Review of Wizkid

You can find a shiny review of Wizkid over HERE

Care and Feeding of Your Company

Possibly taking it too far… source unknown

So You’re a Customer
So, you’re an RPG/hobby game enthusiast and you love RPGs and hobby games. Go you! I’ve been talking about how to do things from the company side to be nice to writers, artists and customers but how can you, the customer, be nice to us companies? Why would you want to? Money’s enough isn’t it? Well, yes and no. This isn’t a gig that pays very well and the internet is a whirling cesspool of hateful opinions that can grind us creators down.Money IS good, more money IS better but there’s other things you can do to help and support us.

Buy the Game
No d’uh, right? Seriously though, RPGs are great value for money, lots of bang for your buck – especially on PDF – so bite the bullet and buy eh? I’m not going to bitch at you about piracy, I guilt-trip people instead, it’s far more effective. However if you DO pirate a game, at least think about buying some supplements, giving the poor sod a donation or buying a legit copy later on eh? If you enjoy it. You can’t leaf through a PDF and decide if you want it, so in some ways a download ‘try before you buy’ makes sense. Just cough up the moolah as and when you can.

Play the Game
This should also go without saying but well… games are meant to be played. If you play a game you’re exposing other players to it and you’re creating war stories and play experiences. This helps word spread – we often can’t afford advertising – piques peoples interest and hell, it’s what the damn things are for in the first place.

Talk About the Game
Mention the game on forums, in chat programs, in blogs on Twitter and Facebook. Talk it up If you’re playing a session, mention it. I can’t believe I’m saying this but… ‘Tell me about your character’. We do like to hear stories of our game being played, to read Actual Play reports and to know people are having fun (or not as the case may be). This is a great motivator and feeds back information that helps us improve our games. Share your adventures, your monsters, your villains. Help keep the game alive and create a ‘supported’ atmosphere.

Review the Game
Wherever you downloaded or bought it, leave a review. Even just a star rating and for fuck’s sake, be honest. Nothing is more off-putting to a potential buyer than obvious fanboy squee, even obvious hater nonsense. Give your honest assessment and feedback. The broader games industry is plagued by ‘fixed’ reviews and honesty is so much better. If you can’t review it on the site, review it on your blog, forum or wiki. People like to know these things and companies like the feedback, even if we just end up giving you the finger and ignoring what you say, it’s good to get feedback that we CAN ignore.

Tell the Company You Love it
We are not awash with fanmail or hatemail all the time, we’re small companies. Please get in touch with us, ask questions, tell us about your games, tell us what you’d like to see. We’re far more likely to see hateful, nasty comments than nice ones when we do go looking – people who don’t like something are far more talkative – so if you DO like something, make the effort to tell the company. Like their Facebook fanpages, spread their news, comment to the writers, artists and designers and show some appreciation. Come shake hands (or at least say hello, it’s more hygienic) at cons.

Don’t be THAT Guy
You love our game about X, Y, Z, not everyone will. You might like our subtle illusions to social decay in Thatcher’s Britain of the 1980s, they might like shooting alien monsters in the face with big guns. Not everyone likes the same stuff, not everyone has the same spin and interpretation of games. If you don’t share tastes that other guy isn’t (necessarily) a massive douchebag, he’s just different. Let us make arses of ourselves arguing about the nature and intent of our games, don’t do it for us.

Cheers.

Next time… my surprise at 4th Edition sales.

Tough Justice

There’s now a Tough Justice play-by-post forum, like the Courtesans one, to be found HERE.