Post Mortem

Talking about producing & marketing .dungeon//remastered, my life, and the industry.

Introduction

.dungeon finished funding March 31st, 12:00 p.m. CST having raised forty-two thousand, nine hundred and thirty dollars. It raised half the first day. According to Daisy Chainsaw developer and .dungeon artist, Charlotte, the funding goal was hit within three hours. When I checked the campaign page after my mandatory-for-my-sanity, twenty-four hour internet break, the campaign had raised a little over twenty-thousand dollars. 

For perspective, before quitting my office job (after funding the first edition of .dungeon back in 2020), I was making a thirty thousand dollar salary. Before that, I was making one hundred and fifty dollars a week driving a garbage route by day and picking up shifts at the FEDEX facility during the evenings.

Last year (2022), I ran three crowdfunding efforts to support myself: 

1.) The Wizards & the Wastes, second edition, which raised twelve thousand dollars, 

2.) The Sun King’s Palace, which raised a little over four thousand dollars, and 

3.) Lilancholy, which raised a little over eighteen thousand dollars on kickstarter. 

It’s important for me to clarify that both “The Wizards & the Wastes” and “The Sun King’s Palace” were crowdfunded on my personal website thanks to the help of Fiona Geist, one of the most overworked and underappreciated trans girls in this and any other industry (it would take thousands of words to list her accomplishments and work history, and thousands more to heap praise upon them). Which means totals raised include all shipping costs. Further meaning that I, personally, kept very little money from either. Lilancholy’s campaign, then, was a bandaid on the costs I ate in 2022, including those spurred on by a major life change (or three).

Further into the past, I worked at a warehouse for a contractor. We were paid a “rate,” meaning: do more work than possible in less time than capable, to make above Illinois minimum wage ($8.25/hr at the time). During my time there I saw people injured irreparably and my own body carries injuries that still impede me. 

The original .dungeon raised an astounding sixteen thousand, five hundred and thirty-two dollars. I remember it stagnated around ten or eleven thousand when I went to sleep on the last day of the campaign. I remember it because when I woke up and it had jumped up several thousand dollars, I hugged my then-partner and told them I was quitting my job. We celebrated with drinks and good food and friends. We were living with my parents at the time, due to the pandemic forcing us out of not only our apartment, but the city we had called home. The victory was well received and needed. Desperately. 

If you were to plot all of this onto a graph, including “My Body is a Cage” (twenty-four thousand, two hundred and fifty-six dollars) it would go up and down and slightly back up again. A building trend, a dip, and then a slight recovery. I definitely didn’t see it like that and it didn’t feel like that at the time. It felt like a full dive down, down, down. So far down that I was looking for positions at nearby Walgreens so I wouldn’t have to *also* buy a car while making barely enough to keep alive. I took several interviews at retail positions, announced I would be leaving games and figured that ended this journey. 

This may sound dramatic with all the shit I’ve laid out before you. All the numbers. But the numbers paint an idealistic picture of my rather short career; those numbers allowed me to survive: get groceries, pay rent (most of the time) and, more importantly to those who gave me the money, print and ship all the books. 

Lilancholy was an abject failure in this regard. One I’ll never forgive myself for because Lilancholy is the best series of words I’ve ever written and because of how I botched fulfillment, it will never get the praise I know it deserves. This failure, to me, felt like a final nail in the coffin—an end to the numbers, the money. It was the end of me being taken seriously as a creator. It was the end of my hopes for a book I poured my heart into, in a very literal sense (if you’ve read Lilancholy, thank you). 

Beyond that, before that, the numbers still only paint a fraction of this picture. They don’t tell you the delays, the emergency hospital visits, the panic attacks, the lack of dental insurance, the borderline-abuse I suffered at the hands of someone who I thought was my best friend in the entire world, the fact that I’ll never get to see my cat ever again (I hope she’s doing well), the multiple, panicked moves I had to make, lugging things up and down stairs, loading Uhauls over and over again, never able to sit still for more than a month before another Thing happened. 

And the numbers don’t even begin to scratch the surface of this industry and the things you experience in it. Especially on the internet-only side of things that I’m familiar with. The way you’re turned into an object. The ways you must turn yourself into an object, a consumable story. How you’re pressured to market yourself and turn the little parts of yourself into marketable things. How coverage is given to those who do those things well, lending them Cred. The way “indie” means, realistically, three books that get talked about constantly which made far more money than my past three years combined. 

When you’re seeing this stuff, you end up asking “what does indie even mean?” And then you get yelled at by successful people. You get yelled at by Paizo, a multi-million dollar corporation for being anti-union and anti-queer. You’re seen as nothing but a pest on the True Industry, and you believe that shit. Because what “industry” are you a part of? What cons do you go to? What con can you even afford to go to? Who do you know in the industry? Who retweets you? Anyone? Anyone important? Are you even part of the “industry?” Are you even a game designer? Can you put your shit on a resume and get a “real job?” What have you really accomplished in your three years?

You get frustrated. Sad. Self-defeating. Which makes you even more unlikable to those in the industry. None of this is said out loud, but you see who ignores you. People who once talked to you just disappear. You see who gets to paint history. You see the awards, the articles. You see listicle after listicle, each one proclaiming a Thing. Either that the games listed are The Best, or The Queerest, or both. And the same games since 2019 are on those lists. You wonder if anyone even reads them. Your books included. You watch a queer critic get torn apart for daring to say anything Not Nice And Pleasant about a game book. You watch queer people get bullied off of platforms for not being the kind of queer that fits with the industry’s dominant narrative. Then you watch those same bullies claim an algorithm is bullying and silencing them. 

Put bluntly: nothing makes sense. Your words seem to lose meaning and words you read lose meaning too. You see animosity everywhere. You lose friends over things that don’t make any goddamn sense. You see trans people accused of transphobia for not liking a game. People subtweet you about things that you didn’t say. Suddenly, like, three different people hate you and stop talking to you and you’re not sure what happened because the last four months you’ve spent twelve hours a day doing layout for a book before crashing on your bed, ignoring the internet. 

I rewatched the anime Aggrestuko, and was struck by how succinctly the show sums up modern life. Every season revolves around Aggretsuko trying to escape her office job. Often she succeeds—with a cost. When she’s “in love” with the Space Cadet, the cost is her physical body at his negligence. When she’s with the rich entrepreneur, the cost is her dream of getting married and having children. And when she becomes an idol due to her intense screaming vocals? The cost is that she loses her identity. Because, what the show says is, when making money from the public, the public creates you. They put things on you, take things away from you. The system we live under asks us, every day, to sacrifice *something*. Time, love, dreams or, for a job like this, identity. It tells you that you are what you sell, purchase, and you are what others say you are.

Anyways…

I’ve learned I’m autistic. Pop the cork and celebrate what everyone else probably knew but I never knew myself. In the short time I’ve lived with the diagnosis, I’ve learned about masking and begun the work of unmasking. I’ve learned the waning and waxing fatigue and hollowness I’ve felt my entire life is usually burnout. And, just as difficult and life-changing as those, I’ve learned my words don’t actually mean what I think they do. 

What I mean is: I learned most people don’t speak literally. In fact, it’s very strange to be literal when you speak. It’s very strange to learn that a lot of what other people say, doesn’t actually mean what I’ve thought. It’s very strange to learn that, most of the time, this burnt out feeling is spurred by—implied but never verbalized—expectations which I was, I guess, meant to intuit.

