TG Deals and Steals: A Free RPG For You and Me!

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Traditional Games > TG Deals and Steals: A Free RPG For You and Me!

JMBosch: May 28, 2006; You're dead.
That's your greatest weapon.

slap me and kiss me posted:

Big `ol Itch.io creator sale on today.

You can get my cosmic body horror one-shot, with all the rules included, for 25% off today: https://atypicalfaux.itch.io/the-pried-eye. And if you join my mailing list here, you'll get future beta drafts and art-less versions of my releases for free and be entered into free boardgame giveaways!

# ¿ May 14, 2021 21:04

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# ¿ May 21, 2024 03:51

JMBosch: May 28, 2006; You're dead.
That's your greatest weapon.

slap me and kiss me posted:

Bold of you to lower your price. Should do what I did and raise it! Also $4 is way too cheap for a full-colour zine. Raise that price, friend.

Thanks for the tip. I was considering it. But even at that price, sales ain't great. I was hoping that undercutting other one-shots built on the same system (most being much less polished) would make my book more appealing, but I don't know if that's working. I'll probably raise it a bit when I release my second book...

# ¿ May 14, 2021 22:05

JMBosch: May 28, 2006; You're dead.
That's your greatest weapon.

Fumaofthelake posted:

I have no idea how to find stuff on itch normally so maybe discoverability is the issue. Anyway I threw down for one and some community copies as well, looks cool

Awesome! I appreciate the support. Because of sales today, 5 more free community copies are available!

# ¿ May 14, 2021 22:52

JMBosch: May 28, 2006; You're dead.
That's your greatest weapon.

slap me and kiss me posted:

Nah. You're actually falling into the number one fallacy of trying to sell your ttrpg projects. It's not that people aren't buying because your prices are too high, they're not buying because you're not getting enough eyes on your stuff.

Typical conversation rates are in the 0.5-3% range, so it's a question of how many people you can get to visit the itch page, not a question of how much your pdf costs (within reason, obviously, but the zone looks gorgeous and it's not percieved lack of value that's holding you back).

Edit: as a proof point, I literally doubled my LIFTS zine prices on dtrpg this month, and have earned the second highest month of revenue I've ever had because I'm sending more people to look at them.

Thanks for the advice; the stats help. My number of payments on itch are actually just over 4% of my views, so I guess sales are fairly good after all. I'll push the price up with my next release.

# ¿ May 15, 2021 00:46

JMBosch: May 28, 2006; You're dead.
That's your greatest weapon.

Itch.io is having its Summer Sale 2021 for a little over a week, with about 550 TTRPG products on sale.

You can get both of my one-shot horror adventures for 25% off each or 44% off in a bundle. While they're designed for Trophy Dark, both books contain all the rules you need to play.

Penumbra is a sci-fi adventure in which burnt-out Sap drillers will struggle to cross a desolate asteroid and add a few final grains of sand to their colony planet's proverbial hourglass. It's a bleak and lonely exploration of whether to fight the end. Think Armageddon meets Annihilation or something like that.

The Pried Eye is a psychedelic adventure in which the sudden appearance of something spectacular and indescribable in the backwoods of rural 20th-century America will lure the players into hunting for otherworldly gems, hoping to seize their independence and break free from their small town�s lack of opportunity. I describe it as a tense and eerie descent into body horror, cosmic weirdness, and ego murder.

# ¿ Jun 22, 2021 20:06

JMBosch: May 28, 2006; You're dead.
That's your greatest weapon.

PJOmega posted:

These look like great pieces. To make certain, can I run these with a group who has never so much as heard of Trophy Dark?

Thanks! Yep, all the rules you need are included in the books. Just be sure to get everyone on the same page in terms of expectations: Trophy Dark is largely a "play to lose" game where the characters are probably not going to survive or, if they do, will be irrevocably changed by their experiences. The players aren't forging the paths of epic heroes. They're telling a story together about how these greedy treasure hunters became enveloped in horror from both without and within. If you try to fight a monster face-to-face, you'll die, but you can distract it, slow it down, escape, etc. I like to think of it as a collaborative effort to tell the story of a horror movie where the characters are doomed. The system is rules light and puts a lot of focus on character development, so the players will often be asked a question about their character to flesh out their backgrounds, motivations, relationships, feelings, group dynamics, etc. It also allows for more collaborative efforts as players can make suggestions for character details or story beats themselves, which can be especially good when someone's character dies, keeping them invested in the story.

