November 20, 2009

TRPG3 = TSoG

Telepath RPG Chapter 3 is now Telepath RPG: Servants of God. Some of you may have noticed me quietly changing the name here and there over the past week or two. Hit the jump to read my reasons.

Telepath RPG: Servants of God

Perhaps the most important reason for the change is that I want TSoG to stand on its own. I grow increasingly embarrassed with Telepath RPG Chapter 1 as time goes by, and I don’t want people new to the series to feel obliged to play it before trying out the much, much, much better games that follow it.

On a related note, the “Chapter” designation leads to the expectation that the storyline is necessarily a continuation of the earlier chapters. TSoG will be linked to the earlier chapters in some ways–but in most ways, it won’t. I’d rather that the narrative threads linking TSoG to the earlier games remain a pleasant discovery for old fans, not an inducement for people to put off playing TSoG until they’ve played its inferior predecessors.

Calling the latest game “Chapter 3” just invites people new to the series to feel like they’re missing something by coming in in the middle of the story. The thought that new players will say, “Oh, I have to play the first two chapters so I’m not missing vital plot and character development,” then simply give up when they realize that the first chapter is terrible, keeps me awake at night. I want people to judge the series based on its best entry–not on TRPG1, the first game I ever made in Flash. (Even TRPG2, which I feel has held up rather well, feels a little half-baked by comparison to TSoG.)

There is one last reason why I’ve renamed the game to Telepath RPG: Servants of God: it suits the central theme of the game, and it’s way more attention-grabbing than Telepath RPG: Chapter 3, or even Telepath RPG Chapter 3: Servants of God. Brevity is the soul of wit–it’s also key to having a catchy title.