Denis Detwiller's "Ransom" was paid by one person? Cool!

[philreed]

Greg Stolze has now used the "ransom model" twice to release free PDFs. As cool as that is, Denis Detwiller tried the same thing and one person paid the $750 ransom.

Makes me wonder how many more designers are going to give this a try.

 

[philreed]

Thinking about it this might be a good system to use for creating a variant Player's Handbook. Provide an outline of the project and wait until there are enough donations to cover the investment in time. Then put it together and release it as a free PDF.

Take things one step further and offer printed versions to everyone that donated at printing/shipping cost.

 

[HellHound]

It is a cool idea, and Greg is a good enough designer to make it work.

I just played one of his games on the weekend...

Now I'm going to go read up on Denis' one.

 

[Turanil]

…in Spaaace! is the next iteration of roleplaying evolution! It radically reinvents pleasure as we know it! It’s a blasted-open universe waiting for your characters to seize it by the reins and leave every other science-fiction setting gasping in your dust! It’s all things to all fanboys! It’s got ninjas! Monkeys! Robots! Robot ninjas! Monkey robots! Monkey robot ninjas!

I wish to know who else hate RPG advertising of this type, and immediately conclude that the game in question is exactly the contrary of what this pretentious ad claims??

 

[philreed]

I wish to know who else hate RPG advertising of this type, and immediately conclude that the game in question is exactly the contrary of what this pretentious ad claims??

I'm not sure what you mean. It seemed very tongue-in-cheek to me. Which seems to fit the game's concept.

 

[Turanil]

It seemed very tongue-in-cheek to me.

Hum, I guess that being not a native English speaker, and not seeing smileys or whatever, I didn't get the tongue-in-cheek tone. Yet, after reading the whole article, I am still convinced I would find the game worthless.

In any case, the "ransom" idea looks interesting. I could even be tempted to try it someday with a product of mine...

 

[Psion]

I wish to know who else hate RPG advertising of this type, and immediately conclude that the game in question is exactly the contrary of what this pretentious ad claims??

Eh. I took it as a joke (and I have seen some that are about this puffed up but obviously not a joke...). Not a funny joke that made me want to get it (if one word in the whole thing didn't kill that desire dead), but nothing to get mad at nonetheless.

 

[trancejeremy]

Monkey robot ninjas? But where are the pirates? You can't have monkey robots ninjas without some sort of apirates...(edit: or pirates)

One of my favorite fiction authors is trying a similar thing with a novel. One of his series, Ethshar, has a lot of fans, but in general, they don't sell all that well compared to the Jordan-clone stuff. So he's doing it chapter by chapter. He wrote one chapter, if he gets so much money he'll write another one.

 

[PJ-Mason]

I just read about this Ransom Model publishing scheme today in an email. What a terrific idea! Very cool. Although i don't see it working for small publishers or no-names, of course, but some of the big boys could pull it off like Stolze did.

 

[John Morrow]

Makes me wonder how many more designers are going to give this a try.

I seriously asked S. John Ross how much he'd want to write a short article about his 5 elements of a commercial successful RPG setting to put on the web. Alas, the price he semi-seriously asked for was unreasonably high (because he's not really interested in writing it). But I do think there is a future for the patronage model to support a segment of this hobby. Ultimately, the idea is to make sure that an author gets fairly compensated for their work and patronage is a perfectly valid way to make sure that happens without having to worry about protecting intellectual property. Now, if role-playing authors could only figure out how to get NEA grants...