Other than that, for actually making sure the session goes as smoothly as it can, you should learn the different types of rolls (and keep a reference for them open), and just mostly teach the game as you play. Since there aren't many rules, it can be tempting to just front-load a full explanation at the start, but I recommend just teaching each type of roll as the opportunity for them comes up. And if you get both adventures, I'd recommend playing The Pried Eye first, since it's the more "standard" of the two.

# ¿ Jun 23, 2021 15:27

JMBosch: May 28, 2006; You're dead.
That's your greatest weapon.

The streamlined-to-almost-the-point-of-poetry, post-apocalyptic, post-western RPG [BXLLET> is having a bundle sale where you get not only the game but also FIFTEEN supplements created for it during a game jam, all for 56% off!

Get it here: https://itch.io/b/964/bxllet-bxndle

Full disclosure: Naturally, I have a supplement in the bundle. But I only get like $2 per sale, and it's a good game.

# ¿ Jul 12, 2021 04:54

JMBosch: May 28, 2006; You're dead.
That's your greatest weapon.

Golden Bee posted:

Can you explain what it is and what your supplement is?

Sure! [BXLLET> bills itself as "a game about systems of violence and power in a world rebuilding itself." Each player is a nomadic gunslinger type that seems to be nearing the end of their story in a new/weird west setting. The world is a mix of "The Wastes," populated with dangerous Beasts of various sorts, towns and communities trying to rebuild and grow, and remnants of labs, machines, and tech from the before-times. One of the few named antagonist NPCs in the base game is simply "Capitalist."

What makes the game particularly interesting is the main gunfight mechanics: If you have a loaded gun, point it at someone, and pull the trigger, they die. No ifs, ands, or buts. But bullets are fairly rare (each PC only starts with 1), and they also act as your experience/resource for your special abilities. Each character class has a secondary thing they can do by firing a bullet besides killing, like "bring a corpse back as a mindless husk" or "make a Beast of the Wastes vulnerable." (Beasts are much tougher than people and aren't automatically killed with a bullet.) Each class also gets a new ability as long as they hold 2, 5, 10, or 20 bullets on them. Trying to hurt someone without a bullet is easy, but trying to kill them without one is hard.

This instant lethality that hangs over the game makes a lot of interactions count for a lot more than they would in other games, and everyone can easily, and rightly, become concerned more with what the consequences or aftermath of killing someone will be rather than "how do we take this person down?" With a bullet, killing is easy, but it can make you incredibly vulnerable and completely alter your relationship with everyone around. It pushes the main consideration of combat to be "do I really want to do this?" in a way that's very fitting for a post-western game.

My supplement is ⁍⁍⁍⁍⁍TXN SOULS⁌⁌⁌⁌⁌, a collection of 10 NPC types written in the structure of the NPCs in the original game. NPCs have a paragraph of description and a series of qualities that you can choose to round them out. Each quality you add gives them more bullets, both making them more dangerous and painting a bigger target on their back for PCs looking to collect bullets. My NPCs are generic enough to be used in any western-themed game that has some more advanced tech sprinkled around but unique enough to be memorable and reusable with different quality choices.

The other supplements add tons of new classes, NPCs, communities, factions, a psychic powers system, and more.

JMBosch fucked around with this message at 17:07 on Jul 12, 2021

# ¿ Jul 12, 2021 14:54

JMBosch: May 28, 2006; You're dead.
That's your greatest weapon.

Agrias120 posted:

Thank you SO much for this description. I had never head of [BXLLET> before, and I just grabbed the bundle after reading this and looking through some of the supplements. This might be a breath of fresh air that my Pathfinder-obsessed group desperately needs.

Awesome! I hope you all enjoy it.

# ¿ Jul 13, 2021 00:36

JMBosch: May 28, 2006; You're dead.
That's your greatest weapon.

Itch.io is doing another Creator Day tomorrow, Friday the 23rd, where all revenue goes to the creators regardless of their profit share settings.

I'm sure many people will use the opportunity to put stuff on sale, such as myself.

# ¿ Jul 22, 2021 18:04

JMBosch: May 28, 2006; You're dead.
That's your greatest weapon.

My latest release is PWYW for the rest of the month, just in time to bring some scary baddies to your Halloween games. I'll be putting a price on it in November, so get it now while it's free/costs only as much as the limits of your generosity!

