how doth the little crocodile

[incandescens]

It is a source of great joy to me to know that next week and the week after are both four-day weeks, owing to the vagaries of Easter holidays.

In the meantime, weekend. And new Doctor Who tomorrow. I must take care to have a bland piece of knitting to hand that won't require too much attention and won't need careful stitch-counting, since I very much hope to be distracted from it.

It's interesting watching other friends discuss what they think is appropriate rewarding in a rpg. From watching lj-rpgs, I'd say that important reward-elements for that audience are (a) deeper immersion, (b) interesting plot twists, (c) interaction with specific other characters, (d) exploration of the chosen character (or invented character's) motivations and details and actions under stress, (e) cool story. So how does one give those?

(Rhetorical question, mostly.)

I'm yet more convinced that the sort of player who is not currently served by the market is one who'd buy an artbook, and who'd buy a character detail book, and who'd buy lots of character merchandise, and who'd possibly buy a book of series plot detail/background and discussions of where it's going, but who isn't particularly interested in statistics, mechanics, or system. A problem is that, judging by Guardians of Order, such books don't necessarily sell very well to the system-buying audience. So how does one sell them to the audience who would buy them? Not sure.

---

How Doth the Little Crocodile

How doth the little crocodile
Improve his shining tail,
And pour the waters of the Nile
On every golden scale!
How cheerfully he seems to grin,
How neatly spreads his claws,
And welcomes little fishes in,
With gently smiling jaws!

-- Lewis Carroll

Comments

[rvdammit.livejournal.com]

Rhetorical answer?

Sounds mostly like a GURPS sourcebook, minus the crunchy system rules. Which would lend itslef to PDF with a second format to allow small press style printing.

I wonder if an hnour system would work with that. Allow anyone to print and sell, with some stipulation of contact details of the printer (pdf owner), and send royalties back.

[incandescens]

I agree on the sourcebook format, but I'm not sure about the selling format.

[archangelbeth]

Psst -- check out http://juthwara.livejournal.com/214140.html ? Have you heard about the Earthsea thing? That it's not likely to be out over here till 2009???? *scream*

...so, when you think the UK DVDs will be out? *innocent*

[incandescens]

Much sympathy. I'll have to watch out for it over here! Though since it'll be in a UK-DVD format/region, even if I bring it over with me, it may not be much use to you -- given previous problems over region/format . . .

[copperbird.livejournal.com]

One thing I think people look for is high quality spotlight time. Most people dont want that 100% of the time, but when they get it, they want to really roll with it. That was one of the things that MUSHes inadvertently did well from time to time.

And a sense of building up personal relationships with PCs and important others, not just single scenes.

I think these are why people preferred RPing with features than with GM controlled NPCs -- the people playing the features were just more immersed than a GM who hadn't been playing the NPC 5 hours a day for the last 3 months and were able to actually have longterm personal relationships with longterm personal interactions. (ie. spotlight)

I think you are right about the character detail book. Something interesting I saw was a girl who was selling Warcraft character books. You could pick one of several pictures for the front (which covered every race and class) and there were spaces to write down what quests you had been doing, who their IC friends were and how they'd met, notes on gear you either got or wanted, and more pages for notes. I don't know how successful she's been but I think she was on the money with the concept.

[incandescens]

I agree, regarding the high quality spotlight time. (And look at how eager everyone is to be the Tempted Victim, the Persecuted Hostage, the Sole Defender, and other dramatic high-voltage high-character high-spotlight spots.)

Your comment regarding features also makes perfect sense.

The question is, how to use this . . .

[copperbird.livejournal.com]

Oo, I think maybe a key could be something like your list of dramatic high-voltage character spots. Trouble is, not everyone can be the persecuted hostage ... someone has to be the sarcastic debonair hostage taker, so what do you do if no player wants to play that role, knowing that players prefer RP with PCs than with NPCs?

Actually this was something else I learned from MUSHing -- the most brilliant experiences I had were when it just happened that the roles people wanted to take dovetailed neatly into each other. (eg. the wizened old vampire who wants to teach the young runs into the rebellious young vampire who wants to learn, etc etc). And you could never really force that, it was mostly random.

[copperbird.livejournal.com]

I think I'm moving towards suggesting pregen characters, funnily enough.

[incandescens]

Which dovetails with the number of lj-rpgs out there where people are playing the "feature characters" from specific series, in a way.

[copperbird.livejournal.com]

And I think the way you sell them is by networking. Start with fanfic writers and fan forums - get people who are already active and known in these places to try out the stuff and post a lot if they like it.

Because if you were on an active mailing list or lj and one of the stalwarts started gushing about this awesome new book and look, here's where you get it, wouldn't you be tempted?

[incandescens]

Oh, totally. In fact, when the GURPS Vorkosigan book finally comes out, I plan to do some boosting of it on Bujold (the author) communities. :)