Navigating this industry as an autistic person is difficult. It appears, at times, everyone just hates one another. That there are unexplained personal histories and squabbles everywhere you look that get put on you without warning. That you become responsible for anyone you’ve ever spoken to. That you’re expected to Simply Know so many little things that have nothing to do with the job itself. That your words will be used by whoever sees fit to use them and that they’ll put those personal histories and those unspoken Things onto your words.

This industry expects individuals to act like businesses. For their words to be marketing. It expects that, if you’re in this industry, you wear so many hats that it’s impossible to be any one thing. It asks so much of you to be taken seriously and looks down on you for not doing it. It separates us into presses and publishers. It appears impossible to only be An Artist who deserves fair compensation for being good at their craft and having a group of people who enjoy it thoroughly.

I often think of Dan Sell’s blog post about how to be a writer, where he lists everything required to be a tabletop games writer, gathered over his years in the industry. A list that, comedically, doesn’t mention “writing” until the very end and, even then, does so flippantly.

I fear that I must clarify and qualify by saying these are my personal feelings and experiences from being alive and in this industry. Or, at least, this small part of the industry that allows me. I have a fear that people will deflect my personal feelings and experiences simply because they don’t agree with them. And I fear that I care about that deeply. My identity is invalidated by popular culture almost daily. Arguably, modern America is a battleground of bigots attempting to invalidate the lived experiences of large segments of the population. This happens in TTRPGs too. We are not magically separated from dismissive initial reactions to A Thing. I’m aware saying this can come off as attempting to deflect any critique of me. Or people might think I’m hiding behind my identity to evade critique. I know all of this. I feel typing these paranoia-adjacent thoughts are important to put on this page because these thoughts are par-for-the-course for online communications. You’ll find other public-facing artists experience these fears. What I’m saying isn’t new or unique. 

What I’m trying to communicate is three years of my career. I’m trying to communicate the bad before I can get to the good. Because that’s the history. I’m writing all of this to say that, despite all those negative feelings, interactions, and experiences: I did it. It. Y’know, like, success in every measurable way that matters to me. 

Let me repeat this essay’s first sentence because it’s been a long time since we were at the top of the page: “.dungeon finished funding March 31st, 12:00 p.m. CST having raised forty-two thousand, nine hundred and thirty dollars.” It exceeded all my prior crowdfunding campaigns funding by a large margin. It exceeds any “real” job I’ve held’s salary. What it means for me, in just numbers, is a safety I’ve never previously experienced, a security I’ve never known. 

It means when I require emergency dental surgery (which I surely will due to mental illness ruining my teeth) I can simply afford it. It means that, when it comes to paying taxes next year, I won’t have to worry about how. It means I can move, for a good reason this time, and not worry I’ll be shit out of luck next month. It means I can afford groceries. It means when I sit to plan the next book, I can take the time to make it the best I possibly can before publishing. 

But it also means more than numbers and dollars. It means my way of doing things worked—which is this article’s purpose. In the following few thousand words, I’m going to talk about Me and How I Do Things (and have done things for years) and how that rubs against the grain of traditional and indie publishing in the industry my colleagues and I operate in. I want to talk candidly and bluntly because I have felt the crushing weight so thoroughly that I too was almost spat out by the machine, like so many other amazing creators over just the last three years. And I hope with my words, those of you who are like me have a renewed spirit when confronting the reality of this world. I want to show that, on this path up the mountain to success, there are actually several branching paths. To repeat an adage frequently thrown around TTRPGs, but I feel is never taken to heart: there is more than one way to do a thing. There is no One Correct Way.

A Queer Without a Home

I’m queer. I suck dick and pussy. Yes, I feel very cringey saying (or typing) this, but I don’t know how else to fucking start this section. I think it’s absolutely ridiculous that I feel the need to justify my queerness. But I do. And those feelings didn’t come from Nowhere. They came from around me. I wasn’t born hating myself (not that I do anymore). As a child, I loved thinking and feeling like I wasn’t a boy. Or that I liked boys and girls and everyone else. 

Because I’m not a man. I’m simply not. I don’t really care if you use he/him pronouns when you talk to me or about me, because I don’t care about my pronouns. I don’t think about them until someone makes me. I don’t feel like I should have to. It’s mine. Not yours. It’s my body and mind. Not yours. I simply do not need to make sense to you and will never make sense to most people. 

That doesn’t stop people from putting things on me, from treating me like a man, and I don’t want to spend every day begging to be treated like Me. It’s upsetting to consider but that’s the fucking world we live in. Being trans means being an object for the world to throw around in arguments about your own livelihoods. Being trans means being told, by everyone, not just Republicans, what I must do, say, and look like to be taken seriously. As if being taken seriously is my life’s goal. As if the goal isn’t to simply love myself and others because that’s, like, a completely natural thing. 

Being trans means contending with arguments against your existence literally daily. Anyone who disagrees is simply not paying attention or has the self control necessary to block almost every news source and lives in the woods with their pack of dogs, a small garden, and, like, three lovers. 

I wrote Lilancholy because I’m queer. To be fair to myself and to give myself some credit, I’ve written every game because I’m queer. All of my work has been, in one way or many, my own unique, trans experience (I mean, come on, all of my games revolve around living and operating in two worlds). But Lilancholy most explicitly explores being trans and remembering the pain of a transphobic world. Both good and bad. It’s a work of fiction, but born from my life. Like all works of fiction.

I remember the day the first line of Lilancholy hit me, out of the blue, filling me with an immense feeling of nostalgia. I was standing in an AirBnB in my hometown, which I hadn’t visited in over a decade. I had just driven around in the rain, visiting old places that hold massive monuments in my brain. I went to a bookstore and smelled the new-book smell on one of my favorite novels. And back in the AirBnB, the line hit me and I realized, more than ever, how I had known I was trans even at a young age. I remembered things the world beat out of me, that I’d hidden out of fear. Things shamed out of me.

I wrote Lilancholy feeling that it would be my magnum opus. Not in a douchey way (like Stephen King’s “Dark Tower”), but feeling I would never write something as true or as good ever again. In the way that I felt I was spitting most of my fire onto the page, leaving only embers for whatever (if anything) came next. I wrote it feeling like the younger me deserved it. Because if they had read it, they would have felt safer. Even if only while their eyes scanned the pages. 

But Lilancholy will forever upset me, because I don’t think it’s queer-enough for the industry. Whether people notice it or not, this industry has an idea of what is and isn’t queer. It states as much explicitly through “journalism”/coverage/analysis and critique. I think words and coverage have meaning, lending credence to things. The more something is discussed, ideally, the longer it is remembered. How many TTRPGs are posted on itch.io that you’ll never hear of? How many artists simply go unnoticed? Coverage provided in TTRPGs paints a very narrow and strict definition of queer works and which designers are sufficiently queer. Partially due to the industry blossoming and the fact it is, comparatively, quite young. But, even then, that doesn’t stop a small selection of games from being discussed repeatedly. It’s as if coverage breeds more coverage breeds more coverage. This critique just feeds back into things I’ve said previously about how those who can yell and market the loudest and have friends in high places get coverage.

This strict definition of “queer” leaves people like me out. Always has and probably always will. It’s upsetting to think that if I want my perspective on being queer to be taken at all, let alone taken seriously, I have to perform. Simply Being Me is insufficient. The world constantly pushes against your identity, asking you to defend it. And, I gotta be honest, I’m fucking exhausted. If I could snap my fingers and have all the things I needed to transition right now? I would. I simply can’t fight like that every single day of my life.