Pulled from a pit of refuse, ever-shadowed corners, a plane of agony, and the fabric of nightmares itself, these terrifying creatures will stalk, scare, torture, and possess any hapless fools who stumble into their realms.

Born of a Bloody Film is a supplement for M�rk Borg and other OSR-inspired RPGs that includes four monsters torn from horror movies and mangled to use in your games. It includes full art, stats, and a bit of lore for each creature.

EDIT - My two Trophy Dark one-shot adventures, The Pried Eye and Penumbra, and my solo journaling comedy game about sad opinion columnists, "Serious Reading," are also all on sale for DriveThruRPG's Halloween sale.

JMBosch fucked around with this message at 21:39 on Oct 15, 2021

# ¿ Oct 15, 2021 18:59

JMBosch: May 28, 2006; You're dead.
That's your greatest weapon.

By popular demand posted:

Can't see myself playing Mork anytime soon but I threw $4.20 your way.

Thanks, that's kind of you! Hope you can find some use for 'em.

# ¿ Oct 15, 2021 20:01

JMBosch: May 28, 2006; You're dead.
That's your greatest weapon.

It's Free RPG Day! All of my stuff is either free or PWYW on itch.io.

If you search around on Twitter, you can find a decent bit of stuff too.

# ¿ Oct 16, 2021 15:59

JMBosch: May 28, 2006; You're dead.
That's your greatest weapon.

On a similar note, a lot of people on itch.io are having winter sales for about a week and a half, so if you were holding off on something, might want to check if it's on sale.

If you need some last-minute gifts for the tabletop nerds in your family, all of my stuff is 33% off, or you can get it all in a bundle for just over 50% off: $15 total.

If you buy the whole bundle, you'll get:

2 horrifying Trophy Dark one-shots
1 intriguing OSR fantasy adventure
4 terrifying M�rk Borg monsters
1 polarizing solo satire game
10 compelling far west NPCs

JMBosch fucked around with this message at 00:41 on Dec 23, 2021

# ¿ Dec 23, 2021 00:36

JMBosch: May 28, 2006; You're dead.
That's your greatest weapon.

The charity itch.io bundle TTRPGs for Trans Rights in Texas has 493 games for $5, with at least a few indie big-hitters included. All proceeds are split between Transgender Education Network of Texas (TENT) and Organizaci�n Latina de Trans en Texas (OLTT).

There's also a charity bundle for Ukraine being organized, but don't know when it will be available.

# ¿ Mar 3, 2022 21:36

JMBosch: May 28, 2006; You're dead.
That's your greatest weapon.

Want 991 games for $10? The Bundle for Ukraine is up now. It's a mix of indie video games and TTRPGs, including stuff like SUPERHOT, Celeste, CrossCode, and Towerfall alongside stuff like Fake Chess, Troika!, Runecairn, and Into the Black. Tons of stuff.

the bundle posted:

All proceeds from this bundle will be split between the following charities:

International Medical Corps provides medical assistance in the region. They have very low fundraising overhead (1% of income), with 89% of donations going to medical aid and 10% to administration.

Voices of Children, a Ukrainian organization that helps children cope with the horrors of war, PTSD, readjusting to school, and getting back to being kids. They have also been doing a lot of grassroots impromptu work during the war, such as helping set up shelters. Our hope is that this war will be over soon, and they can begin the work of healing these kids' hearts.

There's also a separate TTRPG-specific bundle supporting Ukraine with 112 games for $5.

the bundle posted:

All proceeds will go to support Ukraine humanitarian efforts by Canadian Red Cross Ukraine Humanitarian Crisis Appeal We choose this appeal because the Canadian Federal Government is matching donations dollar for dollar, effectively doubling the total donations from this bundle.

You can get a bit of a better idea of what's in the Texas trans rights bundle in my previous post and the massive Ukraine charity bundle by using this website: https://randombundlegame.com/

JMBosch fucked around with this message at 16:39 on Mar 8, 2022

# ¿ Mar 8, 2022 16:36

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# ¿ May 21, 2024 03:51

JMBosch: May 28, 2006; You're dead.
That's your greatest weapon.

Itch.io is having another Creator Day today, meaning they forego their cut and 100% of the money from sales goes to the creator.

Which means lots of people are having sales. If there's something you wanted from itch.io but were holding out on, might want to check if the price dipped.

(My stuff is 50% off)

# ¿ Nov 25, 2022 15:25

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Traditional Games > TG Deals and Steals: A Free RPG For You and Me!