Penny Arcade's case study in marketing magic.

The situation: You're Wizards of the Coast, publisher of the Dungeons & Dragons role-playing game. You're ready to launch the new Fourth Edition, the first full game update in eight years. You obviously want to promote this product launch in a big way.

So how do you:

A. Convince veteran D&D players that it's worth shelling out heavy cash to upgrade a game they already own. (The new rulebook set retails at $105.)

B. Win over people who've never played the game before.

C. Find a place where your limited marketing budget is likely to accomplish both A and B.

The answer ended up being part Web savvy, part faith and all awesome. So grab your  your horned helmet, and after the jump, we'll explore how this idea went down.

Early this year, Wizards of the Coast approached the Web comic Penny Arcade about running some banner ads for the 4th Edition. But the game developer also asked the comic's creators, writer Jerry "Tycho" Holkins and artist Mike "Gabe" Krahulik, to brainstorm some more-intriguing marketing ideas.

The result was deceptively simple: Tycho and Gabe sat down to play a game of D&D alongside Scott Kurtz, creator of another tremendously popular Web comic, PvP. The session was led by experienced Dungeon Masters from Wizards of the Coast.

But most importantly, the game was recorded and released to the public as a series of podcasts.

This might sound stiflingly dull, but you have to understand that the many, many fans of Penny Arcade would likely listen to five hours of Tycho and Gabe scrubbing bathroom fixtures. With good reason. The two are hilarious and play off each other as well via podcast as they do in the strip.

Even the plodding period of character naming is entertaining:

 

Gabe: "I'm Jim Darkmagic."
Tycho: "What? No. Why don't you just name yourself Chet Awesomelaser?
Gabe: "I'm from the New Hampshire Darkmagics. It's a  very renowned family of magicians."
Tycho: "Is Jim short for something?"
Gabe: "Jimmy." 

The brilliance of the podcast is the difference of the three players. Tycho is a lifelong D&D addict, Scott hadn't played in years, and Gabe had never so much as touched a 20-sided die.

The star is easily Gabe. Or more accurately, it's Gabe's self-obsessed wizard character, Jim Darkmagic. Despite having no clue how to play the game, Gabe quickly asserts himself by making brash decisions and heroically coping with his fear of owls.

The result: This podcast series, combined with the related illustrations and several references in the Web comic's blog, makes you want to play Dungeons & Dragons. It's that simple.

Sure, it won't work on everyone. But you couldn't have found a more receptive audience than the Penny Arcade crowd.

The most impressive aspect, though, is the trust that Wizards of the Coast showed in this project. The podcast is rife with obscenities and more than a few digs at the game's occasional clunkiness. But the end result is a very human, very fun marketing stunt that almost never feels like a marketing stunt.