Fred Hicks, the guy behind the popular Spirit of the Century RPG (my tag for STOC), posted some advice on how he promotes his games.
Usual stuff about PDFs sales, getting reviews done, etc. But what I found interesting is his how he deals with the online public. I know he’s active in *many* online communities.
Your Worst Defense is a The One They Notice
This principle also means that you must NEVER be defensive. If you feel any negative emotions at all welling up in you when you start to post about your game, STOP IMMEDIATELY AND WALK AWAY. If you don’t, what you’re about to do in the next few minutes will diminish you in the eyes of the people you want believing that your words are worth hearing. I’ll say it again: thank your harshest critics, pay them respect even if they pay you none, and then disengage, untarnished by getting “into it” with them on that same level
Crap. 
The one thing I love about online discussions is that they can be intense and arguments can often be enlightening (well at least for me). I used to post regularly in a briefly-popular Irish gaming forum with nearly the sole purpose of generating discussion, via argument. It worked, I learned a lot and it has helped form many of my thoughts on gaming but in the process I probably made more than a few “enemies” too. From what Fred suggests, I’d have to have two online personas: the one that is willing to “discuss”, the other that is willing to… well… be nice and avoid arguments (thedeadone.net versus theniceone.net….)
The other thing I realised when I read his post is… I do not have enough time in this world. I’m finding it hard enough to get time to just write, let alone roleplay. But to spend enough time to promote a game as well as Fred suggests on top of that? From his previous blog posts, he wasn’t employed for quite a while until he took a position with indiepressrevolutions… I’m afraid I can’t do that now, not with Tristan’s arrival! Tristan = zero time.
I always toyed with the idea of getting a game out there and promoting it myself, so at least now I can put that idea to bed. I’ll go the other route I think. Reboot continues now with Now Playing. Right now I don’t know what it’ll end up looking like (or possible where), but hopefully some thing good. 
[…] think Fred Hicks was right when he talked about prompting RPGs and always being positive. A single negative can lose you a customer and then the power of the internet is that if you hit […]