Passages has done middling sales (e.g., 4 copies at Gen Con) and essentially never gets mentioned or discussed by, well, anyone. I'd like to know why it's not showing up on your radar. I'm not looking for pity or trolling for sales. I'm genuinely interested in concrete reasons. I'd like to learn from the experience, but it's obviously hard to do when you're not getting any feedback. I've discussed this with Brennan before, and we've identified some potential issues, e.g., price, the imprimatur of d20, etc. What are your reasons?

Well, first reason would have to be, for me, because I've never heard of it before (I didn't stop to check out the booth contents this year at all). Besides the web-site, how have you generated buzz?

And looking at the web-site... two things:
1. It took me a sec to get the humor of the page, and I almost didn't find the actual details on what the game is about below.
2. As for what the site says the game is about... sounds like... Victorian D20... which it's probably not. Basically the data there does little to distinguish the game in any way that would grab me - or much of anyone, I'd think. I already have Falkenstein, in two editions...

Might be an incredible game. How would I know? Did you do public playtesting? Have you posted any actual play of your own? Did you do any of the design in the open where people would discuss the game? You may have done all of these, I've not been over at the Forge recently. But somehow, if you have, it's not translating into buzz.

Mike

Beast Hunters also sold 4 copies, while getting more attention around these parts than Passages, so it's not all about the buzz on Story Games.

Was Passages being demoed? (BH was not.)

Um, what is Passages? What's the premise? I know exactly nothing about this game, and I've been to at least one con where I got to flip through the book.

That'd be my answer to your question, too --- it's really hard to extract a sound-bitey premise from the game book, firstly, and secondly, no one's talked it up to me.

I saw this at my local game store and was intrigued. Unfortunately, I think Victoriana isn't what floats a lot of boats. It's a problem that vexed me back when I was working on Magicians of England (fortunately, I switched to a game set in everybody's favorite setting, the Renaissance). Lack of buzz is no measure of success. People like to talk about the games with new and bizarre twists on gaming. This stuff is bleeding edge, kind of like having a brand new super cell phone. It's an attention getter, even if it's got a few bugs. Are you running and demo-ing at cons? Actual play sells books, or so they say.

This thread is the first time I'd heard of it. The game blurb may be amusing but it's so difficult to read for a modern English speaker that it's off-putting. I gave up after the first couple of sentences because I shouldn't have to work that hard just to get an idea of what the game is about. The character sheet design is very amateurish (particularly the 6x9 version, although the actual book is much better, judging from the demo pdf), the first thing I usually look at is the character sheet as that's what I'm going to be looking at during play and it looks awful.

So although I hadn't heard of it, if I had I probably wouldn't have looked any further because the first two things I look at (game blurb and character sheet) are both so off-putting. Judging by the reviews, it actually looks like you might have a good game in there so maybe you could try improving the online presentation and "re-launch" so to speak?

Hey Justin,

For myself, it's this:

"But Passages is so much more than just a new rpg system, it's a fully realized literary campaign setting of the Victorian era. Take the helm of the Nautilus! Cross swords with the Scarlet Pimpernel! Match wits with the devious Professor Moriarty! Anything is possible in the world of Passages."

"You can do anything!" is rather a red flag for me. My experience with such claims tells me to expect the whole damn thing to collapse into genre incoherence. It suggests a setting collage and players expressing diverse characters without telling me how the game works to achieve thematic coherence.

edit: Theme is what sells a narrativist game. When the others say it's about things they aren't interested in, it's because they're only seeing things, and not thematic purpose.

Paul

Justin, I'm going to be as stream of consciousness as possibly not to filter any of my thoughts. Hopefully this will be of help to you.

At cons where there is an IPR booth, I've asked about it 3 times. 1 times the person had no idea about the game. The other times, it went like this:

- Me: "What's this like? I love the cover!"
- Booth: "Victorian style, think League of Extraordinary Gentlemen with dimensional travel."
- Me: "Cool. What's that big decapitated monster head on the cover?"
- Booth: "Not sure."
- Me: "What are the rules like?"
- Booth: "D20"
- Me: "Ack, umm.. how do the rules evoke the setting?" (I've been burned on D20 too much, and Mutants and Masterminds does everything I want with it, and 4th Edition is coming out soon, and none of my D&D friends will play it because it isn't D20 they know and many of my indy friends will shy from it because it is D20.)
- Booth: "I'm not sure."
- Me: "hmmm..." (almost 300 pages, that's pretty involved for a game I know nothing about) "can anyone run a demo?"
- Booth: ::looks for someone who can run a demo:: "Sorry, no one is available who knows how to run it."
- Me: "I'll see what people are saying online and I may come back. Thanks for you time."

