The "Get Loud" TTRPG Bundle
About a month ago Charlie Hall, editor of tabletop games over at Polygon wrote an odd opinion piece. The gist of it was that since Wizards of the Coast is fumbling the bag with the release of the new edition of Dungeons & Dragons, now would be a great time for indie TTRPG makers to step up.
Above all, I feel it is imperative that indie designers realize that their window is rapidly closing. Rather than sitting in their own little corners of the internet and wringing their hands, creatives who want to thrive in the TTRPG space need to come together and fight for the recognition that they deserve. The dragon is knocked out for now, but it wonāt be at rest forever. Only by building out a solid party, filled with individual contributors each possessing powerful skills, can they hope to one day face that dragon ā or at least earn a place in the lair beside them.
This pissed off a lot of people. Including me. We aren't wringing our fucking hands out here, Chuck. We are loud about our games every hour of the goddamn day, and each time we encourage big media outlets like you to help, we see you wringing your hands about reader retention and clicks and all that horseshit.
We are not the cowards in this arrangement.
So as is my habit these days, I did some organizing about it.
I went through my list of games I've bought off itch and found my favourites, and my favourite designers. I contacted the ones I could (some of them didn't respond, said no, or I couldn't find ways to contact them) and put them together in a bundle. My friend Em did some art. I launched it on the 1st of February.
So far it has raised over $6,000. That's about $300 for each designer, depending on how they divvy up their cuts to itch, taxes, etc. That's money in the hands of indie TTRPG makers who aren't Wizards of the Coast. That's people being able to pay their bills and keep making games.
And not to mention it's 36 of my favourite games and 20 of my favourite game makers all in one place for the low low price of $20.
Being an indie creator is hard and thankless. We make things because we cannot help but be artists, and we are met largely with silence. We are expected to compete with companies who pay salaries to public relations people, who have marketing budgets and teams of artists, when all we have is a social media account, a mailing list, and the occasional crowdfunding campaign.Ā
We are not saved by these companies, but by other small indie groups. By sites likeĀ RascalĀ who make game announcements easy, and the people who makeĀ YouTube channels and podcasts who play and read our games and let their fans know we exist. We are saved by people, not companies.
So if you buy the bundle, if you post about it on social media, or your workās Slack channel, or write the link on the wall of the bathroom in that cool queer dive bar you like, thank you.
We canāt keep doing this without you.Ā