A newsletter and podcast focused on Friday Strout's fiction and tabletop roleplaying games. Featuring top industry contributors from both the professional Game Master scene, game designers, writers, artists, and more!
This ep is a chat with Stefan (he/him) who is a scholar for everything cultural within tabletop roleplaying games. We discuss fear of “the other”, the importance of teaching race, and black history.
Linda Codega (they/them) is known as the Dragon Slayer in the tabletop community for their breaking story that put Wizards of the Coast’s feet to the fire about the Open Gaming License debacle. We talk about queerness, horror, Linda’s origin as a journalist, and professional advice for budding journalists.
Monsters In America by W. Scott Poole
Your first inside look at The Vineyard RPG before it launches on Kickstarter in April 2023. We talk mechanics, the 5e-adjacent system Project Black Flag (Kobold Press), narrative, NPCs, and what inspired The Vineyard! (February 10, 2023.)
Click here or our beautiful banner of Aisling to sign up for the latest on our BackerKit!
Follow us here on Twitter and let us know what you think!
Join the Discord community here to chat about The Vineyard.
Beautiful artwork of both Aisling Rovehnna and The Confessor by Yorsy Hernandez.
Hey y’all! BIG NEWS: The Vineyard RPG will be made using Project Black Flag! This means a more robust 5e game from the mind of Celeste Conowitch at Kobold Press. We are maintaining core compatibility with 5e products while supporting a third party publisher. Today at 5pm PST we are holding an AMA for anyone who wants to listen live, chat, and hangout with our team on this Discord.
If you can’t make it for the live AMA, that’s fine! Just join the Discord and post your Q into the thread I made in #the-vineyard channel. The recording will be posted later this week in a podcast format.
We’re immensely excited to share with you all what we’ve been working on and we cannot wait to connect with our community. Our team:
We talk about a wide range of topics, starting out with Jeremy taking the host role and inquiring about the military! Jeremy talks about being an actor, drama school, being a theater actor, the craft, marketing, and 3 Black Halflings. Support them here through Patreon! Or check them out here on YouTube.
For this convo with B. Dave Walters we’re talking Vampire, pro GMing via Patreon, how to develop your business, and running great horror games!
If you’d like to learn more about B. Dave and his projects, check out: Undisputed Academy and Into The Motherlands!
You can be the best GM in the world, but if no one looks at your ad – well, it doesn’t matter. Ads can be tough and I encourage everyone to develop their skills. Copy + Paste on an advertisement is going to be ineffective at best and harmful for your business at worst. Most of my advertisements go through 10+ revisions before I find them to be effective. You have to keep experimenting intentionally until you settle on what works for your unique GM style and this particular game.
Keep in mind you’ll need to work on your customer service skills to do well in this biz. Check back for an article on that in February.
Brought to StartPlaying Games by an advertisement or word of mouth.
Browse games until they see a thumbnail/title that makes them curious.
They click on the ad, skim, and then decide if they want to join that game.
Sometimes players, especially those who are marginalized, will “vibe check” the GM profile.
Player follows your instructions to join and setup a PC, then play in your game.
If there is a hiccup along the way and the player does not make it to Session 0 or their first session, then you’ve most likely lost that customer. I’ll be writing an FAQ about streamlining your onboarding, soon.
You are solving a problem as a GM. What is the problem?
Listed in order of importance are the factors you need to consider when writing your advertisement.
US evenings are the most “popular” times with the most attention, however, these may not work for you. Remember that you’re just trying to capture 4-6 players, not hundreds of folx.
The weekends are the most popular booking days.
Instant Book is a must.
Marketplaces like YouTube and Amazon have folx trained a particular way. You need to be able to catch someone’s eye while they’re scrolling, get them interested, and then close the sale. That’s asking a lot! I recommend hiring a graphic designer (support human artists) if you can afford it via Fiverr or the SPG community. It will pay for itself in the first game.
Landscapes are easy to scroll past and ignore. AVOID THEM!
Use 1-2 points of focus, no more. Too much will clutter the thumbnail.
Text that is small will not be read by someone scrolling or possibly not at all.
Do not use an image with anything important in the top right or bottom right portions of the image, as they will be cut off by the various tags. Your points of focus ought to be in the center or left.
Avoid cluttering your thumbnail as you want to be able to tell a story with it, when possible. An action sequence with two points of interest is far better than a vast countryside.
If you decide to use text in the thumbnail, then make certain it is clear and not washed out by the background colors.
There’s a few styles you can look to leverage! You’ll see that images like these pop out of the sea of ads because they are leveraging storytelling without clutter.
This works in tandem with the thumbnail. Along with the thumbnail, you need to tell a complete story. Prompts to help you develop a title:
Does the average person / new player understand this word? If not, nix it. (Name Brand might be an exception here, as it has recognition going for it.)
Do they want to know more after reading it?
Is my game unique and fun according to this?
2 or 3 complete thoughts in 4-8 words.
Features of the game.
Evokes curiosity!
Helpful info: level, theme or tone, atmosphere of the game, or other identifier tags about you as a GM.
Use a name brand such as “Menace Under Otari” if you’re running an official campaign.
How do you get someone to make a buying decision in your description? Include relevant info at the bottom (such as game “features”, “theme”, “tone”, etc.) Do not lore or info dump here. Make it snappy.
I’ll be writing a full article on how pricing and value add will work for most pro GM businesses. Stay tuned for that. In the meantime if I’ve helped you out, consider joining my Patreon! I use the funds to pay my podcast editor.
Noxweiler Ignatius Berf (he/they/it) has a long history with performance in tabletop from Geek & Sundry! We chat about his start: Dungeon Master (theater show), Scabby Rooster, becoming the Creative Director of Hunters Entertainment, the importance of indie games in TTRPG,
Arcane Arts: The Dungeoneer’s Guide to Miniature Painting and Tabletop Mayhem
Mentioned: Sloan, Alex T., SarahIsCoffee
Joined for this ep by the host and creator of D20 Deathmatch Mudcat! We talk about production work, streaming, and biz!
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