Zine Month 2022 Post-Mortem

In January 2022, Kickstarter officially announced that February's traditional Zine Quest start date would instead move to August——stranding zine creators with next to no notice. Zine Month, a creator-organized Zine Quest alternative originally formed to support projects off-Kickstarter, stepped in to assume the mantle of all-purposes February zine funding event in its absence.

Zine Month saw mass participation from creators, funding 153 total projects on Kickstarter, itch.io, and other purpose built or hacked-together crowdfunding platforms. Collectively, they raised over $825,000.

In this blog post, I will analyze the successes and failures of Zine Month as a sales event, communal support platform, industry trend, and political statement. Thanks to tireless efforts from volunteers, we have extensive sales data from all Zine Month projects to evaluate and compare against statistics from past Zine Quests.* If nothing else, Zine Month gave us some of the most comprehensive and significant data on sales trends that RPGs have ever seen.

 

*Massive shoutout to Pandatheist for her Zine Quest 2 and Zine Quest 3 stats compilations.

The Zine Month That Was

Like Zine Quest before it, Zine Month is a diffuse entity. While Zine Quest boiled down to a loose set of official guidelines and Kickstarter search tag, Zine Month comprised a mailing list, website, Discord server, stats spreadsheet, hashtag, video seminar series, and more. No one of these things wholly defines Zine Month, and in this sense the event founders accomplished their stated goal of democratization.

To pin down what "ZiMo" truly was all about, let's investigate its constituent parts.

A Year in RPG Self Publishing: Year 2

Have you ever wondered if there's any money in indie RPGs? 

Have you considered making a break into the industry, or just want to earn a little extra cash on the side?

In this second annual report of my run at “making it” in RPGs, I will endeavor to answer these questions and more. I will break down how I spent my year, what I published, things I learned, and get into concrete financial realities.

I entered 2021 earning $1 an hour publishing pamphlet adventures, and I’m beginning the new year with a Kickstarter in the top 100 TTRPG crowdfunding campaigns of all time ($370,000 pledged and climbing). Let’s examine what happened in between.

I leaped into full-time RPG work last year, focusing heavily on my own publishing efforts. I ran my first Kickstarter campaign, published three zines and one pamphlet for the Mothership RPG, and started a business to house it all. 

I also grappled with chronic health issues under the mounting weight of responsibility, uncertainty, and alienation. My hobby fully metamorphosed into a job and now threatens to become a career. I gambled on a massive project that will ultimately consume two years of my life. I played almost no games for fun.

As I did in my first annual report for 2020 (which you should read if you want to hear how I got my start), I’ll begin by analyzing my 2021 RPG finances. From there, we’ll move onto a summary of this year’s lessons learned—the growing pains of a tiny publisher becoming a small publisher. Finally, I’ll walk you through a brutally honest and grounded look at my entire year month-by-month to share the highs and lows of RPG self-publishing.

Financial Realities

Barring illness and the odd holiday, I worked every single day this year on my projects. I rode a wave of intense Kickstarter management crunch into intense Kickstarter fulfillment crunch into… intense Kickstarter management crunch once again. Conservatively, I worked an average of 50-60 hours per week on RPGs. It is my sole source of income. Let’s see how well I did, shall we?

Kickstarter Fulfillment 101: Shipping Costs

You've found the second in a series of blog posts on Kickstarter fulfillment for the discerning RPG publisher, the first covering Pledge Management and perils therein. This time, I'm going to break down the exact formula you need to avoid losing money on shipping for your next project. I'll also show my work, analyzing every step in the formula in detail to ensure you never miss a hidden fee again. 

Compounding fees will sink your budget if you don't plan ahead and factor in some wiggle room. Recalling stats from my previous post, I narrowly avoided over $1500 in losses (nearly 1/3 of my profit margin for the entire Kickstarter) by using a pledge manager for shipping cost collection and carefully calculating a tangled web of fees via the following methods. 

My fulfillment for The Drain is still underway with a few outstanding orders and replacement packages left to ship out, but I estimate my true final costs fall within a 1% margin of collected shipping costs—an extremely relieving success in my book.

Ready for math? Let's dive in.

Kickstarter Fulfillment 101: Pledge Management

Kickstarter fulfillment is an under discussed, behind-the-scenes process that can make or break a campaign as easily (or more so) than a failed launch. In a series of posts, I'm going to dig into the nuts and bolts behind shipping, distribution, pledge management, and the customer service baggage that comes with a Kickstarter. 

