Monica Valentinelli

Find Books and Games by Monica Valentinelli on DriveThruFiction.com, DriveThruRPG.com, Amazon.com, and More!

My New Schedule for Blogging and Jamming!

Hello friends, I have another new release that debuted called Dark Eras 2. To celebrate, I interviewed Hiromi Cota, one of my writers, to celebrate!
I'm going to be attending WisCon online and the Nebula Conference next week. Plus, I've got a novella and two interactive fiction pieces due at the end of this month. Which... Yeah, phew! Guess I better get on that...and not on the 10,000 apartment therapy improvements...or making peanut butter balls... Or...

Yeaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhhh. In other "Monica is getting her shit together" news, I've been inspired by my friend Cat Rambo's ability to schedule her day. She's been building a community by hosting work parties, craft night, etc. and while I've been doing that? It's been a touch more sporadic. Mainly, I'm more concerned about evenings than I am about work hours so I've come up with the following milestones thus far:

• Monday: Moan about how challenging Mondays are

• Tuesday: TACOS!

• Wednesday: Crafty Witches* hangout from 7-9

• Thursday: Tutorial of some sort

• Friday: Game Night

I want to get into a schedule where I spend Sundays blogging and focusing on any updates, but sometimes that's hard due to the way new releases work. (I'm not quite there yet, unfortunately.) My Crafty Witches group is a lovely moderated community of crafters. We're meeting online once a week to start. If you'd like to join, I have a private Slack set up for our group so feel free to reach out.
I've also figured out two topics to blog about: magic and worldbuilding in fantasy and aspects of game production. I'm more keen on blogging about worldbuilding, but I have a lot of knowledge to share about gaming. It's challenging to codify and monetize that, in particular, especially since there's been a lot of turnover in the past five years for various reasons. If you like what you read, you can always take one of my online classes--more on that soon!
I sincerely hope you're doing okay. There's no rule book on how to deal with a pandemic--emotionally, physically, psychologically--and those of us who do recognize the danger are doing the best we can.

Be well and stay healthy,

- Monica
Website: www.booksofm.com Patreon: https://patreon.com/booksofm
Ko-Fi (Donate Coffee): https://ko-fi.com/A527F5H


In the 05/21/2020 edition:
*|MC:TOC|*

Excerpts:

Game Producer Journals: New Players and 5 Steps to Quickstart Design

Two of the ongoing needs in game production are to retain players and attract new players. In video games, short interactive demos give players the feel and basic functionality of the game. Part-marketing/part-preview, player demos are arguably the best way for them to understand gameplay outside of actual play reels. In hobby gaming, there’s a […]
Read on »

Magic Monday Dispatches No 1

Welcome to Monica’s Magic Monday Dispatches where I dive into magic, magic systems, and worldbuilding! Behold, the first dispatch. What is magic, anyway? According to the Oxford Dictionary, it’s “the power of apparently influencing the course of events by using mysterious or supernatural forces” (1). That power, then, is wielded by a practitioner–witch, wizard, sorcerer, […]
Read on »

[New Release] Dark Eras 2

Rebellions swell and vampires feed. Casualties of war draw Reapers to blood-soaked battlefields. Gilded ages benefit mortals and monsters alike. How? Why? What role do the monsters play with us —- and each other? Dark Eras 2 explores 13 new eras scattered throughout the history of the Chronicles of Darkness. This supplement was developed by […]
Read on »

Game Producer Journals: New Players and 5 Steps to Quickstart Design

By Monica Valentinelli on May 20, 2020 02:24 pm

Two of the ongoing needs in game production are to retain players and attract new players. In video games, short interactive demos give players the feel and basic functionality of the game. Part-marketing/part-preview, player demos are arguably the best way for them to understand gameplay outside of actual play reels.

In hobby gaming, there’s a number of ways to preview a game before a title debuts ranging from actual play videos to hands on demos at conventions or retail stores. This introduces a lot of challenges for veterans. After a while, it’s easy to associate who’s playing a game with personal interactions online and off. This can skew a designer’s perspective and lend to design decisions geared toward the audience you’ve encountered and not the people who play the game but never contact the publisher. Setting sample data set analyses aside, the people that interact with a publisher are not typically new players, either.

Jump starts, quick starts, convention demos (live, recorded, and in print), and actual play videos work well when they’re designed to attract new players–people who don’t typically interact with your company. Otherwise, you’re targeting players in the same audience at different times. Though existing players and player retention are both incredibly important, new players are crucial to the overall health of the industry. If you’re having trouble understanding why, please remember that gaming is a dynamic industry. New players often become core fans integral to the community in direct and indirect ways.

Attracting new players is a complex process that requires a multi-pronged approach. It is often intimidating to be a new player because they don’t know the culture (of the publisher, fans, and intersecting micro-communities) or the linguistics on top of not knowing how to play that game. These are barriers to new players that can be resolved in multiple ways, but doing so requires intent and knowledge of both community management and basic marketing techniques.

