#ttrpg economics

[gigantic-spider]

November 2023 TTRPG Crowdfunding Retrospective

I recently became curious about the state of TTRPG crowdfunding (full transparency, it's partially because I am gearing up for a ZineMonth 2024 project *shameless plug*). How much money is actually being made? Who's making it? What are they making? And how many people are backing?

I know that this information is tracked for ZiMo by a variety of people (scroll down for the credits), but what about the rest of the year? What about bigger projects?

Essentially: what about the real money being made?

Well here's the quick stats:

175 campaigns

10 Backerkit

1 Crowdfundr

164 Kickstarter

$10,275,932.48 raised

$1,256,857.98 on Backerkit

$455.00 on Crowdfundr

$9,018,619.50 on Kickstarter

Types of campaigns

7 accessories

2 Actual Play shows

41 adventures

2 advice books

8 campaign settings

1 magazine

58 supplements/expansions

56 systems

39 distinct systems used across all campaigns

66 campaigns (37.71%) used D&D 5e and raised $5,621,468.60 (54.71% of all money raised in November)

43 campaigns (24.57%) developed original systems and raised $751,587.43 (7.31% of all money raised in November)

To read the rest, check out my latest blog post (yes, on a different blog lol) or look at the raw data here.

[cannibalhalflinggaming]

"I’m not stating anything particularly controversial when I say it’s tough to be a game designer. The tabletop RPG market is an economics nightmare; demand is low and supply is incredibly high. Demand is low because this is a niche hobby whose marketing to the public at large is, essentially, Hasbro screaming so loud that nobody else is heard. Supply is driven by the fact that, at a functional level, thanks to crowdfunding Kickstarter, itch.io, and DriveThruRPG, basically anyone can make a TTRPG and get it on sale. TTRPGs and self-published fiction are very much the same, and everyone’s looking for the solution to the fact that 90% of everything in the market is utter crap." - @levelonewonk

[sellsmallthings]

pink and purple dice

https://t.umblr.com/redirect?z=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.amazon.com%2Fvvpesca-Purple-DND-Dice-Color%2Fdp%2FB0CG2PJ87W&t=ZjcxMjZkNGE5OGZiNTQwZjJjMjg0NmY4MDQ5NWU5Y2E5N2NhMjlkYSwyMzQyNDViNDFhNjFkZjMwMzMwNzdkOTMxM2I1OGI2ZTA2NDRlYTE1&ts=1709154464

[solarpunkpresentspodcast]

RPGs get a reputation for being all about fighting. How does that work if the RPG is solarpunk? Or utopian even? What is an RPG, in the first place? What is the usefulness of a solarpunk RPG? Join us as we discuss these questions and more.

Art from the Fully Automated website used in episode cover is by Sean Bodley as well as a few other artists and this will get updated to credit them when we track them down :)

Links:

You can find Fully Automated at https://fullyautomatedrpg.com/ The Sogorea Te Land Trust: https://sogoreate-landtrust.org/ Solarpunk 2050: http://solarpunk2050.de/ Solarpunk Pioneers Fund: http://solarpunk-pioneers.org/ Coyote & Crow: https://coyoteandcrow.net/ Lunar Echos: https://affinity-games.itch.io/ Neon Black: https://notwriting.itch.io/ Legacy: Life Among the Ruins: https://ufopress.co.uk/legacy-life-among-the-ruins/ Fighting for the Future: https://www.android-press.com/product-page/fighting-for-the-future-ebook “Murder in the Tool Library” by AE Marling: https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/murder-in-the-tool-library-a-e-marling/1144354144 “Fully Automated Luxury Communism: A Manifesto” by Aaron Bastani: https://www.versobooks.com/products/476-fully-automated-luxury-communism “Four Futures: Life After Capitalism” by Peter Fraise: https://www.versobooks.com/products/59-four-futures

[outeremissary]

I say this with no malice at all but I fr hope they kill Abadar. The worldbuilding implications. C'mon. C'mon.

[ossifer]

i will not try to make a baru cormorant ttrpg. i will not try to make a baru cormorant ttrpg. i will not try to make a baru cormorant ttrpg. i will n

[willknightauthor]

The Art of Worldbuilding

Thought I'd spread the good word of worldbuilding on Youtube. There are so many great channels that approach it as an artform in its own right, teaching you how to do it, analyzing how others have done it, or doing it themselves.