This first post on pledge management services is based on my own experiences Kickstarting The Drain and discussions with other indie RPG creators. I generally advocate for a financially risk-averse approach because that's my personal priority, but I will try to indicate options for those prioritizing accessibility, time investment, and other concerns.

Even if you're not planning to run a Kickstarter any time soon, you might be intrigued to learn what goes on behind the scenes of your favorite RPG campaigns after they fund.

My Fulfillment Experience

Back in February 2021, I kickstarted a 3rd party Mothership zine called The Drain. The campaign went far better than I'd hoped, closing out with over 1400 backers. I launched with a completed, edited manuscript and art + layout in process. I gave my backers a fulfillment estimate for June 2021, but internally I expected to fulfill in April-May. I ended up encountering a few setbacks and delays and used my entire grace period—beginning digital and physical fulfillment on the main zine in mid-June, with a few outstanding digital stretch goals still in the works.

Zine Quest 3 Post-Mortem: The Drain

I ran my first ever Kickstarter this year for Zine Quest 3. My project, a Mothership RPG adventure called The Drain, received over 1,400 backers and $15,000 in funding. In this post, I will attempt to convey everything I've learned through the process and share all associated costs and statistics. I hope to paint an honest portrait of running a Kickstarter for the first time. We'll start by jumping into the meatiest statistics, then settle into a host of lessons and tips. But first, a little context.

A Brief Project Overview

The Drain is a 16-page zine, priced for Kickstarter at $5 digital and $10 physical (+ digital). It's a DCC-style funnel adventure where each player runs multiple characters through a meat grinder—the first of its kind for the Mothership system.

I brought on several prominent RPG creators to work with me on the project, including Sean McCoy as an illustrator, Christian Kessler for layout, Fiona Geist for editing, then later Evlyn Moreau and Dirk Leichty as stretch goal artists. I ended up listing and funding 7 stretch goals. I wrote campaign updates almost every day. I partnered with Exalted Funeral, the Melsonian Arts Council, and Monkey's Paw Games for distribution. I approached my Kickstarter with an "all-in" philosophy: I put everything I had into making it as polished and successful as possible. I believe it paid off.

A Year in RPG Self Publishing: Year 1

Have you ever wondered if there's any money in indie RPGs? 

Have you considered making a break into the industry, or just want to earn a little extra cash on the side? 

This article about my first year giving it a shot might provide some answers. I will break down how I spent my year, what I published, things I learned, and get into concrete financial realities.

I started 2020 with 0 published works and no following, and I'm kicking 2021 off with an RPG Kickstarter on the brink of crossing 5 figures. With this post I seek to chronicle what happened in between.

That's me!

Last year I worked on RPGs part time for most of the year, then closer to full time at the very end as I was gearing up for a Zine Quest project on Kickstarter. I self-published 6 small projects on my own, most of them for the popular (in the indie world) sci-fi horror RPG Mothership. I also did a spattering of contract work, including writing and editing, and I participated in a couple RPG community charity projects.

I'll first dive into the financial breakdowns and juicy takeaways, then go through my entire year month by month, highlighting my publications and other major events. If you're interested in the human element of RPG design, you might benefit from reading my monthly reports first then diving into the takeaways at the top. If you just want some useful advice and data and don't have time for all that, then read on.

Kickstarter Updates Blueprint

In this the second of my RPG Kickstarter blog post series (check out the first on campaign page structure here), I will outline what to post in your Kickstarter campaign updates. Some of the best advice I've gotten from RPG Kickstarter veterans is to thoroughly plan out if not pre-write your update posts before your campaign goes live. In your scramble to promote your Kickstarter, answer questions and put out fires when your campaign launches, you'll thank yourself for every second of preparatory effort.

To complement these guidelines, take a look through the updates from the following campaigns. The Mork Borg crew, Exalted Funeral, and the folks at Tuesday Knight Games handle campaign updates with a professionalism everyone should strive to emulate:

• https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/exaltedfuneral/putrescence-regnant
• https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/gerdling/gradient-descent-module-for-mothership-sci-fi-horror-rpg
• https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/exaltedfuneral/the-ultraviolet-grasslands

Overview

• Aim for 5-10 update posts over the course of your campaign (one roughly every 2-3 days). Over-posting generally isn't an issue for RPG Kickstarters, but under-posting definitely is. Frequent posts help reassure backers that you're active, present, and dependable.

• Good update posts feel like content rather than dull administrative affairs. Before posting, review your updates in this light. What could you add to make this post more interesting and engaging?

