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Not sure if my tabletop idea is still marketable...
Oniros25
Registered User regular
Registered User regular
I wasn't sure if this fit better here or on Critical Failures, but I'm primarily looking for advice, so I went here first. If it needs to be moved, I can do that.
So. For years, YEARS I've been toiling away in my secret tabletop RPG labratory to make a game that several people told me simply could not ever work: a stealth-oriented tabletop RPG that draws inspiration heavily from things like Thief, Dishonored, Metal Gear (mechanically speaking) and to a much lesser extent Dark Souls. Despite even my own skepticism over it, I made it work. Aquaintences who playtested it once will come up to me at parties and ask if they can try it again. The rules are solid, the setting and lore I built are interesting enough on their lonesome. At least I think so.
But then, this morning I saw Will Hindmarch's kickstarter for Project Dark. It's a stealth-oriented tabletop roleplaying game influenced by Thief. It's already been funded several times over. Given that it was created by Will Hindmarch, it's going to be great and I fully support anyone interested in it checking his game out when it becomes available.
My question is, given how close his game and mine actually are thematically and in their intent, is there any point in my investing my own money in publishing my game? I feel like with a sub-genre of this size, one game might be enough to scratch the itch. Is there any point in pursuing this project beyond fun enthusiast fiddling? I was all set to go all in on this and now I just don't know if it would be worthwhile to do so.
So. For years, YEARS I've been toiling away in my secret tabletop RPG labratory to make a game that several people told me simply could not ever work: a stealth-oriented tabletop RPG that draws inspiration heavily from things like Thief, Dishonored, Metal Gear (mechanically speaking) and to a much lesser extent Dark Souls. Despite even my own skepticism over it, I made it work. Aquaintences who playtested it once will come up to me at parties and ask if they can try it again. The rules are solid, the setting and lore I built are interesting enough on their lonesome. At least I think so.
But then, this morning I saw Will Hindmarch's kickstarter for Project Dark. It's a stealth-oriented tabletop roleplaying game influenced by Thief. It's already been funded several times over. Given that it was created by Will Hindmarch, it's going to be great and I fully support anyone interested in it checking his game out when it becomes available.
My question is, given how close his game and mine actually are thematically and in their intent, is there any point in my investing my own money in publishing my game? I feel like with a sub-genre of this size, one game might be enough to scratch the itch. Is there any point in pursuing this project beyond fun enthusiast fiddling? I was all set to go all in on this and now I just don't know if it would be worthwhile to do so.
Nintendo Network ID: Oniros
3DS Friend Code: 1461-7489-3097
3DS Friend Code: 1461-7489-3097
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It absolutely is a project for fun. And you should keep at it!
Okay, so first off, how far along is the thing?
Can you complete it without spending too much money? Consider your art, editing, and advertising costs. Next, how will you publish it?
As for me, I did DrivethruRPG. It was moderately painless. They take... 30% of the selling price? Yeah. That sounds right.
So, tally up your costs and set a price point that will cover those costs if you sell 100 copies. That'd be a Bronze Seller, and I know it sounds like a trivially small amount of sales, but the market is super small.
If you can cover costs in 100 sales, do it.
Hell, do it so you can say you've published freaking RPG!
Shit, do it because you made an awesome game! If even one person plays it and has a good time, you've enriched the community.
Never thought it would be something I could quit my day job over. Did see it as an idea that could potentially be at least a little profitable, however. And at least successful in the public sphere. I've got an editor lined up. He's not got much professional experience, but he's tallented at what he does and I feel blessed to have him. Most of my investment in the project would go toward art, advertising and publishing. I was also thinking DriveThruRPG. It's the only sane way to go these days if you're a little guy.
3DS Friend Code: 1461-7489-3097
Heaven knows that there are tons of copycat movies, games, books, etc. that come out to follow every trend that's seen as hot so as long as your personal investment isn't going to break you or cause too many problems if it doesn't take off it is probably still a good idea to try.
3DS Friend Code: 1461-7489-3097
Just push ahead with art and formatting. It might be better if your game drops before the Kickstarted Monster. Deadlines are excellent motivators!
Once you have your files set it takes less than a week to get it all set on DriveThru.
