Am I correct in assuming that you are the creator of the "Wanderer " mock-up ?
Yes. And there is a story behind its creation:
Years ago I co-owned a game store. One day I started to wonder what effect shelf placement had on sales. I used to bundle thematically equivalent games together, ie, Nephilim and In Nomine next to WoD, Cyberpunk next to Shadowrun, etc. But I couldn't track whether the copy of Nephilim got sold because I had directed the interest of a WoD fan to it or if the buyer has been looking for it specifically.
I figured that I needed a product that made customers wonder and ask me, "hey, what's
that?". So I built two dummy boxes, one for the English language shelf, one for the German shelf.
The result was that
not one customer came to me with a remark like, "I never knew they did a fantasy version of Traveller," or a similar statement. Simply put,
no one discovered it, and I had placed it next to: Traveller, D&D, smaller fantasy games like Palladium and C&C, and the bargain bin, for two weeks each.
(The German dummy triggered the same reactions--that is, none--leading me to the conclusion that gamers browse game store shelves
very focused on game lines they know and expect.)
Years later, someone (Dr Rotwang!) explained the old Judges Guild Wilderlands campaign setting as "D&D's Spinward Marches", in
this thread on the RPGsite. That was when I remembered my mock-up. I quickly added a fake back cataloque, answer card, and map, and shot the picture as a visual answer to Dr Rotwang!
Shouldn't it be "Wande
rrer?
Right, I missed that...
