Going out and promoting

The last few weeks have been an interesting, and important, learning experience for me.

My intention has been to go to various events and, potentially with other GMs, show people how to play the game(s). Run a game for them. Right now, Battle Gnomes is the star of Branum Games until the Kickstarter goes through. Which, by the way, has been postponed so that I can do more marketing. Also, there are other plans of promoting I’m also engaged in, but that one has been a big one recently.

It’s also been awful being a GM. Just awful. I love meeting new people and chatting with them, but I happen to not be confident as a GM. I don’t feel like I explain my game as great when staring at 5 new faces. For years in gaming I organized the people running games, their locations, their benefits, and so on. When I played games, I let people who enjoy running games, run them. I always knew some people have a knack for it but did not know that it would be SO challenging for me. Talking about my own game too, I get shy and nervous. I thought I would be great at it since I can socialize pretty well but it’s not the same thing and nerves get involved when it’s something that matters so much.

So now I’ve decided to recruit GMs from all areas to do this thing for me. To go to shows an introduce people to the games. I’ll also get my games in convention game libraries. As the game designer, I’ve been wearing a lot of hats but I have to recognize when something just doesn’t come easy to me, or when I should pass it off to someone more qualified. I have fun ideas for this GM plan. I can provide swag of course, and games. I want to create a “team” of people. I have 5 other people as GMs over at Phoenix Comicon, and after that event I can look into  this option more heavily. I’m excited about fleshing out the details of having such a team of people. I think people will want 1.) swag 2.) games and most especially 3.) to be with a promising company from the ground up as it grows.

So lately I’ve been trying local, grassroots promotion and running games but have learned I should leave the running of games to those who are good at it. I still need to delegate better rather than doing things myself I’m not as good at. That’s where things are at the moment.