Oh, and if you can, try to release a quickplay preview demo thingy for free. Then people can gab about it on RPGnet or here. Free advertising!
Checking this project off your list is gonna be powerful emotional weightlifting. I'm super down for reviewing and getting a conversation started.
I'll be sure to check in with you when that's ready.
3DS Friend Code: 1461-7489-3097
Think about how many generic D&D inspired RPGs there has been since D&D launched. Most of those found some audience right? So in a stealth RPG world where there is only your product and this other product, you have very good chances. Plus you could theoretically be first to market right? That never hurts.
Also, how modifiable is your game? Like could I do a straight up Dishonored or Assassins Creed game with minor tweets? I noticed his game uses playing cards vs. dice which could be a deciding factor for people who prefer dice. He's game and yours (depending on how you made yours) could fill two different groups for the same style. Like Dungeon World and DnD are both fantasy dungeon games in different ways.
All and all, I'm excited by both games so you can count my wallet to be there.
Dishonored would require almost no modding. Most of Corvo's powers are in there with the serial numbers filed off already and then some. You just have to make the player's mana pool regenerate more frequently. I tried to make magic more of a sometimes snack than it is in Dishonored.
Assassin's Creed would take a little more work, but I wrote a scenario for what will become the demo here shortly last night that involved the players navagating a galla event at a mansion and using social stealth to avoid being spotted by the guards along the edge of the ballroom. That idea obviously spun out of Assassin's Creed. Actually, no I could do AC quite easily as well. The biggest hurdle there is how the game handles death. I made the system hyper leathal. You either win combat in one or two rounds or you die. In my provided setting, which is a lot closer to Dishonored than Assassin's Creed, if a party member dies there are...methods by which one might get him back on his feet. One would have to find an alternate solution for that in a world without its phoenix down equivalent. Maybe that means toning down the leathality of combat, maybe that means a player hitting 0 puts them into unconciousness that they can be awakened from rather than death. There are options.
3DS Friend Code: 1461-7489-3097
I'm quite fond of the mechanics I'm using. It's one of the things that made me believe the project might have legs outside of my own wide-eyed obsessions. Not to get into it too deeply, but stealth works kind of like a streamlined hybrid of what you get in Thief and what you get in MGS3, tweaked for dice rolling of course. Stealth is double-layered in my game too. There's a system for the players altering an enemy and then another inter-related system for an enemy trying to physically discover their presence.
The first is easier to fail than the second. In game, this means that every once in a while, the player will step on the wrong thing or poke a little too far out of the shadows and a guard will go, "Huh?! What was that?" The player then gets an opportunity to find a better place to hide as the guard approaches and the harder to fail discovery check goes down and the guard goes, "Humph. Must've been rats..."
It provides the thrill of having been discovered without punishing the player with enemies immediately raising an alarm. Also, players sweat bullets when the guard comes close and their squirming reactions to this are often quite hilarious.
Also, simple revelation that came to me early on: if everyone is playing a rogue, then there's no reason for Sneak Attack to be a class based characteristic. I bound it to individual weapons. It actually allowed me to make things like daggers useful beyond the usual "too weak to use anything else" sort of argument. Weapons that deal high base damage often have shitty sneak attack damage and vice versa.
3DS Friend Code: 1461-7489-3097
It does not take that long to put a tabletop game out to market.
You should be play testing this every weekend, as often as you can really. You should be constantly iterating and fixing things that don't work well or adding new things that you discover may improve the game.
If you're really serious about this, pick up the pace, that's my only advice. Otherwise it will become one of those projects that never gets released, and thats the ultimate waste of time.
The whole concept of "market" is pretty unimportant as far as tabletop RPGs go. You are never going to be rich making a self-published RPG. As long as you have fun and don't lose too much money, it's all good. So fretting over competitors is pretty pointless.
Erm. No. The RPG market is definitely for making money - whether or not you can make a living off of small run self publishing is another question entirely, as is how to make a successful start-up business, but you certainly can make money in the gaming / RPG market & even make it your primary revenue stream, if you can put the work / time into it and have enough initial capital to do some marketing / pay your bills while you're still getting off of the ground.
