This post is brought to you by my new TTRPG Industry PR Playbook, now available in the store.
A great pitch is a powerful thing and when it comes to TTRPG products it can mean the difference between a sale and no sale. In my TTRPG Industry PR Playbook I go into detail about crafting an effective pitch and store description for your game. Here are some of the top takeaways:
Start with your core ingredients
Alright, it might seem obvious but you yourself need to know your product. Drilling down to its core is where you'll strike elevator pitch oil (actually I hate that metaphor, but let's go with it). Ask yourself these questions:
What is my game about?
What's its genre/vibe?
Who are the players and what do they do?
It can be tempting to overwrite this, but that will just serve to confuse things. Pare everything back to its simplest form. Let's take an example from my game The Terror Beneath:
What is my game about? Investigating supernatural terrors in 1920s London and Wales
What's its genre/vibe? Weird folk horror with some science fiction elements
Who are the players and what do they do? Investigators tracking down and eliminating pagan horrors.
Assemble your pitch
Now you have your main ingredients, you can use this template to form you elevator pitch:
[Name of Game] is a [genre/vibe] game where players are [player identity] who are [core activity].
For The Terror Beneath, this would be: The Terror Beneath is a weird folk horror game where players are 1920s investigators battling against pagan horrors in London and Wales.
Take a reality check
Now ask yourself:
Is the pitch 30 words or less?
If someone reads the sentences, do they instantly know what the game is about?
Are the words you use universally understandable, not leaning on proprietary lore or characters? Basically anything other people wouldn't understand.
If you answer "no" to any of those, relook at your pitch and refine it.
Creating an effective elevator pitch will make the rest of your marketing a whole lot easier. When you write your product description you will know which elements to focus on. When you create social posts, you will understand what areas are going to help hook people in. While it seems like a simple task, pitching your TTRPG is a concise way is something people tend to struggle with. Also it really helps to have a pithy line when you're selling at cons!
If you want to learn much more about marketing your TTRPG product, check out my TTRPG Industry PR Playbook.