Alternate Reality Games (ARGs) and TRPGS

[nedjer]

[FONT=Calibri, sans-serif]Just heading off to the wilderness for a few days with bows and arrows and stuff. (No animals will be harmed in this production, as most of the targets are human). In the interests of encouraging similarly inappropriate behaviour amongst others, I posted about homemade Alternate Reality Games (ARGs) before packing[/FONT].


[FONT=Calibri, sans-serif]Which got me thinking about TRPGs and ARGs. An earlier post on online ARGS covers the basics and the topic leaves me with two questions:[/FONT]


[FONT=Calibri, sans-serif]Why on earth aren't TRPG companies using ARGs to promote their games and recruit from a much wider potential audience?[/FONT]


[FONT=Calibri, sans-serif]If a TRPG was putting together an ARG how should/ would they go about it, i.e. what should a WoTC or Piazo ARG offer?[/FONT]

 

[Krensky]

[FONT=Calibri, sans-serif]Just heading off to the wilderness for a few days with bows and arrows and stuff. (No animals will be harmed in this production, as most of the targets are human). In the interests of encouraging similarly inappropriate behaviour amongst others, I posted about homemade Alternate Reality Games (ARGs) before packing[/FONT].


[FONT=Calibri, sans-serif]Which got me thinking about TRPGs and ARGs. An earlier post on online ARGS covers the basics and the topic leaves me with two questions:[/FONT]


[FONT=Calibri, sans-serif]Why on earth aren't TRPG companies using ARGs to promote their games and recruit from a much wider potential audience?[/FONT]


[FONT=Calibri, sans-serif]If a TRPG was putting together an ARG how should/ would they go about it, i.e. what should a WoTC or Piazo ARG offer?[/FONT]

Honestly, I don't think the concept will work for most games. Most settings are too separated from the 'real' world. It's part of their appeal.

Now, a game like Continuum, World of Darkness, Conspiracy X, Call of Cthuhlhu, or Delta Green could do quite well with them. Any game that is largely set in the 'real' world. Preferably one with fantastical elements hiding below the surface and just outside your field of vision.

 

[Umbran]

Hm.

First off, the ARG doesn't represent anything much like a TRPG experience. Folks will go through the ARG with, and then someone tries to sell them books for sitting around a table?

By the look of it, ARGs require some significant multimedia muscle and manpower to pull off. Most TRPG companies are small, and don't have the expertise in-house, nor the budget to hire it.

Any time you use the "this is not a game" model, you are verging into LARP territory, which for many folks simply isn't a draw.

 

[eyebeams]

1) TRPGs have used ARGs are promotions, with mixed results. Hunter: The Reckoning was promoted with a proto-ARG (it said WW has been purchased by libertarian free speech activists, asked you if you'd experienced off things and asked you to join an email list that was Hunter-net) that was unfortunately a touch ahead of its time and confused and annoyed some folks.

Alpha Omega was also heavily promoted via an ARG. This happened to get confused with the Cloverfield ARG campaign and garnered a great deal of attention, though much of it ended up accidentally promoting Cliverfield instead.

2) ARGs are direct descendants of TRPGs. 42 Entertainment, the creator of the modern ARG, is run by Jordan Wiseman, formerly of FASA. If I remember correctly, R Talsorian's Mike Pondsmith worked on "The Beast," the first major ARG (that promoted the film AI). I have worked on commercial ARG material, and so has James Wallis (of Nobilis, WFRP and Dragon Warriors fame). The ARG-RPG connection is very strong.

Believe it or not, outside of RPGs the idea of a rich set of in-world objects and events that are freely found and shared is actually pretty exotic. I have struggled to get this across to clients who really want there to be one "funnel" to draw people along a predetermined set of conclusions. So knowing TRPGs is helpful.

3) You can build a primitive ARG for nearly nothing, just by using free site hosts, blog services, Facebook and Twitter. It gets expensive when you get to the following:

a) Live events
b) Snail mail/artifacts to try and build a base of participants
c) Complex websites

I've toyed with building a barebones ARG, but it's pretty labour intensive.

4) The problem with ARGs is that they're now pretty common, and there's an established fanbase that, while helpful for launch, isn't really the target for promotions. A good ARG is something that the average person gets involved in a little and still feels like he/she had fun, but it's very easy to end up being to cryptic so that as you roll out content a smaller and smaller number of diehard fans actually understand it.

 

[nedjer]

Hm.

First off, the ARG doesn't represent anything much like a TRPG experience. Folks will go through the ARG with, and then someone tries to sell them books for sitting around a table?

By the look of it, ARGs require some significant multimedia muscle and manpower to pull off. Most TRPG companies are small, and don't have the expertise in-house, nor the budget to hire it.

Any time you use the "this is not a game" model, you are verging into LARP territory, which for many folks simply isn't a draw.

What's with the negative waves dude? There are loads of similarities in terms of groups of players meeting up through various media and f2f to collaborate to build a shared story which involves solving mysteries/ challenges. ARGs with these ingredients have been used very successfully to promote, e.g. Halo, with a much greater 'distance' between the 'social mystery' ARG side and the 'on your own in a room' fps that Halo delivers.

Equally, can TRPGs really still be thought of as an exercise in selling books and wargame-centred gameplay? TRPGs are, to me, about letting players take part in a shared social game, which may or may not involve hard copies of arithmetic-laden texts, but definitely involve sharing challenges, puzzles, plots and decisions. Beating up monsters is a fun part of that, but surely it's a pretty shallow and deeply yawn inducing TRPG session which relies entirely on stringing together a loosely connected set of tactical skirmishes?

A full-blown ARG might be beyond the means of most TRPG companies but elements of the ARG experience seem well suited to promoting TRPGs. The Kit Williams type prize search books, the (mentioned somewhere) use of solo gamebook play to introduce players to D&D, and mystery videogames like Alan Wake and Heavy Rain, all have gameplay elements which reach out to wider audiences and are not that far removed from TRPG gameplay. Simply adding a social or shared dimension to pull together the 'common (gameplay) ground' through a website seems relatively inexpensive?

Some of the staples of the ARG are more of a problem/ would need to fall by the wayside, as there's clearly the danger of entering into LARP territory, which is a hair's breadth away from costumes and joining the Sealed Knot. I.e. the thought of running a TRPG/ ARG along Kit Williams lines at a Con seems quite intriguing to me. But the minute it started to involve a) costumes b) plastic weapons c) fake accents, I'd have to leave the building.