• Pack your posts with eye candy like you would for your main campaign page. Even on a dry post about shipping updates, try to include some new bit of art or design to grab people's attention.

• Save juicy surprises and updates for the mid-campaign lull. Between the first and last 48 hours, Kickstarter campaigns slow to a crawl. Try to hook people back in with cool announcements, well-known contributors, and new stretch goals.

• Combine multiple topics into single updates. Don't be afraid to write meaty, almost blog-length posts. Remember, update posts are content.

• While a matter of taste, many update posts read more informally than main campaign page copy. In your updates, you're writing directly to your backers and perspective backers. A more intimate, conversational tone often feels appropriate. Just make sure to clearly state any critical info.

• After your campaign successfully ends, try to update your backers once or twice a month.

• If your project runs into problems and deadlines get broken, post honest, consistent, and frequent updates. The last thing you want is for your campaign to appear abandoned.

Mid-Campaign Updates

Clarification

Issues and questions about a particular aspect of your project will inevitably come up during a campaign.

• Address any concerns swiftly and clearly, and update your campaign page if necessary.

• Kickstarter has a built-in FAQ section but I find it rarely gets used in smaller projects. Even if using the FAQ, double-up your clarification in an update.

From the Knock! Kickstarter

We're Funded Celebration

When your campaign funds, post an update letting everyone know!

• Thank your backers. Include them in your celebration.

• If funded with impressive speed (within 24 hours), note how long it took.

• Remind your backers to help spread the word and post your social media links. Marketing people would probably say something about a "call to action."

Adding Stretch Goals

Unless you've revealed all your stretch goals from the get-go (or aren't using them at all), you should be heavily featuring new stretch goal announcements in your updates.

• Double-up on new information. Even if also updating your main campaign page with new goals, tell people about them in an update.

• Go into detail. Talk up your fancy reward, add contributor bios if the goals involve other creators.

• Use art and mockups. Particularly for physical rewards, give your backers an idea of what the thing is going to look like.

• Exciting new stretch goals while cross promoting a smaller project from Mork Borg: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/jnohr/mork-borg-cult-heretic/posts/3074102

Hitting Stretch Goals

Like adding stretch goals, but with more celebration.

• Add even more detail about the goal.

• Pair successfully met goals with new ones in your updates.

Project Status Updates

What's going on with your project right now?

• Did you just do a round of playtesting? Got back some paper samples or proofs? Some sweet art just came in? Post about it.

• Pepper these into your other updates. Peeling back the curtain so people can see what you're doing is a great way to get people excited and make them feel involved.

Detail Spotlight

Highlight an aspect of your project not fully covered by your campaign page.

• Be it a deeper look at your zine's contents, a bonus item from a higher backer tier, work from a particular contributor, or a look at your fancy book production--people like to learn more stuff about your project.

• This is a good way to tap into those longer, blog-like content posts.

• Sean McCoy particularly excels at these detailed looks behind the curtain: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/gerdling/gradient-descent-module-for-mothership-sci-fi-horror-rpg/posts/2799086

Cross Promotion

Promoting other projects concurrently running with your own in an update is great way to help support your fellow creators.

• If making content for a particular system, genre, or RPG scene, talk to other creators doing similar things about promoting each other.

• Particularly if your campaign is doing well, highlight smaller campaigns that might be struggling to get across the finish line.

• Use cross promotion sparingly in updates. No one will mind some campaign recommendations in a post or two, but as always avoid veering into spam territory.

Media Roundup

Did you go on a podcast, record an actual play, or get interviewed for a blog? Tell people about it in an update and share the links.

Time Remaining Reminder

When there's 1 or 2 days left in your campaign, tell everyone!

• Encourage undecided backers to help you squeak across that "funded" finish line, or reach just one more stretch goal. Get excited!

• Again, direct backers to help spread the word on social media. This is your last marketing push, so make it count.

Post-Campaign Updates

Campaign Success Celebration

Take a breather, you did it! Celebrate with your backers.

• Thank your backers for supporting you.

• Sketch out next steps. Get your backers oriented for the post-campaign page. When should they expect another update, and what will it contain?

Pledge Manager Update

Are you using a post-Kickstarter pledge manager like Backerkit to collect shipping and add-ons? Walk your backers through exactly how that's going to work.

• Add a short FAQ: How will you be notified when the manager goes live? Who do I contact for support questions? I'm moving, how can I change my address? Etc.