My thoughts looking at the website:

- The logo is aliased poorly and has jagedy white edges. This doesn't look professional.
- The cover is cool but at that size it looks like Mortal Coil.
- I can't click on the cover to see a larger image.
- "Passages" sounds passive.
- Why is the text all bold?
- Ack, the rollover on the top have gray floating animated boxes... looks very strange!
- "Adventures penned by legendary giants" is very hard to read.
- Saying "fiendishly clever" annoys me if it isn't a quote from a third party.
- "Blue Devil’s Passages", wait, I thought it was called "Passages", who is Blue Devil?
- "Dainty. Palatable. Non-Constipating." - WTF?
- "The only Game Preparation which is uninjurious to the digestion because of the slow measured absorption of rules and use of a singular icosahedron for resolution. The only Game Preparation of agreeable taste to all palates, and an excellent substitute for Cod-Liver oil. Prescribed by eminent practitioners to lymphatic and scrofulous children; to adolescents for troubles associated with growth, amenorrhoea, etc.; to adults for asthma, syphilis, and female hysteria; and to all ages for chronic bouts of ennui." - WTF? If I wasn't reviewing this for this thread, I would have left at this point.
- What's that bullseye, is this game sold at Target?
- Who is Robert Louis Stevenson, Professor Gibberne, Charles Lutwidge Dodgson, and Jules Gabriel Verne? Why should I care what they have to say?
- " Lifetime supply now only $32.95!" That's a lot for an indie game I know nothing about. I'm willing to do an impulse buy if it is $22 or less. More than that I need more encouragement.
- Ugly blue links.
- Cool!!! Reviews from places I know with high scores! I'm starting to feel interested.
- No actual play? Is no one playing?
- Paul Tevis? He's a sexy man! Interest is further peaked!
- "You can read about the development of Passages in our ongoing design diary" - AWESOME! I'm starting to get more excited!
- WAIT... the design diary isn't a blog... it is text saved as JPGs? WTF? And then PDFs?
- "©2004-07", cool, they have been around a while.
- Why is the "Read, Hot & Blue" banner on the top right have a weird background? Why does it look cut off? What does "Read, Hot & Blue" mean?
- If they didn't spend money on their website, what does the book layout look like?

My thoughts reading the review http://www.rpg.net/reviews/archive/12/12602.phtml:

- This table should be on the website. It makes me want to play:

* Nearly Certain (0). Jumping over a Lilliputian
* Easy (5). Intimidating the Cowardly Lion
* Average (10). Minding your manners at the Mad Hatter's tea party
* Hard (15). Navigating the Nautilus through the English Channel
* Challenging (20). Tracking Sher Khan through the jungle after a fresh rain
* Daunting (25). Training White Fang to play dead
* Heroic (30). Beating Professor Moriarty at a game of chess
* Herculean (35). Persuading Ebeneezer Scrooge to loan you £10
* Nearly Impossible (40). Seeing the Invisible Man

- Score of 5/4 is good!
- 296 pages... if it is more than 100 pages, it better be amazing!
- I'm not lazy, but I just bought 20+ indie games at Gencon for over $340. I play a lot but still have trouble going through all my games and I would rather play more games than spend time with GM prep so the following made me nervous:

"But there is also one big problem, and this is why I'm giving a substance score of 4 instead of 5. There is not enough information to start playing immediately. Either the narrator has read the works that inspired the game and has them fresh in her mind, or she will need a lot of work to prepare the adventures. This is a problem not exclusive to Passages, and other great games also have it. But I really believe that the book needed 20 more pages describing one of the alternate worlds, one alternate London or something else."

and:

"In conclusion, Passages is an excellent reading and great game that needs an extra effort from the narrator."

- I really need games with situation generators.

I hope that was helpful. I'm trying to be as honest as possible in the hopes this will be of some help.

