TG Design/Production/Publishing: Shameless self-promotion is good, actually

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Traditional Games > TG Design/Production/Publishing: Shameless self-promotion is good, actually

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potatocubed: Jul 26, 2012; *rathian noises*

Cross-posting from the KS thread, but I've just launched a new Kickstarter and I'd like your money please.

I posted:

Hello, time for me to self-promote!

I've just launched The Map is not The Territory which is a collection of dungeon adventures, essays, and mini-games all based off a single map. It's a bit of a weird project and I'm filled with anxiety that it's going to crash and burn, so if you've got some spare cash... why not give it to me so I can pay two dozen authors to write fancy stuff?

# ? Oct 20, 2020 13:43

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# ? May 17, 2024 17:12

Nemesis Of Moles: Jul 25, 2007

I'm writing one of the entries for the thing above and i would also like your money

# ? Oct 20, 2020 19:42

UnCO3: Feb 11, 2010; Ye gods!; College Slice

Good luck! I meant to send something in for that, but didn't have the time.

# ? Oct 28, 2020 11:01

potatocubed: Jul 26, 2012; *rathian noises*

I know I'm supposed to be running a Kickstarter at the moment but because I've had some time I wrote a whole other game as well.

Guardian Mecha Generations is built on the bones of Quest -- which I know isn't too popular around here, but w/e I like it -- and borrows heavily from Pendragon in that it's meant for long-term dynasty play, and that your values are both a source of strength and a source of conflict with society at large. Also you get a giant robot.

It's barely formatted and completely untested, but it's ~45000 words, feature-complete, and wholly playable.

Now to take a break from my giant robot game by watching some giant robot anime (or maybe listening to a giant robot podcast) while building a small plastic giant robot.

# ? Nov 1, 2020 20:54

Mr.Misfit: Jan 10, 2013; The time for
SkellyBones
has come!

After ....almost a year, my first game, based on Jesse Ross' TROPHY Gold is soon coming out. I'm...wow. This was a wild ride. Testing, writing, checking it back.
It's only going to be available in german for now, but drat if it doesn't...it's ....its so weird, seeing the message from the printer telling me my package with the printed books
is underway... This was mostly a passion project for me...but I suppose, I'll have to look into real marketing now, don't I? drat.

So, I've had to self-publish, with Corona and everything, but what's a good way to go on about this?

# ? Nov 2, 2020 21:58

UnCO3: Feb 11, 2010; Ye gods!; College Slice

In terms of easy online publishing, your four options are probably:

itch.io�a digital marketplace, but you can do some extra setup to let people give you their addresses so you can mail them physical products (afaik it's still possible for people to miss or bypass that, though, making you chase them up by email). Here's a tutorial on making your first itch project.
DriveThruRPG�probably the biggest online rpg marketplace. They take a brutal cut, though (35% default), and I dunno whether they can act as a middleman for you to deliver your own physical goods as opposed to stuff like print-on-demand. Here's a tutorial on making your first DTRPG product.
gumroad�I haven't used them but as far as I've heard they're the best-equipped of the 3 so far when it comes to helping you sell and mail physical products. Less discoverability than itch or DTRPG, though, and less customisability than itch.
bigcartel�this is a proper e-commerce storefront meant for physical deliveries first, but unlike most other options there's a free bottom tier with basic features that lets you have up to 5 products.

In terms of advertising, you'll probably want to get into the official Trophy discord and discuss your game there, and you might want to make a twitter account (either for you as a designer, or your 'company', or the game, depending on how limited and focused you want it to be) and advertise there. The people behind Trophy are pretty active there and could help you get some visibility at launch. I've seen people talk about paid social media advertising (promoted tweets, facebook ads), but it's hard to tell what works and what doesn't (or what worked for which people). Honestly, this is kinda tricky without a platform already (e.g. it's take me about a year to get past 300 followers on twitter), but there's a lotta people willing to give a little boost to designers without followings.

