The Designer Monologues » Gareth-Michael Skarka » Transmedia (Part Three)

May7

Welcome back. This is going to be a long one, because I’m pushing through to the end, come hell or high water.

You’ve read along this far, and I know what you’re thinking: “So, Mister New-Media-Buzzword-Smartass, that’s all very interesting, but how do we make the leap? Pop quiz, hotshot: What do we do? WHAT. DO. WE. DO.” (Or something like that, anyway. I’m a bit fuzzy on the specifics.)

Short answer: You keep doing what you already do: Design worlds. You just expand how you present them.

That’s what it all melts down to. Now let’s talk details.

Tear Up The Rulebook

Think of the current standard for presentation of an RPG. The Big-Ass Rulebook (BAR). Most games are published this way, in some fashion — whether it’s a softcover BAR, a hardcover BAR, a multi-book set of BARs, or the recent return to the boxed format (where the components could be compiled into a BAR). As conventional wisdom has it, the BAR is divided into “Crunch” (the rules) and “Fluff” (the setting material).

So here’s the thing: take out the Fluff, and concentrate on developing that. That’s your central content, which you will then leverage through various other formats. The Crunch? The crunch becomes the RPG — one of the formats you release. Going with examples provided by Trent Reznor and various Webcomics folks (that I linked to yesterday), I’d recommend making the RPG available free as a PDF download, with upgrade options for sale (softcover, hardcover, limited hardcover, limited hardcover + extras, limited hardcover + extras with design commentary, etc.).

But the main thrust of your work will be to develop your property — the material that has been labeled with the dismissive title “Fluff.” The fictional world is your centerpiece — the core of your property, and everything else you do will orbit around it. Everything you release will be a method for a consumer to interface with your world, whether actively or passively. The goal here is to create fans. Give them as many paths as possible, with all paths leading to the center — the world you’ve developed.

Now, let’s talk about those paths...

Posted via web from Siobhan O'Flynn's 1001 Tales