#16: Indie is a Marketing Term
‘Indie game’ is actually just short for ‘Indiana Jones game’.
You know it’s true.
I. Indie is a Marketing Term
What is the purpose of a label like ‘Science Fiction’? If you ask a dozen people for what they mean when they use the word, you’ll get thirteen different answers. If they’re academics, you’ll get two dozen. Trying to define what about ‘science fiction’ makes it ‘science fiction’ and not say ‘magical realism’ or ‘space opera’ is a fun but essentially futile task. I’m a nerd. I like definitions. But nobody’s going to ‘solve the problem’ of ‘what science fiction really is’ unless they can make everybody in the world use the label in the same way that they do. So why do we use genre labels? Because it works to sell stuff.
Let me explain. I’m not saying the words were invented to sell stuff. I’m saying that they’re primarily used as tools to help sellers reach buyers. Or vice versa, if you want to pretend that you’re in control of what you buy. (Is that cynical?) ‘Science fiction’ isn’t a property of a book or movie. It’s a section of a bookstore or a category in a netflix.
It’s the same for tabletop games. OSR isn’t a kind of game. Broadly, the OSR has two strands: the nostalgic and the modders. The nostalgic think that OD&D is amazing. The modders are DIY hackers that use D&D as a lingua franca. The two groups have some overlap but not as much as you’d think. The term OSR was popularized by people who wanted to create a community so they could sell books to that community. This was a conscious process, helped greatly by a turf war started with the “storygamers”*.
The same goes for ‘indie’. If you try to use indie to mean ‘creator owned’ (which is how it’s used in comic books, I believe), you’d have to know what legal rights people retain when they publish their games with Magpie or Evil Hat or Pelgrane. It would also then include say 3rd Party D&D products but they’re not who I mean when I say indie. If you want to use indie as they use it in music, then either you mean that (a) it isn’t from the big publishers or (b) whatever indie rock means. It’s sort of the same for film - independent films are just those that aren’t funded by a major studio as far as I can tell.
So what do people mean when they say ‘indie’? I have no idea. I think the most honest definition is “not D&D or Vampire”. But why do people then describe themselves as indie? Because it’s a marketing term. It’s a term that a broad community of gamers and developers use to identify themselves to each other.
That’s about it.
But I still call this the Indie RPG Newsletter so I must have some sense of what I mean, right? Well, definitions are for losers (just kidding, I love some definitions but only with my friends) but I do have an answer actually. When I say indie, I mean that it’s a self-published storygame. But I’m not too fussed about the self-published or the storygame part. Hope that’s cleared everything up!
* What’s a storygame? A game that is not a trad or OSR game. What’s a trad game? A game that’s like D&D but with different mechanics. How bad an answer is that? I’m so proud of it.
II. Listen of the Week
This week, I’ve been thoroughly enjoying Grant Howitt and Chris Taylor go through their game, Heart: The City Beneath, and talk about how each section came about. Like a Director’ Commentary but honest - sometimes, too honest! Despite being a really polished book, the design process remains messy as hell. That’s a real relief to hear! Here’s the first episode of the series. If you want to subscribe, you’ll have to search for Rowan Rook and Decard because that’s what the podcast is called for some reason!
III. Links of the Week
GMTK on Youtube has a video on the puzzle box dungeons of Zelda. He makes a lovely point about how you need to visualize how the entire dungeons works - holding it in your head - to figure it out. And I love that little nugget of insight!
There’s a kickstarter going that is raising money to make more accessible versions of existing tabletop RPGs.
Two simple “collect clues and solve the mystery” moves for Hearts of Wulin but could just work for any PbtA game. Definitely owes something to Brindlewood Bay.
9th Level Games have put a call out for small games to include in their Free RPG Day anthology. I think it’s going to be a physical product and they will pay you a small amount for the game. The theme is ‘masks’.
How to play Forbidden Lands GM-less using emulators and elbow grease.
A very long, very interesting deep dive into colour (like red, blue, green, etc) and how you can use them to reinforce theme and symbolism in your games.
Indie Game Reading Club’s second part of the Storytelling Mindset series goes into coming up with characters with an eye on transformation.
Another Fate bot for Discord but this one has visual representations of the Fate dice.
Kieron Gillen of Wicked+Divine fame runs his game DIE based on his comic DIE for other famous comics people. It’s about old people going into a game world that they created as young people. It’s weird.
Also this tweet:
IV. Small Ads
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Hello, dear readers. This newsletter is written by me, Thomas Manuel. I’m half-man, half-beast, half-journalist, half-game designer.
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