• Note if your pledge manager will accept pre-orders from non-backers (consider headlining or making a separate update focusing on this, you'll want to get the word out).

• See how the pros over at Exalted Funeral handle it: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/exaltedfuneral/putrescence-regnant/posts/3029731

Survey/Pledge Manager Reminders

After you've sent out a survey or went live with your pledge manager, remind your backers about it in every single following update post. Do your best to make sure backers don't slip through the cracks.

• Give a prominent last call notice before you close your pledge manager or shipping survey for fulfillment.

Status Updates

Project delays are a fact of life for most RPG campaigns. Be honest and prompt about explaining delays and you'll keep rabid backers at bay.

• Tell backers about specific problems. They're more likely to empathize with "the cargo ship my pallet of books was on sank to the bottom of the ocean" than "delayed by unforeseen issues."

• When things are going well, update your backers about that too. Show off a fancy new layout spread, tell them when your books arrive from the printers.

• A painful message from Luka Rejec about a delay-prompting tragedy. UVG has quite the storied history of unexpected delays, but their nearly 70 updates kept backers steadily informed throughout the ordeal: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/exaltedfuneral/the-ultraviolet-grasslands/posts/2597470

From The Insectiary Kickstarter

Self Promotion

Did you release another project or launch another Kickstarter? You could tell your backers about it if you dare.

• Use with caution! Backers will get annoyed if you use the campaign update feed as a marketing platform for your other stuff. If you do this, make sure you do so sparingly and tastefully.

• Include self-promo as an addendum to other updates in which you've shared some good news. Don't announce a delay along with a new book.

• If you've already fulfilled your book, limit yourself to a single self-promotional update (if you post one at all). A notification that you've launched another Kickstarter can work if you phrase it correctly, your previous campaign delivered smoothly, and your new one relates to the old.

Shop Talk

As in mid-campaign Detail Spotlights, post blog-length content updates about production.

Stretch Goal Completion

If you have stretch goals getting fulfilled separately from your main book/zine (like digital bonuses), update backers with clear directions for how to get them.

Fulfillment

Tell backers when their books get shipped, when you've heard back that backers have started getting their books, and/or once most of the backers receive their books.

• Let backers know who to contact if they have a problem with their order.

Kickstarter Campaign Blueprint

This Zinequest I will be running my first Kickstarter (The Drain, a Mothership zine), and I've been doing a ton of research, outlining, and talking to creators with experience. I figured others (including my future self) might benefit from a polished-up version of my notes compiling all my research. In this post I'll include an outline of an indie tabletop RPG Kickstarter page, weaving in some advice from experienced creators and best practices from my own observations. I'm focusing on the structure and presentation of a campaign page here rather than book production or financials--I'll leave that for a future post.

Campaign Video

In general it seems better to do a video than not, but indie Kickstarter videos can be indie. Don't sweat production values. If a video feels too far beyond your expertise, just skip it! You can run a perfectly great campaign without one.

From Kozmik Objects & Entities

• Keep it short: Limit yourself to a minute or so. Don't try to explain your entire project in your video, that's what the campaign page is for. Just sell the atmosphere and art/design.
• Keep it simple: Don't break your budget or your brain making a complicated and ambitious video. Simple motion graphics showing off some of your art, mockups, a few key phrases selling your zine is plenty. Alternatively, some people make atmospheric short films--just be careful about overextending.
• Don't talk over your video: 6-minute monologues will bore backers to death. Whatever you do, don't film yourself monologuing.
• Examples of good videos:
• You Got a Job on the Garbage Barge: It's long, but the simple concept shows off the art and sells the atmosphere wonderfully.
• The Forest Hymn and Picnic: Probably my favorite indie RPG Kickstarter video. A charming short film that nails the atmosphere, shows off how the game plays, and warms your heart. Higher effort, but it pays off because of the strong concept.
• Fungi of the Far Realms: Another great short film that sells the atmosphere, but this is a better example of making the most of lower effort production. All you need is some store bought mushrooms and a forest.
• Kozmik Objects & Entities: An example of what's probably your best bet for a simple Kickstarter video: it's got motion graphics, art and design from the project, and some fun music. When in doubt, copy Nate.

Campaign Page

I'm overstuffing this outline with more ideas than is advisable to include in a single campaign. Pick and choose what elements best fit your own project.