Rock,
John

Posted By: stevebarkerukThe character sheet design is very amateurish (particularly the 6x9 version, although the actual book is much better, judging from the demo pdf), the first thing I usually look at is the character sheet as that's what I'm going to be looking at during play and it looks awful.

So although I hadn't heard of it, if IhadI probably wouldn't have looked any further because the first two things I look at (game blurb and character sheet) are both so off-putting.

Posted By: Paul Czege"You can do anything!" is rather a red flag for me. My experience with such claims tells me to expect the whole damn thing to collapse into genre incoherence. It suggests a setting collage and players expressing diverse characters without telling me how the game works to achieve thematic coherence.

Posted By: RemiFor my part it seems like the innovations of the game are oriented in a direction I'm not interested in (One d20! Combat and grappling as skills! Point-based character creation!) with little about how the system will bring the excitement of Victorian-era fantasy to the table.

I wanted to emphasize these comments as well as they very much ring true for me.

Here's a link to my Passages review for anyone interested.

I keep track of the page impressions for my reviews and Passages got over 1,000 in about two weeks. While some games can do that in under 24 hours (BESM 3) I'd say it's about average to above average for less well known, small press titles.

All that said - I just don't see anyone talking about it. The only thing I can think of that could help is an active LiveJournal or other blog where you can turn interest in Dawning Star into interest in other BDG products by occasionally posting about all of them.

No, I genuinely thought it was a game about poo. It's called "Passages", as in back passage. The website mentions digestion and cod liver oil. Clearly, it's a poo game.

Really, that's what I thought.

What?

Graham

I'm with Graham.

Seriously, I get to the web page (which was a big thing, as I hadn't otherwise heard about the game) and get an extended poo/laxative metaphor. If I had been casually passing through, rather than reading to find out about an indie game, I would have been out of there in less than 3 seconds.

I mean, what everyone else says about things like buzz and marketing and demos are all good, but so far as the web site goes, it smelled like poo to me.

Also, the best thing I've seen about the game was the table that John posted -- that's awesome. Makes me like the game much more than anything else I've seen.

Posted By: Ben JohnsonI played a demo at GenCon, and it really just felt like a standard D20 game. The demo was just running through combat. Now sure, it was vs. Professor Moriarty and his thugs, and there was a neat thing in there where you showed how the thugs were generated quickly, and you did simplify the die rolling mechanics with your Spread mechanic, but it didn't feel particularly literary.

Yes, I get this. There was definitely some cognitive dissonance in the demo. The literary aspect is supposed to come in with (1) use of elements from famous works (e.g., Moriarty and Wonderland); and (2) the wild narration that results from a "wide" randomizer like a d20, using spread as a measure of success/failure, and certainly plot points. While I think the demo covers the bases, I recognize that it does not hit a home run. (That's why I was happy to leave behind my demo kit for the last day; I'm going back to the dawing board for a full reboot.)

For what it's worth, many women I've talked to about game design (gamers and non-gamers) have remarked that they would love to play something that felt likePride & Prejudice, so I'm going to say that there is a market out there for Playing in Literary Victoriana, but this game, based on the demo I had, didn't feel Literary, and didn't feel particularly Victorian.

Well, one demo can't satisfy everybody's literary sweet spot. Perhaps I'll shoot for a few different demos and choose based on the stated interests of the demoee? Or is that demo suicide?

Hi Justin.

With regards to the d20 / SG split, and what the SGers/d20ers do/don't want to see, I'd suggest doing some sort of split/sidebar along these lines:

Into d20?
[bullet points of the various differences & similarities with other d20 products]

Into Story Games?
[bullet points of the various SG influences, and how it all hooks up]

In fact, if this was a clickable title, or some sort of pop-up box, then the d20ers don't need to worry about the SG links, and vice versa.

I admit my whole household is Victorian adventure fans but every time I've looked at Passages I've given it a pass. Primarily because of the system. Not even necessarily that it's d20 based, per se (although that's a large part of it). But these days I basically require my games to have a focus like My Life with Master or Dogs in the Vineyard or god something as awesomely tight as It Was A Mutual Decision.

So you're adventuring through Victorian lit.... to what end? What's the game? What part of the mechanics make it about doing that thing? Right now it's some fun colorful setting material.... with no GAME. Just a randomized decision maker with no focus or purpose other than maybe reinforcing the colorful setting material.

Sorry that just doesn't cut it for me these days.

