Reynard said:
I'm surprised. I hang out at my local gaming store quite frequently and get to meet a lot of customers. When it come to scifi RPGs many know about Traveller (and the store does have a shelf with all the hard copy books) and quite a few have played. I don't hear the same about most other scifi RPGs in the store which are more often specific genre or based on movie and tv shows. In terms of popularity and reputation in my 30+ years of gaming, the two big names were always D&D for fantasy and Traveller for science fiction. This now includes both splitting off over time to other settings as they evolved.
Sounds like a great place. That's never been my experience at all over my 30+ years of gaming and I'm doing everything I can to change it. We attend several conventions all over the southeast US (and we're expanding as fast as we can!) every year promoting our products and, more often than not, we are introducing Traveller to them. In general, when I mention we're doing Traveller at a convention/game store, I get one of the following responses from the con goers/store denizens (listed in order of commonality):
1> What's that?
2> Oh yeah! I know that game. My dad/granddad/older friend used to play that. You die in character generation. That was stupid!
3> I played that once. It was boring as hell. We all sat around a table while the GM and the player playing the captain sat there doing spreadsheets for selling stuff. No thanks!
4> Isn't that the thing that had the Kickstarter where everyone was excited and all they got was a giant book of charts? I remember that.
5> Seriously? People still play that? They still publish that?
6> I bought a rulebook for that a few years ago. I went online and asked some questions in a forum and got shouted down by a bunch of old guys saying I was doing it wrong. Decided I'd rather play Pathfinder/Star Wars/etc. or go back to D&D.
7> AWESOME! Man, I haven't played that in twenty years. When do you start running it?
We usually introduce them to the game. They most often leave interested in playing it again. It is very rare to find people who automatically know the game well. When you do find someone who knows the game well, it's like running into an old friend despite having never met the person in your life.
Reynard said:
As with so many products today , outfits are relying more on internet exposure often exclusively and, unless you somehow know about possible products or do specific product searches or are savvy to a particular product such as Traveller and its location around the net, you may never know. I know about this website so it makes it easier for me to find those more elusive web only materials. I probably still have missed a lot.
Unfortunately, this is quite true. We do use the internet extensively in our promotion of the products and that's because that is the most successful way of reaching people. You still don't reach everyone but I suspect that's the nature of the beast.
Reynard said:
To be fair to Mongoose, they should not be responsible to promote or advertise Mongoose related third party products especially how often they come and go but I might suggest giving specific forum space pointing to 'official' companies that do have products. Still, those outfits need to also find other avenues to announce and market such Traveller based items.
Frankly, we've been around for just short of five years and we're not going anywhere. We're not just some "fly by night" organization here. We're in this for the long haul.
<This paragraph snipped and edited by me. Probably said too much. LOL>
All of that being said, I agree with you. Mongoose has no responsibility to us to promote or advertise our products. I do not expect them to do so. However, I do think it would be wise of them to do so. After all, to use one of our products, you must first buy one of their rulebooks and that often leads to buying not only more of our books but more of theirs.
We're out here pounding the ground promoting the game and, while they are not obligated to mention us in return, I think it would be a nice show of faith.