Overview

• Graphics: When possible, use graphics for headers and sections like stretch goals and pledge levels in the main body of your campaign instead of plain text. Custom graphics add interest and teases the design of your project.
• Art: Try to include at least a couple pieces of art from your project sprinkled into your campaign text.
• Mockups: Include a 3D mockup to show off what your project will look like when finished. You can find many cheap or even free mockup templates online.
• Layout: Include at least one sample layout spread from your project at a high enough resolution so the text is readable. The spread doesn't need to be final, but it's important to show your backers competent design and writing (particularly if the author and designer are unknown quantities).
• Examples:
• Gradient Descent: Heavy use of art, graphics, and mockups here breaks up the text and demonstrates Mothership's signature excellence in design.
• Silent Titans: Similarly design heavy with beautiful header graphics and mockups.

From Gradient Descent

Introduction

• Elevator Pitch: Explain the project in the briefest space possible. Keep flavor text/quotes from your book scarce if you use them at all.
• Feature Overview: Note fun and interesting details that sell your project. Give people more reasons to buy your thing or at least read on if the initial pitch didn't sell them.
• Media Inspirations: Wear your inspirations on your sleeve. Weave a brief Appendix N into your introduction.
• Context: If you're writing something for a specific system, talk about that system a bit. If you're introducing new rules or writing a system all your own, explain them (briefly).

From the Ultraviolet Grasslands introduction:

"The Ultraviolet Grasslands and the Black City is a tabletop role-playing game book, half setting, half adventure, and half epic trip; inspired by psychedelic heavy metal, the Dying Earth genre, and classic Oregon Trail games. It leads a group of ‘heroes’ into the depths of a vast and mythic steppe filled with the detritus of time and space and fuzzy riffs."

Logistics

• Timeline: Clarify how far along you are on the project. Break down each step you need to take from now till completion. Including an organized timeline helps win backer trust. Be conservative with your estimates.
• Budget: I don't see this often with RPG Kickstarters, but some include a budget breakdown. If you do this, be sure to run it by your collaborators to make sure they're cool with you publicly posting their extrapolated rates.
• Printing: Particularly if you're doing something fancy with the printing, talk a little shop. Who's printing it?
• Fulfillment: Who's managing physical fulfillment, you or a partner? How are you delivering digital rewards? Are you using a pledge manager, and how will that work if so? Are you taking add-ons? Late pledges?
• Shipping: Shipping is a hellscape right now. Changes to VAT in the UK and EU have just/are soon to go into effect and no one seems to have a good idea how that's going to work. Do your best to walk backers through what they can expect while preparing them for complications. Couch your statements with qualifications, because you really can't guarantee anything. If you plan to collect shipping after your campaign via a pledge manager, include conservative pricing estimates. As an aside, US-based publishers may want to consider sticking to US-only fulfillment or work with international distributors in the near future.

From Putrescence Regnant

Contributors

• Talk a little about yourself and the other contributors (artists, editors, etc.) to your project.
• Keep the information focused on what backers would want to learn: Who are these people, what have they done I might have heard of, what are they doing on the project?
• If you have indie-famous contributors on your project, hype them up!

Stretch Goals

• Don't Overstretch: Campaign finance strays outside the domain of this post, but this is worth highlighting. Stick to goals you've already researched, planned, and priced out. Keep things cheap and simple to avoid eating your entire margin or ruining your release timelines.
• Tease Rewards: Reveal one or two goals at the beginning of your campaign or after you get funded, then reveal the rest piecemeal as more are funded.
• Highlight Notable Contributors: Stretch goals are a great place to bring on and show off RPG pseudo-celebrities.
• Be Brief: Note whether each reward is digital or physical. Succinctly explain each goal's reward. You can always elucidate goals in update posts.

Pledge Levels

• You might want to expand upon and explain specific pledge tiers if they involve complex rewards, or you just want to highlight a specific reward not covered by the rest of your campaign.
• This is also a good place to talk about your book's physical production if you haven't elsewhere.

Risks and Challenges

• Be Honest: Shipping is always a concern, but it's even worse now. If your project faces particular logistical challenges from particular rewards or stretch goals, mention them here. Some campaigns mention the risk of contributors dropping off the face of the earth, but that's a given for any project.
• Be Positive: Reassure backers about the steps you've taken to reduce risks. Talk about your experience handling similar projects, if you have some. If your project is simple and poses few risks beyond the default, say so.

Pledge Levels

• Title: Some campaigns use simple, descriptive pledge titles like "Print + PDF" while others use thematic titles like "Mad Cultist". Which you choose is a matter of taste, but be sure to clearly state what the reward is for elsewhere in the pledge if you don't in the title.
• Description: Some use dry, factual copy here while others add more flavor. Include key details here or refer to sections of your main campaign when describing a complex reward.
• Items: Whatever your stylistic choices on the above sections, always be dry and factual here. Clearly and simply state each item.