Jesse

Note: Sadly, Fae Noir (which I know isn't your game) suffers from the same problem despite my love, love, LOVE for the concept. Fae Noir is my greatest disappointment this year.

Justin, you now have three people saying the same thing (Jesse, Paul, and I). You sort of handwaved our concerns before, but this is very serious territory for a lot of story-gamers. How does your game system address its Vicotrian adventure theme? Does it? Is the answer, "Well, the GM incorporates setting elements to create the adventure and then you use the resolution system?" Do you see how this might be unsatisfying for people who want Dogs or Primetime Adventures or Contenders?

Again, I have a strong feeling this game is Not For Me, but I want to make sure I'm understanding you completely.

Hi Justin,

I'll turn the topic around a little bit and tell you why I liked Passages and plan to play it one day.

Because the characters are not skating through dimensions or alternate realities or teleporting or doing anything like that. They are shifting through Victorian stories.

That's not only original, it's interesting. Just jumpin' around meeting and skirmishing with various fictional characters is as familiar as dirt; shit, they did it all the time on Star Trek, for Pete's sake. But entering the stories? H'mm. That's nifty. Every time you've explained the game to me, you were careful to say it exactly that way, and every time, it interested me.

But somehow, no one else seems to be getting this impression.

I also know that a con demo can't often capture the subtlety of a game's concept. The other players and I did a few task rolls in the one you ran for us, and that was fine. Still, though ... if it had somehow made it clear that when we shifted from one place to another, we were literally entering another text, in some way which was not just clicking to another backdrop as in Mortal Kombat ... that would be cool.

Not just altering the rules per story, either; there are plenty of games like that, and that's not what I mean. I'm thinking more metaphysically, as in, do characters' actions alter the texts they're in? Stuff like that.

Let's take a harder look at GenCon, too. For one thing, you weren't there on Thursday and Friday. No shared buildup with the rest of the publishers and exhibitors, no sense of communality, no sharing of lessons learned or other experiences from those days. For another, you had to leave on Sunday. I announced that I could demo the game on Sunday morning, but at that point, I can only do so much in between last-minute make-ups for missed meetings and other necessary con stuff. If it'd come up, I woulda demo'ed it (like I did with Reign, on request), but it didn't.

Now for the other thing, the good part. We talked on Friday, and on Saturday, you totally made good on your statements and self-imposed commitments from that conversation. It was fun and exciting to have you at the booth. You ran Passages, you played other stuff, you added to the booth culture, and rounded out the booth content (in terms of system). It is fair, I think, to say that if you'd been there doing that all four days, you would have moved 16 books on your own, and probably more given the spillover effect of mutual interactions among the pack of us.

Therefore, "I sold only 4 books at GenCon" is not actually a fair assessment of how things went for you. When you did the Forge booth thing, it worked.

Best, Ron

edited 'cause I signed off twice

Posted By: RemiJustin, you now have three people saying the same thing (Jesse, Paul, and I). You sort of handwaved our concerns before, but this is very serious territory for a lot of story-gamers. How does your game system address its Vicotrian adventure theme? Does it? Is the answer, "Well, the GM incorporates setting elements to create the adventure and then you use the resolution system?" Do you see how this might be unsatisfying for people who want Dogs or Primetime Adventures or Contenders?

Again, I have a strong feeling this game is Not For Me, but I want to make sure I'm understanding you completely.

Oh, I'm not "handwaving" over the concerns at all. (Sorry if I gave that impression.) I didn't want to muck up the thread with my "defense" as it were. I think the game can accomplish what you're talking about, but the important thing is that the website, back cover, and demo are not conveying that to the customer.

Hi Justin,
Some of this has already been said, but I personally feel the core book is lacking in two ways:

1) D20, no matter how you spruce it up, is not a system that supports a literary-themed setting or literary-themed stories. I noted in our demo that even though the basic mechanic was certainly easy to use, we spent a lot of our time trying to figure out which traits we could bring in on a particular test, even trying to come up with justifications as to why we should able to drag in an additional trait. I think the game would do very well with a more streamlined system, one that describes competencies of characters rather than having everything broken down quite so much. It doesn't matter whether Alan Quatermain is awesome with knives or swords or his fists, it matters that he's good at fighting.