And the fact that I have to do it for my job is also very upsetting. So, instead, I simply allow myself to be written over. Especially when it comes to things and people this industry remembers. I don’t want to be remembered as a cis-man. I want to be remembered as me. As trans. Autistic. Bisexual. An artist whose work explores those things on every page because they are intrinsic to Me. My greatest fear, one I see actualizing, is that I have no control over my legacy. That I must scream louder, harder, and to the right people to be heard. And I simply can’t.

I feel like a queer without a home.

I don’t feel accepted by cis folks nor queer folks either.

I feel detached from the larger industry. 

Even now, I don’t know how to be part of the industry. I don’t know what that means. 

This yalp into the void won’t change the nature of things either. I, myself, am very lucky to have found the success I have in spite of the fact that I am autistic and anxious and find talking to people very hard. I have trouble convincing myself to do things when I simply don’t want to, like marketing or “networking.” The picture painted for me might be painted by people more cynical than I, but I don’t think about other people as tools for my success. I don’t think conversations are merely transactional. Whenever I see or hear people talk about networking, it all feels very anti-human.

Then again, I’m not the kind of person you should listen to if you want to find a job. I’ve never been asked to write for anyone’s game. I’ve never been offered a tabletop job. When I’ve applied for jobs in the industry or related industries, my resume is ignored. Even if you think I’m successful or whatever, It’s not for the sake of having a laundry list of projects I’ve helped others bring to life. And that’s something I’m proud of most of the time. I’ve known from the moment I went to film school that the “standard” way of doing things wasn’t for me. The standard way being where you network, work on other people’s projects for a long time, and maybe one day get your break. 

I left the film industry right after film school because working on student sets made me want to die. Even though I loved and still love filmmaking. I left the industry before I was really even part of it because moving to L.A. and working as a P.A. for five (or more) years while writing scripts in a sweaty studio apartment that I share with three other dudes, sounded like Hell crawling out of my ass to eat me alive. 

I’ve always bucked against expectations, and never on purpose. I simply don’t react well to people telling me how to do things. Or that there’s a right way, especially for Art. Like, sure, you can tell me the easiest way to change a car tire, but the moment you try to tell me I can’t write a novel the way I want to is the moment my brian turns off. 

Film school was basically that stretched over four years (which actually took me seven, we’ll discuss it some other time). Film school was a boot stepping on any artistic idea I’ve ever had, forcing it down into a strangely shaped mold that didn’t work inside my brain. Save the Cat is the death of script writing. Dan Harmon’s story circle is a great piece of fictional mythology but it doesn’t automatically make a good script. And “Hero With a Thousand Faces” is dog shit! It’s all bad and worth only as much as you can read them, nod your head, and say outloud to your professor, “but what if I don’t want to suck this much ass?”

So I left that industry before I even got started in it. I worked as a garbage man, driving a make-shift garbage truck (it was a pickup truck with a big bucket on the back, essentially) instead. Even today, as previously mentioned, I would rather work retail than not be able to act and create as I wish inside any artistic field. This is simply how I am. I am fine withering away in obscurity if it means avoiding being told how to be an artist. I feel I need to communicate this as clearly as possible to those still reading, because, to me, this has been my greatest obstacle to overcome in every artistic career. It ruined my chances of being a filmmaker and, shortly after, it made me unable to work as an author.

I remember in my last semester of college, I was majoring in film (screenwriting specifically) and minoring in fiction writing, and my fiction professor at the time had a meeting with me. She sat me down and she said, “We know you can write, but you have to decide if that’s what you want to do? Do you want to be an author? Go to readings, do readings, send pitches, write for grants, live in a shitty apartment, answer to a publisher, and maybe, just maybe, make enough money to pay your rent? Or do you want to just get a job and write in your spare time?”

She wasn’t being harsh. Any professor who doesn’t sit you down and tell you being an artist, in America at least, means that you’ll be lucky if you get a job working for someone else, is a liar. American culture doesn’t respect the arts nor artists. That’s just the way of this culture and job market—and she knew I hated the notion of working for someone else. She knew I wrote because I had to and I wanted to write what I wanted to. She knew that I would hate working for some editor (Fiona: Hi!), reading manuscripts, and marking them up. She knew I would hate working as a ghostwriter for rich assholes trying to get-rich-quick. 

That’s when I decided to graduate, put my diploma in a box and regret it for the rest of my life. No offense to my college, it just wasn’t for me. Working as an artist isn’t for me. Working under artists isn’t for me. I like writing. I write all the time. I mean, fucking look at this long-ass retrospective that hasn’t even gotten to the game it’s about yet. I’ll always write. Until the day I die. But it’s difficult for me navigating this world. The only thing I feel I have most of the time is my writing. My art. My craft. To sell it to anyone but myself? I would rather be a garbage man again. I would rather work any other job and just write in my spare time. Even if I know I can’t do either of those jobs for very long, due to the autism, and the depression, and the pain my body feels, and the All of it.

I don’t say all of this to put freelancers or other artists down. I don’t say this to put myself above others. I say this to do the opposite. I say this to say that I’m not cut out for artistic industries. I say this to paint the picture that, in order for me to be a successful artist, I would have to do things my own way, which, at the time, likely meant toiling in obscurity until I couldn’t take it anymore. I say all this to illuminate the dominant narrative painted by the American school system for prospective artists about what it takes to Be An Artist and how I didn’t fit in. That the United States does have a path up this mountain for artists. One that it pushes high school and college students on to with promises of “job placement” and “job security” and whatever buzzwords recruiters are using now. And they push these young people, like they pushed me, onto the path because it ostensibly makes Them a lot of money and puts all of us under crushing debt. And let me burst that bubble: there is still no guarantee. Most of my fellow students didn’t find careers in filmmaking when they graduated. Just as most TTRPG creators don’t find success. On itch.io. On Drivethru. Working for companies.

We don’t talk about it enough, but the Arts are an unforgiving field of false promises often dominated by nepotism and wealth. A lot of people in artistic fields get into those jobs because they know someone. Their family has a history in the field or an adjacent one. Or, their family is just rich enough their kids don’t have to work. Those who relate to even half of what I’ve said remember rich kids in college pretending to be poor. The kids living in the fucking John Hancock building in Chicago’s downtown, along the Magnificent Mile, but pretended they came from small towns with little money but over winter break on Facebook, they’re staying in a country house with three floors and have a range of horses to ride whenever they like. More than three cars in the driveway. The most dedicated roleplayers.

I’ll talk about it here because it’s important, but we also don’t discuss how much being white is a benefit in this regard. I’m white. I live in the United States. I have the upper hand over most people in the United States and even more people outside of it. I have privileges that must be accounted for. Because for me to paint myself as entirely “self-made” perpetuates an American-specific mythology that doesn’t exist and is not real. I think it was Bo Burnham who said that we shouldn’t be listening to Taylor Swift when she says to follow your dreams. And if I ever say that to you without a healthy dose of realism: ignore me too.

I’m only here to speak on myself and what I personally put myself through. To talk about the trials of having undiagnosed autism and trying to fit into a neurotypical world, and struggling with being queer in a country seeking to destroy queer culture. I’m not here to speak on how it is for those outside of the United States because I frankly can’t. I can’t understand what it’s like for them. I’d never pretend to. I know a lot of people from outside of the United States and I see them struggling with entirely different barriers of entry every day. While often silenced by USAians utilizing leftist words and rhetoric to be “anti-establishment.” They are silenced and called sellouts and shills and all manner of horrible things for taking jobs with companies. Their art is denigrated for it. They aren’t taken seriously. They are cut off from avenues we take for granted.

For example: my belief that I could just go back to being a garbage man or retail worker if my art career failed is a form of privilege.

