A modest strategy for small TTRPG fries

How to invest a ludicrous amount of time to be relevant in the smallest pond of all

Photo by Moose Photos

The TTRPG industry is now worth over $2 billion worldwide and projected to top $3.14 billion by 2033. This incredible growth has surely brought great rewards to game creators, right? Well, at least that’s what they say, while you bundle your game at every chance you get and still earn less than €5,000 a year. Competition is fierce, and traditional business models are no longer effective for independent artists.

That’s why we’re exploring an alternative path, one that doesn’t rely on large-scale crowdfunding campaigns or massive printed tomes. Our approach is “Time-Rich Capital-Light,” which means we invest in creativity and energy while mitigating financial risk as effectively as possible. Before starting, we ask you to consider what time-rich means: for a solo developer, it effectively means having a full-time job with no pay for at least a year. It’s not some magic bullshit training program that gives you incredible results in 10 minutes a day. It’s a lot of work, sweat, and some capital (Capital-Light is still Capital!) to at least try to monetize in the long run. Maybe make a living out of it someday. Maybe.

“Well, I can use crowdfunding and start from there,” you may say. Crowdfunding offers numerous advantages, including market testing, fundraising, and creating buzz. However, crowdfunding also presents several (not so) hidden obstacles: running campaigns can be time-consuming, communicating with backers can become tedious, shipping delays or shortages could halt your project altogether, turning crowdfunding into a potential failure if not adequately planned. We discussed it over the last two months, so you can have a read if you’d like. Obviously, this path works for labels and publishers that want to produce games with a digital-first approach and don’t want to compete with the AAA market leaders in terms of quality and quantity of output. Great indie labels, such as The World Anvil of our fellow countryman

Tommaso De Benetti

, can’t obviously produce highly detailed, content-rich books and companion pieces with only spare change and an entrepreneurial drive. We still don’t know how to be relevant on the big stage without the help of substantial crowdfunding (or personal) investments. I’m afraid.

The four pillars of our strategy

In our experience, four interdependent pillars are essential in creating an impactful business venture in the indie space. In theory, of course. In practice, it’s challenging, and we continue to struggle.

1. Digital First Approach

Digital content can often be the best way to minimize initial costs for printing and storage. A digital-first approach makes it easier to launch and gather feedback quickly. Digital-first also means that you’re designing and producing your game specifically to be consumed and used without physical support, perhaps on a small 6-inch LCD screen in a brightly lit room. It’s another sport altogether. PDFs are often an inadequate support for TTRPGs (more on that at another time), but they’re the best option available to us right now.

2. PODs are your friends

Once your digital product has been completed and tested, POD enables you to supply physical copies on demand, thereby eliminating inventory risks, warehouse costs, and fulfilling customer service needs. We discussed tariffs a couple of months ago, and we’re now seeing the first repercussions.

With PODs, you erode your margins, but you also significantly reduce your forward costs. In our space, DriveThruRPG offers this service, allowing customers to be served without making substantial upfront investments in printing and shipping infrastructure. There are also other similar services available, but your experience may vary depending on your country. We’re in the FAFO arc of macroeconomics, thanks to you-know-who, so POD is definitely a sensible choice for a lot of products.

3. Community as your engine

Your community is the place to share ideas, test your products, and draw inspiration. Engaging your users can also provide invaluable feedback, strengthen loyalty, and facilitate word-of-mouth promotion. Utilize Discord, social media, virtual events, or podcasts to establish a presence and build your voice; it sounds counterintuitive, but you need to be a product before expecting to sell actual books. It’s becoming increasingly complex, so we suggest you start right now.

4. Establishing a Freelance Network as a Business Structure

You can’t possibly do everything by yourself, but you have no money to invest in full-time employees. To maintain high quality while keeping costs under control, you should hire freelancers—and retain them when you feel that you are all clicking. And when you click, for the love of Bob, listen to them.

Pillars working in synergy

The advantage of this strategy is that it has no friction points. Digital-first design facilitates rapid experimentation and decreases costs. POD helps businesses easily expand their physical market by transforming already digitally successful products into low-risk physical products. Community engagement creates demand and feedback loops. Freelancers excel at maintaining quality while cutting costs, and when they become recurring, they can become part of your stylistic code.

You create an environment where you are in complete control, with good feedback and a network of excellent collaborators. You lose something in the process, clearly. You are not designing expansive (and expensive) 300-page-long game manuals with physical bits and bobs everywhere. You will probably print something with a zine quality and call it a day, if you’re lucky. Maybe it’s an actual problem for your vision, but perhaps you are just losing the chance to produce some beautiful, completely ego-driven coffee books that pretend to be game manuals.

From Idea to Sustainable Business Venture

The “Time Rich, Capital-Light” can be broken down into four distinct steps that take its creator from initial planning through full-scale operation. Clearly, it’s all in the air. There’s money involved. Perhaps you’re good at spending nothing, but you end up splurging a couple of thousand on most things. We don’t know; take the estimates as a simple projection made by idiots.