2) I wanted more setting material. It's fine to say "Go look in Alice in Wonderland and make a cool adventure for that." But it's a hard thing to do from the standpoint of a GM. These are static texts that MIGHT give you a few ideas, but it would be amazingly helpful if there were more explanation in Passages as to how to turn a static story into a living breathing world, with changing characters. Additionally, I really, really wanted to see some example settings, because that was what originally intrigued me about your game. I wanted to see what you thought of Wonderland and how it interacted with Captain Nemo or Frankenstein or whatever.

Anyway, that's my two cents.

I heard about the game prior to its release and waited eagerly for it. Partly it was the premise of the game, partly the delightful cover blurb (which seems to have tickled my sense of humour but clearly not everyone's). As soon as it landed in the stores I bought a copy. And so far I haven't played it.

The D20 part really does present a problem for me. I don't see what it gives the game and it takes an awful lot of space in the book. Having worked through the rules (I'm not a D20 player, so there was no useful familiarity to the system for me) it seems perfectly fine, but no better than any other semi-generic system and I'm not terribly impressed by the range of results inherent in the mechanics. It seems too random and bland, and I suspect that unless that impression changes drastically when I play it then I'll likely port the whole thing over to Fudge and use it with Terra Incognita.

Because the mechanics take up so much room there is not enough space devoted to the setting, which is where it really falls down for me. I can run a Victorian version of Fringeworthy with a Jasper Fforde twist without needing a new game for it, so I was hoping for more in Passages, more background and detail to spark my imagination and help me to construct more than just random Sliders-like adventures. It almost delivers, but I'd cheerfully lose half the pages devoted to the system in favour of more space for setting and such.

It's a fine little game in so many ways (and I'm aiming to run it before too long - especially now you've got the adventure on your site - and record the session for RPGMP3.com where some of our other games are linked as MP3 downloads) but it could have been quite brilliant. Maybe it's the feeling that it's almost what I was hoping for that makes it seem a bit flat.

That said I have recommended it, with caveats, to friends. It deserves a bit more attention.

Posted By: Piers(I don't want to see tables listing the hardness and hit points of doors)

This is something, I know now, was a mistake. This was a function of the "incremental" design the game suffered from. (When I started out, it was indeed just going to be a setting for d20 Modern.) It's stated at the front of the book that all these "numbers" are just suggestions, but when someone picks up the book and flips through, it sure does look like a d20 Modern setting. Would it be weird to do a Second Edition that's shorter than the original? Maybe a Story-Game edition?

Posted By: Brand_RobinsSeriously, I get to the web page (which was a big thing, as I hadn't otherwise heard about the game) and get an extended poo/laxative metaphor. If I had been casually passing through, rather than reading to find out about an indie game, I would have been out of there in less than 3 seconds.

I mean, what everyone else says about things like buzz and marketing and demos are all good, but so far as the web site goes, it smelled like poo to me.

That's exactly what I did after looking through the first ten or so posts. I hit the site, skimmed over the page and bailed. The flavor sell copy on the page Justin linked to went on for far too long. There's one basic tenet of website design about the fold -- don't make people scroll to get to the important content on your page. The important content on the page is what the hell the game is about. Running at 1280x1024 pixels, the first bit of information about what Passages is about is one and a half screens down. If I was in the market for a Victorianesque game and that page was the first thing I saw about the game, I'd think the actual book is written in the same manner: a ton of overwritten fluff that I have to get through until I reach the actual game.

Actually reading the bulleted list that's the selling point of the game, all five seem to indicate it's based on d20 and I've played enough d20 games to know the game system isn't for me. At this point, I'm probably flipping through the display copy of Full Light, Full Steam or wandering over to see if any of the dealer booths have Space 1889 on sale at a sizable discount.

Justin, will you be attending Dexcon, Dreamation, Ubercon, or I-Con? Or in NYC at any time? One of my players is Nick Logue who is a very popular author for Wizards and Paizo. If you run a demo or full game for him, and if he likes it, I can encourage him to write a short actual play report of your game on the various forums for Paizo, Wizards, and En World. That should help stir up sales among D20 customers.

I don't know you or how connected you are with other indie authors but I find the best way to get people into your game and talking about it is to include them in the development stage of your project and helping them out with their own games. This helps foster camaraderie and in such a small niche, camaraderie and word of mouth are huge!

