Spinning a web of RPG adventures…

This one is for the people interested in a cool business idea for their RPG company or for their local gaming group. Enjoy!

I can always grab a great idea from comic book marketing. I think that reason for that is comic book companies product a product that is brought on a monthly basis, that must not only look appealing and be intellectually stimulating and it must have a continuity to what happened before it the previous month. There are very few products that have to follow this model. Now with this set up, comic book companies have developed something that is called “The Summer Crossover Event”. Basically it is an opportunity for the companies to sell more book by connecting on storyline between several comic books. A good example of The Summer Crossover Event is Marvel Comics’ Civil War, Secret Invasion or the original Secret Wars or DC Comics Sinestro Corps War, Rann-Thanagarian War and the granddaddy of them all Crisis on Infinite Earths.

I have thought this would work somewhat OK in the realm of RPGs but there would be some issue with implementing these ideas. But finally I think I might have come up with the idea that this could actually work. What I have come up with is what I call an Adventure Spiderweb (see the image with this blog). The Adventure Spiderweb starts from the position zero (#0) – The first adventure in the web; and from there you can go to either #1, #2, or #3. From there you can go to any other number that connects to any other number via the black lines. So you could go #0 then to #3, then #6, then #9, then #5, then #2 and so one. Even though they adventures are connected and related, you don’t have to play then in any specific order. You just have to start at #0 then the rest is up to you. This plan would work for simple encounters, sidetrek adventures, and even full blown mega adventures. This process is valid for whatever you want to do adventure-wise.

So then I thought what if you used this in a subscription based business format like dungeonaday.com? You release #0 the first week, then you release #1 thru #3 on the second week. You release #4 thru #6 on the third week and finally #7 thru #9 on the fourth week. You take the fifth and sixth week off and start again with a new Adventure Spiderweb the following week. Kind of a variation of what Paizo is doing with Pathfinder Adventure Paths. I will have to try this one day and see how well it works. Talk to you later…