No serious publisher or designer would discourage you from trying to have a successful career in the industry if that's what you want to do (they will tell you that it's hard, yes, but nobody ought to tell you that you cannot make a go of it).
And @The Ender , I was by no means trying to discourage our Dream Lord from getting his project off the ground. @CelestialBadger said it much better, above.
Just sayin it's hard to make RPG making your primary gig.
Game Making /= Wall Street, but Game Making does = Awesome.
A fair while ago (maybe mid last year?) I had an idea for a website / app that probably wouldn't have made me any money, but could have found a handful of users, and in the worst case was something I'd use myself (along with a few friends I could count on). And then, maybe a few months later, some very established names announced that they were collaborating on basically the same thing, and it was spruiked in all the major channels, and they'd already developed it to a closed beta. I signed up and basically realised it was 99% of what I'd hoped to make, and that all of their support network and decades of experience meant I probably shouldn't try to do it myself. They'd already got there and they'd get all the users.
And then, earlier this year, they folded. Lack of interest, compounded with what seems like massive overhead making it unsustainable.
Which tells you two things: first, that there's no certainty someone else's product will be more successful or marketable than yours. Even if it's already been funded on Kickstarter! People fund all sorts of shit on Kickstarter. Second: I gave up even thinking about the project once I joined their open beta. I was using their product when I could have been working on my own, and now they've closed shop and there's a vacuum once more. Had I kept going, I might have been in an even better position than if they'd never even announced it.
You seem worried that people might think you're ripping off what Will Hindmarch is doing well -- but you should focus on what he's doing poorly. So his product is 99% similar to your own? Make that 1% fuckin' shine.
I'm just going to keep teasing a few little things: Magic. There is a spell list, but you have to steal spell scrolls to learn new spells. They have to be found in the world, which means that the GM ultimately has complete control over what spells casters know outside of the spells they start the game with. When casting, there are two DC type goalposts: there's your casting skill, which you have to roll under and the spell's challenge rating, which you have to roll over. The goal is to hit that sweet spot where you're exceeding the challenge rating, but not busting on the roll. If you don't exceed CR, you subtract your roll from CR and that's what the spell costs in cunning, the games mana equivalent. If you do exceed it, the spell costs 1, all but free spell for your that turn. If you bust, it costs you the CR's worth of cunning and the spell still fails. Every spell cast feels a bit like a slot machine as a result, albeit one you can stack in your favor, as any good rogue would.
If cunning reaches 0, your character falls unconcious for a short time though, so there is some serious risk to casting when you're in the danger zone. But no reward comes without risk...right?
3DS Friend Code: 1461-7489-3097
3DS Friend Code: 1461-7489-3097
3DS Friend Code: 1461-7489-3097
Lots of games are similar to each other. Mostly the decision to pick up a game comes down to aesthetic, for me (and my wife, and my friends). So, never let something which is even mechanically identical to your project be a deterrent. People will pick your game over another game because it speaks to them.
In order for that to happen, you've got to give it a chance to talk.
Also, I am Mr Cynical. I am Mr Super McCynical when it comes to RPG designs. So I'm going to ask you a pair of questions that might be a little insulting.
Have you heard of the term Fantasy Heartbreaker? The capsule of what a Fantasy Heartbreaker is is that it's a D&D clone with one good/great idea buried in among all the D&D knock-off parts of it. The heartbreak being that the good idea is ignored/forgoteen about by the general public about because everyone just sees the D&D clone parts and dismisses the good idea.
The follow up questions is, "Is your game a Fantasy Heartbreaker?"
I made a game, it has penguins in it. It's pay what you like on Gumroad.
Currently Ebaying Nothing at all but I might do in the future.
Question two: I am familiar.
Question three: I don't think it is since play feels significantly different. I only say "I don't think so" because I'm almost 100% sure no one thinks they're developing a fantasy heartbreaker in the midst of it. I don't honestly use a lot of D&D mechanics or ideals. I don't use D&D monsters or races. Truthfully, this game has more in common with the works of Chaosium than it does with any iteration of good ol' D&D. I think I could only honestly say yes if your definition of "fantasy heartbreaker" was so broad as to include any game developed going forward that features a middle ages fantasy setting where the protagonists are adventurers of some stripe. Even then, in true Thief/Dishonored fashion, the provided setting is more Victorian era with fun Middle ages trappings than anything more soundly set in the period.
