Writing a blurb for a con game is often your sole form of advertising. In a very small space, and with limited visual scope, you need to be able to catch people's eye, get across what your game is about - its story, genre and approach to the particular story involved. It also lets potential players know all the administrative bits about your game.
There are as many approaches to writing blurbs as there are styles of running and writing games, and they all have some good points and some flaws. This document doesn't attempt to instruct you on what to put in your blurb but is more concerned with covering the administration requirements that Arcanacon has for putting your blurb in our booklet, as well as briefly touching on how you can minimise some of the potential pitfalls that new (and old!) blurb writers fall into when writing blurbs for a Convention booklet.
First of all, you need to sure you can get your blurb to us at all.
If you're sending them through the post, then you might want to take
care that any images aren't bent or folded. Blurbs should be mailed to
Most cons in Victoria currently have a form of rating system for their blurbs. These ratings can be a bit arbitrary because one person's M is another's R, but at least they provide a basis for people looking at the booklet or browsing the site to see what the writer thinks that their game might be like.
Arcanacon has four ratings at the end of each blurb - Seriousness, Adult Content, Rules Knowledge and Characterisation. Some writers add their own rating as well - such as Genre Knowledge - and these extra ratings are also welcome. Blurbs are rated between 1 and 5, except for Adult Content which typically uses a movie-like rating for content. Sometimes ratings are expressed in a more qualitative way, but you should only do this is it is still clear what you mean.
Here follows a rough guide to what the ratings mean from the point of view of the Convention.
| 0 | You're expecting the players to gibber like loons and giggle constantly. |
| 1 | Not really serious. You wouldn't expect the players to sit there and make monkey noises at each other (unless that's part of the game), but its meant to be a fun game. |
| 2 | Your game is not a giggle fest, but you're running it for entertainment. |
| 3 | Its meant to be fun, but you've got a serious topic in the game, or you would like your characters played straight (as opposed to the players being totally serious) |
| 4 | This is serious, dammit. The topic or plot of your game is serious, and you'd like the players to treat it so. |
| 5 | Your game has nothing lighthearted in it, from beginning to end |
| 0 | You could play this drunk or dead. |
| 1 | Characterisation is not essential to play |
| 2 | Without playing the characters to a reasonable degree, the players will definately be missing something from this game. |
| 3 | Unless the players definately get enthused about playing the characters, this game isn't necessarily going to work very well |
| 4 | Unless the players step into the characters straight away, you're going to have real problems running the scenario |
| 5 | The game is solely about being these characters. |
| 0 | You aren't using a system. |
| 1 | You're using a system, but only just, or you are using a system but you don't care if the players don't know it. |
| 2 | An approximate understanding of the rules would be useful. |
| 3 | A good grounding in the rules of the game will add to the enjoyment of playing your scenario. |
| 4 | Without knowing the rules of the system you've chosen, players will be at a definately disadvantage. |
| 5 | The rules of the game are essential to your story. |
| G | Teletubbies. Meet me in St Louis. This Island Earth |
| PG | Princess Bride. Ghostbusters. Psycho |
| M | Angela's Ashes. Matrix. Grosse Pointe Blank |
| MA | Blade. The Patriot. Being John Malkovich |
| R | Artemesia. Clockwork Orange. Erotic Ghost Story |
| X | Dracula Sucks. What's the Lesbian Doing in My Pirate Movie?. Because I Can. |
There has long been an ongoing debate amongst con organisers and attendees about the use of names, pseudonyms and production houses. Arcanacon would like writers to provide their names somewhere in their blurbs, but we don't object to using production houses and pseudonyms as well.
When using a production house, we recommend phrasing things as follows:
Pseudonyms can be handled in a similar way:
Arcanacon would like to recommend to writers that they are as honest as possible about the type of content of their game as they can be without giving away parts of their prospective stories. Players enter your game almost solely based on the blurb, and a story called, (as an example) Petting Zoo, with only quotes as the body of the blurb, could be easily misinterpreted as being an entirely different sort of story from the one you were intending to run. The blurb ratings assist greatly with helping players sort out the games they want to play, but sometimes misunderstandings happen.
We think that most of our writers and attendees are mature enough to politely excuse themselves from a game if it is causing them some distress, but there can be situations where a player can't leave, or stopping the game can be a stressful situation, so its better to be safe than sorry.
Just as a sanity check, grab a couple of people who don't know what your game is about and ask them to read your blurb, and let you know what sort of impressions they get from the blurb. You could think of it as playtesting your blurb, in the same way as you would playtest your actual game.
There are just a few details that we always need and that we always forget to ask for, and you always forget to give us, so here's a brief list of administrative details you should check you've included with your blurb:
Have you