If you think and operate that way, putting down folks from outside the United States for having to play by rules our system forced them to: you’re pathetic. If you relate to anything I’m saying at all, please listen. I can only speak for myself. I do not speak for others. My industry critiques do not trickle down to the individual. One of the core beliefs I hold is we can’t sacrifice the individual at the altar of critiquing a system. What the American system does to individuals and their communities is and always will be Harm. We are all trying to be good people, and judging another for trying to find a modicum of safety is assimilation with a system seeking to destroy through you. Using you as a personal mouthpiece—a tool, in the truest sense. A tool for a United States built upon and operates within facism. 

The Well-Tread Path Up The Mountain

There are proven ways to “succeed” in TTRPGs. The first and maybe most obvious is writing and creating for the fifth edition of Dungeons & Dragons. The second is licensing an IP, like Cowboy Bebop or Lord of the Rings. The third is selling your existing audience from elsewhere a TTRPG book, like with Quest (created by the executive editor at The Verge, part of Vox Media, owners of Polygon). Semi-related to the third (we’ll call it third-point-five) is success in another artistic field (e.g. a traditional artist, digital artist, or graphic design) and transfer those professional skills and credentials over to a TTRPG. The fourth is having sufficient capital to afford a massive amount of art that can also be repurposed as marketing. None are guarantees, but all are proven. Most popular games of the last five years fall into these categories. 

I personally don’t like IP games because they often don’t come with any sort of creativity (most just use Powered by the Apocalypse and rake in big bucks on Kickstarter), but they get people paid (though normally not much given the industry’s piss-poor standards for rates) so as long as people are paid, who cares? But beyond that? I have complaints about Wizards of the Coast (I won’t support them) but all these proven ways of finding some success in tabletop are just fine. I know people will think me listing them entails denigrating these avenues to success. So, I need to be very clear: I am merely stating an observation. Just because x + y normally equals z, doesn’t make x, y, or z automatically bad. Our industry has plenty of patterns that you notice if you stick around long enough and aren’t chewed up and spit out by it before then.

I’ve seen plenty of good and bad happen within these methods. The Uncaged Anthology has given lots of women and queer writers their first big writing credit, despite DM’s Guild being a shitty service that takes most of their money. It’s not their fault DM’s Guild sucks ass. I’ve seen digital artists fed up with their own industry turn to TTRPG commissions to make rent and end up sticking around because they love the work and the folks commissioning them. I’ve seen small creators get an IP and make enough to pay their salary.

My issue with any of this is actually very simple: these avenues are not open to most people. Only focusing on the United States here because that’s where I live, so that’s what I know, but not everyone can afford an IP. Not everyone has start-up money to afford even a thousand dollars of art (standard for a full-color cover). Not everyone wants to or can write for the fifth edition of the world’s most annoying roleplaying game. And not everyone has an audience or even applicable skills from another industry that transfer. Not everyone has connections. 

More often than not, TTRPGs feel like an industry you have to move laterally into. Starting from ground zero feels sisyphean. There are plenty of creators like this. A lot of itch.io is like this. I started like this (though I’ve been writing for a long time before ever making money as a writer, so I and you can consider that a transferable skill). Even just four or five years ago, I saw several people who were new to the scene (me included) make cheap zines and small books on a pre-order basis, and slowly grow an audience this way. The barrier to entry felt more open. Lyric games were exploding. Game jams were exciting and created some of my favorite experiences in games.

But today, the bar seems to be raised. And yes, we can have a discussion about what kind of “quality” we should expect or that we should be reaching for a certain quality in our works. I don’t want to have that discussion right now because, as someone who has found their audience, who has been able to do this full time for the last three years, if I’m feeling the pressure of this raising bar, if I’m feeling it scrape against my back and pass me up, then I can’t even imagine what it must feel like for first time or smaller creators watching ladders being pulled up and away from them. 

It is sometimes debilitating to think about the amount of work expected of even the smallest book. Art is expected. Beautiful layout is expected. Marketing is demanded. A Twitter presence is demanded. And even with all of this, your success is not guaranteed. 

These sorts of standards or expectations might not even be real! They might not even be needed! But they are felt and their effects are seen. I’m sure a mostly-text book could find an audience. Same for a book made by just one person, construction paper, a stick of glue, and some heart. But when you see what is being talked about, what is popular, what is given coverage time and time again, how are you not to feel those expectation’s weight? I’ll repeat a line from earlier: I believe the coverage that is given has meaning. 

These expectations, I think, are fine for teams employed by companies, or working for salary. It’s hard to not expect quality from Free League (owners of several large IPs, including Lord of the Rings) or Paizo (owner of Pathfinder). They can afford to pay employees. I won’t entertain arguments to the contrary. It’s ridiculous. It's not hard to expect quality from Rowan, Rook, & Deckard (owners of Heart, Sin, and now DIE) or the Possum Creek crew (owners of Wanderhome). These are folks who have made hundreds of thousands of dollars. They can pay their folks and do. They make high quality books because they can afford to.

But when you look at the scene, many of us are put on the same level. The dominant industry narrative is  Wizards of the Coast on top and everyone else is on a level playing field below. When you make an adventure, you’re expected to have the same level of quality as a Pathfinder module. When you release a system, it’s expected to have the graphical fidelity and layout of a Free League book. When you create your book, it’s expected to have the same print quality as a Wanderhome or a Sin. 

The argument about what “is and isn’t indie” is this industry’s most useless fucking argument, because it completely obfuscates the problem at hand: that some people are simply operating on another level. And not in the way that their art is better or more deserving, but in the way that they are operating on another level of capital… or influence. 

The majority of the tabletop industry is made up of individual creators working for free or freelancing. The majority is not making hundreds of thousands on Kickstarter. The majority aren’t even making a hundred dollars. And they are still part of the industry! Their voices matter, to me, more than any company with salary roles. Because those are the people seeking those salaries, Kickstarters, opportunities. Coverage. Access. Chances. Just a chance.

I can’t even begin to describe how thankful I am for Joe (@IHeartFargo) for giving me an opportunity. And it was just a passing thing for him, I’m sure. Let me do a screen transition and fade away into the past for a moment…

It’s after graduation. I’ve done the garbage-man thing. The FEDEX thing. I’m working at an office now, somewhere just outside of Chicago. I’m coming home nightly to write my little games and I publish two on Drivethrurpg because they do print-on-demand. And I’m so excited to hold my first book in my hands (after several failed misprints). I’m so excited I convinced one Redditor to buy it (I used to write exclusively on Reddit for years and built a small group of people who recognized my name when I posted). I join Twitter because they say that’s what I gotta do. No one follows me. Maybe like five people. And out of nowhere, Joe, this person I’ve never met and never knew, who, from my perspective, knew what he was talking about and people listened to, retweets my book and says something nice. That’s it. It gets me a few sales but it also gets me in front of other indie people. More importantly, it gave me hope. I remember he said that I was doing something weird and cool and I thought, “fuck yes, I love being weird and cool.” In the history of my mind, that was the true beginning of my tabletop career.

(I also have to thank my ex, who, while I had to work one day, took my drawings to the FEDEX shop a few blocks away and scanned them so I could put them onto the computer. I’m very grateful that they weren’t shitty about my insistence on pursuing art. I’ve known lots of people who were shitty about it, and I can’t imagine what I would have lost if they too had been that way. Thank you, Quinn.)