Heists in Deceit play out more like an episode of Leverage set in a dark fantasy world ala something like The Black Company. Trying use my game model (engine? I dunno how that is best described for pen and paper) to run D&D knock off adventures would be both unsatisfactory and frustrating. Not sure if that's better or worse, but I modeled it to be a vulnerability fantasy. If you play it as a power fantasy, kicking in doors, killing monsters, getting loot, you will die. Not sometimes. Everytime.
Is that a satisfactory answer or have I still not hit on what you're getting at? No concern needed on being Mr. Cynical either, sir. I am totally "that guy" for any of my friends who fancy designing a game like this. I'd be a pretty poor sport if I couldn't take what I dish out.
3DS Friend Code: 1461-7489-3097
No that hits it pretty much spot on. The very fact you are aware of the Fantasy Heartbreaker and can talk about your game with that in mind pretty much makes you immune to developing one. Although these days people do use the term more broadly to basically means any game that is clearly derivative of X but with good idea Y. There are plenty World of Darkness-esque Heartbreakers out there.
The idea of a game that's about stealth rather than just featuring stealth, especially as group of characters ,is intriguing and I wish to sign up to your newsletter. Stealth bits in RPGs often feel like net-runs in cyberpunk games, only the specialised characters can do it and that means everyone else has frustrating down time.
I made a game, it has penguins in it. It's pay what you like on Gumroad.
Currently Ebaying Nothing at all but I might do in the future.
Exactly! That's how I always saw it too. It's frustrating for others to wait on the stealthy character to do his thing and it's frustrating for the stealthy guy to try and ply his trade when all his companions are not at all interested in keeping things on the downlow. I cannot count the number of times when I was inches from ganking some unsuspecting fool in other RPGs only to have some joker let off a fireball or an arrow or a battlecry or, hell, just fail a stealth check. Suddenly, not only am I bloody useless, but exposed and in prime face-smashing position. Any irritation I express on this front is often met with a shrug. It's not what they're character is about and they just don't care.
This game is about stealth in the same way that, say, White Wolf's Mage is about magic. Every stat, every skill, every device, every spell is in some way in service of keeping the players concealed or helping them cope with moments when they are finally discovered. Anything not expressly about stealth is streamlined as much as I can make it without removing the substance from those subjects entirely. In this way, the stealth can be complex and nuanced without the player drowning in overall detail. Even the provided setting is designed that way, as a giant spiderweb of secrets, lies and jealously guarded treasures. I can only hope that my skill at the craft matches my desire to produce a very specific kind of experience. You guys will have to let me know how I did in a few days...
3DS Friend Code: 1461-7489-3097
3DS Friend Code: 1461-7489-3097
3DS Friend Code: 1461-7489-3097
3DS Friend Code: 1461-7489-3097
You've been very clear that combat = death, but what about fast-talk, disguise, convoluted aliases, and other skulduggery?
Basically, can I be Locke Lamora?
3DS Friend Code: 1461-7489-3097
And then just step right back into the shadows and leave.
3DS Friend Code: 1461-7489-3097
Shadowcasters who are the best with spells and are essentially human portal guns between two visible shadowy locations. It should be noted that all my spells facilitate stealth, illusion and deception. There are no fireballs or lightning bolt spells...or at least none that just owning won't put you on the hit list with the king's assassins...who all know those spells. Those guys are tenacious too. Maybe just don't?
There's the Resurrectionists who make you all better when you screw up and die. They use a very nearly-legal form of necromancy. They're unpleasant, but preferable to a swift death (probably.) Closest thing to a cleric or priest in the game as written.
Lastly, there's the Quickblade who essentially can cleave after killing on a sneak attack. He's a guard exterminator. Not a nice man usually, but handy to have in a pinch. If any PC is surviving combat (still unlikely) it will probably be this gent.
3DS Friend Code: 1461-7489-3097
Ok, thank you. I sent a message to the mod of that form, but he hasn't gotten back to me. I don't want to cause any trouble, but I would love to keep talking to these lovely people about my game.
3DS Friend Code: 1461-7489-3097
Are there any lasting effects of being resurrected?