I also wanted to readdress price and page count. I didn't mean to bring it up originally to say that your game was too expensive. I think most RPGs should be much more expensive. My only point is that anything higher than $19-25 takes it out of the range as an impulse buy. And anything higher than $12 takes it out of range as a "sure, it doesn't look fully baked but there is enough there that I would give it a try." If it is more than $19-25, it just needs to have more behind it. And I believe perceived value is more important than page count. A higher page count can actually hurt you. It may mean more rules I have to learn, or more I have to do before I can start having fun. And a larger book makes it harder to get buy in as a casual game from players. And if no one is talking about it, that means you will have to do all the work to get anyone to play, and on and on. It's tough. And I definitely recognize the chicken/egg dilemma. I just wanted to be clear the literal price is only a small part of the overall perception of the product.

Also, this may help with your website:
http://www.useit.com/alertbox/9710a.html

Posted By: Joshua BishopRoby
b) d20. The d20 logo implies to me that what your game does is track hit points and handwave everything else into GM fiat. Which is totally unfair, but nonetheless the exact impression I get whenever I pick up the book.

If the book did a better job of telling me what it offers, I wouldn't be relying on mere associations I have with a label. But as it is, the label is all that I've got.

Just to be clear, it doesn't bear the d20 logo, but your general point is well taken.

Out of curiosity, Justin, how many copies do you still have around? There are solutions that you can use to clear out current stock, and then there are other solutions that you can use to make the next printing/edition more appealing. Where are you on that spectrum?

I just did a reorder, so I have maybe 60 copies split between IPR and Key20. I expect I'd be able to sell out of those by the time I'd be able to re-jigger the game anyway. I'd love to hear your thoughts.

Oh, and to address the original intent of the thread. Two reasons why Passages holds no interest for me.

1. I'm bored silly of Victorian-riff games and Passages sounds terribly generic.

2. The fact that it's D20 leans me toward never buying it.

Reason I bought Joshua's Full Light Full Steam because he has some very cool game mechanics in there. If that had simply been Space 1889 redux with a trad system, I would never have gone near it.

Justin,

The stuff Ron said about entering stories instantly made me go "WHA???? THAT IS BAD ASS."

I went from kinda thinking the premise was cute to thinking that when I get another wad of cash for games I may have to check this one out in about 30 seconds.

Just as a data point.

FWIW, I've heard about this game on a couple of podcasts (HGWT, voice of the revolution, and maybe the games master show), and I've not done much research, to be honest. But the "first impressions" were just the same of Ron, Brand, Albert and others: traveling inside the books/stories? Interesting!

d20 derivative? Probably not that interesting, sorry.

If there is some mechanic that's making this game do awesome stuff then it should be on the forefront in the ad copy: you can totally have a d20 derivative with a "fate aspect lookalike" mechanic... but you have to let people know! What's the cool stuff in your system?

'cause if it's the setting and the premise (victoriana mashup and traveling inside books-reality), well, I can probably take that single sentence and do it with Fate3, or PTA, or something. What's the selling point of your system?

Posted By: renatoramFWIW, I've heard about this game on a couple of podcasts (HGWT, voice of the revolution, and maybe the games master show), and I've not done much research, to be honest. But the "first impressions" were just the same of Ron, Brand, Albert and others: traveling inside the books/stories? Interesting!

d20 derivative? Probably not that interesting, sorry.

I totally share Renato's story. When I listened to Paul on HGWT discuss Passage I thought, "holy cow, I need to get that game now!" Then he mentioned the d20 system, and I bought another game instead.

If you could tell me how the system supports the experience of travelling inside Victorian fiction, then I might still get the game. As it stands now, the d20 thing keeps me from even entertaining picking up the game.

If you do a "How To Play" guide, then I might buy it. I really don't know why RPG designers don't include this in every game they publish, you don't get a boardgame just talking about its theme, skipping how to actually play it. Dogs in the Vineyard still reins supreme on how this should be done.

TTFN,

Yoki

It was the 3rd Indie game I bought
Got it on IPR a few months ago

I love the idea and how damage is done and the entire genre
Now if I had people to game with who love Steampunk like stuff as I do

Passages has sat on my bookshelf for a few months now. I don't think I've actually sat down with it and read it for any serious length of time yet, but here's my data point: so far, I haven't heard why I should. Sure, even with Ron's post about it, I haven't been told why I shouldn't just take what I've learned from this thread and run that idea with what's starting to feel like the GURPS of the indie world, Spirit of the Century. So, the fact that I don't know how your book supports that idea is one element.