Pre-Launch (€500-1,500)

Niche Research & Validation: Utilizing platforms like DriveThruRPG or Itch.io to survey communities, identify market gaps, and explore niches is ideal. Think about your next games and modules as products. It’s important. You are not your audience.

Legal and Business Startup: You will spend and earn money, so it’s essential to establish an official organization to meet your needs. Mileage (and costs) may vary based on your nationality. Research and draft basic contracts before initiating operations. Ask (and pay) professionals before having the tax guys knocking at your door.

Product and Brand Planning: Develop game concepts and prototypes for testing, and create visual identities and branding strategies to be implemented during the testing phase. Again: you are selling products, not games. Think more about your audience and less about your ego.

Launch (€1,000-3,000)

Digital-First Production: Produce a manual of 50 to 100 pages using digital-first production techniques; commission illustrations (10-50 euros each); complete layout, editing, and proofreading services; complete any necessary editing before proofreading. Don’t overdo it, don’t overspend.

Create and Launch Platforms and Distribution: Set up your accounts on DriveThruRPG and Itch.io, and select your preferred POD printer. If possible, launch a simple website for your business, a blog, or a Nazi-free newsletter (so no Substack, sadly).

Growth (€2,000-5,000)

Building Your Community: To develop your community, maintain a Discord server and post regularly on social media channels, such as Instagram or Facebook. Additionally, consider participating in podcasts or live streams. Sometimes, you need to be obnoxious and talk about your products as if they’re the best thing since sliced bread, but you can do it with style if you’re skilled.

Additions to the Catalog: Enhance your offering with items such as quick-start rules, modules, and expansions designed to supplement your core game. Your first game should be relevant for years in your strategy. Digital books don’t yellow.

Optimization (€2,000-5,000)

Advanced marketing: Participate in conventions and team up with micro-influencers (for the uninitiated, this means collaborating and compensating them) to expand your reach.

Scale: Build up your freelance network, implement project-management systems to facilitate production, and allocate at least 40% of profits toward new product development.

Evaluation of Crowdfunding: Yes, it’s in the menu, people. You can consider crowdfunding to finance large projects, such as offset printing runs. Yet, be sure to evaluate it strategically rather than reactively, and ensure you have a clear understanding of your margins.

A terrifying and straightforward table for recap

Here’s the plan summarized in a neat table that shows both budget (limited, but available) and time (a lot of it, perhaps too much). You can get by with less money, or you can split the workload among several people, which also means breaking the modest profits, of course.

The real question is always: is it worth it? Do the products you have in your hands—or in your head—deserve these investments, especially in terms of time? Only you can know that. The good thing about realistic business models is that they give you a path forward. The drawback of realistic business models is that they don’t conceal the costs and sacrifices involved.

And where are we in this model? Nowhere, honestly. Phase 2 and a half? We don’t have the money to invest right now, and time is scarce. Does it work if you put in the hours, the sweat, and the sleepless nights? We think it does, if the products are good enough and you’re not really expecting €100ks to appear on your lap every year magically.

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Toybox: Apex Troll

What happens when a Troll’s insatiable hunger is satisfied only by the most gruesome acts of cannibalism? You get a Troll with unstoppable strength and unique ferocity, with regenerative abilities that are astonishing even for its own kind, and a hunger so great it can devour magic itself.

Art by Simone Tammetta

You can download the free monster sheet for the Apex Troll for Blood Engine by clicking the button below.

Apex Troll is made for Blood Engine Essential, the complete OSR package in a lean, mean format. Inside the book, you will find everything you need to play brutal, bleak adventures in unforgiving worlds, easily compatible with all the best modules, monsters, and adventures of the Old School scene.

You can download it from itch.io and DriveThruRPG.

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Things we loved (or hated) this month

1. You know what would be great? To play with the Slimes that good old Vol Flint studied, converting them for Cairn. Luckily, we have a fantastic digital guide available at this link.

2. Speaking of conversion, there’s a splendid discussion on Enword about creating and adapting monsters for Shadowdark. We’re somewhat obsessed with this topic (for the right reasons; we’ll discuss it when the time comes).

3. Following the Yogurt merchandising philosophy unironically, Wizards of the Coast President John Hight goes back to explaining how cool it is for D&D to be a franchise now. We’re still shocked by the absurdity of the latest Magic crossover with friggin Play-Doh to be so confident it’s actually a good idea, but what do we know? We’re scrubs. Additionally, he’s adamant that AI is the future for WoTC, for undisclosed reasons, as is often the case.

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We’ll be back in a week with a new shiny free product for you. It’s the first of three products of our Season of the Copper. What does it mean? You’ll see.

We’d usually ask you to subscribe to the newsletter, but it’s hard to do that right now, considering Substack doesn’t seem to care that it’s still offering a platform to actual Nazis to spread hate. In a few months, once we’ve figured things out, we’ll be moving to a platform that treats this kind of scum the way it should.

If you decide to subscribe, you’ll be the first to know when and where we’re going, and you’ll still get free little games in your inbox. However, if you choose not to, we understand.