When people, and I, talk about “the industry,” I think of individuals—the many, disparate and small communities online. I don’t consider cons, influencers or companies. I don’t think of pay-to-join communities. Because, percentage wise, they are such a small number compared to the rest of us. Yet they disproportionately hold the majority of influence and resources, of opportunities.

Our industry has many obvious and glaring issues. Including the fact that “the world’s greatest roleplaying game” was created by a racist xenophobe. But also including the fact that America is centered at its apex. White supremacy is therefore prevalent in our industry. Queerphobia is a problem. America’s problems become the industry’s problems because of our centering. There is a reason the majority of individual, small creators are queer, POC, and black. There is a reason why so many of us don’t know of a single game published outside the United States. These are not accidents and are not accidentally upheld.

Our industry also has a huge money issue: pay remains ridiculously low. Way below any sort of living wage because people need paid. They gotta pay rent. So companies exploit them. Pay them as little as they can to not get shit-talked on Twitter. 

Our industry has a problem with lowering ladders and giving opportunities beyond PR stunts. Should you be unlucky enough to be on Twitter, you will observe everyone with a voice tied up in the most useless discourse, cycling and repeating itself monthly. Call it whatever you like, there is such animosity twisted up in every little interaction on the social hell-hole. The fact anyone is supposed to retain all that pettiness is absolutely ridiculous. Part of the problem is Twitter is seen as the only-way for many to get traction and shit-talking and discourse get the most eyes on you. Subtweets. Assholish behavior. Because that’s bankable social media clicks. That’s what gets shared and passed between Discords. 

One thing I’ve seen that absolutely drives me up the wall, is when a small creator gets the bag (hell yeah), joins the ranks of other successful people, and then looks down upon those below. Like they “escaped.” As if it’s not those very people “down there” who need assistance and opportunities. Ask around. There’s not a single person who thinks they should have to maintain a Twitter presence to be an artist. It’s an unfortunate notion and side effect of people with the means and resources putting that upon everyone else. We all want the privilege of not doing that. The social media grind is often very anti-human and very demoralizing. Especially when you’re targeted for bullying, harassment or threats from people adjacent or above you. You start to believe you deserve it: maybe you are a bad person and therefore your art is bad.

My biggest problem with the industry is individuals are expected to act like a company, to work like a company. Is expected to do layout (or afford it), art (or afford it) and marketing, oftentimes marketing themself as a product. Is expected to talk to printers, do distribution, and reach out to shops. The downsides of these raising standards is they ultimately fall on the shoulders of the individual because actual companies can swallow the costs or run a nigh-guaranteed successful Kickstarter. This leaves very few alternative examples for new folks. 

It leaves the individual to turn to Kickstarter to afford these things. A dangerous proposition for new creators who either: 

a.) don’t have the audience or 

b.) don’t know how to produce a book like that (because it involves many moving parts and various skills). 

More often than not it’s both. And we shouldn’t expect that of new creators. We can’t expect it, because many people can’t even access Kickstarter to begin with.

We shouldn’t expect an individual creator, regardless of pedigree, to take on these risks. We shouldn’t expect it in order for our support or to raise people up. Especially when there aren’t a lot of artistic grants offered to folks. And those that exist are usually tied to a specific system, turning their labor into an extension of someone else’s IP. Which, sure, fine, that’s great. But I think people deserve the money simply because. I don’t think people should have to sing and dance to any specific tune. The individuals, especially marginalized people and those outside of the United States, deserve to bring their ideas to life. Not confine them to someone else’s.

These issues all stem from well-tread paths up the mountain, so prevalent anything to the contrary is fighting against the current. They make the canvas and ask everyone to paint inside of it. And maybe, if you’re a good boy, they’ll toss a rope down and pull you into their world. 

A Terrible Day to be an Op

I started working on .dungeon//remastered in the middle of 2022, after extensive work on a Songbirds’ third Edition. The original .dungeon was a hack of Songbirds second edition; so, when I wanted to make a new .dungeon, I thought I should figure out what a new Songbirds should be. The two are tangled in my mind, even if they ultimately have little to do with each other. I did the initial planning and a good chunk of writing before and during Lilancholy. 

The initial goal was to simply reprint .dungeon in black & white, changing it from a landscape book to a more minimalist, portrait one. But, going through it, seeing what I could reword and clarify, I realized the entire book deserved more love and attention. Spencer Campbell did his great look-through of .dungeon for his youtube channel and it provided significant perspective onto what I had wanted .dungeon to be and what actually wound up on the page (thanks for your time and work Spencer). 

I knew I would be Kickstarting it because I needed the money. After my unsuccessful attempt at moving away from the platform (and Lilancholy’s success), it seemed like the only choice to keep this train running—likely my choice for the foreseeable future.

While designing, I knew I wouldn’t have the money to afford a ton of art—or any at all. I have a good relationship with my past layout artist, Micah Anderson, and we had a few talks about art direction and what we could do with as little as possible. Lots of art packs from Creative Market and photobashing public domain stuff. I had art packs from itch that I acquired over the years but never used. We were planning on making the book for as cheap as possible. All black and white, uncoated paper, printing through Mixam. I’ve learned a lot about printing costs by self-publishing and I was going to use all the tricks to make .dungeon//remastered a reality.

I met Charlotte and established a good working relationship with him. The art he did for the Kickstarter was done on a work-trade basis (now I can afford paying him as well). And I tapped on Vi Huntsman’s shoulder (editor of Lilancholy) to come on-board for dev editing for (promised) pay after the Kickstarter. I could do this because Vi and I have a good professional relationship. We trust each other and we both trusted in the book.

The only reason I brought Vi on for developmental editing was because the initial draft of .dungeon//remastered was clocking in at ~30,000 words. More than double Lilancholy and nearly quadruple the original. None of it for the sake of bloat. Every word was written to answer the original book’s promise. But I needed Vi to help make sense of it all and organize things. Development stuff. Real basic stuff. Should this go here? Should we cut this? What needs added or explained differently? What can I get away with? Can the opening be an adventure walking everyone through how to play? Shit like that. 

All to say: .dungeon//remastered was started under atypical circumstances for a professional project. I wrote a lot of words unsure of pay. I worked with people I knew and who I could trade work with. I worked with people who believed in me and the project, which can only come from months or years of friendship. But we still made choices based on a reasonable budget. I remember telling Micah we would cap the book at a certain page count in order to keep printing costs low, even if it meant cutting things. Plus all the art direction choices.

Compare this to my very first publishing project: Songbirds, entirely written by me for no pay. There was no editor. The art was free-to-use. It made no money. Or the first physical book I had printed, Haunted. Written all by me for no pay. I drew everything (terribly). And did print-on-demand to avoid eating printing costs (which I couldn’t afford). It sold a few copies. Or, compare it to Songbirds’ second edition, which had a very limited Mixam print run. Written for no pay. Layout by me (I scrolled Pinterest a lot and watched so many tutorials to learn how to use a pirated copy of InDesign). The “art” was all done in layout by me. Unedited. 

I mention these because .dungeon//remastered was only possible because of other people (thanks to Micah, Vi, and Char). Because of relationships and trust. The project’s scope was simply unattainable without them. And that takes time. I wrote for years without pay (simply for the joy, I wasn’t a freelancer) before there were enough people to buy the 25 copies of The Wizards & the Wastes I printed through Mixam in 2020. 

You can even compare this to the original .dungeon kickstarter, funded out of my pocket thanks to my office job. I couldn’t have made it without a paycheck. It doesn’t matter if the job made me depressed and made me stress cry all the time. Without it, I couldn’t have paid Jared Sinclair for initial edits, or Micah for layout, or Kate Sheridan for the cover image which sold the book to ~400 people. I can’t overstate this: 

Kate Sheridan’s art made .dungeon marketable. 

