A year in the life of an indie RPG publisher

Originally published at: A year in the life of an indie RPG publisher | Boing Boing

Back in the days of Google+, the crowd I somehow found myself falling in with were indie TTRPG folks despite my never having played a non-electronic RPG at the time. (The first boardgame community that appeared on the service introduced me to these people as gamers, not creators. Finding out the latter was a treat.) Reading posts like this are now a treat as it continues my virtual kinship with great people. And as a someday-creator myself (fiction, not games - but why not games?), it is always helpful to hear stories about starting out and pushing through despite the fact that everything won’t immediately pay off financially.

Thanks for sharing this post!

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I’ve been working full time in RPG’s for about three years now - you basically have to lower your living standards to just a hair above living in a cardboard box, but it’s doable.

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All that said, there is a real possibility of carving out a livable niche if you work hard at it.

It’s nice to know that some people are making a living off of this, but it doesn’t indicate anything about whether you can make a living off of it. There’s some definite survivorship bias at play here - or “possibility” is doing a lot of work. This is advice from someone who did build up a following, but there are plenty more people who never manage it. If nothing else, there’s enough people making RPGs that the quality of the work plays a role - only if you have some talent do you have a chance of surviving doing this. But as with all creative work, the product also has to resonate with enough people to produce a livable income, and luck plays a role here, especially if you’re taking any creative chances.

Unfortunately you don’t hear from the people who don’t make a career out of it. There’s important information they have to impart as well.

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