# ? Nov 2, 2020 23:12

sasha_d3ath: Jun 3, 2016; Ban-thing the man-things.

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/tknyarlathotep/granny-for-mork-borg

I made a GRIEVOUS loving ERROR and accidentally launched my Kickstarter weeks before I meant to. This vexes me deeply and egregiously, but my loss is your gain! Witness now, GRANNY: A Southern Gothic monstrosity based on a dream for MORK BORG.

eta: relevant tweet

https://twitter.com/TheEldritchTomb/status/1328209510788435968

# ? Nov 16, 2020 06:47

Frozen Peach: Aug 25, 2004; garbage man from a garbage can

My publisher released the first color artwork for my game! I'm so excited and this is the first tangable moment that feels like it's really happening.

https://twitter.com/SapphireParlor/status/1328394248404787200

Frozen Peach fucked around with this message at 05:52 on Nov 17, 2020

# ? Nov 17, 2020 04:32

sasha_d3ath: Jun 3, 2016; Ban-thing the man-things.

Is Evil Molly inspired by Stephen King's dog?

# ? Nov 17, 2020 11:41

UnCO3: Feb 11, 2010; Ye gods!; College Slice

Cross-post from TG chat:

UnCO3 posted:

For a couple weeks I've been running a co-op bundle with another designer and there's ~24 hours left. It's called the Sea Changes Bundle and it's a set of 3 map-games (plus 1 extension) about the near and far fates of humanity and the slow changes that get us there:

One Trillion Years is a game for telling expansives histories of humanity across the stars and over inhuman timescales, tracing characters and legacies into the end of humanity and the guttering of the stars

A Few Degrees of Warming is a Quiet Year hack where you both make and erase parts of the map as you tell the story of a city efflicted by climate change and rising sea levels

Twilight Song is my Yokohama Shopping Log-inspired Quiet Year hack where you collectively play a single immortal narrator in the peaceful twilight era of humanity, as the world becomes something strange and new

Midnight Signal is a dark expansion on Twilight Song, a new oracle and rules changes for a hateful world crawling into the light

# ? Nov 17, 2020 11:57

Frozen Peach: Aug 25, 2004; garbage man from a garbage can

TK_Nyarlathotep posted:

Is Evil Molly inspired by Stephen King's dog?

Yes, yes she is. And Mops is Marie Antoinette's pug.

# ? Nov 17, 2020 18:53

sasha_d3ath: Jun 3, 2016; Ban-thing the man-things.

Frozen Peach posted:

Yes, yes she is. And Mops is Marie Antoinette's pug.

Love ittt

# ? Nov 18, 2020 12:35

UnCO3: Feb 11, 2010; Ye gods!; College Slice

Some people here may be interested in Spear Witch, which is a new-ish US-based curated indie games store (a bunch of SWORDDREAM stuff but also things further afield). They mainly sell physical products (and do wholesale purchases from publishers), but can also sell digital. I'm in the process of getting one of my upcoming products on there for the US market, and depending how it goes I might go for more.

With the whole IPR thing I think there's been a surge of interest in starting up new small-scale distributors. We might see more in the near future.

# ? Nov 20, 2020 15:16

potatocubed: Jul 26, 2012; *rathian noises*

Now that is a website that needs an 'about' page.

# ? Nov 20, 2020 17:33

sasha_d3ath: Jun 3, 2016; Ban-thing the man-things.

I can also recommend Exalted Funeral, who do a ton of distribution for OSR and other goth esoterica - I recently submitted copies of grimDARK for distribution, should be going up around Black Friday

# ? Nov 20, 2020 20:15

Nemesis Of Moles: Jul 25, 2007

UnCO3 posted:

Some people here may be interested in Spear Witch, which is a new-ish US-based curated indie games store (a bunch of SWORDDREAM stuff but also things further afield). They mainly sell physical products (and do wholesale purchases from publishers), but can also sell digital. I'm in the process of getting one of my upcoming products on there for the US market, and depending how it goes I might go for more.