Making RPGs: Playtesting 101

From Mockup to Final

Earlier this year, I was ecstatic to publish my first RPG content in a Mothership pamphlet adventure called Moonbase Blues. I've since self-published another couple small pieces and written a few others currently awaiting publication. Though still very much a beginner RPG author myself, I want to share what little knowledge I've gained to help other authors get their start. Several months ago I published a beginner's guide to RPG self publishing, and today I'm going to talk about efficiently playtesting and developing your RPG writing.

Every author has their own distinct writing process, but to me writing is like sculpting. I unleash a glut of ideas onto a page and slowly refine it down into something useful. Each pass adds detail and removes unnecessary chaff. My process typically looks something like this:

1. Kernel of an idea
2. Barely comprehensible note soup
3. Playtest 1
4. Complete rewrite*
5. Playtest 2
6. Finishing touches
7. Editing
8. More finishing touches
9. Proofing
10. Final

*If I'm lucky, I'll get some developmental editing help around here.

Playtests are easily the most important steps of this process. Without it, I can only guess at what works and what doesn't. A playtesting session runs into glaring problems, sparks new ideas, and shatters indecision. I've developed a semi-formal playtesting method/set of best practices that always dramatically improves my work:

Playtesting Best Practices

NOTE: I typically apply this process to small (1-2 session) adventures, but the principles also work for longer adventures or systems. When I say "playtest" I mean a full or nearly full run-through of your material, not a single session.

Run two playtests. One playtest gets you most of the way there, but leaves gaps in play knowledge. It tells you something, but needs another data point for contrast. Three or more playtests over the same material yield diminishing returns. GM fatigue begins to set in--it's hard to run a good session if you're not having fun. Your material can only get so polished, and further playtesting quickly becomes redundant. Two is the magic number.

Playtest #1: Run this as soon as you have enough material to play a game. The earlier you get a playtest in, the less time you have to write down bad ideas you'll cut out later. The first playtest gives you the direction you need to turn your half-baked idea into something good. Don't worry about running a perfect game, just get a run in and hit as much material as you can.

Playtest #2: Run this once your content is essentially complete. The language doesn't have to be final, but all elements you want in your adventure should be present and fleshed out. This is a double-checking run to see if your ideas from the first playtest hold up. Run this playtest like your life depends on it--test your material under optimal conditions.

Play with friends. Run one of your playtests (preferably the first) for people you've played with many times before. Familiar player dynamics make it easier to gauge player reactions and behavior. It skips the group-getting-its-sea-legs stage and cuts right into playing the game. Your friends will also be more patient with rough material and less reserved when giving feedback.

Play with strangers. Run one of your playtests (preferably the second) for people you've never played RPGs with before. Novel player dynamics push the playtest in unexpected directions and test the boundaries of your material. This is a great way to simulate how your material would work in someone else's game.

Write pre-playtesting questions. Identify potential problem areas and write them out as questions to yourself before your playtests. Does it need a random encounter table or are location-based encounters enough? Did the players care about the NPC in room 4 or did they ignore her? After a playtest, you won't be able to recall what you used to think about the material so write things down while you can. 

Pause to take notes. If you have an idea during a session or events unfold in unexpected or interesting ways, stop and write it down. Answer your pre-playtest questions if you solve them. Your players won't mind, particularly if you're playing with friends. A lot of things happen during a playtest and you don't want to rely on memory.

Fruits of Playtesting

2nd Best Practices

You've heard the best, now the rest:

Take player feedback? A lot of people recommend talking to your players after a game to see how they feel about the session. In my experience, this contributes surprisingly little to playtesting. Players tend to be too broadly positive in their feedback and confirm things you already know from running the game. Specific critiques or suggestions are pretty rare, but still common enough that I do this in all of my playtests. I recommend you do too, but don't hang your hat on it.

Outsourcing playtesting? Getting a friend or collaborator to run your game seems like a great idea. It's a perfect test of how your game will work in the wild. However, a lot is lost in translation from the events at their table to the feedback you receive. There's no substitute for running a game yourself and feeling the mood of the players and witnessing the game's events firsthand. I've definitely experienced some benefits by outsourcing playtesting, but it tends to work better for reassuring yourself that the adventure works than refining specific details.

