[Musings of a Game Store Owner] GGP: Networking

Last week a reader asked about networking, and it's a big enough component to the publication industry that I'm doing what I can to address it.

Let's start with a definition. 

Networking in a nutshell is developing and cultivating relationships in a way that grows your business.

Maybe that seems like "using" people (it sort of does to me). I don't make it about my business; I like to think of it as making friends.

For those of you that are shy or introverted, perhaps message boards, forums and blog communities are better for you since they don't involve face to face conversations. These avenues are also great for those that enjoy writing and meeting lots of people without using a lot of face to face conversations.

If you're more like me, and love talking to people- that's all it is. It's talking to people. I personally use a mix of in person, phone, email. Facebook, Twitter and blogs to talk to people; but it's talking to people.

It's important to know that networking is a careful balancing act- you can't just meet a person at a convention or event and then a week later drop your pitch. It should be a natural outflow of your relationship with the person, so they WANT to help you because you're friends or work in the same circles or whatever.




Here are some examples of how networking happens:

Mike Bohlman 

I heard you got backing from some pretty big names in the industry. Did that help your project get publicity at all?

It did a little bit because of the social aspect of Kickstarter. When those people backed the project, their friends saw that and backed the project, too. Ben McFarland actually ended up joining the project after hearing about it. Since we're an unknown in the industry, I think the big names are likely to hold back any big promotion until they see that we can produce a good product. If that happens, I think the post-Kickstarter sales will be fantastic.

How do you publicize something like this? 

The main places I publicized were d20pfsrd.com, Google+, Facebook, and Twitter. The d20pfsrd.com publicity made the biggest difference. John Reyst is a big fan of our setting, and he was happy to post our project to the front page. Google+ was the next best place because the gaming community is very active there, and there is a bit better chance of becoming viral.  (Check THIS out.)

Joseph Wolf

I've been working with Reaper for 15 years now. I got my start while

working for Riders Hobby Shop in Kalamazoo Michigan. I managed to get

Ron Hawkins on the phone to tell him we were ramping up our interest

in their minis and he sent me a copy of the main rules.
---------------------------------------


Jeff knew me from the Barbarians of Lemuria and HEX forums. I
contacted Simon of Beyond Belief Games who published BoL and asked if
I could help out so he provided an introduction.

-----------------------------------------
Forums to share your knowledge and ideas coupled with emails to open
the lines of communication. I attended a lot of conventions in the
late 90's as a featured GM for RPGA events when they did more than
promote the latest incarnation of D&D. I ran the oddball games like
Cthulhu and Paranoia. Lord did I run a lot of Cthulhu at AndCon,
Origins, Three Rivers Gamefest, Gen Con and Winter Fantasy.

Ed Healey 


The best way to do this is to think about community engagement before
you publish anything. If you want a game that will become part of a
lifestyle for your customers, you need to bake that into your product.
Once you publish, it's too late. The importance of this can't be
underestimated. You can put lipstick on a pig, but it's still a pig.
How much better to make something that doesn't need any masking.

Not having to hide the blemishes of your product will help you be more
authentic when interacting with potential customers after release -
and will drastically influence your relationship with your community
and with influencers, such as podcasters and bloggers. That's really
the magic sauce after release - be yourself and you will not only
attract customers that like the game, they're more likely to be of a
temperament that make them perfect evangelists for your company.

Porky

If you're looking for more interviewees, I could suggest quite a few from the RPG and old version D&D end of things- As a start, here are some of the more obvious ones, Tim Shorts, Christian Walker, Trey Causey and Christopher Brandon.

Tim Shorts published an old school D&D pdf adventure called Knowledge Illuminates and runs a print zine:

Knowledge Illuminates page -  Zine and updates blog - 

Christian Walker really got the current zine thing going, but you probably know that, and he covers different systems too.  Zine blog - 

Trey Causey published a pdf and print system-free sourcebook called Weird Adventures for an early 20th century weird fantasy in North America.

His blog -                WA - 

Fenway5 / Christopher Brandon has all kinds of free mini rules-light systems, but published a version of Rogue Space RPG in pdf and print witht the subtitle The Dark Frontier. All his blogs listed - the ones with games have free downloads via the sidebar -  Here's his profile 

Brian Nero (of Gentleman's Ones and Wreck Age) 

So. I met Anton almost two years ago at AdeptiCon (2011) where I was running the first eventful trial of Special Operations: Killzone on some tables that I’d made. I made a lot of noise about it all on my blog, but this was a very interesting trial period for a set of skirmish rules that I was pushing an informal, derivative game into an arena of rather solid and ambitious gamers. It was billed as a kind of fun alternative to the more rigorous and competitive games happening all around, but still there has to be a level of competence when placing fan-based goods in that atmosphere.

Me to Brian:

It is the strangest thing. Something about your reply struck a bell with me, and I went searching in my many emails- and found:

An email from ME to Von (of HOP, and also a friend) about Wreck Age. I was telling him he might find it interesting and enjoyable, as it touched on single, multi, skirmish and RPG play capability. 

-------------------------------

And there you have it. Anytime someone else is talking about your product or design to another person (especially if it is someone you don't know); it's networking. It can be on your behalf or you working on someone else's behalf (like Porky did), but that's networking in a nutshell. All of this factors into publishing, and I'll show you how next week.