This process is easier for new games that don’t have previous editions attached and becomes increasingly more challenging the older the game (or property) is. These legacy games (Shadowrun, Vampire: The Masquerade, Dungeons and Dragons) are more complex to manage because of their multi-year, multi-edition spanning history. Each edition that debuts, which is healthy for a publisher to consider, has a core audience and the potential to welcome new players. If the game is primarily being played solely by legacy players with few to no new players added, then over time the core base will shrink.

Using Product to Attract New Players

One product that can help reach out to new players is a quickstart. Here’s where it gets fuzzy: the words “jumpstart” and “quickstart” are often used interchangeably, even among publishers. I asked Matt M McElroy, the Operations Manager for Onyx Path Publishing, what the difference was. He said that: “Jumpstarts are more robust, and are basically starter sets in book form. Quickstarts are very light introductions with some marketing attached.” The jumpstart can also serve as a quickstart and often does, which is partly why the terms are swapped so often.

Going forward, I’ll use the word quickstart to mean “a short standalone marketing product designed to demonstrate the core rules and feel of a game” and a jumpstart as “a robust starter set for a game that includes an adventure, characters, etc.”

Quickstarts are almost always free and are treated as a marketing expense; jumpstarts can be free, but are often not due to the costs involved. Often, jumpstarts must hold more perceived value for the consumer than a free product because of the cost.

Designing the Quickstart

Designing a quickstart is one-part game design, one-part marketing. I personally feel that game designers shouldn’t develop the quickstart’s outline by themselves. This task is something the publisher and marketer should be involved with for a few reasons. They typically 1) know their core fanbase 2) have a rough budget in mind and 3) know how to brand their game. Who works on the quickstart, in particular, is less about skill and more about perspective.

Step One: Identify Your Audience

How a team is set up to handle production won’t matter unless the publisher has a clear idea of who the quickstart is for. Typically, that answer is one or more slices of an overall audience. Just saying “new players” is pretty generic. New players who like “X” system can be too specific if that fanbase is small or insular.

To figure out audience, I recommend reviewing a minimum of five similar products produced by different companies. In this way, you establish a marketing baseline for your game by analyzing what others have already produced.

Step Two: Determine Your Message

Once you have your audience in mind, you can then brainstorm your message. Saying “we have the best game evah!” is not a good message and, quite frankly, is challenging for engagement. Rephrase that to be: “here are the reasons why this title is the best game of its kind”. Then, list the reasons.

Unpacking my last statement, here’s what my rephrased statement means:

• * here are the reasons – you’re presenting the meat of what your audience needs to know in order to purchase your game.
  * why this title – you’re focusing on revealing more about this game and not previous editions, similar settings, etc. This keeps your focus on the present.
  * is the best game – you’re acknowledging the hard work that went into making your game. There’s nothing wrong with being proud of what you created.
  * of its kind – you’re acknowledging this game has its own style/feel and will be compared to other games in this vertical regardless of publisher.

Codifying these reasons will force you to think about your game from the perspective of someone who’s never heard of it–which is typically the hardest audience to write for.

Step Three: Identify Components

While an outline is valuable and typically follows next, I feel that quickstarts necessitate a different conversation before it can be finalized. Components are key elements of a game that are important to the audience and messaging.

Items might include:

• * Ad for the corebook
  * Sample player character
  * Sample NPC
  * Highlights of gameplay: damage, advancement, combat, investigation, social conflict, player vs. player, success/fail, etc.
  * Condensed setting
  * Iconic art
  * Flash fiction or character sketch
  * Corebook chapter preview
  * A DM-facing section
  * Sample adventure hooks
  * Sample loot
  * Sample equipment
  * Sample map
  * Mini-scene
  * Gameplay examples
  * Graphs/icons of dice rolls
  * Full page ad for company (with links to social media, streaming channels, etc.)
  * Ad for upcoming products or Kickstarters
  * Interview questions with the producer/developer
  * …and more!

I recommend that this stage occurs without a clear page count or product spec to freely allow for brainstorming.

Step Four: Outlining

This phase is where the nuts and bolts shape the quickstart. I personally believe a sample layout here is crucial, because knowing how many words are on a page will impact the outline. Once the production parameters are known and a page count is determined, then content can be assigned on each page.

Here, it’s also smart to figure out how you intend to distribute your quickstart, because that will affect its intent and budget. Saddle-stitched and digital quickstarts are the two most common types and are used for different reasons. Printed quickstarts are great for conventions/retail distribution and may attract people who have never heard of that game or publisher before. Digital quickstarts can do the same thing, depending upon where it’s offered and what the perceived value is.

If you’re on the fence during the outlining phase and find you’re adding more information, you might want to consider a hybrid jump/quickstart that you can charge for. This is the perfect step to make this decision!

Step Five: Production

Following this, it’s time for production to begin. I would treat this product just as you would a gaming supplement by hiring a writer who can simplify setting and rules into a condensed space. Less is usually more. The quickstart is a slice of what your game is all about and why it’s unique. I would absolutely lean into that to best inform potential players.

