A lot of previous posts have touched on what we're all thinking and needing. I love itch.io in general, but when it comes to my tabletop RPG games / products (I make digital games as well, but ttrpgs currently form the bulk of my catalog) discoverability has been a problem on here. Having specific analog games / physical games tags would go a long way.
Making it easy for someone looking for ttrpgs / analog games / larps / etc. to find a full, comprehensive listing of those offerings would be fantastic. As it stands, I often can't find my own games if I search by category alone, and I actually tag them as "physical games" as well as whatever other tags I find to be appropriate. Half the time, they don't show up at all if I click on physical games and scroll through from start to finish (I am not entirely sure why this is).
So basically, yeah, a comprehensive high level tag for physical games should list ALL physical games (sortable by date released, alphabetically, or etc.), and then lower level, more specific category tags should list ALL games tagged with that category. As for the categories themselves, here's a list off the top of my head. Some of these have definitely already been mentioned, but I can't imagine it hurts to reinforce / reiterate.
Formats:
- tabletop rpg / pen and paper rpg
- board game (print and play, most likely)
- GMless tabletop rpg
- Solitaire tabletop rpg (I think this has been referred to in a previous suggestion as Roll and Write)
- Dice based game
- Card based game
- Diceless game
- Print and play game
- Live Action Role Playing Game / LARP (some subcategories: Parlor LARP, Freeform LARP, High Immersion, Low Immersion, Powers and Secrets LARP, Nordic LARP, etc. ... there are a lot of kind of LARPS, but I am far from a LARP afficianado, so I'm sure more research will reveal a more complete picture).
- Micro-game
- Anthology
- TTRPG Supplement / Module / Adventure (sortable by system, and with an available "system agnostic / universal tag")
- Rules heavy game
- Rule light game
- Storytelling game
- World building game
- Old School Revival (OSR) - This one is maybe somewhere in between a genre and a format.
Some Common Game Systems / System Tags:
- Unique / Original System (super important!! - not everything is DnD or a hack of something else. Most of my games fall into this category.)
- Powered by the Apocalypse (Apocalypse World Hack)
- Forged in the Dark (Blades in the Dark Hack)
- F.A.T.E.
- Gurps
- Savage Worlds
- Cypher System
- The Dark Eye
- Gumshoe
- Basic Roleplaying
- and so on. DnD / Shadowrun / etc. are obvious ones, probably.
Some Common Genres / Genre Tags:
- Universal / Genre Agnostic (again, very important to make this its own, viable tag)
- OSR - (again, it's kind of a genre / format / philosophy, I guess?)
- Sword and Sorcery
- Cyberpunk
- Superheroes
- Family friendly
- Horror (Gothic, Cosmic, etc.)
- Heroic / Nonheroic
- Dungeon Crawl
- Basically, a lot of genres pretty much directly overlap with other media. So there's probably multiple analog games in every conceivable genre (or at least one).
None of the above was meant to be exhaustive. It's just the stuff that comes most immediately to mind.
I think having the link to physical games show up on the front page is a great early step. It'd be great to be able to search for all physical games currently on sale (currently, it won't let me do so, but that might also be because nothing is on sale?), and to have an accurate, easy to access "new releases" page for the top level category and any number of lower level categories (as it stands, this seems to be a feature, but it never works correctly for me ... again, don't know why).
Anyway, thanks for giving physical games more consideration. If my work had even a fraction of the discoverability on itch that it does on drivethru, it would likely make a tangible difference. Maybe nothing life changing, but every dollar and cent counts, honestly.
Aleks
Viewing post in Physical games classification project
good points and lists! will say, there's not gunna be a need for many game specific tags, as a lot of those games don't allow 3rd party content. so like, unless SJG wants to port their entire store then we'll never need a gurps tag, same with d&d, shadowrun, dark eye, etc. but PbtA, FitD, OGL, etc though, definitely—these games are legal derivatives and standalone. in general though, game specific tags aren't really useful for independent creators unless they have a bevy of supplemental material pointing back to their core game.
Agreed. I don't know 100% which systems do or don't have open SRDs / OGL / open licenses or whatnot. I guess in the indie space, PbtA is the one that comes up most often, with FitD coming in strong (but Blades was a PbtA hack too, I think, so it's hacks, of hacks, of hacks). I think FATE games can be made under OGL also, though? Savage Worlds probably doesn't belong on that list, because now that I'm looking at it, their license seems to be only open-adjacent, at best. Anyway, yeah, definitely no need to include the big ones, but maybe some players / customers will find having a few of these categories useful. I don't know. I've heard that some folks are really particular, and just want to play PbtA games exclusively, or just play FATE exclusively, or whatnot, so they might be able to narrow things down a bit that way.