Halloween Special: Survey Says...

The results are in. For the past week I've been soliciting participation in a short online poll. I invited friends and family to participate, but 95% of those who responded were strangers from Role Play Media Network, The Forge, The Tangled Web, The Magical Gnome, Steamchan, and 4chan. Some have even emailed me to find out how they can get involved.

The responses were generally positive:

Very Interested	5%
Interested	75%
Less Interested	15%
Disinterested	0%
Can't Tell	5%

These results are, of course, skewed - if someone was disinterested, they probably didn't take the poll. Still, nobody posted any fakespam or hateful responses, so +Faith in Humanity Points. Let's just put a big disclaimer on this whole project: I AM NOT A STATISTICIAN. The sample wasn't huge, even with a bit of spamming on my part, the poll wasn't very well publicized, we have no way of knowing how many people saw the link but didn't click, the whole thing was short, vague, and unscientific, so we can't say that these responses are representative of my entire target market demographic. This is just a ballpark test of the waters, mostly just to help me make a couple of very general decisions.

On what I consider major selling points and important features, the average score out of 5:

All Characters are Mortal Humans	3.67
Nations have Widely Divergant Technology Levels	3.86
No Nation in the Setting is Designated 'Good' or 'Evil'	4.27
Ethnologically Detailed Cultures	4.34
Magic is Subtle and Rare	3.86
Attributes are a Style of Play - No Dump Stat	4.29

As expected, my game's main strength is the setting, and I need to leverage that. I may want to downplay the low-fantasy aspect of it - it is key to the setting but not a 'selling point.' Part of it is that people play RPGs as a form of escapism, the real world is boring so they want to play an elf. Part of it is that I was deliberately rather vague. I didn't put, "Dude, these guys are so crazy awesome: they do ritual combat dual-wielding serrated hatchets. It doesn't matter that there are no elves," as a selling point, either.

On whether to include the original recipe four nations or the expanded eight nations in the core book, and whether to give short or full descriptions:

Eight Full	31%
Eight Short	35%
Four Full	32%
Four Short	2%

The fan base is pretty divided on this one. I think we can actually take 'Eight Short' and 'Four Full' together to mean, 'I want enough detail to have a sense of the world, but a manageable amount of information.' What I'll probably end up doing is do Eight Short in the front of the book to get everyone up to speed quickly, then give the Eight Full either in an appendix or in a supplement. I do not intend to write a chain of splatbooks, but even if the Eight Full are in the back of the core book, there is still plenty of world to develop in an atlas.

On a title:

Stone, Steel, and Steam	31%
New Worlds	21%
Dominions	13%
Colony Wars	10%
Agents of Change	10%
The Great Game	4%
Other	13%

This, I think, settles it. I was already leaning away from Colony Wars because it misses the point, The Great Game because it sounds vain and is historical, and Dominions because I think it might already be taken. Agents of Change, though, was one of my favorites. Going with SSS, I have to go with eight nations, because the only Stone Age civilization is in the second set.

On demographics:

under 18	10%
18-25	52%
26-40	29%
over 40	9%

No surprises here. Responses also showed participation in almost all types of games in almost equal numbers, actually a bit low on the console gamers.