If you’re worried about art, I agree with your instinct. People make decisions to buy games for all kinds of reasons and mentally associate gameplay with emotions that are invoked through their experiences. Art can invoke emotion and is important to their impressions of value and setting.

Lastly, you might get to this point and realize you don’t know how to market your game. That’s okay! It’s for this reason you’ll want to plan a quickstart even if you don’t go through with production. The elements you decide during this project further shape how you want to present your game. If you need to stop and rethink a detail, that’s a good thing to happen early on.

Thanks for joining me and good luck!

Read in browser »

Magic Monday Dispatches No 1

By Monica Valentinelli on May 18, 2020 04:42 pm

Welcome to Monica’s Magic Monday Dispatches where I dive into magic, magic systems, and worldbuilding! Behold, the first dispatch.

What is magic, anyway? According to the Oxford Dictionary, it’s “the power of apparently influencing the course of events by using mysterious or supernatural forces” (1). That power, then, is wielded by a practitioner–witch, wizard, sorcerer, mage, etc.–to affect themselves, other people, or the organic and inorganic in their environment.

Science, on the other hand, is “the intellectual and practical activity encompassing the systematic study of the structure and behaviour of the physical and natural world through observation and experiment” (2).

Magic and science have been entwined for millennia because the universal system–the scientific method–wasn’t commonly applied to study, observe, experiment, and record findings until the late 19th century. This proven method is the best way to separate magic from science in our world and is still being used today. There’s a longer history of the scientific method and its deployment, spanning multiple countries and centuries, so if your interest is piqued? This is a fun rabbit hole to fall into… *evil grin*

The process of separating magic from science is recent (within the past 150 years or so) and slow; many scientists are still dealing with this today. Despite this, its impact cannot be overstated. The term pseudo-science, “a collection of beliefs or practices mistakenly regarded as being based on scientific method” (3), was popularized as a result of this process. Other words, like witch, have since been rebranded as well. More on terms in a future post!

Questions for Worldbuilding

Applying our basic definition of magic to a fantasy setting, it’s clear you’ll need three components to form a magic system: source of mysterious power, practitioner(s), and one or more vehicles (such as a wand, potion, rune, spell, etc.) to access, store, and wield that power.

With this in mind, here’s twenty basic questions to help you worldbuild and troubleshoot different areas. Please keep in mind your answers are to help you brainstorm the components of a magical system and will spawn other worldbuilding elements. Ultimately, what the reader interprets about magic in your story isn’t linked to your notes, it’s connected to your characters. Before you can figure out how your characters view and treat magic, though, it’s helpful to understand what it means to you.

1) What is the source of your world’s power? Is it unlimited or finite?
2) What effects does your power have on your world?
3) Who has access to that power?
4) Who has the ability to use that power?
5) Can that power be stored? If so, how long does it last?
6) Is your magical source perishable or no?
7) If magic can be stored, how are those objects distributed?
8) Are there any side effects or chance of failure?
9) How is magic taught?
10) How does society view magic? Its practitioners?
11) Is there more than one source of power?
12) Is there more than one way to access that power?
13) What “in universe” nomenclature will you use to describe your practitioners?
14) Is gender a factor? Why or why not?
15) Must a practitioner be literate to perform magic?
16) Is there a moral attribute (good versus evil) to that power?
17) How does faith and religion intersect with its use? Study?
18) Does your world have scientific disciplines? If so, how are they impacted by the presence of magic?
19) Is disability a factor for your practitioners? If so, why?
20) Does class affect the use and distribution of magic? If so, how? Why?

Hope you have fun with this exercise. Until next Monday, my lovelies. Have a magical week!

Read in browser »

[New Release] Dark Eras 2

By Monica Valentinelli on May 18, 2020 11:55 am

Rebellions swell and vampires feed. Casualties of war draw Reapers to blood-soaked battlefields. Gilded ages benefit mortals and monsters alike.

How? Why? What role do the monsters play with us —- and each other?

Dark Eras 2 explores 13 new eras scattered throughout the history of the Chronicles of Darkness. This supplement was developed by Monica Valentinelli, Matthew Dawkins, and Meghan Fitgerald. Each chapter features two to three game lines which include Vampire: The Requiem, Mage: The Awakening, Hunter: The Vigil, Changeling: The Lost, and more!

The rules in Dark Eras 2 are compatible with second edition Chronicles of Darkness. Each terrifying time period and location is examined through the supernatural creatures that dwell there. Inside, you’ll find historically-inspired settings, story hooks, character-creation tips, gameplay advice, new Tilts, Conditions, and era-appropriate rules–and more!

Unlock the past. Find out what hides in the shadows. Dark Eras 2 is available now!

Read in browser »

Recent Articles:

My Jan-Apr 2020 Progress Report
[New Release] WisCon Chronicles Boundaries & Bridges + Giveaway
[New Release] Death is Not the End anthology for Geist: The Sin-Eaters 2nd Edition
Ahoy Mateys! Sea of Legends is Now on Kickstarter
5 Cooking-at-Home Shortcuts