RE: [DL] Fan Submissions/editing

["Heivilin, Jim" <banzai@missouri.edu>]

> -----Original Message-----
> From: SteveL1979@aol.com [mailto:SteveL1979@aol.com]
> Subject: Re: [DL] Fan Submissions/editing (was: Re: Combined Format 
> 
<snip>
>     If I may, let me provide some perspective on Patrick's 
> entirely accurate comment, from someone who's actually done 
> something like what people are suggesting.
> 
I don't have as much information on the success of the venture, but I work
as a pseudo-writer, webmaster and general
all-around-do-what-needs-to-be-done-guy for Biohazard Games (Blue Planet
sci-fi rpg) and we've done a couple of projects involving our fan base in
the game design business.  We ran a contest before the release of our first
supplement where fans could write an intro.  We also involved the fans in
our 2nd edition (see below). 

Last year we were in negotiation with Fantasy Flight Games (publisher of
DiskWars) and part of the deal was that we do a 2nd edition of our main game
book.  Greg Benage, our VP and later to become the line editor, wrote up
some brand spankin' new mechanics that really rocked.  So we asked our
mailing list if they wanted to help playtest.  We got, overall, IIRC seventy
something people involved.  One of them even started a web based mailing
list on egroups to discuss the new rules.  

While I wasn't totally involved in the rewrite I did handle the NDAs and
emailing the packets to the playtesters as well as miscellaneous traffic and
managing the list of playtesters.  Even my small part was incredibly labor
intensive (although I'm not nearly as certain of it's usefulness I suspect
Greg's comments would fall in line with Steve's - very labor intensive but
also very useful).

So IMHO there's some good to it but it carries a huge price tag. 

Jim

Jim Heivilin, Webmaster
Biohazard Games
http://www.biohazardgames.com