Lecturing customers in an RPG?

 WTH

A couple of days ago I say the cover image for "Coyote & Crow" on the promoted row of RPGs at DriveThruRPG. That small image peeked my interest, it was cartoony and evocative so I clicked through to read more. Well done marketing department!

The game's listing is full of more evocative and inspiring art and when you read over the description it sounds really imaginative. The America's were never colonised, historic world wide disasters, new technologies that add a sheen of sci fi. I read all that and got more excited. so I clicked the preview.

All my excitement died as I read that sample from the game. 

Was it the rules that peeved me? No. 

Was it the layout? No. 

Was it the internal art? No.

It was the hectoring, the lecturing, the talking down, the horrific, ridiculous, speechifying right there in the introduction. 

"If you do not have heritage native to the America's..."

That was the line that started the paragraph that destroyed my interest in the game. It goes on to tell me what I can and can't do in the game... my game, at my table, in my house, with my friends.

Note please, it's not a request, not some friendly guidance, but instructions. This game is so desperate to tell me, the client, the purchaser, how to behave and how to act that they put this rude and impudent instructional right there at the front.

So what's the game actually like, how does it play? Damned if I know, I haven't bought it. I wont buy it now. It seems to be a lecturing document rather than a fun time. Notice I say "seems", I say that because I'm fully aware this is all first-impressions, and the reality of the game may be different, but the marketing people fecked up here. Create a good first impression is a rule of society and marketing, and they seem to have forgotten that.