With the whole IPR thing I think there's been a surge of interest in starting up new small-scale distributors. We might see more in the near future.

Cheers for the heads up. Been meaning to hit them up, just sent a few copies of Disposable Heroes to them!

# ? Nov 20, 2020 20:15

UnCO3: Feb 11, 2010; Ye gods!; College Slice

potatocubed posted:

Now that is a website that needs an 'about' page.

I know what you mean. I think they're relying on word of mouth and the fact that the people behind it have high-3/low-4-figure twitter followings (dunno about elsewhere), so they can explain things on social media. I'm not sure how much traffic they're expecting from google etc. rather than directly through links they post and talk about.

-

Is anyone here interested in running a bundle to pay for marginalised creators with low incomes to get Affinity Publisher licenses? I'm looking into whether it's possible to bulk-buy, too, since I know that someone did a similar sale early this/late last year, but the alternative would just be paying people directly from bundle income.

# ? Nov 21, 2020 09:59

potatocubed: Jul 26, 2012; *rathian noises*

UnCO3 posted:

I know what you mean. I think they're relying on word of mouth and the fact that the people behind it have high-3/low-4-figure twitter followings (dunno about elsewhere), so they can explain things on social media. I'm not sure how much traffic they're expecting from google etc. rather than directly through links they post and talk about.

Yeah, but who are 'they'?

I mean, the tabletop RPG scene is so riddled with bad actors that creating a storefront which doesn't identify the people involved feels like a huge trap.

quote:

Is anyone here interested in running a bundle to pay for marginalised creators with low incomes to get Affinity Publisher licenses? I'm looking into whether it's possible to bulk-buy, too, since I know that someone did a similar sale early this/late last year, but the alternative would just be paying people directly from bundle income.

I kind of want to, but I only have one product worth putting on sale right now (Pigsmoke) and I already have plans to put that on sale in the Black Friday event because I could do with some money. So I guess it depends on the timing?

# ? Nov 21, 2020 12:55

sasha_d3ath: Jun 3, 2016; Ban-thing the man-things.

UnCO3 posted:

Is anyone here interested in running a bundle to pay for marginalised creators with low incomes to get Affinity Publisher licenses? I'm looking into whether it's possible to bulk-buy, too, since I know that someone did a similar sale early this/late last year, but the alternative would just be paying people directly from bundle income.

I'd contribute copies of grimDARK!

# ? Nov 21, 2020 14:36

UnCO3: Feb 11, 2010; Ye gods!; College Slice

potatocubed posted:

Yeah, but who are 'they'?

I mean, the tabletop RPG scene is so riddled with bad actors that creating a storefront which doesn't identify the people involved feels like a huge trap.

Fair point�the better-known person's Jared Sinclair/infinite_mao. He's a bit aggressive sometimes on twitter, but generally solid. There are two other people behind it who're pretty low-profile, so that's kind of a crapshoot, but they seem decent (should be thriftomancer and micaholism on twitter if you want to look them up). The other people I'm thinking of had products on the store early on, like Highland Paranormal Society, Melsonian Arts Council, and David Schirduan. Not officially involved, but high-profile enough that it'd give the store an early boost. Basically no red flags I can see. I'm not very into that side of indie games, though, so I might be missing something.

-

TK_Nyarlathotep posted:

I'd contribute copies of grimDARK!

potatocubed posted:

I kind of want to, but I only have one product worth putting on sale right now (Pigsmoke) and I already have plans to put that on sale in the Black Friday event because I could do with some money. So I guess it depends on the timing?

Nice! The timing's flexible. Early-mid January? That'd give people a break after Black Friday (I've also got a lot of stuff I need to do before the end of the year).

UnCO3 fucked around with this message at 15:46 on Nov 21, 2020

# ? Nov 21, 2020 15:08

potatocubed: Jul 26, 2012; *rathian noises*

Thanks for the info! And yes, I find Jared Sinclair very annoying on Twitter so I muted him ages ago.

