RPG Book Club: somebody picks a discussion-worthy RPG, participants have a week (or whatever) to read it, and then there's a discussion thread about it.
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A great idea. Would definitely require a group of actively involved/engaged members, but there is definitely space for that here. If you already know some folks who'd be interested, please feel free to get this going and let me know if I can help in any specific way. I would be happy to make each week's RPG Book Club thread sticky for that week, though I guess you'd probably want to gauged interest and get some "club members" on board first.
I'd definitely be into participating in something like this myself, at least on occasion (time and money permitting).
This sounds great! Here is an idea: what about we choose free or PWYW games in here? I think it would have several advantages:
- People participating wouldn't have to spend money to participate.
- We would bring attention to creators that are probably struggling to be noticed at all, and maybe we could leave some comments on the page (those are gold for indie creators).
- They would tend to be much, much shorter than your typical published RPG, so it would be a lot easier to participate and we could have shorter, more frequent discussions.
I'm biased because I'm such a creator, but I'd be happy to ban my own creations from the book club 😄
I don't think it's as simple as that. Very often even small games from indie creators have price tags on them - at least, that is the trend that I'm seeing. I think choosing only free or PWYW games would eliminate a large number of excellent games and excellent creators. That said, I aree with all your points. So I think free, PWYW and playtest kits should not be ruled out. But at the same time, I think designers could submit free copies of their games to the book club for distribution to participants.
But this does open up the question of how we'll choose which game to read. I see two options:
1. Voting.
Pros: Democratic. People are also more likely to participate if they can choose the game.
Cons: Popular games will be chosen. Games from less popular creators will always lose.
2. Lottery (suggestions are solicited and then you roll dice to see which one is read this week, same suggestions are rolled on next week)
Pros: Gives every game an equal chance of being chosen.
Cons: The counterpoint to choosing a small game is that the number of people who might participate is low.
So I'm not sure how to decide between these options. I think that Lottery is more fair but Voting is better if we want more people to participate.
Fair enough! I hadn't thought of the possibility of the author providing free copies. That's cool, too. I was mostly thinking that, at least in the beginning, it would be a good idea to lower the bar for participation by choosing short games that can be downloaded for free. I know that I would not even think of participating if I had to buy and read a 100+ page book.
Regarding how to choose, I think voting should be fine. If people suggest several games first, and then people vote between those, we won't necessarily get "popular" games, I think.