Levi Kornelson (hope I got that right) has posted an easy situation generator that can be used for any "travelling" RPG, where the players go from location to location, cleaning things up. As is only good and right, he focuses on the *people* involved, and the *history* of what's gone on.

Go hit his rockin' new gaming site here: http://www.amagi-games.com/2008/06/broken-places.html

And download the PDF from the link at the bottom.

http://whenisgood.net/

Very simple "who can make what, when?" scheduling for events. Like, you know, games.

I just solved all the summer scheduling for Faith, Faces, and Fingerprints with this thing in, like, 5 minutes. (3 sessions afoot starting in late July.)

For the adult gamer I cannot think of a more useful, easy-to-use, low-barrier-to-use-by-the-players scheduling tool.

Go forth, and use the crap out of it.

So, there's a gamestore in Glen Burnie, Maryland -- Games and Stuff -- that just signed up for a retailer account at IPR: http://www.gamesandstuffonline.com/

This is IPR's first retailer in the entire DC area (all of Virginia and Maryland combined, in fact). Dream Wizards kept dropping the ball on talking to me, so on the recommendations of a few of you folks I reached out to G&S as a good second option for the Maryland side of things. G&S responded very quickly -- I sent the email, like, yesterday or so -- and what with HeroCon happening at their store in early November, I can definitely see building a partnership with them in the coming years. Plus, they're decently close to rob_donoghue, so I'm pretty excited about that.

Anyway, Ed from Games & Stuff says he'll probably be placing an order in the next week or so, so if you've got any special orders let them know -- or drop on by in early June when I figure stuff will be on the shelves!

If you are a small or micro (or, heck, large) game publisher and you are looking into how to get into retail stores, chrishanrahan has lobbed this knowledge-bomb at your CPU. Read it before it EXPLODES!

http://chrishanrahan.livejournal.com/5324.html

One of the phrases that has emerged from the lessons the gaming community is learning from improv techniques is "Here's how I make you awesome." This is a good lesson, one which folks can and should be taking to the gaming table. It's far more rewarding to the game, to the sense of camaraderie, to the social fabric of play, when everyone around the table is working hard to make everyone else awesome -- rather than grand-standing to show off how they are, by themselves, awesome. Don't get me wrong -- grandstanding is good and fun and has its place, but I find it works far better when it operates as the punctuation mark at the end of each sentence of communal play.

I'm using the word "communal" there with much intention, because here's what's going on with "here's how I make you awesome": when put into practice, it builds communities. This is in pat because communities form around emotional bonds with one another, and it is an incredible feeling when you get that moment of being awesome by being carried on the shoulders of those you're playing with, those people you respect and admire. It's a feeling of belonging, and as social mammals, that's a pretty important feeling for us to have.

So I'm glad that portions of the gaming community are picking up on this, and putting it into their play, whether through play-habits at the table or through systemization in the game texts themselves.

But that's just a starting point, if you ask me. The principle can, and should, be used more outside of games, inside the communities themselves, in social interactions with one another, online and off.

It's a principle I use when I'm participating in forums like RPG.net. I don't get into those threads to ring out the clear note of "me me me me". I get in there to say "here's how I make you awesome" to the rest of the folks in the discussion. I point at ideas that aren't mine that are cool and say "Yes! That's great! And here's something building on that!" When I act in a customer service capacity for either IPR or Evil Hat, I try to make use of it as well. It informs what I do and who I am online, whenever possible.

Heck, this is part of why good game reviewers are worth their weight in gold. When they do their job right, they are pure machines of "here's how I make you awesome" in action, bringing exposure, clarity, and insight to the good stuff out there. They are on the construction crews of community.

Yes, I do talk about my own stuff and the things that I do, but I do my level best to talk about the cool stuff out there that's not mine: that's how I make *them* awesome -- with attention, with audience, with respect, with praise. This is how I do what I can to feed and build communities I'm a part of.

(This is also why I go absolutely bug-nuts when folks who should be community builders suck the life out of them by failing to follow the principle of making others awesome. I try to go bug-nuts quietly rather than overtly, but it's hard to keep that particular demon down sometimes.)

There are plenty "be a good human" reasons to make this a part of your lifestyle. We are social creatures who wish to belong: create belonging through who and how you are online. But there are solid, pragmatic business reasons to do this as well.

If you're a game designer or publisher, you are your brand, you are as much a part of the product experience as the product itself. When people bond with you emotionally and positively, they're forming an emotional bond with your product, your brand. And you can take that to the bank.

This is why as a publisher it's so important to think about what you are doing as a community builder, as a participant who makes others awesome and in turn strengthens those emotional bonds that will keep the community strong and healthy. That's the currency -- in my opinion, the best kind of currency -- that you'll be investing in the years to come to build your success.