No time to playtest? Sometimes you get caught on a tight schedule and have to cut some corners, or just want to enhance your existing development process with an extra step. I find much of my playtesting productivity comes before the game, when I'm prepping my notes for an immanent session. My game prep headspace pushes me towards hyper-practical material and spots content gaps that my typical game dev brain misses. It's not easy, but tricking yourself into that headspace by prepping for a mock session can sometimes glean partial playtesting benefits without the scheduling nightmare of actually running a game. Don't make a habit out of it though, there's no substitute for real playtests.

Solo-game playtests? You can run a quick and dirty version of a preliminary playtest by running through the game yourself or with a single player running a whole party. It's a useful mid-ground between a real playtest and not playtesting at all, but you miss out on all the juicy dynamics and decision negotiation that makes a full party such a useful force of chaos. Most responsibly used as a reality check between proper playtests if your adventure changes dramatically in revision.

Playtest #3 and beyond? Despite the diminishing returns, there are ways to push value out of intensive playtesting. Approach additional playtests from drastically different angles. Use different starting hooks or framing devices. Cut out large sections or add experimental content to see how they play. Picture yourself a GM adapting the adventure for their home game with new context.

Wrapping Up

I tend to feel pretty down on my material until I get it to a table and watch it play out. Playtesting provides a warm and reassuring, and sometimes lovingly stern clarity necessary to RPG development.

Playtesting dramatically overhauled my most recent adventure about a dinosaur theme park in space. Vague sense of direction and scale lead the attempted escape from the space station feeling too loose and killed tension during the first playtest. We tightened things up by adding a hex map with key locations and gameplay-relevant points of interest like port-a-john hiding places and binocular stations for scouting ahead. The hex map provided a much more concrete framework for survival-horror exploration and improved the feel of the adventure tenfold.

You can check out the results of my playtesting method here on DriveThruRPG:

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/332954/Dinoplex-Cataclysm?src=fp_u5

I hope you find some of these ideas useful for your game development. I'd love to hear other people's playtesting methods and tips here in the comments.

Stumbling Through RPG Self-Publishing

In the past few months, I've stumbled my way through the process of developing and releasing a small, 2-page RPG scenario for the Mothership RPG. Though many other creators have come before me, it's been an exciting process and I thought others might be interested to hear some bits and pieces I've learned along the way.

Back in January, Dai Shugars posted a fun prompt for a Mothership scenario in a discord server I use. I elaborated on the prompt with a d10 table to use with the scenario, and left it at that. After some encouraging words about the table, I decided to flesh it out into a fully playable scenario. A month or so later and with Shugars' permission, I had a blog post I was pretty happy with. I posted it to the always-bustling Mothership discord server as well as r/rpg, where it was met with modest interest. As of right now that blog post, "Moonbase Blues", sits at about 600 views.

A few weeks went by, I continued to write blog posts and I started running the scenario for my regular Mothership playgroup. Out of the blue, I got a message from someone I'd seen hanging around the Mothership discord but had never spoken with, Warren Denning. Turns out he'd read Moonbase Blues and liked it so much that he laid out the scenario onto a professional-looking 1-page spread with maps to use in his home game. I was floored by the work and the compliment it represented. It made me feel like the blogging I'd been doing, which had heretofore received minor engagement, was all worth it.

Warren and I got to talking about what to do with the pdf. We both agreed that we should release it to the community, but weren't sure if we should try and sell it or put it out for free. We got in contact with Sean McCoy, the creator of Mothership, who began supplying us with a TON of excellent advice and support. I seriously cannot thank him enough for the help he's given us on this project. He encouraged us to sell the scenario for a similar price point to The Haunting of Ypsilon 14, an official 2-page one-shot scenario released for Mothership earlier this year. Because the free version of the scenario exists on my blog for anyone wanting to play it but without the inclination or financial ability to pay, Warren and I made the final decision to try and sell Moonbase.

With our decision to sell the product, we started working to polish up the material and expand the scope to fill both the front and back of a double-sided pamphlet. We added more content, tweaked and improved the layout, and made several editing passes. Meanwhile, we began to work on the logistical and marketing side of our project.

First, we had to decide where to put Moonbase Blues up for sale. DriveThruRPG is the largest online RPG marketplace, and other Mothership products have had a lot of success there. There's also Itch.io, a marketplace primarily used for video games sales but with a burgeoning RPG scene. DriveThruRPG takes a 30% cut of pdf sales for products sold exclusively on their website, and a 35% cut for non-exclusive products. Furthermore, they require an 18-month wait time to switch a publisher account from exclusive to non-exclusive. Itch.io takes 0%, with an option to donate a percentage of the creator's choice to maintain the site. DriveThruRPG also awards products with medals according to sales numbers and visibly promotes high-selling titles, pushing creators towards putting all eggs in their basket.