Curious Archive analyzes the themes in the worlds of video games, films, and art books. One of my absolute favorite channels of all time.

Hello Future Me makes videos and writes books about writing and worldbuilding, and has been doing it for years.

Artifexian is the worldbuilding ur-channel. He got his start covering conlanging, solar system formation, and geography. Then he started teaching people how to use worldbuilding programs. Then he started taking submissions and showing them off with constructive criticism. Now he's on a mission to build a whole world from start to finish, and showing everyone how he does it.

William SRD uses video games as an entry point to discuss TTRPGs, their commercial and cultural histories, and their world lore. There are many obscure worlds and games he's the only one to cover in high quality.

Biblaridion started out as a conlanging channel, but became known for his top tier xenobiology videos.

Terrible Writing Advice uses ironically bad advice to show all the terrible cliches in speculative fiction and worldbuilding, and explain why they don't make sense.

Worldbuilding Notes is a secret gem made by a Polish illustrator. She's constantly conceiving worlds from a simple but surreal premise, and logically building them out from there. My favorite world of her's has a country where most women reproduce asexually.

Tales of Kaimere is a professional paleontology illustrator. He has a whole channel for displaying and explaining the illustrations for his science-fantasy world where he sets his books. A magical colonial organism transports plants and animals from Earth to another planet, and so its evolutionary history is both similar and completely different from our own--like dinosaurs coexisting with whales, and multiple species of human. (He's also on Tumblr, though inactive.)

Yinka is a new channel I just found. He's still working the kinks out, but his channel has a lot of potential.

And now I just found Monstergarden, which may be the most popular worldbuilding channel on Youtube, based on sub numbers and views. Given how high quality it is, I get why. Holy shit.

[letsstatahero-dndpoll]

This is Your Life Poll

[condraws]

my pathetic failson medic whitewater and his gaslight gatekeep girlgroup of fellow takers (it's another red markets game of course)

other characters belong to @/cino-checker, @/poinsettiya and non-tumblr people

[monsterblogging]

"I know JK Rowing is a terrible person but her books are so good-"

You sure about that?

I mean, just for a start, have you taken a good look at her fantasy creatures lately? A whole bunch of them are straight-up based on malicious and dehumanizing stereotypes about actual people.

Remember the werewolves? And being a werewolf was made into a kind of metaphor for having AIDS?

And you know how AIDS was first associated with gay men? And how conservatives back in the day were claiming gay men were preying on children in order to convert them to gayness?

Remember how Fenrir Greyback preyed on children in particular? Yeah, she put that subtext in there. She was an adult in the 90's. She knew damn well what she was doing.

Remember the house elves? Remember how most of them loved to serve and needed to have a home and a master or else they just wouldn't know what to do with themselves?

Did you know that's literally what slavers in the American South said about the Black people they kept enslaved? Go look up the happy slave myth.

Do I even need to get into the goblins and the antisemitic tropes they're based on? No, folkloric goblins were not gold-hoarding bankers waiting for their chance to stab humanity in the back.

"But the characters are so good!"

Are you kidding me?

Most of her characters are pretty one-dimensional, including Harry. Her idea of making a morally complicated character is giving a tragic past to a bully. Numerous characters are little more than stereotypes. (Looking at Fleur right now.) Literally anybody, including you, can easily make dozens of characters just as good, if not better. (It doesn't exactly take a lot of character designing skill to go, "hey, actually, having a sad backstory doesn't make it okay to bully children" or "hey, maybe I should not base a character on the first stereotype that pops into my head.")

"But the rest of the worldbuilding!"

Sorry, but her worldbuilding is just as basic as her characters. Magical castles and secret passages are stock tropes. Magical people who keep their true nature secret from humanity is the premise of pretty much every White Wolf TTRPG. Most of her fantasy creatures are just common European fairy tale and folklore creatures with shitty stereotypes projected onto them.

I'm not saying "basic worldbuilding bad." I'm saying, you could do just as good, if not better, with minimal effort.