The second, and maybe bigger element, is this: So, you hacked d20. Maybe -- I'll assume definitely, but from the point of view of a skeptic, maybe -- you even have a decent implementation of d20. Here's the problem: you're doing double-duty here. (1) You're having to convince d20 players why your version of d20 is worth playing more than theirs is. In a world full of d20 hacks and tweaks, you have to show why yours stands out and is worth re-learning the system, since you have enough tweaks to kill their assumptions about how to play it. AEG pulled this off with Spycraft, and again with Spycraft 2.0. What are you doing to pull this off?

(2) You're having to convince story gamers to try a game with the mental baggage surrounding the term "d20". You certainly aren't going to get their attention by telling us how it's mechanically not like WotC's d20. You're going to have to sell them on how your game would work for, say, my play group without getting into the fact that it's a d20 implementation until, honestly, you have us sitting down at the table.

I play games like Don't Rest Your Head, Truth & Justice/PDQ, Polaris or Agon because (a) the mechanics in those games work with me and (b) they generally try to do one or two things well (even PDQ, which is generic in setting, doesn't do everything equally). The one or two things d20 does well do not interest me. When you tell me it's a d20-based game, you'll have to start telling me right away what -- not how, but what -- it does well that differs from stock d20, and you'll need to do it in a way that simultaneously tells me that your game does what I want and make me not question why you bothered to use d20 at all.

Maybe I sound like a bit of a dick here, but you want bluntness. You put yourself in a hard position by trying to make an "indie20" game. Hell, I've been tempted to try a couple times, and I always come back to "and why am I using d20 if I'm deviating from it this greatly?" Kudos for doing it and making a game people like. I suspect you have something good there, but there's too much baggage around "d20" and lengthy game books to interest me without warming me up first.

First, I love Dawning Star and am looking to repurchase it soon, so it's not you. Second, I love Victoriana and period literature, so it's not the subject matter. Third, I like d20 for non-commital, action-oriented, gaming. And therein lies the problem. Passages seems like it has something to say. It seems like an incredibly cool concept with a deep undercurrent of philospohical badassitude. It seems like a horribly awkward marriage. d20 is really big on the G, which is ostensibly why the system is the juggernaut that it is. d20 fans love it because its heavy on the G and that's what they want out opf d20 games. By design, it has almost no N and very little S. IME, people who want deep concepts and messages, want N and S in spades but could give a rat's ass about G. Looking at the big picture I could have told you that a d20 game with a heavy concept would be a hard sell ;)

Posted By: jdrakehan incredibly cool concept with a deep undercurrent of philospohical badassitude

Now that's a quote that sells. But seriously, I'm late to the party, so maybe I don't have as much anti20 baggage. I think you could make it work for you, if you embrace it. Like:

"Bringing the D20 into the storytelling age!" or
"Hippie-fy your twenty-sided dice!" or
"And you thought 20 sided dice couldn't tell stories" or

My biggest problem with the website, though, is I'm not really sure after reading it what I would be doing in a game session. Who am I playing? Where? What cool things are we up to? I've heard good things about the game on "Have Games Will Travel" but now I can't remember the details, save that there is Victorian correspondence involved.

I just want to say one thing:

Ive been digging Passages for about a year now, and Ive been dying to get my hands on it.
Ive got the demo lying on my harddrive, and I poke through it from time to time marvelling at the elegant simplicity of the reworked d20 system and the coolness of the games premise.

In short: I love it and want to buy it, but I havent had the opportunity or the cash yet.

Just to let people know that there are in fact people on the net who have heard of and like the idea of Passages.

I also think the name is cool.

Justin,

Here is my current summary of this thread:

For d20 players, they are charged about this game and curious. Most just haven't heard of it (for whatever reason).

For story-gamers, d20 is a really hard sell, and you are going to need to explain exactly how Passages delivers story game goodness if they are going to take a look. Right now, they are all saying, "Oh. d20." and putting the book back on the shelf.

