The format is easy: I take a game I’ve been given based on an elevator pitch I’ve been sent, I give it a read, and talk about it for 10-15min. It’s kind of review, kind of feedback, and hopefully I can edit myself down to not ramble all over the place.
What will I be doing?
- Reading your game
- Thinking about its design
- Talking about the stuff above
What might I be doing?
- If you ask, I will try make specific comments about layout
- If you ask, I will try make specific comments about artwork
- I’m not planning to comment on either of those unless they make your materials really hard to use.
What won’t I be doing?
- Playing it through with others
- Making some kind of Actual Play
- Doing an interview
- Edit (13 May 2021): After Luke Crane no longer being at Kickstarter, I’m shifting my position from March. I don’t mind mentioning your Kickstarter. If you already know your launch date, let me know and I can mention it.
- Edit (1 Mar 2021): I will not be mentioning Kickstarter in any way shape or form due to Luke Crane and his conduct around abusive individuals such as Adam Koebel, and Jordan Draper. This may change based on the actions of those at Kickstarter, or it may carve this position into stone; on this matter time and actions will tell.
What should you pitch me for this podcast?
I would be looking for stuff that is:
- Independent Game Designs
- Your own systems
- Hacks of other systems like… PbtA, L&Fs, Wretched, FATE, For the Queen, etc
- Quirky stuff
- Has an unusual resolution system
- Some kind of unexpected mash-up (I like the unexpected)
- Takes something we’re used to and really shakes it up in a new way (give it a cool spin)
- Please show me in your game just how much you love some genre or style or TV show.
- Shorter stuff
- I’m going to try cut this down to a 10-15min thing… 400pp Fantasy Heartbreakers just won’t be able to get read or covered sensibly in this.
- I’m cool with your Zines, your 1-pagers, your “Choose 2 of 3″… whatever
What should I NOT pitch you?
- Bigger Names
- I’m not here to give more advertising time to the Hasbro Beast, or Pathfinder, or even really Shadowrun. R Talsorian, love you guys too, but you can sell licenses to CDPR so I think you’re probably a bit too big for the sort of thing I’m thinking to do. These things are big name items, they have their own PR, and I don’t want to let this stuff in the door here when really they do fine on their own. This includes your “I wanted to bash My Little Pony into PF1” or “I got the Buffy TV show and made it Shadowrun!”. Nah. It’s fine, you do your thing, this space isn’t the space for that.
- Romance Games
- This is mostly a “me” thing. I am really not at all interested in those games which lean hard into romantic relationships at their core, or high-school love drama stuff. You want those read by people who love that stuff… and it’s not me.
- OSR Fantasy Stuff maybe…
- This is another ‘I’m not super into this’ thing. Rehashes of Old D&D stuff just doesn’t interest me either. If you’re going to pitch this stuff like this you’ll need to convince me it is has enough stuff ‘going on’.
Will you do all of them?
- Nope, I can’t. There will likely be hundreds of things people will want to send me. I can’t do hundreds of them. I’ll try my best to make sure you know I’m not doing yours.
- Some stuff might use systems, have themes, or be associated people that I really don’t want to deal with for my own reasons. I’m not planning to get into it, but I’ll let you know that I’m not going to be reviewing your material.