Often, in this industry, art gets eyes on your work. (Thanks, Kate. I know you were just doing your job, but thanks for taking a chance on my silly, little game.) In those early days, if art wasn’t free, I was scraping my paychecks together for cover art. If it weren’t for those artists, I’d probably not have been given the chance by so many folks.

Is it upsetting art sells writing? Yeah, sure. I wish my writing was good enough on its own. But I’m not making a blog. I’m making a book—which are (quite literally) judged by their covers. I can be a sad, little writer about art and still understand its purpose and power in the industry. I can still respect it.

I remember interviewing Dan Sell a long time ago, before I really took the leap into funding the first .dungeon. And he told me, “don’t fear the abyss.” He said that when it’s between eating or not, throwing caution to the wind isn’t a question. You do what you have to to survive. I remember looking down the barrel of my office job, realizing that I was becoming suicidal again; thinking “I make this art thing work or I won’t survive.” I simply wasn’t built for this world. Thinking about those times makes me want to cry. I think I might have been an alcoholic to cope. I don’t know. But I almost lost the ability to walk due to nerve damage from drinking. I was ignorant to it at the time. I simply went to work and came home and worked more. Hoping beyond hope that it wouldn’t end. Hoping that my work was “good enough.”

I remember interviewing Dan and when he said that, the drastic mindset I found myself in made sense. “Don’t fear the abyss.” When it comes to surviving or not, what’s the risk? 

That’s the only reason I took the risk on .dungeon the first time. It’s the only reason I spent the money on art and editing. It was a dream. A hope. Just a fleeting chance that if I could simply make enough money, I could quit my job and figure the rest out later. This was during the pandemic’s initial months, so perhaps my brain wasn’t working at peak function anyways.

I don’t think I would ask people to follow in my footsteps, or romanticize them, because I don’t want people to think that it’s either this or death. I know that’s the reality for some. But that doesn’t make it right. That doesn’t make it a good, happy circumstance. Especially sans guarantees. I’ll say it repeatedly: I got lucky. I am very lucky. I am very privileged to be where I am today. Regardless of mental state or anything. For every Me out there, there are 10-20 who throw caution to the wind, put everything behind a dare, and don't succeed. They are, best outcomes, still working office jobs, picking up garbage, working retail. Maybe they’re still artists in their spare time. I hope.

What I can say is that my most successful project didn’t come off the back of tons of art, or being retweeted by the right people, or through my big-industry-connections. I still can’t get Matty Merc to retweet my shit! And it has honestly surprised me. I sat down to write this article to examine that and figure out what worked. What I could maybe pass on as nuggets of hope to everyone struggling. Maybe I could say something discouraging another person from throwing in the towel. I’m tired of seeing people quit and disappear. I’m tired of art being lost. 

So…

Why Did .dungeon//remastered Succeed?

I think it might be important to first talk about what I didn’t do.

I didn’t have a marketing strategy. I didn’t buy ads. Micah made a really sick ad reminiscent of those 90’s video game ads and I posted it on twitter. And I emailed my mailing list (built over years) the project was coming soon and again when the campaign was live. This is probably why the campaign got what I assumed would be all of its funding on the first day. You can see “day one” backer tiers have the most backers.

I didn’t post about it a lot on Twitter. It had hit the goal, so I didn’t feel the need. I was happy with where it was. But also because, when I looked at the metrics on Kickstarter, only a slim fraction of backers came from Twitter (moving your audience off social media should be your main goal using social media). Most came from my email list and an even greater number came from people finding it on Kickstarter. Even without the “projects we love” badge. Dan Sell, during that interview I mentioned, told me to do a Kickstarter for everything. “It’s free advertising.” He runs the (rather successful) Melsonia Arts Council, so I think he’s a pretty good source.

I didn’t send press releases to news outlets. I’ve never done that. When the fuck am I supposed to find time or energy to do that? Also, there’s no guarantee that they’d even cover me if I do—or while the campaign is live.The only journalism that benefited me was Polygon writing about the original .dungeon—a stroke of luck on my part. Charlie just decided to cover my game and I wasn’t going to bank on that happening again. I’m honestly pretty skeptical of the benefits of TTRPG journalism for sales. Beyond the Polygon article, Dragonkid’s video on .dungeon was the second biggest bump in sales. And I know getting featured on Questing Beast’s youtube channel often leads to big sales bumps, if the project is OSR-adjacent (which I would not consider myself or my books).

What I’m saying is, expend your limited marketing energy in specific places. Because there’s no guarantee of coverage nor that coverage leads to success, in my experience.

I don’t say all of this to act cool or like I’m above anyone. Truly. I’m saying all this because, in my experience, these things haven’t been helpful. If you can afford running ads, then my experience is of little consequence to you. If you have a big name influencer who will cover your book on tiktok, youtube, twitter or whatever, again, my experience is of little consequence to you. If you have friends in high places or a publishing job: congrats, you don’t have to worry about this (hopefully) because the publisher should handle it. That’s why they exist.

But if you’re in my position (or a similar one), you’re most likely going it alone or with a very small team. So you need to decide where to expend your energy. You might not always be able to sit and write a press release that risks not being picked up. You might not always be able to go on Twitter and yell about your books at the risk of being ignored. Polygon or Dicebreaker won’t always notice you or care about you. I don’t think you can or should try to build a career by relying on outlets including Influencers. They can’t cover everything and there’s no guarantee that they’ll even notice. So consider what you can do.

What can I do? I can write. I can make youtube videos (you do not need a camera or even a microphone to do this, but also your phone can most likely do both). I can make music (or at least try to). I can take public domain art and creative commons dungeon maps and slap them together. You are a creature, a human, not a machine. You have limited capacity. It may take time, and trial and error, but you will find and gain knowledge about yourself and what you’re capable of. Try not to burn yourself out doing this, but also I’ve done that a lot so what the fuck am I talking about?

When talking about what I did do for .dungeon//remastered, it’s harder to quantify. As mentioned earlier, almost everything I did came from years of relationships, trial and error, and building upon the craft. The active steps I took are as follows:

1. I wrote the thing. 30k words. It’s what I do. It’s what I know I can do. And I trust my writing. My writing is my craft. I’ve done it for over a decade.

2. I leaned on other people who trusted me and also trusted my words. Vi trusted my words because of Lilancholy. Micah trusted them because they worked on the first .dungeon. Charlotte trusted the words because he had read them. This is actually a common thing in, say, the film industry. To shop a script around. To do the writing and then find the people to attach to it. Even you, starting in the industry now, can do this if you have a good set of writing, though it’s harder and, again, not a guarantee.

3. I reached out to my mailing list. It’s been built up bit by bit, project by project.

4. I reached out through itch.io to the folks who previously purchased .dungeon. This list has grown over the years as well, thanks to community copies, bundles, and the many, many sales I’ve run.

5. I have a history of running Kickstarters and don’t have any fear about being able to fulfill one any longer. You won’t gain this with your first project. It takes time.

6. I let Charlotte take over formatting the Kickstarter page. Because I was tired and didn’t have the energy to do it. I can’t stress enough how important it is to have people you trust. 

7. Micah made that awesome, 90’s inspired ad that I posted to twitter.

8. I set the project live and walked away for twenty-four hours.

You can’t just go out and follow these steps verbatim and have a successful project. Each of these things has years of work behind them. My writing is good, I know it is. But it’s only good because I’ve worked at it for a very long time. I have trusted colleagues and friends who are great artists. I built these relationships slowly over the years. I have experience with Kickstarter which makes me more comfortable with what I can and can’t offer during a campaign.

