Blurb submission guidelines.

Contents

1. Introduction
2. Blurb Content
3. Ratings
4. Names
5. Honesty and Accuracy in Blurbs
6. Administrative details

Introduction

Writing a blurb for a con game is often your sole form of advertising. You need to be able to catch people's eye and get across what your game is about - your ideas, genre and approach to the particular story involved. Your blurb also needs to let 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 site.

How to get it to us?

Electronic submission

The easiest way to get a blurb to Arcanacon is to get it to us electronically. Ideally, you can login to AON and use the online blurb submission. We would really prefer that writers use AON for setting up games - it means that your game is already into the system, checks are done on the content to make sure everything we need is there, and it means that you're already in the system for administering your game. If that doesn't work for you for some reason, you can email us directly at orgs@arcanacon.org, but please try AON first.

Before you do either of those, however, you should probably read the information on electronic blurbs.

Ratings

Most local roleplaying conventions 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 or five ratings at the end of each blurb - Adult Content, Characterisation, Genre Knowledge, Rules Knowledge, and Seriousness. For some events, Rules Knowledge or Genre Knowledge is irrelevant, but all other non-special events should have information for the other ratings.

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 if it is still clear what you mean.

Blurbs will not be accepted into Arcanacon without an Adult Content. This is to help make sure than no one ends up in a game that they weren't expecting - no one wants to find themselves in something with what are commonly referred to as "Adult Concepts" when they were expecting a G-rated romp.

Here follows a rough guide to what the ratings mean from the point of view of the Convention.

Seriousness

Seriousness can be a measure of both the content of the game, and how seriously you would like your players to take the game.

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 it's 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

Characterisation

The Characterisation rating is a good way of letting players know the balance of plot and characterisation needed to have fun playing your game.

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 definitely 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.

Rules Knowledge

Some games are systemless, and therefore have no Rules knowledge at all. For some games, a rough grasp of how conflict is resolved in the chosen system can speed things along, and not get the game bogged down in explaining dice rolls. In any case, having a Rules Knowledge rating is a good way of telling your players how intensively you'll be using the system the game is written for.

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 definite disadvantage.
5	The rules of the game are essential to your story.

Adult Content

Adult content is in some ways the hardest rating to set for your game, as what constitutes "appropriate" varies from writer to writer, and from player to player. The best we can suggest is that you look at examples:

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.

Please note that the Adult Content rating also should apply to the behaviour of the GMs in the session - if you publicise your game as G rated, then you need to be able to make sure that your speech and behaviour is also G rated.

Names

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:

Over years of collecting feedback on the blurbs and games for Arcanacon, it has become clear that many attendees are leery of blurbs which don't have the actual name of the writer included, especially in the current climate of minimalist printed material. For potential attendees who only have the printed material to go by, they often only know the Event name, the System and the Writer, and so knowing who actually is running or writing the event is important to them.

Conversely, one of the three things that inclines someone toward entering an event is the writer/organiser - people remember from year to year who wrote an event and go back to play their games again if they had a good time.

Honesty and Accuracy in Blurbs

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 it's 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.

And finally....

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

1. provided a name for your game?
2. given a system (if applicable)?
3. listed the number of players? (min and max)
4. listed the number of sessions?
5. put your name on the blurb?
6. told the organisers when you can and can't run your game?
   Arcanacon 2010 runs sessions A,B,C and D on Saturday; E,F,G and H on Sunday; I,J,K,L on Monday; and finally M,N and O on Monday. The session times are 9am, 1pm, 4pm and 8pm each day. Monday is not a public holiday, but Tuesday is!
7. told the organisers about any special room allocation needs you have?
8. made it clear whether your game is a tabletop, freeform, living, miniture or special event?
9. told the organisers about your trophy requirements (including if you don't want any )
10. made it clear what genre your game should be grouped as?
11. given ratings for the 4 categories (Adult content, Seriousness, Rules Knowledge/Genre knowledge and Characterisation)?
12. (opt.) dice or no dice?
13. (opt.) provided any other ratings (angst, pretension, cheese , etc)
14. (opt.) given contact information and a website?
15. (opt.) mentioned costuming or other requirements for attendees?