I reached out to Sean McCoy for advice, who shared that Mothership received roughly 80% of its sales on DriveThru and 20% on Itch. Doing some table napkin math, I applied those numbers and determined that one would keep 72% of a product's profits selling on both DriveThru and Itch, compared to 70% from going DriveThru-exclusive (assuming equal sales numbers). I also got in contact with Aaron Sturgill, the author of Vita Nova, a 3rd-party Mothership scenario that had been for sale on DriveThruRPG for several months. Aaron also graciously shared some of his sales experiences, and told me that Vita Nova had enjoyed very consistent sales on DriveThru since its release. With this information in hand, Warren and I weighed our options and came down on the side of a simultaneous Itch and DriveThru release. Though it seemed DriveThru was helping to promote its games and drive consistent sales, the numbers were close enough that we decided to err on the side of being less constrained in our future options.

Next, we tackled the hurdle of copyright. We wanted to protect our creation but avoid the relatively costly copyright registration fee (around $50, depending) on this very small project. Luckily, an attorney friend of mine shed some light on copyright law for us. From her advice and my own research, I learned that published works in the US automatically gain copyright protections upon creation, no registration required. Even a notice of copyright is optional, though we decided to post one on the pdf for thoroughness.

Now fully prepared with our completed files and all decisions made, we went to release our little scenario. I created pages on both DriveThruRPG and Itch.io and went to hit the button to upload my files to the latter site when DriveThru notified me of an approval process that would take up to 5 days. I wasn't aware of this requirement, so had to postpone release plans.

On the following Monday, I got an email from DriveThru that Moonbase was not only approved, but automatically pushed live to their marketplace. If I'd wanted the option to choose when it went live, apparently I should have set a specific release day in the future. I scrambled to organize some marketing posts before I lost the benefit of DriveThru's algorithms for newly posted content. I posted links to both the DriveThru and Itch pages to the Mothership discord, my twitter account (which had only 15 or so followers), and to a few subreddits in the body of a longer text post explaining the story of its creation and linking play reports from Warren and I.

Sean McCoy and several other notable RPG people retweeted me, so my post managed to reach a decent number of people there. On the discord, Sean posted Moonbase to their "announcements" channel where it was much more visible. My posts to reddit did better than expected, receiving some attention on both r/mothershiprpg and r/osr but climbing almost to the top of r/rpg. The marketing effort felt like a reasonable success despite my minimal social media presence, largely due to help from others.

Within a few hours of my posts, Moonbase shot to the #1 spot on DriveThruRPG's "Most Popular Under $5" section, which is prominently visible on the site's front page. It stayed there at #1 for an entire week, and has only today dropped to position 3. I attribute many of my sales on DriveThru to this. On the first day of release, Itch accounted for approximately 1/4 of our sales, but that ratio soon trailed off as Itch sales dropped to almost nothing. DriveThru sales remained fairly consistent, tailing off but at a slower rate. We earned a Bronze Best Seller badge from DriveThru within the first 24 hours of our release and Silver a couple days later.

Itch sales have settled at around 15% of our total sales, not far off the 80/20 estimation shared by Sean. I feel good about our decision to go non-exclusive, mostly because it's given us flexibility while seemingly doing no harm to (or even slightly benefiting) our sales numbers. I think in the future, I might choose to only promote a DriveThru page for a new product now that I know the vital importance of hitting its front page (which would be impossible on Itch given competition with the much more popular video games on the site), even if I was posting to both DriveThru and Itch.

Despite our rookie mistakes and various unforeseen problems and challenges, this all worked out pretty well. Starting on a small, manageable project provided plenty of trial and error learning opportunities without setting the stakes and stress too highly. Warren and I haven't earned back anything close to minimum wage given the many hours we spent on the project, but we have a shiny silver medal and a lot more experience under our belts than we started with. Perhaps most importantly, I got to feel first hand the joys of collaborative community effort I'd only heard rumors about from the glory days of G+. My efforts to make some stuff and share it with other rpg people paid off and became something more than I could have envisioned.

If you're curious to check out the finished product, here's links to Moonbase Blue's DriveThruRPG page and Itch.io page.

If you found this post useful or at least interesting, please let me know! Thanks for reading.