Also there's her magical bioessentialism, where only Harry's abusive blood relatives could provide him with supernatural protection from Voldemort. Rowling thus effectively declared that non-biological family isn't quite real family, and that abusive biofamily can give you some essential thing that a loving, supportive family that isn't related to you just can't.

The Hogwarts houses are one of the most insidious elements of her worldbuilding. The idea of being sorted gives you a little dopamine hit because wow now you have a li'l niche where you belong!

But the actual function of the houses and sorting system and the House Cup is teaching children to see each other as rivals, and ensure that the most toxic views of the upper class get passed on to every new batch of kids sorted into Slytherin.

Hogwarts effectively prepares children for a dystopia where magic serves to distract its citizens from how nightmarishly awful it is. Economic inequality is so bad that people like Arthur and Molly Weasley can barely afford to put their kids through school, casual sadism is just an accepted norm in everyday society, and non-humans are second class citizens. Rowling sorta acts like she thinks this is a bad thing with certain lines she gave to Dumbledore, but in the end, her special boy protagonist becomes an auror; IE, a defender of the status quo. So.

If you've never seen it, Lily Simpson's video goes into even more detail on how the worldbuilding of Harry Potter is actually incredibly fucked up, and how it betrays small-minded attitudes on Rowling's part. There's no separating the art from this artist, because Rowling's rotten values pour out of nearly every page.

Yes, there are many things in Harry Potter that evoke feelings and inspire people, but there's absolutely nothing in it that this series has a monopoly on. You can find those same experiences in much, much better media.

[maegaasperion]

You are wanting what for that?

Many people who like playing these RPGs desire the more basic elements. They want to travel from one combat to another, or another social situation to another with little thought about what goes into the background of those situations. Especially if they are attempting to prepare for those important combats, these preparation periods will require something that few individuals look forward…

[highshelfcollective]

🧟 TONIGHT, 8:30PM EST - It's the wrap up that you've all been waiting for - #RedMarkets : The Incidentals Post Zombie Apocalypse Post Mortem! 

It's been a long journey and now that the curtain is closing, WE'VE GOT SO MANY QUESTIONS! Come hang out with us on Twitch and get the real scoop on all the ends and outs of this mega-campaign! We're remembering the good times, the sad times and all that's in-between . . .

Follow us on #Twitch to know right when we go live: https://www.twitch.tv/highshelfcollective

[cannibalhalflinggaming]

"Bicycling is dealing with a lot of similar trends to RPGs, trends like emerging technology, customer diversification, and a tail of niche players who are just as vital to the hobby as the biggest companies." - @levelonewonk

[sellsmallthings]

green venom dice. Transperant dice with green smoke suspended inside.

[gallusrostromegalus]

True/false: you're in at least one fandom that's so small that niche doesn't begin to describe it

TRUE Fandoms include:

My husband's unpublished TTRPG World feat. Fungal Goblins, Memetically Contagious Orcs, Julius Ceasar Acetara, Every Failed Economic Theory Of The Last 500 Years and The World's Best Necromancer

Bringing Up Baby (1938)

Given recent surges in @montereybayaquarium IDK if the MBARI Deep Sea Robot expiditions are niche anymore, but it SHOULD be front-page news

The Toronto Maple Leafs

[writingwithcolor]

WritingWithColor FAQ: How do I start writing a character of color?

First, be mindful that no race, culture, or ethnicity makes one inherently predisposed to certain emotions or personalities, despite what stereotypes or TTRPGs may suggest. We are all humans who share the same range of emotions and ways of thinking, even if we have different values.

Understand that there is no single template for a good [race, ethnicity] character. A person’s social, economic, and geographical background influences their life and values just as much as their race, culture, or religion. Consider: a Black American boy who grew up in a California mansion versus a Black American boy who grew up on an Illinois cornfield versus a Black boy who grew up in an apartment one city over. All three will have very different privileges, disadvantages, and outlooks on life.

Further reading (WWC x NaNoWriMo):

The Do’s of Writing PoC

Properly Coded: Creating Characters of Color

3 Ways to Show a Character's Culture

---

This Q&A is an excerpt from our General FAQ for Newcomers, which can be found in our new Masterpost of rules and FAQs. For more general resources on POC representation, check it out!

-Writing With Color