As you might expect, I spent the week preparing for and enacting the CWP launch I discussed in the last newsletter. Let’s see how that’s going, then.
A weird publishing approach
By Saturday I’d pretty much finished with writing and proofing the CWPs as much as I was going to, so it was time to mail them to the backers. The concept in my “trading game” distribution model is that everybody gets a randomly assigned pack of CWPs (the size depending on their backer tier), which means that every email had to be somewhat custom. Took a few hours of furious email management to get all the ~130 backers taken care of over the Saturday night. If there were just say 50% more people on the list, it’d have made more sense to configure some kind of automaton to deal with it.
After getting things rolling, I wrote up an update at IndieGoGo about the CWPs and the trading game; perhaps read that one if you haven’t, I not only discuss my random distribution scheme, but also the conceit of the trading game, and the prize. Because it seemed like a fun thing to do, I promised to reward the Master Trader who manages to collect all 20 CWP issues with the privilege of picking a bonus CWP that I’ll write at some point over the winter.
It’s now been about 24 hours since the initial CWP publication, and the response has been fairly positive! I suppose people haven’t really gotten to read the material yet, but we had a fun time with the most eager trading game participants at the Discord server, setting up a trading board and seeing if and who would manage to identify and collect all the CWPs that I’d sent out into the world last night.
Some people certainly were more lukewarm on the trading concept; it is, at its base, an excessive stylistic conceit. I do not benefit personally from making it difficult for people to get their hands on the CWP material, and neither does the individual audience member who is forced to find other people with different CWP issues and trade for them if they want to have them. It is on some level irrational for me to give one item to one person and a different item to another person, and then tell them that they’re free to copy those for each other; why not just give both items to both people to begin with…
But then again, I’m happy to report that others seem to like the fanciful premise, too. Not only is there strategy in trying to be the quickest to become a Master Trader, but it’s also amusing to try to match up different trade needs, and generally just get to know the other participants alongside the low-stakes trading. Discord makes both the public trade calls and private negotiations easy, and we found that it’s simple to send the CWP files themselves to other people over Discord, so the practical threshold to trading was low for anybody who found their way to the server to begin with.
The initial hustle and the dash trades evened up the collections, with several people who started with just one CWP issue quickly climbing the ranks to the region of ~10 issues. The most active traders found each other and traded themselves to around 18 issues, but after that it became harder: for most of the day it seemed like nobody among the people attracted to the Discord server had issue #36, and #38 was rare as well. We would have to wait for a few days, perhaps look for more trading partners outside the server to find the coveted issues.
With the trading settling down over the day, we’ve been figuring out how the social and technical rules of the CWP trading game go. My favourites are the participants who’ve figured out that they don’t need to trade just CWPs: there’s now a selection of other hobby ‘zines and adventures and such that you can get in exchange for missing issues from various people.
In the evening, however, the dam broke when first one and then a second relative latecomer declared that their initial allotments happened to include issue #36. I think the trading can’t have been very difficult for these lucky ones, as all the active traders were eager to add the last remaining issue in their collections!
When the traders broke for the night I think we had managed to mint three Master Traders, holding the entire CWP set. I suppose tomorrow will reveal more about what kinds of terms the MTs will accept from others seeking to complete their collections. I’m expecting that we’ll see several Master Traders more, and perhaps further new traders entering the field as the weekend winds up and a new week begins to develop.
Joining in the game
I’ve heard from reliable sources that these Coup Workbook Partials are a fun read, of interest to old school gamers. While I’m not selling them at this time, I think it’s fairly easy to barter for them with the Traders and Master Traders at the Discord server. Maybe bring something you’ve created yourself to offer in trade.
The trading game (in the formal sense of inducting Master Traders and distributing prizes) is also still ongoing, for all that we’ve already found some doughty masters of capitalism. I expect to write some kind of official closure declaration, with a list of the winners, at some point next week. In a day or two, we’ll see. And of course the trading would logically speaking have to keep going after that, too, to allow the CWP distribution to continue.
The nefarious Master Trader scheme
So here’s how you calculate your Trader Title (usable as a character title for new characters in the Coup campaign, of course) on the basis of how many CWPs you possess. Very important and official information that we figured out earlier.
| # of CWPs | Title/Kit |
|---|---|
| 10–17 | Mushy Trader |
| 18 | Muster Trader — the character starts play with an extra spear, a leather cap and a shield. |
| 19 | Mister/Missus Trader — the character starts with +1d6 GP. |
| 20 | Master Trader — the character starts play with two random CWP issues on hand. |
| ??? | Mystery Trader |
Beyond the fancy title, the Master Traders get ranked in order they finish the trading game, which will be useful information for me later when determining how to weight their votes in further CWP developments. It’s Internet 2.0 social participation gameplay all the way down, boys and girls. I’ll never need to decide myself what I’m going to do if I just keep polling the audiences.
State of the Productive Facilities
The CWP project’s done with for the year! The plan is to get back to writing Muster, hopefully by mid-week I’ll be immersed in that.
And… I guess that’s all for this week! I’m too busy enjoying myself to put too much effort into the newsletter. Let’s get back to it next week, perhaps I’ll be back in the doldrums then.