Make the folks who aren't you awesome.

The rest will follow.

Extra credit: Tell me who you made awesome today.

So, I spend a lot of time on this blog talking about publishing, or at least Evil Hat's journey through the rpg publication biz. Something I don't spend a lot of time talking about is the reasons *not* to follow us down the publication road.

My biggest reason I like to sling at people is: Don't do something where you're not prepared to lose every single dollar you spend. This was sort of a glimmer of the notion going when I talked about offset print runs as well as POD methods, but it's worth saying explicitly. If you're not willing to lose money, stick with public domain art, use your local word processor to put your game together, and stick with Lulu as your way to get any print versions out there -- don't sign up with IPR, don't do preprinted stock. Minimize your costs as much as possible.

A note: This is what I did with Don't Rest Your Head, on a budget of $75 that I was willing to use, because I had no idea anyone would really be all that interested in it. With Fate's free PDF, we used software we already had access to to lay it out, and spent cheap $ for a short term membership on www.clipart.com for the art. You can, and probably should, do this too. Keep it simple, small, cheap, and low-risk.

Here's another: Unless you're committed to the idea that your hobby will turn into a business, that you'll be on the hook for staying current with your print runs, that you'll have to do taxes around this stuff, manage money, make yourself into a bit of a salesperson, stay away from the "preprinted" publication game. Like I said above -- Lulu will suit you fine, it'll minimize the cash outlay you do, and if you find that your game sells 5 or 10 copies you can feel like that's a big success, converting the time you invested into "free" money, instead of wondering if those other 40 or 100 or 1000 copies you printed up will ever sell enough to get you to the break-even point.

If you do decide to publish, there's no shame in choosing the safest possible version first. I'd go so far as to say you MUST do this if you're an "unproven" quantity -- if your buying audience has no reason to know who you are enough to stimulate the sale of dozens or hundreds of copies. Start small and be happy if you stay small. Build your success incrementally, rather than betting the farm on a one-time make-or-break effort.

I'd also say this: Honestly assess why you want to publish. If you're more about getting an audience than making money, consider giving your game away for free. I think that this sentiment is already explored well enough in what I've said above. When Rob and I got Fate out into the world, we didn't care about doing it for money. Never really entered our minds -- the PDF market was pretty young. But by doing that, by giving something away, we created all the opportunities that have lead to Evil Hat's success today. Make your name -- THEN spend money. Doing it for free also means you'll get a chance to get feedback from the world, and a chance to make some early mistakes without it costing you hundreds or thousands of dollars.

And as a follow-on to that: Honestly assess whether or not anyone's going to have a reason to spend money on what you do. After all, what reason does a stranger have for having heard of you? There's a decent chance, unless you've built up an audience of folks who listen to what you have to say online or off, of people who will turn around and tell their friends what you've said or done, that your first for-pay game is gonna fall flat on the sales front. Build your brand and identity online using cheap or free methods. Be that cool guy posting threads on RPG.net full of exciting ideas (like judd_sonofbert). Create a community of folks who dig your free game (like the FateRPG yahoo group). Become someone worth talking about before you become someone worth buying from.

At the end of the day, it's important to blow up the myth that publication is a necessity. And by publication, here, I mean, "at the level that gets you listed on IPR or on a local gamestore's shelves". What I'm advocating instead is that you start out with the easy, no cash up front kinds of publication instead: put up a webpage, let people print copies of your book one at a time through Lulu, use public domain or cheap clip art, etc.

And be willing to admit that maybe designing games -- beyond cooking up your own homebrew -- isn't something you need to do either. Games need players and fans, when it comes down to it. But that's a whole 'nother conversation of its own -- and one which has already been well covered by Johnathan Walton and Clinton Nixon. If any of what I've been saying here seems to be speaking to you at all, you really should go and see what these guys have to say about being a player, and about turning away from the publication game in favor of what actually makes them happy:

Jonathan Walton on getting out of the status game:
http://thouandone.wordpress.com/2008/01/30/getting-out-of-the-status-game/

Clinton Nixon: "Play is the point. Become an expert player."
http://rpgheretic.wordpress.com/2008/01/10/play-is-the-point/

Me, I'm happy actually doing the running of a business. I find actual, palpable joy in it, even though I have maybe 10% of the time I used to have to actually do the designing part. If there's one regret I've had it's that the business has somewhat occluded the opportunities to actually play games, but thanks to conventions like Dreamation, and some shifting of priorities at my gaming table, I'm starting to connect with that again.

Remember that being happy about what you're doing is priority one. Make deliberate moves to preserve the joy that got you into the hobby in the first place. That's what matters. Anything beyond it is just gravy (if positive) or a distraction (if otherwise).