Comments on: The year so far for Diaspora

By: Fred Hicks

Fred Hicks — Tue, 05 Jan 2010 22:08:51 +0000

Brad, I forget if you’ve talked about this before, but I’d love to see you dig into the role that the microfiction played in the game, and how it came about. I think you guys hit exactly the right tone with it, the sort of thing that reminded me what was awesome and wondrous about hard SF — aside from the stuff you did with the system, I think it was one of the biggest factors for producing an “excited to see this in motion” reaction in me similar to Peregrin’s.

By: halfjack

halfjack — Tue, 05 Jan 2010 22:06:29 +0000

Thanks, Peregrin! I hope you have a great time playing it, and don’t forget about our dice promo because I still have lots of black fudge dice left — if you post a public actual play report and you live in North America, we’ll send you a set of Oort-cloud Black fudge dice!

By: Peregrin

Peregrin — Tue, 05 Jan 2010 21:53:27 +0000

Good to see the game is doing well! I received my copy a week or two before Christmas — an early present to myself. ;)

I really like what I’ve read so far, and I have to say, it’s one of the first games in a while to get me excited about putting together a scifi campaign. You guys did a bangup job and I’m looking forward to running a game for one of my groups.

By: Evil Hat Sales: 2009 Catch-Up

Evil Hat Sales: 2009 Catch-Up — Mon, 04 Jan 2010 13:25:08 +0000

[...] guys over at VSCA have posted about their Diaspora sales numbers. Celebrate this practice! I tend to believe that the industry is made healthier by disclosure. [...]

By: Fred Hicks

Fred Hicks — Sat, 02 Jan 2010 17:29:36 +0000

The pundit’s review of SOTC definitely coincided with a spike in sales, but we were still in the early launch-period where there were a lot of things happening that could cause spikes. But it was at least correlative if not provably causative. :)

By: halfjack

halfjack — Sat, 02 Jan 2010 06:52:53 +0000

Pretty much every Lulu coupon code has been worth a big bump in sales. It’s good for us because Lulu eats the whole discount — our revenue stays the same!

By: Anarchangel

Anarchangel — Sat, 02 Jan 2010 06:08:00 +0000

As one of those direct sales, it was being reminded of the Lulu holiday sale ending yesterday that prompted me!

By: halfjack

halfjack — Thu, 31 Dec 2009 23:07:34 +0000

Hey Max thanks for posting! I’m ecstatic to hear we’ve penetrated Italy!

By: Max Lambertini

Max Lambertini — Thu, 31 Dec 2009 22:25:45 +0000

One of the copies that made its way to Italy has arrived here because the fellow Italian gamer and FATE aficionado Renato Ramonda mentioned Ffred Hicks’s rave review in http://www.gentechegioca.it , an italian version of story-games.com. So, I downloaded the SRD, liked it so much that I made a PDF out of it and I ended up ordering the game at lulu.com . I also happened to have endorsed it in the same forum. As a former

* 2300AD player
* Jovian Chronicles player
* FUDGE hard-scifi player

I’m very happy to hear about your sales. Keep up the good job, the RPG world does need a good, hard-sf game (that leaves room for space opera twist, if you like it).

PS: I LOVE the mini games!

By: halfjack

halfjack — Thu, 31 Dec 2009 21:56:44 +0000

Well every conversation there is a kind of flameout. :D

I think your observations are largely correct. Diaspora (and, really, Fate in general) is actually pretty traditional game structure it just has a focus on simulating story instead of physics. Our table is not very far from the norm — we’re AD&D players thirty years later is all. We don’t play, say, Polaris a whole lot, but we have tried and tested a lot of divergent material and incorporated whatever worked in whatever we do. So I don’t have a “side” in the war. :D

And no, I didn’t send a copy to Pundit. As I noted, we’re following a pretty conservative marketing path.