My main point is building a path that fits you takes time. It’s not a guarantee and you might not have the luxury of time. But if you do and it works, you’ll have your own audience. I can offer my wisdom regarding the steps listed above. Or, I can try at the very least. I don’t know if I’m a good teacher. 

Writing like Batts, a style guide?

Firstly, I will say that if you are trying to be a writer for a company or get hired by someone else? Don’t write like me. Those companies are looking for you to write like them, which depends upon the project and countless variables I can’t quantify. These tips are specifically to help with the writer’s broader craft; specifically, the craft of TTRPG writing.

Don’t be boring. If you’re bored, skip it. Delete it. Forget about it.

Have a routine.

When writing fiction, aim for 2k words daily.

Write in paragraphs. Each should be an idea, preferably separated by headers. Otherwise you’re probably saying too much.

Instead of writing a random generator for something, just write the good version of that thing.

Make a map. Put your ideas on the map. No more lists or procedural generation.

Theme comes later. First, the writing.

When writing rules, remember “if…then.”

Get a good editor and listen to them.

A great game is made of “catch-all” or “default” rules. Such as, “when in doubt, roll d20. Higher numbers are better.” They’re easily grasped and fill the gaps that all TTRPG texts have.

Your goal is to write one thing that’s True. This is the Work.

Refill the tank. Life is important and creates art.

The writer’s job is asking “what if?”

Read. A lot.

Go for a walk without music or a book-on-tape or a podcast. Walk and talk to yourself. Ask yourself questions about what you’re working on. Talk to yourself. Be in conversation with yourself. You are complicated and deserve attention.

Have peers. Not just collaborators or colleagues, people whose work you respect. They should make you want to be better.

If things just aren’t coming? Take a break. If you’re feeling aggravated, eat some food, drink some water, and get some rest.

Know yourself. Most people can’t sit alone with themselves. But knowing yourself is paramount. Therapy can help too. Knowing yourself means knowing why you like something, developing taste and not hiding it, knowing where to waste your time and where not to. This takes time. This is the Work.

A hex/encounter/dungeon room/story can just be a weird, little guy.

Write the game you want to play, not the one you think others will.

Make sure your needs are taken care of by the budget before hiring collaborators.

No stretch goals.

When writing Hurt, the most important thing is that you are human. What you feel is human. What happened to you is also human.

End all dialog with “said.” It’s all you need.

Writing is a skill as much as it is an art. Give it respect. Good writers don’t simply fall out of the womb. They mastered a craft. Not unlike any other skill or discipline. You won’t build a good chair on your first try.

Find time to write. How else can you be a writer?

Writing can be lonely, but shouldn't be solitary. No book is made by one set of hands.

Having an opinion is easy. Having a good one worth defending is the Work. If you have nothing to say, do anything other than write.

Never submit a first draft.

Don’t follow trends.

Writing is about making choices. Half measures are worthless. Make a choice. If it’s the wrong choice: that’s fine.

When writing games, you’re composing an incomplete text. Otherwise it’s a script. Choosing to write a game over a novel, is an important decision.

The two ideas circling your head are actually one idea.

Take yourself seriously. Listen to yourself. This is how you gain confidence.

You need to learn to say, “That’s a bad idea.”

When writing, ignore the first thing that pops into your head. Ignore the second thing too. The third idea is where the work starts.

Western writing traditions are not the world.

If you aren’t sure if you can or should write something: experience more art. You don’t need permission. You need to broaden your horizons. You’re not the first to tread this path.

If you can’t say why you chose to do something, shut up and listen to your editor.

The most beautiful critique isn’t worth as much as the most mediocre art.

Copy writing you enjoy. Assimilate it.

Your job, as a writer, is making a claim. Any claim. Your art can’t be for everyone. You can’t write for the lowest common denominator. You can’t write for the widest possible audience. Be you. That’s how you find your audience.

Collaborating

Now that you’re sufficiently angry about my ridiculous writing stuff, let me disappoint you: I am not the person to give collaborating advice. Not only has no one reached out to me specifically to write for their projects or be their Kickstarter stretch goals, my brain actively fights me when writing anything but the exact, specific thing I want to write. It’s very hard getting my brain to cooperate.

But I have surrounded myself with peers. Friends. Which took a lot of trial and error and a stroke of luck. My personal belief is most people are ephemeral, passing in and out of your life with little of your input. I am naturally quiet and solitary and have rubbed against “being social” my entire life. That just ain’t me.

If you’re like me, just doing you helps: keep working and share that work online. Because, in my experience, more sociable industry folks will reach out to you if they like your work. And, it’s okay to make extroverts do the hard work. They love that shit. Let them have fun.

But seriously, share what you’re doing online. You don’t even need to talk about it. Just take and share screenshots. Frequently because the internet is open 24/7. You got new folks coming and going every hour. You never know who will see or share it. Just be consistent and keep working on your craft. 

Second piece of advice: keep trying. One in every ten Discords you get invited to feels good to post in. But you still have to join those other discords and give them a shot. You just have to keep trying. If you’re not trying to make friends or at least open to the concept, what do you expect? Making friends requires optimism that you are worth talking to or about. So, I guess this advice is actually to have some form of hope and patience. These things, like building your craft, take time.

I will say making friends simply to get them to work on your project feels very weird. Like, there is a difference between trying to meet other artists because they share interests and hobbies and joining Discords trying to get help bringing your project to life. I don’t have advice for you if you’re one of those folks. Just, don’t do it? Be a normal person, talk to people like they’re normal and not like they’re tools for your art. That’s my advice. I can’t make you a good person.

When it comes to collaborating, work-trades are the best. A work-trade is when, instead of trading money for services, we trade our labor. I write for you and you do a drawing for me. This is great because a lot of people don’t have money—but we do have our skills and time. If anyone tries to tell you work-trades aren’t ethical or something, tell them to fuck off.

If you have some pedigree or have peers who want to take a risk, you can also work on spec for a crowdfunding project (not just Kickstarter, but itch-funding or any others). There are artists, writers, layout artists and editors willing to work with newer creators sans upfront pay in exchange for a cut of the crowdfunding money or backend reimbursement. For these collaborations, be upfront every step of the way. Like, I don’t know what else to say, just be a good person and don’t lie to folks willing to help you.

Lastly, don’t overreach. Just don’t. Don’t try for a huge book as your first project. Don’t try to get a ton of art. Just keep it simple and build your audience. There have been many horror stories the last few years of new creators losing huge chunks of cheddar, leaving collaborators without pay and a failed project, simply because they promised too much. I know this smaller project won’t pay your bills, but once you bring in collaborators, there are people to think about beyond yourself, be considerate. 

Building an Audience

This is rather nebulous and impossible for me to give any concrete promises. My best advice is: keep working on your art, sharing it in your own way online, and keep your head down. This can take time. Slow, agonizing time. I have 3,000 Twitter followers after joining in 2018. If you ask most people, that’s either a lot or pathetic. To me? It’s totally reasonable and probably excessive. I can say the times it has grown significantly were when I have shown off art or when I’m running a Kickstarter. I would never suggest courting controversy to build an audience because I think that shit is annoying. I think almost every ounce of TTRPG discourse is a complete waste of time, unless we’re discussing paying people properly or pushing out abusers and other bad actors from our industry. These things are actively good.