UnCO3 posted:

Nice! The timing's flexible. Early-mid January? That'd give people a break after Black Friday (I've also got a lot of stuff I need to do before the end of the year).

Next year, I can do. Probably.

# ? Nov 21, 2020 17:29

UnCO3: Feb 11, 2010; Ye gods!; College Slice

Okay well it turns out Affinity's also putting its whole suite and a bunch of other stuff on sale right now, 30% off:
https://twitter.com/affinitybyserif/status/1330826107071787011

(affinity store)

It's a pretty good deal for people who want a solid and affordable non-SaaS publisher (and the other apps are decent too).

# ? Nov 23, 2020 13:38

Frozen Peach: Aug 25, 2004; garbage man from a garbage can

Two more good doggos for the doggo pile!!!!

# ? Nov 30, 2020 14:31

Sentient Data: Aug 31, 2011; My molecule scrambler ray will disintegrate your armor with one blow!

Update on Budding Heroes, over 1.5 tons of cardboard, paper, and plastic are officially incoming!

Sentient Data posted:

It's been a long road, but there's light at the end of the tunnel! The booklets also arrived - I added them to the existing copies of the game that are already stateside, and on Wednesday I'll be mailing booklets out to everyone that already ordered a copy.

I also threw together a more easily printable version of the rulebook in case anyone wants to make extra copies, https://www.buddingheroes.com/pdf/rulebook-print.pdf

# ? Dec 7, 2020 16:03

Frozen Peach: Aug 25, 2004; garbage man from a garbage can

Sentient Data posted:

Update on Budding Heroes, over 1.5 tons of cardboard, paper, and plastic are officially incoming!

Oh wow that's super exciting! Hopefully it doesn't end up in the middle of the ocean somewhere like what happened with Asmadi games this past week.

https://twitter.com/AsmadiGames/status/1334620059168350214

In less terrifying news, I now have 6 doggos to share! All currently playable doggos have been given colorful life! My artist is amazing and I love her.

# ? Dec 10, 2020 05:56

Arivia: Mar 17, 2011

There's been some talk on the forum about trying to design/write/produce trad game books in ways that are accessible and relatively format agnostic, ie not just producing in a book format but also being able to produce them as a wiki page or in ebook formats, etc.

Does anyone have any suggestions on how to do this, guides for how to set it up, or best practices if you want to add on other formats later?

# ? Dec 17, 2020 05:26

potatocubed: Jul 26, 2012; *rathian noises*

Off the top of my head: Do all your writing in some very basic format, like Markdown or XML, then keep that as a master version of the rules somewhere. Then you create a process for every format you're going to be publishing in, by which your master rules are transformed into something that can be read as a web page, fed into an e-reader, inscribed on stone tablets, whatever. Then every time you change the rules, you also follow every process to ensure that your book, your SRD, and your skywriting edition match up.

It's a lot of setup, but in theory once you've got that framework in place you should be able to reuse it for every game with minimal fuss.

Caveat: This is based on the process we have for updating documentation at work, so I know it functions under the right circumstances, but I've never tried applying it to an RPG.

# ? Dec 17, 2020 09:29

sasha_d3ath: Jun 3, 2016; Ban-thing the man-things.

UnCO3 posted:

Nice! The timing's flexible. Early-mid January? That'd give people a break after Black Friday (I've also got a lot of stuff I need to do before the end of the year).

Can do!

Also ironically enough, Spear Witch ALSO just got some physical copies of grimDARK.

# ? Dec 17, 2020 16:33

Arivia: Mar 17, 2011

potatocubed posted:

Off the top of my head: Do all your writing in some very basic format, like Markdown or XML, then keep that as a master version of the rules somewhere. Then you create a process for every format you're going to be publishing in, by which your master rules are transformed into something that can be read as a web page, fed into an e-reader, inscribed on stone tablets, whatever. Then every time you change the rules, you also follow every process to ensure that your book, your SRD, and your skywriting edition match up.

It's a lot of setup, but in theory once you've got that framework in place you should be able to reuse it for every game with minimal fuss.