Wow! Go to sleep and wake up to 70+ posts of hard-charging input. Did I say thank you? I did? Well, I'll say it again. To clarify, it is based on d20; indeed, I have a copy of the OGL in the back of the book (though SotC does too). But it doesn't play like d20, and I really do think that the modifications support the kind of play that indie gamers are looking for. But -- and here's the important part -- this thread has helped me identify the disconnect between the game and my marketing of it.

I am going back to the drawing board armed with a lot of great insight. And I've got something of a new tagline I'm toying with that gets the concept across a little better: "There are twenty faces on the die. Each one tells a story."

I had *briefly* come across Passages a week or two ago. My instinctive reactions:

(i) Nice artwork.
(ii) The faux-Victorian blurb is amusing but trying too hard to be prolix in places. If you're going to do that sort of thing, do it better, and give it more of a Victorian presentation, like a showbill. Seeing that kind of text in sans serif is jarring to me.
(iii) Overall, I was left wondering "what does this game do for me that wouldn't be handled adequately by Cthulhu by Gaslight?" (or indeed, Spirit of the Century).
(iv) The review quotes should be given much more prominence. I care far more that Paul Tevis thinks it's good than that the designer thinks it's good.
(v) If it really does do that Jasper Fforde type "adventure within a famous story" thing, then you should be saying that much more plainly. Because that sounds very cool, and I would never have guessed.

No, OGL is just a license under which lots of things can be published, by this point under multiple systems of mechanics, not just the d20 mechanics. And the d20 mechanics are more than just being able to use the trademark - just because the license for the use of the d20 trademark is so restrictive, this does not mean that those are the only games that are mechanically a part of the d20 family.

Things that kept me from buying Passages:
* On a regular basis, without knowing anything about a game, $20 is my soft limit, and $30 my hard limit, for game books, regardless of length or production values. High production values are, honestly, sometimes an explicit turn off, as they fuck with the {book price :: play experience} ratio without actually making the play experience any better. (what the hell is with the price inflation these past two years? this year, it was hard to find games UNDER $20; my reasonably-priced Fastlane at $12 now looks like a generous minnow swimming with voracious sharks). You are currently above that hard limit.
* I was on a very strict budget this year, thanks to the whole surgery thing, which made me not even consider the above-$20 books.
* GenCon was the first I'd heard anything of Passages more than its name. And hearing "d20" made me immediately stop considering it (this also happens when I hear 'FUDGE' or 'FATE'). Granted, that's about all anyone could tell me about the game at the booth. The descriptions in this thread make me curious, although not curious enough to climb over my hard limit to buy a product in the d20 system.

Well, I don't think it's derailing the thread at all (and I'm guessing the thread is nearing the end of its natural life in any case). The term "d20" covers a wealth of sins, e.g., the license, the system, the die itself. To be even more technical, the name of the license is the "d20 System License". "d20" is often (probably even most often) used to describe the system. So, it's not incorrect to refer to OGL Conan as a "d20 game" at all. And, for purposes of this thread, it highlights the pitfalls of marketing a game that uses the d20 system (even in a highly modified form like Passages). As some have pointed out, even referring to just the die as a "d20" carries alot of baggage to the end consumer.

People have alluded to this, but just to be a bit more explicit: dude, you have to do something about the website.

(Again, apologies to be blunt, but it'll be easier, I think).

The first paragraph doesn't sell the game at all. I see what you're trying to do (use a comic, wordy style), but it's really hard to read.

Then there's a load of made-up quotes. They're not that funny and they make it look as though no-one's actually said good stuff about Passages, so you had to make stuff up.

So I scroll down through all of this (it's really long), and finally I find the one paragraph to explain what it's about...

"But Passages is so much more than just a new rpg system, it's a fully realized literary campaign setting of the Victorian era. Take the helm of the Nautilus! Cross swords with the Scarlet Pimpernel! Match wits with the devious Professor Moriarty! Anything is possible in the world of Passages."

...but, even then, it doesn't quite tell me. If you'd said "In Passages, you travel between great Victorian adventure stories" or similar, I'd have been interested.

And all those superb reviews are buried down the bottom! I didn't even get to them the first time I read through: I've just found them now!

Personally, I think you should start with a paragraph telling me what the game's about, then go straight to the glowing reviews.

Graham

I'm glad this thread was apparently useful, because the truth is, I'd like to be sold on Passages. Convince me the system as-is is going to do the job of launching literary Victorian adventures and stories better than if I slap another system on the concept! :-}