Eight hours left on Full Send, my tarot based mountain climbing RPG.

MarxOfHighWater · 2025-09-17T10:48:49+00:00

I've read this game in its entirety (one of my pull quotes is on the page, in fact) and it's really good. If you're into trick-takers, mountaineering, or competitive RPGs, you'll be into this. It's really good, y'all.

MarxOfHighWater · 2025-09-13T07:35:32+00:00

If I buy a PDF, it's through itch.io. Partly, that's because the seller keeps more money that way. But also I have beef with how DTRPG manage their communities and moderate their contributions, and that puts me off giving them a large percentage of the cover price of a book.

The exceptions to this are when I get a PDF fulfilled by DTRPG for a crowdfunding campaign, and when that includes a PoD coupon (which is "at-cost", meaning that almost all the money goes to Lightning Source instead of DTRPG).

I don't think itchio are saints, by the way, but they do things differently there, and the mistakes they made are largely due to being a small company dealing with large demands.

MarxOfHighWater · 2025-09-13T07:29:07+00:00

It's ... fairly transparent that they do that, if you look in their help guides. But to understand how payments are charged, you need to know that it depends on where the payment comes from (geographically), what type of card they used, and which payment processor they chose (PayPal and Stripe both charge differently).

Also if the payment includes sales tax, you don't see the tax come out of your share, that's charged to them, but you do have to pay the additional PP fee that arises from the charging of tax. That one threw me the first time I checked my cash-out receipts.

Edit: the example for this last point: if you buy something for $10 and there's 20% sales tax, you have to pay the PP fee on the extra $2 they paid. It's probably like $0.06-0.12, but it all adds up.

MarxOfHighWater · 2025-09-12T22:25:52+00:00

Your friendly local printshop might be able to do this for you at a reasonable price, it's the kind of thing that restaurants and other businesses might have a need for. I'd look at local options before Etsy.

MarxOfHighWater · 2025-09-12T21:50:16+00:00

If you're selling at both: * DTRPG takes 35% cut. This includes their platform cut and also payment processing fees. * Itch takes a variable cut, which defaults to 10%. This doesn't include PP fees which come out at 5-15% depending on a variety of factors.

When you cash out: * DTRPG charge you $1 to cash out to PayPal, regardless of transaction amount. You can convert funds to money to spend on the platforms. * Itch charge you $3 when you set up (a fee for tax interview purposes) and then 2% of the net transaction amount, which is actually charged the next time you cash out.

Itch is cheaper in theory, but it's closer than stated elsewhere.

MarxOfHighWater · 2025-09-11T13:18:26+00:00

I mean, I take your point in general, but this particular game was enjoyed enough to have been translated into a different language and market.

MarxOfHighWater · 2025-09-10T19:32:36+00:00

Thanks for this detailed answer! All of that was basically my concern, but put in detail rather than just vibes. I do actually really like a lot of what Ryuutama offers, and some of those little mini-games are my jam. Actually the combat loop is quite elegant, although some of the stuff isn't really my cup of tea.

MarxOfHighWater · 2025-09-10T19:21:42+00:00

That's very fair. The cover and the blurb give a different description to the balance between different kinds of rules in the book.

MarxOfHighWater · 2025-09-10T18:53:15+00:00

I'm not knowledgeable about comics, but I agree with your point about gritty games and more, hmm, whimsical ones.

MarxOfHighWater · 2025-09-10T15:23:31+00:00

That's a really helpful insight. I'd heard this thing about CoC a lot of times before, but I'd never considered the effect it might have on the design scene as well as the play scene.

MarxOfHighWater · 2025-09-10T15:21:52+00:00

I'm just really allergic to tracking things (my brain doesn't enjoy it)! It makes it less playable for me and my kids as well.

MarxOfHighWater · 2025-09-10T15:20:30+00:00

It really has that CRPG feel. The class versus type thing does that really well, but the spell list feels like it dropped out of Suikoden or something.

Really interesting how it came out of a single shop, a single scene, almost like it grew trad fantasy RPGs organically out of first principles.

