Product Configuration Survey

[arnimlueck]

First ideas and surveys on product configuration
-------------------------------------------------------

I had the chance to hang around two shops lately and talk to various
people about

How a Tabletop Wargame product should look like

this is just a first feedback, mainly from Warhammer Fantasy players
but also Confrontaion players other that just joined in the talk and
two DBM players. sorry no more historical players where present that
day.

I did not mention the Art of War or any indication of from what
company this game should be from.



This is a 'hotlist' unsorted. It is not *MY* recommandations for AoW but
a first attempt of a survey.

A) a support homepage seems to be a 'must'. it is expected to contain
new, tools (e.g. army builder SW for Win, Mac, linux, smartphones),
scenarios, free sniplets and 'goodies' (sorry the goody guy did not
specify what this really is. But it seems that any gifts / free stuff
etc attract people. One guy was remarkable: the www site should
contain help for tournament organizers. Now he was not talking about
IWF scale, but me and 5 friends scale of events. He requested
templates for posters/announcements in bw/colour, simple chart
as pdf or Win/Linux SW etc. links to the community was mentioned
often.
Short: an actively managed central support site providing help
and collecting feedback from the gamers. Not a surprise but shall
not be forgotten either

B) In contrast to my own suspicion people wanted colour printed books
for sale. BUT: Rules where requested to contain a CD (or
webinterface) that gives to all buyers the pdf version of rules and
play aids (handouts, tables etc). Many wanted to load the pdf
version on smartphones or pda for reference during play.
Seems that I am getting old (I prefer paper/booklets as reference).
Also armylist SW organizers (or config files for popular list
builders) where seen very much as part of the deal.
Note: the printed book is not dead, but SW support is seen as a
standard

C) when I mentioned that I was thinking about some very new game and
that it might be historical tabletop most fantasy player wanted to
see a 'flyer' showing the scope and the spirit of the game extra.
So a rule set in the shop should be a four page flyer with a general
intro, beautiful photos, maybe an extract from a battle report.
To be prcise: a flyer plus a book plus a CD with pdf and support
SW was the dream package envisioned.
Note: Paper advertisment seems to be very important to bring across
the spirit and excitement. I assume 95% of these 'flyers' to end
up in the bin, but if the 5% gain us new excited players we should
give it a thought

D) free (or cheap) updates!! Guess which group that was...
seriously: those people who play Warhammer Fantasy specified that
minor updates should come for free (updated pdf plus list of changes
was ok) and new versions where expected to come cheaper for those who
had the 'old book'. Now this really came from very young Warhammer
Fantasy players - but note that customs from SW business are
spreading out

E) We talked about existing rulebooks. Pros and Cons of WAB, WHFB,
Chronopia, Confrontation. What make a book cool to read:
- sniplets of stories
- graphics, photos of excellently painted minis, photos of games
- I asked what they mean with graphics: illustrations that
bring in the atmosphere
- I know that this affects more the list books but several players
stressed that identification with "their army" is key. So they
said that an army should have its unique style and design.
My own idea on this: here we open up a great opportunity of
going towards "roleplay the general" that needs not to be only
in the game mechanics!


I will continue to ask various groups of potential players things like
this and post in this thread. Be inspired

[rbodleyscott]

Very interesting Arnim.

[jdm]

Thanks for this effort Arnim, where was your "survey" done

Regards
JDM

[arnimlueck]

This first one was of course Stuttgart and Ludwigsburg. Both Shops that trade Tabletop, Roleplaying Games, Comics, Book etc. So no GW stores.

I will continue this in and update. But of course feedback from other countries might bring other results! I recall many people commenting on the public forum when the discussion came to accessing new groups of players. So please: if any differing picture is seen in other countries please post. Because of course we want to concentrate on the relevant wishes at the end, not on everything said.

So please view this topic as a record of inspiration. I will spin off one on how to sell AoW as soon as the collection of ideas has reached a more representative status.

[jdm]

What would be of use is data on German publishing and distribution partners for this sort of product in Germany

Let me have any information you have on this

Regards
JDM

[arnimlueck]

distributer in Germany:
of the "big" distributers that work with international producers 'FanPro' and 'Pegasus Games' jump to my mind. Both have solid experience with international game producers. Pegasus being probably more my view. I hope to make it to the convention in Essen this year and have a word with more of them. But it really depends on your working style: if you want to negotiate directly with shops (like BURST or FunTainement which have shops in several cities) or with one distributor for the country. I will give it more thought. Juergen, Thorsten , Martin what is your view on this?

Besides that I followed my hobby and asked more guys from Ulm and the Zuerich (switzerland) area on publishing ideas. All either DBM or GW BloodBowl players: they also expressed that rules should come as electronic (pdf) form as well as printed. Guess what everybody agreed you should pay only once

I took some notes on book/text organization which i will summarize later. Just let me say this: the associated product web site (nobody questioned that every table top ruleset has one) "must" have a battle report narrative which shows the game fow picture by picture. From the discussion I think I remember seeing a nice sample on the Medieval War pages.