Design Diary: What It Was Like Publishing My First Game

This year, in my spare time outside of my day job, I set out to publish my first RPG product. I'd done lots of homebrew or more amateur products before, but this time I wanted to go the whole 9 yards: writing, editing, layout, art (3/4 of which I would need to be working with others and they weren't in my skill set).

I started in January, casually, and at some point later I came across the Designing Dungeons Course which helped me organize and coordinate my thoughts. Eventually, I got enough of the writing done that I was able to seek out an editor and start looking at someone for layout & art.

Being Canadian, I started my search inside the country, which led me to Brent Jans who was great to work with. The first professional addition to the project really motivated me, seeing everything cleaned up. After that, I started my artist search which was a little tricky at first (I actually really struggled with Google's search and found discovery of new people was hard). Different factors contributed to the difficulty of it, a lot of artists are out there but they are either busy or not quite what I was looking for.

I was aiming for something in a OSR (but modern) kind of style. I wanted to have a sense of the 80s in the project but not like those "epic fantasy" covers you see on Conan books. After some searching, I found Gordy Higgins, and we began to work together on what would be a cover, a bunch of character art, and then some additions of Gordy's own ideas for a map and other pieces that really took the project the next level.

This was my first time budgeting for a project (since all my previous ones were just my own thing, as I mentioned), and it was cool to learn about pricing and figuring out how much this would cost. The adventure was about 16 pages long, and my tangible costs ended up being a couple thousand CAD. Will I ever see a return on this? I think eventually, but it was also very eye opening what the market is like and how important marketing is. I printed off about 50 copies for local promotion, and while many people in my life have shown an interest and think it's great, figuring out how to replicate that word of mouth on the internet is... a unique challenge as someone who's not a brand themself. Mind you, I worked in the MarTech SaaS space for nearly a decide so at least knew a lot of the theory behind what was going on.

I've always had a lot of respect for anyone who does this more seriously than I do, as a full time job or as a major part of their career, but doing this first hand has really given me a new appreciation for just how much work goes into creating and selling a TTRPG product.

As the art came in, which Gordy was great with updates, the project really started to come to a complete product and the next steps were underway. How do I sell this? How do I distribute it? Physical? Digital?

Well I had thought physical was out of the picture but I'm considering doing a print on demand solution, so I ended up going digital and that's where it's at right now. I've dabbled with both DriveThru and Itch (and looked at some other solutions, like Shopify), but DriveThru ended up winning for this use case. I wanted the discovery that DriveThru offered and knew that itch was more of a expert's favourite but not practical for the discovery I wanted.

So, a whole 9 months later, the project was ready to go live. I knew that doing work outside of my day job was going to be tough, and it was about as tough as I expected. It'd be cool to be able to move faster or work on a team, but the reality of doing a full day of working and then finding the motivation to do more work was often challenging.

I knew the product I had was something I was happy with, and looking back, I was really happy with the folks I got to work with. As well, my partner was very supportive and always kept me motivated and would listen carefully to what I had to share (including when I had a bit of a fixation on mangalica pigs). After that came releasing the adventure.

Now I think creating something and sharing it for others to see is a unique kind of experience. If you haven't created and shared something that gets put on a pedestal for others to see (and judge), I think it's something you really should do to know what it's like. Having others look at what you've created and be judges to it is very vulnerable but also really empowering. Doing this on the internet makes it doubly vulnerable, because people can be asses behind the comfort of their keyboard.

On that note, I do have to laugh whenever someone does come along with some snarky quip or thinks I've created some kind of abomination. I remember one Reddit troll who responded and someone else commented to just ignore them and they were well known as the village idiot (lol). They later deleted their comment which gave me a second laugh. If you're gonna say something, say it with your chest, honey! Don't be shy now :)

I'm still in the process of figuring out how I follow up now that I've finished and release the adventure. Things like sharing it with those that inspired me, or divving out all my promotional physical copies. It turns out I really didn't know how I was going to sell or pitch myself when it came up in day to day conversation, so that took some practice.

Going into this, one goal was to create something fun and after playing it with my friends, it was the fun and silly afternoon I had hoped for. It was never meant to be taken too seriously, and included a bunch of easter eggs to things like The Black Cauldron or a famous chess player I watched a bit.

But a bit of a second goal has come up where I want to make sure my adventure is out there for people who would do want to read it. I don't care if 1,000 people who aren't interested see it if there's 10 people who would really connect with it don't get the chance to see it. Like Edmund Snow Carpenter said, I just wanted to make sure I was an artist who talked out loud and those who liked it would hear it.

As far as monetary returns go, I'm onto the scale of $10s of dollars and I think I can break into the $100s of dollar (which is only one magnitude off from getting a return on what I spent). I'm interested in learning how taxes work and if that impacts me or how I organize my expenses.

To my surprise, tenfootpole picked up a review for my adventure. I wasn't really aware of them before but when I learned about their "old man rants angrily" brand, I took the review with a grain of salt 😅 My favourite comment was the anonymous person who said:

> What the fuck.

Truly a glorious reaction to the adventure. Round of applause 😂 I took comfort in knowing that someone's day was so upended by what they saw that I made.

As I was working through the whole project, I was also thinking a bit about identity. I know that in TTRPGs, queer folk (which includes myself), tend to cordon themselves off to their own kind or active allies. There's a very hateful other side of the spectrum and I would hide my work from them if I could just because it's not meant for them but alas, that's part of the deal with releasing something publicly.

I'd love to be able to do more in the future, I learned a lot from this; first and foremost, though, is that I can make really funny and enjoyable RPG content. It might not be for everyone but it was for my table and I know other tables like the less serious and more fun tone of game and I hope they find the adventure if it interests them.

This was a bit of an impromptu design diary but if y'all have any questions about the process or want to hear more, ask away :)