When I first started, I offered my games to any itch.io bundle I could. That puts your game in front of a ton of folks who otherwise wouldn’t see it. Bundles are usually for good causes as well. You could even run one, like I did in 2021, but those take organizing and trust. I would also suggest doing a game jam but it’s hard to tell if anyone cares about those anymore. Game jams, to me, feel rather dead compared to 2019-20. 

The best thing I can tell you about building an audience is you really don’t need that many fans to pay rent. It might surprise you to know that most fiction books, by even major publishers, don’t even sell 500 copies. Most don’t even sell one hundred. 

In my experience, I needed to sell 400 copies to keep living and working. It’s not extravagant money. It won’t buy a car or cover health insurance (I still don’t have that). But it can pay your rent, get groceries, and let you work on the next thing. 

I’m not selling a luxurious life. I’m hardly selling you anything. This life worked for me because I don’t have kids or a mortgage. I have student loan debt that I’ll probably never fully pay off. I have credit card debt. Medical debt. I’ve had to move every year to avoid rising rents. Some months were very tight. Some months were terrifying. But I’m alive. If you’re here to become the next Big Company, you’re simply in the wrong place. I’m sorry. I can’t fix the industry and I can’t put you into a lifestyle that isn’t still scary. But I survived. This job, for the most part, is fulfilling. It’s basically all I think I can do for the rest of my life. I don’t know how I would survive if I went back to a “real job.”

So I lowered my standards to meet the money I made and I’m still alive. Not that my standards were much higher to begin with. But there is an adjustment from a paycheck every two weeks to making a chunk of change every few months last.

What I’m ultimately saying is, if you want to make it as an artist, it might mean abandoning the stability of menial labor. It might be very difficult if you have children. It might be harder or easier if you have a partner who either is or isn’t working for any number of reasons. For me, I had my partner who I both supported and then was helped by, and our cat. No kids. Living in Chicago, so rent was our biggest expense. And we went through periods of maintaining a car and then not having a car. There was a rather wide range of (fluctuating) expenses. You’ll have to make these judgements based on your circumstances. To me, there is always a risk when turning to freelancing or self-publishing for a living. No amount of advice can completely mitigate this.

I think that if you want a modest life of working on art, fearfully doing taxes and maybe getting McDonalds sometimes, then you don’t need to Kickstart for hundreds of thousands of dollars. If you want to start a company and pay other people? I can’t help you. That was my goal but my priorities changed substantially over the years. All I want is to be able to support myself and I’ve changed how I operate to accommodate. I don’t want to be anyone’s boss. I don’t want to own a studio. I did the Project NERVES thing and realized I only want to be known as Me. As an individual artist. Not as a press or a company or whatever. That was my decision for my mental health. If you want to start a company, you might need to talk to other folks for advice.

Running Kickstarters/Crowdfunding Campaigns

I’ve run nine separate crowdfunding projects. Six on Kickstarter, two on my own website, and one on itch.io. In total, I’ve released more projects directly to print as a way to make monthly rent. I feel like a healthy dose of both are what allow me to be here today, having completed a very successful Kickstarter campaign.

My rules for doing this are rather simple:

1. No stretch goals. 

2. As few tiers as possible: pdf and physical book are fine.

3. Stickers, posters, and art prints are cheap to print and people love them.

4. Your budget should include printing at least 500 copies, shipping supplies (~$3/book), paying contributors, tax percentages (use Google), and ideally paying yourself for the work you’ve put in (I don’t do this a lot and it’s really dangerous but I also have nothing to lose and no one is relying on me but myself).

5. It’s okay to use a print on demand service, just make sure you state so. Rookie Jet Studio does this exclusively to great success.

6. Your budget should be small for your first time. My first Kickstarter’s budget was ~$500. 

7. You make most of your money the first and last two days.

8. Schedule a lot of tweets for when you’re away from your computer, like when you’re sleeping. Most people don’t see everything on Twitter. You’re just providing more chances. Don’t listen to people telling you you’re being annoying (especially if it’s coming from inside the house).

9. A good piece of cover art and a good mockup (you can get them cheap on Creative Market) sell your book to strangers.

10. Maybe outsource fulfillment. Lots of smaller distributors and shops have affordable rates. 

11. If you’re doing fulfillment yourself, don’t collect shipping until you’re shipping. Shipping prices fluctuate and you don’t want delays to eat into your shipping money (trust me).

I think you should run crowdfunders. I think smaller creators should be given priority over IP games or studios. If a studio or company is run well, they should be able to just take pre-orders or print the book and recoup those costs through sales. Small creators can’t take those risks (that’s how we got the whole “heartbreaker” meme). Small creators shouldn’t have to take those risks. Small creators should be given crowdfunding priority. Plain and simple. Everyone at my size or bigger should do everything they can to get eyes on smaller creators. I’ll be straightforward and honest: we failed the industry with Zine Month this year. I think we failed. Too many campaigns failed. It’s really sad and I feel bad, even if I didn’t have the money to back what I wanted to. I’ll do better moving forward, thanks to the .dungeon//remastered campaign.

I don’t know what to do for countries completely cut off from Kickstarter other than offering our platforms to other folks, but smarter folks with solutions should share them. I would love if we had more solutions for people accessing the American market. Cause there’s a lot of nerds here buying books and they should buy more books that aren’t made by Americans—a net good for everyone which hurts no one.

Lastly, we should be more critical of companies using Kickstarter to fund their games. They don’t need coverage, first of all. I know they’re buying the coverage because they can afford to, but it’d be great if that when they did buy it, we just talked about other games instead. No one needed to talk about The One Ring Kickstarter, for instance. Games like that? The IP sells it on its own. IP is its own marketing. It was always going to succeed. I won’t argue this point. 

We should be more critical of companies that use crowdfunding and be asking them why they aren’t just printing their books or doing website pre-orders. Sometimes they’ll have good answers, but no one is presently making these meaningful critiques, so I don’t really care. It’s okay to be critical. I think, due to the notion it’s everyone against WotC, many companies obfuscate any criticism. And that’s silly. Criticism is normal and not inherently good or bad. Asking questions of companies who want our money is normal. If a game promises to deliver the Breaking Bad experience, or whatever, the first question we should ask is “how?” And then probably “why?” It’s the least we can do as consumers.

Setting it loose and walking away

When I finish a project I find it best to walk away for a while. The anxiety and stress of sitting around and watching is not worth it. At the point of release it is out of your hands. It’s in the ether now. Time to think about the next project. So walk away for a while. Take a break. Refill the tank. 

I’ve said a lot of words here. Aired grievances. Tried to instill some hope. Explained what this success was made of and what it means for me. I’ve been critical of this industry that I’m in (and you’re probably in as well) especially if you’ve made it this far. I’ll continue being critical, perhaps even more vocal now that I feel comfortable. Now that I don’t think I need to rely on Twitter’s opinion of me to succeed. Not that it’s been a good opinion for quite some time.

But I’m not going to leave Twitter, the pit in which we squirm, behind. I don’t want to lift up the ladder behind me. I’m not going to create a walled off community and ask you to pay to join it. Those of you on my Patreon know that I just post the shit I make there and sometimes post previews of stuff that doesn’t end up getting released. I plan on continuing Youtube. I plan on using this .dungeon money to secure a short while into the future (enough for the next book) and take care of people and try to help anyone I can. I don’t know how to do that yet. I’ll be honest, I’m not a business-minded person. I’m a writer. This here is what I’m best at. Everything else will take me time to build confidence and wisdom in.

I’m gonna go pour one out for those who left the scene.

Edited by Fiona Geist (@coilingoracle)