Author: Mark Green (---.ac.uk)
Date: 01-04-2002 04:33
RPGers and tabletop gamers like printed material. They don't like to have to sit by a computer in order to play, and they like to be able to refer to stuff quickly. You can print out a PDF, granted, but you can't print out a Flash demo or a Quicktime movie.
Two problems in the case of RPGs: first, many RPGers I know already have a big stash of games that they have yet to play in or run. Persuading people to play anything other than D20 is already hard enough, and persuading people to duck out of a campaign for a demo one-shot might not go down well. Even then, people will still prefer to run a game which they have paid for and which has been sitting on the shelf then a demo they got for free - by playing the paid-for game they (at last!) realize its value, and by not playing the free game they lose nothing.
Secondly, what part of an RPG can you "cripple" to make a demo? If you cripple the setting, then highly creative DMs might make up new material based on what you do provide and decide they don't need to buy the book; others might find it too hard to run the demo because they might have to make an assumption that conflicts with what'll be in the full version. If you cripple the system, then the demo will be incompatible with the full version and everyone will have to rebuild their characters, which is not a good thing.
Computer games work because computer games (in general) require almost no committment from the player, and those demos which involve committment usually enable it to be transferred to the full product somehow. RPGs, to my mind, can't do either of those. Tabletop games and similar can, and the demo idea might work quite well with them, but I'm really not sure about RPGs.
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