Ok, here's something on my nerve lately: weak adventure blurbs. How the heck am I supposed to sell, weak scenario blurbs like this to potential players on my Meet-Ups or at coventions?

Amazon's entry for TGS: Product Description
The Gathering Storm is a complete campaign for Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay. The story centers around a series of bizarre events that bring the heroes face-to-face with dangerous enemies, moral dilemmas, and the raw fury of nature. or...From the Manufacturer - The Edge of Night is an adventure for Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay. Thrusting the players into a world of mystery and intrigue, it offers a rich setting, a complex cast of characters with plenty of secrets to hide and all the materials needed to immerse the players in the story.

compared to this:

Pathfinder campaign: Carrion Crown - From the whispering shadows of haunted Ustalav an ancient evil rises to grip the world in a new age of horror! Amid the mists of this land of dark superstition and dread secrets stand both those who would defy the return of evil and those who would seek its terrible favor. Can the heroes discern their allies from their enemies in time to save a tortured realm from a tyrant’s return? Pathfinder’s darkest and most frightening campaign ever sets the heroes against the agents of Golarion’s most notorious villain, the Whispering Tyrant, in a terrifying trek across a land of lurking horror and ancient mysteries.

jh

Good point.

Should email this to FFG customer service as a suggestion?

Are you suggesting the Pathfinder one is a good example of what you would want?

Coz for me it's just as vague as the others (it could apply to almost any adventure), but has a bit more hype. I mean, a blurb is a blurb; they're not really designed to inform.

And, after all with adventures, useful GM information is Players' spoilers.

monkeylite,

I guess what he's saying is that the blurb for Edge of Night is not at all tantalizing.

- Edge of Night is an adventure for WFRP --> Yeah, I got that from the fact that it's standing here on the shelf, next to all the other WFRP stuff, and it says 'adventure' on the front.

- a world of mystery and intrigue, with a rich setting --> Uhu, we 're looking at a Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay module, something with mystery and intrigue. So yeah, doing great.

- a complex cast of characters with plenty of secrets to hide --> You said that just in the previous sentence... mystery and intrigue, got it. So what's it about?

- contains all the materials needed to immerse players in the story --> Isn't that the whole point and idea of selling this module? To get the information & material to actually run it?


So you get no real information about the story, in a game that is about shared story-telling. That doesn't really help to build interest in this box.

Compared to the Patherfinder blurb, that you could imagine being read out loud by Don Lafontaine, Edge of Night sounds as if written with a random blurb-generator. Isn't a blurb meant to draw in people? How can you do this if you do not inform them (in whatever shape)?

Yes, I agree with all that. I'm just saying that what we are given as an example of how to do it properly is almost no better. And, I'm also saying that the reason adventure blurbs are likely to be poor in this regard is that nearly any useful info would be, to some players, spoilers.

You're right there. I guess you're damned if you do, and damned if you don't.

But when selling people on an adventure as a GM, you're gonna have to give something about the story away.
In case of EoN, at the bare minimum you might want to mention that it's played "in real time" like the show 24 for example (or RNat3F if they know it). Or mention the clear advantage in this case of having at least rudimentary social skills.

If it says campaign for WFRP on the box, as a player you know what you're getting yourself into if you decide to read up on it. People still go watch movies, even if they've seen trailers before, that spoiled the start & middle of the story for them.