The Business: You Should Show Them How To Play

Say what you want about Critical Role (I have). It has been a boon for Wizards of the Coast because, despite doing it wrong, it shows people how to play the game.

YouTube is something solo operators can use to level the playing field with bigger competition. You can't flood the shelves with slop and win; the bigger players have that sewn up. The smarter way to compete is to use YouTube to show prospective players how to play your game.

Not one of these are done by the publisher, and many of them are owned by a company that could be doing this as part of their marketing but NOOOOOOO- especially those owned by WOTC (Gamma World, Boot Hill).

It doesn't take much. A dude, a webcam, a copy of the game, and footage of said dude actually using the game. There is no excuse for any Tabletop publisher to not do this; shoot with an eye for TikTok/YouTube Shorts/whatever short-attention-span brainrot comes up and you'll get massive returns while spending pennies and maybe a week of time shooting and editing- and you can outsource the editing.

"But that-"

GunTube, motherfuckers.

Channels devoted to the pew-pew are such a big asset for that industry that the better channels routinely get provided not only new guns to shoot (and to shoot), but often get ammo provided to them as a form of sponsorship. I can tell you, from first-hand experience, that the Total Cost of Ownership for firearms dwarfs that of Tabletop Adventure Games by orders of magnitude and I am in a mostly-free US state (for now). The returns are worth the effort for guns; they definitely are worth it for Tabletop.

Don't believe me? This new lever-action just dropped from Taylor's & Company. You better believe I want to check it out because I saw this video.

This works for cars, planes, trains, yachts (you should see some of the yacht channels), houses, appliances, and so much more. Why in God's name don't you think just shooting a video where you show the viewer how to play the game step-by-step would not work is boggling because--again, despite showing it wrong and thus setting errant expectations--Critical Role does this and it has been nothing but a boon for WOTC.

You don't need to be Critical Role. You need to be Joe Fucking Friday: Just The Facts. You don't need to be perfect; just admit when you fuck up and annotate the video with the correct information. By doing this you set the expectation of what this game and what it is about conclusively and decisively, preventing decades of disingenious bullshit and bad-faith blather by bad actors out to skinsuit your creation for their ends. Define your creation or they will define it their way against you.