Caveat: This is based on the process we have for updating documentation at work, so I know it functions under the right circumstances, but I've never tried applying it to an RPG.

This is a great idea aaaaaaaaaaaand none of my writing applications or style works for it so nevermind. Thanks anyway!

# ? Dec 17, 2020 22:46

Frozen Peach: Aug 25, 2004; garbage man from a garbage can

Updated my TTS mod with the color art and such. All placeholder card templates, but the dog art is final. Sans Cerberus who was shamefully stolen from Hades until we get their art from my artist.

It's so exciting seeing it coming together like this. I can't wait to get a real prototype copy printed with the final art and templates.

# ? Dec 29, 2020 09:38

UnCO3: Feb 11, 2010; Ye gods!; College Slice

Something people might find interesting, or get some use from: I did a write-up about my ttrpg income in 2020.

Here're the key points:

quote:

PART 1: TOTAL INCOME ($2,417.95)

You can split that two ways.

$1,473.88 from individual itch and DTRPG sales (at regular and discounted prices)
$861.07 from solo and co-op itch bundles
~$83 from patreon and ko-fi

or...

$1,396.90 from solo and co-op itch bundles and discounted sales
$938.05 from individual itch and DTRPG sales (at regular prices)
~$83 from patreon and ko-fi

# ? Jan 13, 2021 06:17

UnCO3: Feb 11, 2010; Ye gods!; College Slice

There's another 50% sale on the Affinity suite (and it's a single payment, not a subscription like e.g. Adobe):

Publisher, for layout
Designer, for pixel and vector art
Photo, for photo editing

I bought all three during big sales like this and I get a lotta use out of the first two at least.

https://twitter.com/affinitybyserif/status/1351476287886553089

# ? Jan 19, 2021 14:35

Angrymog: Jan 30, 2012; Really Madcats

Does anyone know what's happening with Zinequest this year?

# ? Jan 20, 2021 15:34

potatocubed: Jul 26, 2012; *rathian noises*

It's on!

...but other than that, I don't know anything.

# ? Jan 20, 2021 17:45

Angrymog: Jan 30, 2012; Really Madcats

potatocubed posted:

It's on!

...but other than that, I don't know anything.

There's nothing on the site, no dates or anything?

# ? Jan 20, 2021 19:16

LashLightning: Feb 20, 2010; You know you didn't have to go post that, right?
But it's fine, I guess...
You just keep being you!

Angrymog posted:

There's nothing on the site, no dates or anything?

It's just a February thing. I think if you contact Kickstarter directly they'll inform you and send you the promotional images, I've seen a few people post the previews of their campaigns - the guy behind Planet28 is doing a fantasy version of it. A number of creators have been complaining about the opaqueness of the whole thing.

Edit: Here's the page for Zine Quest...? It's mostly ones from last year, but there's one that has 35 days to go...

LashLightning fucked around with this message at 20:31 on Jan 20, 2021

# ? Jan 20, 2021 20:28

potatocubed: Jul 26, 2012; *rathian noises*

I mean, it was completely opaque last year as well. I think you're supposed to find out how to do it from somebody who already knows what's up.

# ? Jan 21, 2021 00:05

Frozen Peach: Aug 25, 2004; garbage man from a garbage can

The cover art for my game!!! I love her so much!

# ? Jan 21, 2021 02:02

That Old Tree: Jun 24, 2012; nah

That's loving awesome.

# ? Jan 21, 2021 03:40

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# ? May 17, 2024 17:12

Lumbermouth: Mar 6, 2008; GREG IS BIG NOW

Followed open_sketchbook's advice and hammered out something in an afternoon. I've never used Affinity Publisher before, but I made this pocketmod setting in an infinite Madison Square Garden for a Troika Jam on itch. It's little and full of public domain art but I feel good about it.

# ? Jan 22, 2021 00:11

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Traditional Games > TG Design/Production/Publishing: Shameless self-promotion is good, actually

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