The Business: A Look At Fixing A Gimped RPG

Taking all that's been said, let's take a look at how to fix a gimped game.

About 20 years ago, Alderac Entertainment Group published Spycraft. By itself, it was a d20 System version of Palladium's Ninjas & Masterminds or TSR's Top Secret.

Taken with the setting intended for it--Shadowforce Archer--and you had some just weird enough to stand out from the crowd.

Yes, I mean weird. "Telepaths get their powers from Hitler's frozen corpse" levels of weird. "Wong Fei Hong is still alive and kick ass" levels of weird. Compared to that, powered armor and Rods From God are tame.

Yes, all of that is in there.

Like many gimped settings, Shadowforce Archer has several factions vying for power and control and there is disunity within them.

Like many gimped settings, these are excuses to make supplemental products with bait for players to lust after and punching bags for GMs to deploy against them.

Like many gimped settings, there was not even the conception of letting players run anything but their PCs.

Let's start looking at what to do to fix this.

• Redesign the game as a wargame. Players are expected to take control of the factions as Patron Level Play, with them dispatching Agents (PCs and Henchmen, in AD&D terms) to handle threats and advance agenda items.
• Remove all the real life widgets from the product line, especially as most RPG designers are incompetent when it comes to things like cars and guns. Instead, you put in a translation procedure for taking actual product specifications and using them in gameplay and you put that on your product site, preferably as an automated tool. This is the Age of the Internet; Learn To Outsource & Curate.
• Commit to the Weird. Go full Alex Jones. Put David Icke on speed-dial. Make men like Richard Grove look normal by comparison. Gay frogs, UFOs, Satanic rituals at Bohemian Grove, all that and more. Don't half-ass it; go set up a satellite office in Crazytown and mine those rich veins for content- and go the extra mile by seeking out the weird worldwide.
• Tech Writing: Your manual(s) needs to be shorn of all illustration that has no immediate utility. It needs to be clean, concise, clear, and clinical; this is not fiction to read, but instructions on how to play a game- it is meant to be USED. Write like it.
• Rules: Defined procedures, put down in Explain Like I'm Five form, need to be the norm; tell the user what he's going to do, tell him STEP BY STEP how to do it, then tell him what he did. The machine of gameplay needs to integrate top level Patron Play and street level Agent play seamlessly, and Jeffrogygaxian Timekeeping needs to be there at the root of the entire system. Spycraft already recognized this previously; this is refinement.
• Design Emphasis: You are not making a brand or intellectual property to be managed by Corporate. You are making a wargame about weirdness and spies and adventure where certain Hero figures (PCs) get down there to Handle Shit like James Bond (solo play must be viable) or Ethan Hunt (for those that prefer to be in a team). This is a tool to be sold to users- what they do with it is NOT YOUR PROBLEM.

Your product business model is not the Supplement Treadmill. It is not Game As Service. It is Selling A Widget. You manufacture the widget. You promote the widget to prospective buyers. You sell. You give no fucks about what the buyers do with it. You care only about making certain that your widget is there to buy, and gets into their hands as fast as possible once the check clears.

This leads back to Outsource & Curate.

You do not need to publish supplements with stats for guns. You have the Internet. Gun manufactures, custom shops, and more freely advertise their wares online with videos, spec sheets, and more.

All you need to do is to figure out how to make all of the things that matter in real life compare with what matters in gameplay, and then to device a means for translating the former to the latter. This is a hobby; let the user enjoy hobby stuff.

If Keanu Reeves wants to play John Wick on the table top, and he can call up Taran Tactical right there to get a price and spec quote on a tricked out Glock 34, let him and hand him the game stat cheat sheet so he can scribble down the stats for his slicked up yeet cannon.

The same applies for cars, planes, and so much more out there. Find all of that stuff, put up a referral page on your product site and curate links to the real deals. The real stuff is far more interest and better presented than you have the skill or acumen to handle so don't try; let them do it and all you need to do is provide a means for putting that 65 foot expedition yacht into terms for the tabletop.

By now you get the idea. This "reframe as wargame with faction play" approach will work on most tabletop RPGs out there, including the Theater Kids doing their Fake Game stuff, and the first party to commit to this and be competent at marketing it will thrive in a manner unseen for decades.