TTRPG pre-play presentation

[Pebblerubble (Peter Wiehe)]

Continuing the discussion from Detective Osiris: The Post-Mortem:

@pieartsy

I have heard people in the TTRPG space talk about the importance of game presentation, as in the stuff you see before you play, to be more important to the experience of the game than a lot of people realize. I think there’s a specific word used but I forgot it! I’ll go with before-game presentation.

As a former pen and paper roleplayer I haven’t heard of this before and would love to hear more about it.

[HAL9000]

At first, it sounded like you two are talking about “the setting” or “the lore” for a TTRPG. Before-game presentation though, the stuff you see… like, “props/accessories” for “ambience/immersion”? Hmmm… now I’m curious too.

Edit: Sounds like “Prologue” or “Introduction” still though.

[pieartsy (Aster F)]

No I’m not talking about any of that I suppose I’m talking about “the pitch”. Promotional material, is the way simpler word for it that I just remembered right now, but even if you’re not trying to advertise actively, presentation matters in whether someone even cracks open the game or expects the right thing from it. Think of it as priming.

Just to use two game pages of mine as examples:
https://pieartsy.itch.io/andromeda-chained

You are Neurodivergent as FUCK (and not alone) by Aster F

Just look at the pages themselves before you even press play. What assumptions do you make about each game, such as the quality, amount of effort put in, genre, tone, whether you would enjoy it, what it’s about, etc?

After you've formed some opinions...

The presentation of Andromeda Chained has a coordinated palette and background image, a description that indicates that the game is a myth retelling, and a thumbnail (which isn’t showing here for some reason) that has a pretty public domain image with the title on it. The line “I recommend you play it more than once” primes the player to understand that the replaying of the game might matter, even if they choose not to follow the recommendation. Even the title itself is clear that it’s about Greek myth and hints at certain themes of the game.

You Are Neurodivergent as FUCK (and not alone) has a title that the game description and tagline acknowledge to be misleading while not elaborating on why or what it’s actually about. It has a clipart cover image, with no palette on the page and no punctuation. The presentation comes across as low effort because it was, and you might make certain assumptions about the quality of the game matching that level of effort.