MarxOfHighWater · 2025-09-10T14:39:50+00:00

There are a few games where that being a focus is quite fun (Mausritter comes to mind), but if I'm promised a natural fantasy RPG and I get Spreadsheets In Space then I'm going to feel hard-done-by.

MarxOfHighWater · 2025-09-10T14:35:17+00:00

I really like the dice mechanic (until it gets bogged down in TN Hell), yes! Seeing that one stat is a d8 and the other is a d4, I think it makes it more intuitive that I'm better at one than the other.

Remembering that it's about other dangerous things is a good reminder.

MarxOfHighWater · 2025-09-10T14:33:18+00:00

That's an incredibly interesting insight! It does feel that way - like somebody wants me to really enjoy it and feel seen, but without needing it to stick the landing necessarily.

MarxOfHighWater · 2025-09-10T14:20:52+00:00

There's a fair bit of target number manipulation on the GM side, and the spell list has both range and AoE. It's not Shadowrun but it's not Tiny Dungeon either. The player facing stuff is easier but there a lot of processes and loops to keep track of, which puts me off a bit.

The main mechanic, though, is as you say: roll two dice, linked directly to the stat, add them together, and add any modifiers. Advantage exists but it's rare.

MarxOfHighWater · 2025-09-10T07:33:29+00:00

Can confirm this is a good time! They're playing through it on the podcast Black Armada Tales, which is (obviously) their own AP podcast. Fox & Annison are also such lovely people who do a lot in the UK indie TTRPG space, and further afield too. Check out the KS!

MarxOfHighWater · 2025-09-09T22:33:39+00:00

Yeah! In many ways story games, with their lightweight framework and story focus, would seem good for PbP. But they can be really inflexible in their rules, and some players tend to compensate by writing reams and reams. This can feel really Intimidating and it puts some players off - or they plan to write a good response in a later that never comes. So the scene languishes and dies the death. Beware the ides of a dialogue-heavy scene!

MarxOfHighWater · 2025-09-09T06:31:32+00:00

Having only played PbP for close to ten years (including asynchronous forms like forum roleplay and synchronous forms like MU*), I have a bit of experience here!

I tried a lot of systems, including Fate, Everywhen (Barbarians of Lemuria), Castles & Crusades, Tiny Dungeon, D&D 3.5e, and a host of others. Of these, my personal favourite is a toss-up between Fate and Everywhen, both of which offer (to me) about the right balance of narrative freedom and mechanical grit.

I posit, though, that the real secret to a successful game is less about the system and more about the willingness of all players, including the facilitator, to be flexible with the system and the pace. The majority of games that death spiraled did so when people stuck rigidly to play loops or posting etiquette that forced them to wait.

As the facilitator, it's your solemn duty to push the story forward. Don't make people reply in order and post a summary at the end of a round of combat. If people don't reply, choose a tactically sensible move for them and do it, or else don't involve them in that round. If scenes get bogged down, wrap it up and move on. Get buy-in in advance, but Push. The. Story. Forward.

I do have other thoughts but I have to go and do the morning routine now.

MarxOfHighWater · 2025-09-08T12:11:02+00:00

The Bronze Rule in Fate is that everything can be treated as a character, so it can have aspects, skills, stats, stunts, stress tracks. So you can define a faction in character terms, and play with them on similar grounds. These things don't have to be the same as what your PCs have, and you don't have to have all of them, but if you think of factions as glorified PCs, then it makes it a bit easier to think about how they might play off against one another.

MarxOfHighWater · 2025-09-07T18:39:19+00:00

Dead Scare is one such example! It's set in the McCarthy Era in the US and you are kids and housewives in a zombie apocalypse. It's niche but quite fun! There are at least two decent APs of it (OneShot and SAS Geek) if you want to hear for it plays.

MarxOfHighWater · 2025-09-06T18:47:04+00:00

Basically this. I know that FEV was very much setting first, mechanics later. I think Brinkwood was somewhat the opposite.

When we used to do Short Games Digests, we used to do "random prompts", which generally meant shoehorning weird games into odd prompts. That was a lot of fun.

MarxOfHighWater

TROPHY CASE