community promotion ad to run on worldbuilding.SE

Question

Many of us enjoy the work of our friends over at worldbuilding.SE, and their ad here has been well-received. I wonder if we'd like to reciprocate with an rpg.SE ad to run in their community promotion? (Monica Cellio has invited us to do so.)

The thought I had was something that blends imagery native to each stack, and referencing some sort of transition from building a world to playing in it.

Here's Century Gothic font, re-drawn icosahedron. Pending the font choice, I think this is the final effort I'll be putting into it. Thanks for all the feedback so far, everyone.

The pending suggestion was to look at the fonts, as the original was a bit... vanilla. Three possibilities:

These are Century Gothic (UL), Trebuchet (UR), and Sitka Heading (LL). Whichever we settle on I'll tidy up the centering; leave a comment below if you've a preference.

(Note these still have the chunky/aliased icosahedron. Just look at the fonts.)

Feedback requested on at least these fronts:

• should we put a community ad over there?
• different transitioning image(s)? Background for them? (Starry background->our site's grid-background?)
• other taglines/phrases?
• better artists: create better image ideas?
• which font?

---

Old versions, critiqued below First thought:

this might be way to suggestive of CRPGs, and just lead to a lot of confusion.

So another idea:

third idea, but RPG's icosahedron was too faded:

converging... but there's a sky-artifact that obscures the incomplete planet and the rpg.se address is a little clunky. (Back in the first iteration I thought the simple font and full URL lent a nice console/terminal effect, but now they're just cruft.) On the right I've made the bottom line a little less clunky, and replaced the planet-image with a better original.

Answer 1

Yes, we should run an ad or ads

All the yesses.

Feedback on designs

I like the overall design! The top-left to bottom-right fade is just the right visual flow to both catch the eye and imply the message of build-then-game that we want to convey.

I like the background as-is. I do like the idea of an additional background transition, but it might make it too busy. And specifically, I think transitioning to a grid background would give the wrong impression: we associate that with play grids and grid paper used during play, but viewers are more likely to associate that with “building” and wonder why it's on the wrong side of the transition, confusing the visual message.

I like the art in general. Having different colours for different messages is a nice touch that will make them stand out as distinct, should we submit more than one and more than one get accepted.

Another reason to not worry about the art: perfect is the enemy of good enough. This art is plenty good enough, and it would be good to just get an ad or ads over there sooner rather than later. We're also not locked into these ads forever should we come up with something amazing farther down the road.

Taglines: Hmmm.

The taglines don't work for me though. They're good starts, but carry unintentional messages:

• build complete. start game? [y/n]

  I agree, this would often be misinterpreted to mean that we're about computer RPGs. We get that misunderstanding enough that we don't want to encourage it in any way. (I actually really like it otherwise: it's pithy and cute, so the unintentional message is all the more a pity.)

• if you build it, we will play it

  This implies something we don't offer: that they can find people here to pitch their worlds to / form a play group with. They might want to play with their world, and RPGs are a good avenue for that, but we should avoid implying that we're a whole site of people just waiting to play in the ad-clicker's world.

Alternative ideas that dodge these problems:

• Play with your world
• Game in your world
• Build a world, and then visit it
• Done building? Now game in it.
• Set your world in motion

I don't think any of these are brilliant! More ideas would be helpful.

Answer 2

As a enthusiastic lurker of both sites, a semi-regular contributor of worldbuilding.SE and the creator of the original ad I say:

Yes please!

There should definitely be an ad for rpg.SE on worldbuilding.SE and your idea is excellent.

Execution

Generally the design looks good, I have a few small points of critique though:

• The font is a tad bland, perhaps you could use a D&D related font like Vecna. (Though that one is only free for non-commercial use, you could ask opensource.SE for advice on this issue.)

• The night sky is slightly visible at some points (the top right mainly) and distracts me a bit.

• The bottom right side of the planet should probably fade to black, so it really only shows the die.

• rpg.stackexchange.com is a bit long, the relavant information is rpg and the fact that it's a stackexchange site, this could be conveyed much more succintly and then be printed larger. I'm partial to rpg.SE, but that's just a matter of preference I suppose.

Other than that, I think it's fantastic. set your world in motion really is a gorgeous phrase and very fitting. The idea of using the design of our own ad is brilliant, the way it's combined is very effective. and I think the contrast betweenthe simplicity of the new elements and the complexity of the planet really demands attention.