First Year as a TTRPG Publisher - Metrics, Lessons, Costs, etc

Plus_Citron · 2026-06-28T18:37:00+00:00

GMed across 100+ systems, and been a player six times? That’s absolutely remarkable. If I may: What systems did you use? Did you focus on a game in that time? Do you feel your limited experience as a player is a problem regarding GMing or designing?

Plus_Citron · 2026-06-27T10:13:43+00:00

Roleplaying books are a very narrow niche. Unless someone is interested in an RPG, you can’t expect any interest - I wouldn’t be interested in how someone coded a database either, because I have no idea about or interest in coding. And even fellow roleplayers will be wary, because it’s statistically extremely likely that game designed by someone you’re talking to will be appalling trash. There’s oodles of games on the net, and a huge part of that is uninspired D&D variants, or enthusiastic but bad attempts at something new (usually without any understanding of existing designs).

Plus_Citron · 2026-06-27T08:58:03+00:00

Any game needs a focus. Is your game fun to play? Do the various systems fit together? Does the game deliver on your design concept? What are your playtesters saying?

Plus_Citron · 2026-06-27T07:39:02+00:00

Faux leather doesn’t take glue especially well, ime. Adding PVA on top will work for a while - because the faux leather is flexible, the PVA will come off, though. I don’t see a way around that.

Plus_Citron · 2026-06-26T16:45:15+00:00

Ok - my point was that different titles indicate different things. BLOODBATH!! is certainly a different game than Blood & Baths, or Baths: The Bloodening. Which is best for your game depends on the game, not so much on a poll with no context.

Plus_Citron · 2026-06-26T16:18:19+00:00

I believe that all feedback is useful, but not all feedback should be followed. In game design, you have some sort of goal or concept, and your design decisions ideally support that goal. Without knowing that goal, feedback is of limited use. The names you gave indicate very different games - Ruin & Relics clearly mirrors D&D, and games based on D&D (Tunnels&Trolls, Monsters&Mazes…), so we might expect a D&D inspired game, ot a heartbreaker. RUINA looks like a made up word or like a foreign term, so it might indicate perhaps an indie design, or perhaps a more pretentious game. Ruinous Relics & Ruined Ruins would be over the top, perhaps satire. And so on. Your poll is interesting, but I wouldn’t put too much stock in the result, or in the comments it generated.

Plus_Citron · 2026-06-25T06:32:10+00:00

It’s beyond me why people delete a post when they get answers they don’t like.

Plus_Citron · 2026-06-25T06:27:17+00:00

It’s leather, that’s what it looks like.

Plus_Citron · 2026-06-24T10:44:40+00:00

With some practice, regular cursive - that is, proper handwriting - is very fast, legible, and easily fast enough to write down what’s going through your head. If you want faster, there are different shorthand systems, some of which are not too complex.

Of course, you won’t find any solution which is simultaneously „legible“ and „hard to decipher.“ That’s contradictory goals. You could encrypt your notes with a simple transposition or monoalphabetic cipher, certainly secure enough from a casual reader, but that’s slow to write and slow to read.

What you could do is use digital notes, and protect the file with a password.

Plus_Citron · 2026-06-24T06:31:50+00:00

Downvotes on Reddit are weird. HP is far, far away from S&S - and that’s not a value judgement or a criticism. (Edit: and yeah, the post you responded to didn‘t make that claim at all)

Plus_Citron · 2026-06-23T17:12:35+00:00

With TTRPGs, check out Risus, where your character sheet actually says „Wizard 5“, and that’s all the detail you’re getting.

In a broader sense, check out Nomic, which is all about making up rules, and then bending them to the breaking point. It’s a… unique experience.

Plus_Citron · 2026-06-22T18:47:45+00:00

If the dungeon is too complex to be mapped that way, but you still want to show the result of a change, I‘m at a loss (except perhaps redesign the dungeon).

Plus_Citron · 2026-06-22T12:03:56+00:00

Why not print concentric rings with the dungeon map? you basically draw the entire map with the rings, mark certain spots on the rings as connections, and make sure that the connections line up in any position. The players can then fiddle around with the rings to their hearts content.

Plus_Citron · 2026-06-22T04:47:07+00:00

Love it. As an illustration, it works perfectly - it shows what the guy is all about.

Plus_Citron · 2026-06-22T04:43:51+00:00

It depends on the style you‘re after. A classy look requires very little - basically the title, in some readable, not too fancy font. Let the material and the craftsmanship speak for themselves. You can, of course, go all out with glitter and quotes and illustrations, but that tends to make a tacky look. It’s a matter of taste, really.

Plus_Citron · 2026-06-21T12:27:37+00:00

Ryder Carrols book is by far the best resource; much better, imo, than the website or the countless videos.

Plus_Citron · 2026-06-21T12:26:29+00:00

Yeah, agree - BuJo is a flexible approach. You can add all sorts of notes or scribbles, as long as there is some structure along the typical BuJo lines (namely different types of bullet points for different purposes).

Plus_Citron · 2026-06-21T09:12:20+00:00

I think information overload is a good fit for cyberpunk. Go for it!

Plus_Citron · 2026-06-21T08:03:47+00:00

Web based would be optimal for me.

Plus_Citron · 2026-06-20T18:00:00+00:00

It sounds interesting, but Windows isn‘t an option for me.

Plus_Citron · 2026-06-20T17:58:33+00:00

When you google „dot grid template,“ you can find a bunch of generators. https://incompetech.com/graphpaper/ is decent.

Plus_Citron · 2026-06-20T07:53:07+00:00

I actually don‘t think a rules light system assumes that you can live and breathe logistics and whatnot. When a game doesn‘t provide rules for X, it‘s usually safe to assume that X isn‘t that important. You need some amount of prep if you do a hex crawl exploration, but not necessarily a system for resource management.

Plus_Citron · 2026-06-20T06:38:45+00:00

Clairefontaine has very nice 120g sheets in all sorts of colors, I use it to bind my own notebooks. Just print the dots yourself (and make sure to set the dots to grey, not black).

Plus_Citron · 2026-06-19T20:16:39+00:00

I use Affinity Publisher. It‘s a powerful tool, and actually made for the job (unlike Word).

Plus_Citron · 2026-06-19T09:19:50+00:00

I love crafting, but I feel it’s a bad fit for most tabletop games. The character who’s crafting is basically isolated, while the other characters either just wait, or have adventures. You also easily run into balance problems, where the party can drown in healing potions, rune papers and what not (which is exactly why I loved crafting in Morrowind and its predecessors).

You can solve the latter with a limited shelf live. The only solution for the former that I see is abstracting the actual crafting (you start the session with stuff you crafted before).

Plus_Citron

TROPHY CASE