movie. Finally, since I was very heavily playing every RPG I could get my hands on those days, it had to have something no other RPG ever had, and there had to be a solid story reason for this creation.

"Worlds of Rage" began as a street with two clubs and two competing crime lords. In an attempt to make it original, I dealt primarily street level storylines involving crime, treachery, extortion. Other planets were mentioned but rarely visited. We had an ongoing storyline of two competing criminals and the people caught in the struggle. It was fun, but limited. I had to expand more.

Enter the religions. I couldn't bring myself to have any kind of Judeo Christian religion in a world I had already said had no connection to the world those type religions had come from. The end result was a mix of Christian, Jewish and Jehovah's Witnesses belief systems but done in such a way to make sense in the back story of the game. It was a simple story of an omnipotent creator based on my upbringing in the Catholic faith, but I wanted a mixed connection/opposition between religion and science believing that would add drama. This gave me the antagonist I needed to keep religion on its toes.

While I was writing and creating (and recreating), I was keeping an eye open for a publisher. I knew I didn't want to sell to one of the established companies as I wanted to own my work. The best way for me to retain ownership of the property I had struggled to get into print, I soon found, was the print on demand market.

Print on demand is a new kind of creature, but yet it seems tailor made for the role-playing industry. We are creative people to begin with, and more than likely computer savvy. Print on demand services allow us to showcase our abilities a number of ways; writing, graphic design, desktop publishing, web design, etc. It's as if the digital world reached out to us, invited us into a tight embrace and asked what it can do to help. There I was with arms extended looking for my chance to etch my name in the stone of RPG history.

I soon discovered how valuable a tool constant research was. Not only was I looking up various publication channels, but I was also doing research on technology to get a sound idea where the advanced tech of my world(s) would be. Most important, it had to look right, it had to look plausible, it had to seem like these people would have naturally gravitated towards this tech. To do this, I studied a lot about where technology came from and how it evolved in our world.

History gave me more ideas than almost anything else. When designing your own world from scratch, why not research on our home planet and what happened in each stage of evolution? This got me looking at the races involved in my game. I suddenly had a model to work with, a way to decide where each race came from. The Limthrakk, the orange skinned nobles, see themselves as the Creator's chosen, the one the others should look up to. Their culture was based on Asian culture and history. The Groon are seen as savage and brutal by the other races, but they are nothing of the sort, they just don't think those that look down on them need to know just how beautiful their culture really is. They were heavily based on Native American tribes. This process continued with the other races.

I spent the most time deciding what classes would go into my game. I started out with classes whose sole defining characteristic was summed up in a few words, often the name of the class. It soon came to me that these class names were looking more like skills; thief, assassin, fighter with bladed weaponry, mystic, etc. I own the fact that a lot of "Worlds of Rage" is inspired by fantasy RPG's, but I could not see a place in my high technology science-fiction worlds for a healer or an arena fighter. However, a soldier who was only ever good at fighting and decided to increase his already wondrous skills with the addition of cybernetics to the point of facing a growing addiction to cybernetic implants? That had promise.

And soon other classes were inspired. An offshoot of one of the terrorist organizations that pledged a life of nonviolent social demonstrations focused on corporate espionage and activism. Priests that had to train heavily in combat with bladed weapons as they were going to do missionary work in some of the most dangerous places in the galaxy. Bodyguards who would self-administer poisons to build up an immunity and get a taste for them so that they could not only survive the effects but identify the substances in an employer's food (which also had the added benefit of making them quite adept at administering poisons themselves). These were the kind of morally ambiguous classes I was going for.

Alignment became a thing of the past. If you are creating characters that normally act outside the line on an average business day, why incorporate a system of alignment that would penalize them for doing the very thing they were buying skill points to do? Ridding myself of an alignment system got me looking at other mechanics of RPGs we have grown accustomed to.

I discovered a growing disdain for experience points. How is an encounter judged in such a way that one encounter is a higher threat than another? A large stampeding monster could be reduced to a blathering idiot if dice rolls were not going your way, and a low level pickpocket could ruin your day if he took your knife out of your pocket and stabbed you with it before robbing you and walking off, all in a time span of about 15 seconds with an amazing roll. So "Encounters" no longer had a numerical value, rather the skills that you roll increase themselves through repeated successful use. This not only rewarded the soldiers in combat, but also the engineers who repaired the ship, the technician that fixed the equipment, the ambassador that was able to use words to avoid a fight.

I am in no way an artist, and any RPG is judged on the quality of its art. Since I was self-financing this, I wanted to save the lion's share of the money for publication, so sacrifices had to be made. It took me 7 years to find an artist that could produce good art for a price I could afford. Anyone near to me was offering comic book quality artwork but for well over $100 per illustration. Thanks to researching options online I found a good quality artist at a more reasonable rate (thumbtack.com helped out wonderfully here). For the front cover, I tapped the friend of a friend who was a local tattoo artist and very interested in the project. This same artist is still producing content for me and negotiating a contract to work on future titles.

I had found my publisher in the form of CreateSpace, a publishing house owned by Amazon. I jumped at the chance to work with them, not only for brand recognition but also because this meant my RPG would be available on the Kindle. I've seen a good amount of digital role players as of late; you know them, the gamers that have either their laptop or tablet at the table. Technology has allowed us the chance to carry dozens of books to the gaming table in only one hand. I wanted to be a part of this, and was able to do so, thankfully, and not just with the Kindle but also drivethrurpg, which is another amazing resource for aspiring designers.

Ah, marketing. The total dominance of the internet has made marketing a double-edged sword; you would think it is easy given how accessible the entire world is now, but be careful for you can accidentally use these resources incorrectly and alienate potential customers. I did a Reddit AMA (ask me anything), created social media pages, a wordpress site, a twitter account, a Google+ page, had friends talk me up on social media, etc. It helped a bit. I got a lot more traction once I learned to use Roll20 and Skype. The online role playing community - and this includes online gaming conventions such as Virtuacon and Aethercon - allowed me to get my name out there and to introduce people in other state and other countries to my work. Once players saw it in action, they were more inclined to look it over.

My wordpress site has a beta test copy of the rules available. I would suggest this to any designer. The professional designers make their SRDs (system reference documents) available to consumers online, and your beta test rules can be the same thing. Also, it serves as a text for possible play testing, which is important, but also more honest if you can get people to play test it in your absence, and to find play testers who are not related to you. We all start running our games for our friends, but it's when people who do not know you try your game for the first time that the real issues start to show themselves. 

Don't settle for online, get out in the world and play it also. Your local gaming store is a good start, but absolutely go to conventions; go to a lot of conventions, go out of your way to go to conventions, go to each one you can find and afford to go to. Get the word out there. Let people you have never met before know about your game. Do demos wherever you can. Post demos online and let strangers find them on YouTube at 3 o'clock in the morning.

This has been a labor of love for me, and that is the complete truth. I have gone at this mostly on my own - not out of choice, out of circumstance. I was, however, fortunate to be able to realize this goal without having to Kickstart it (I never thought it would be beneficial to be a married gamer, but I was proven wrong on this).

Good luck, designers. I hope to see your products soon on the shelves of my local bookstore.

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I would like to thank Marker for his post, and if you you would like to learn more about Worlds of Rage you can check out Markers Wordpress, or you can find the game on Amazon and Drive Through RPG.

before I end off this article I would like to make a quick announcement to all of my readers! I want to hear from you, use the contact form to the right of this article and let me know what you want to see in future posts. I love writing this blog, and with your help we can make it something great.

And as always, thanks for reading,

-Patrick