Pitching Potential RPGs to a Group (Patreon)

Inspired a bit by this video from Matt Colville, I've started developing my own approach to pitching games when discussing options with a group. It helps me focus my own thoughts and to try to be very clear in communicating with players about what they should expect from a game in terms of what I am thinking and what I am hoping they'll bring to the game and/or be asked to do in play.

For the Damon Runyon charity one-shot, I put together a pitch list of games I was considering. This one was a good exercise because the scientist players were largely new to the world of ttrpgs, so I had to think about clarity for an audience not already familiar with the form. Here's that writeup. Stick around after for some commentary on how and why I put this together the way I did.

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Here are three different games I am interested in running for the game on the 31st. They each use different systems but should be good for players without much tabletop rpg experience. They differ in genre and tone. Please let me know your first and second choice to see what you are interested in playing.

Heart: The City Beneath

Heart: The City Beneath is a complete tabletop roleplaying game about delving into a nightmare undercity that will give you everything you’ve ever dreamed of – or kill you in the process. It is a dungeon-crawling, story-forward tabletop RPG from the designers of Spire that focuses on what characters have to lose in pursuit of their dreams in the chaotic darkness beneath the world.

This game is kind of like Dungeons & Dragons or Darkest Dungeon meets the recent movie adaptation of Annihilation - surreal action-horror dungeon crawling. Tonally I’d be going for something like the movie Aliens (directed by James Cameron). Heart is very story-driven and doesn’t have as many layers of interconnecting crunchy rules like Dungeons & Dragons.

Rules: Light
Tone: Kick at the Darkness Until It Bleeds Daylight
Genre: Action Horror

Monster of the Week

Monster of the Week is a standalone action-horror RPG for 3-5 people. Hunt high school beasties a la Buffy the Vampire Slayer, travel the country to bring down unnatural creatures like the Winchester brothers of Supernatural, or head up the government investigation like Mulder and Scully.

This is a pulp-action procedural urban fantasy game about playing a group that investigates and confronts a monster. Focuses on story-first play and collaborative storytelling. The tone trends toward the heroic.

Rules: Light
Tone: Cinematic modern pulp
Genre: Urban Fantasy

Scum & Villainy

Scum and Villainy is a Forged in the Dark game about a spaceship crew trying to make ends meet under the iron-fisted rule of the Galactic Hegemony.

Work with the members of your crew to thrive despite powerful criminal syndicates, warring noble families, dangerous aliens, and strange mystics. Explore the ruins of lost civilizations for fun and profit. Can your motley crew hold it together long enough to strike it big and insure your fame across the sector?

I’d be running the game in my own space opera setting from my novel Annihilation Aria. You would play a group of freelance scavengers/retrieval specialists hired to search for artifacts of a long-deposed empire. This work is, of course, highly illegal. But it pays very well.

In terms of touchstones, think the Star Wars movies, the Rachel Weisz/Brendan Frasier Mummy movies, and Guardians of the Galaxy.

Rules: Light/Medium
Tone: Space Opera Adventure
Worldbuilding: Medium

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I started each pitch with the game title and some text from the creator to let them introduce the game themselves. I then editorialized a bit about each game, including the touchstones I'd be bringing to the game, then I gave each game a breakdown for three categories: Rules complexity, Tone, and Worldbuilding.

The idea here is to give a snapshot of expectations of the players - how involved a ruleset are you engaging with? What tone and feeling are we going to be shooting for in the game? How elaborate is the worldbuilding in the setting and how much will I as a player be asked to dive in and add texture to the world through play?

I asked each player to rank their top two preferences from the list, and I ended up with a clear winner (thankfully).

Matt Colville uses different categories here - he has Politics and Combat where I don't. Notably, Colville was talking about campaigns all within D&D 5th edition vs. my pitches which were each for a different game with a different system.

This pitch system should be (IMO) the beginning of the conversation about a game and not the whole conversation. But I have found it a useful exercise to drill down and almost write a synopsis or query letter for the campaign, borrowing skills from my business of writing experience, in order to be as clear as I can be in working with players on deciding what game to play together.

This format is very much a work in progress, and I expect that I'll re-work how I do pitches depending on the people I'm playing with, my understanding of games, and my specific interests in any given game, especially where there are notable contrasts.

For the folx out there that have had "what game should we play" conversations with their groups, what do you do to get everyone on the same page and have that pre-session zero conversation to choose and set yourselves up for success?