Cassi Mothwin

What are you hoping to accomplish by publishing this game? Do you want to...

See what the process is like and learn?

Make money?

Share something you think is cool?

Your goal might be something else, or it might be a combination of these. That's ok, but do decide which is the most important. The most important goal should guide the rest of your decision-making process.

No matter which goal you have, you'll have to write your game first. Lately, I recommend Notion.so for that. It's a free, always-online word processor. It has a bit of a learning curve compared to Google Docs, but you can export files as HTML or PDF, and exporting in HTML is a killer feature (more on why later).

Whatever you do, DON'T WRITE IN A DESIGN PROGRAM. Don't write your game in InDesign or Affinity! Bad! No!

Ok, so you have your game written or at least a draft of it. What next? Well, that depends on your goals.

🏫You want to see what the process is like and learn...

If you are completely new, I recommend a low-stakes approach. It's sort of a release as you go option.

Write your game in a word-processing program.

Check it for spelling and grammatical errors.

Upload to Itch.

Have a term like one of these in the title: Alpha, Beta, Preview, Draft, or Ashcan. (Ashcan is a TTRPG term for unfinished, but it can be confusing for newcomers to the hobby, so I resist using it.)

Make it pay what you want or free.

Congrats. You've published your game. You may have told a few people about it, but mostly this was for you. Now you have a better sense of how Itch works too, and you can start experimenting with your page.

But what's next for your game?

Join a community and see if you can find interest for it. (Twitter is a good start, but finding a Discord group focused on game development would be better.)

Offer to run it online for people for free.

Be ready for crickets.

Offer to playtest others' games. See if anyone else is up for trading games.

At this stage, you're more focused on joining the community. You're taking in what others are doing. You're looking at Itch pages, layout, how people talk about their games, how people write about their games, and how people talk about everyone else's games.

We learn language by immersion. That's what this process is.

You can of course start doing these things before you publish your game, but things might click better after you've hit publish.

Once your game is published. You can continue to refine it, edit it, move it from alpha to beta, move it from draft to final, move it from final to remaster, and so on for as long as you want. Itch provides a great development log section for you to track changes.

💸You want to make money...

Oh no.

I have some news for you.

You're probably not going to make much if any money. It takes money to make money, and that's especially true in self-published TTRPGs.

So if you want to get attention and interest, you'll have to spend a lot somewhere.

Time

If you want to try to make money, be prepared to spend a lot of time in project land. All of your time is now your project. When you're not working on your project, you're writing ads or pitching it to people. When you're not doing that, you're performing health needs and day-job stuff. But otherwise, all of your free time is now in project land.

Art

There are games that sell without art. But even if they don't have art in the traditional sense (characters, monsters, landscapes), they're likely stylized professionally. Plus, there are likely nice visuals or a show-stopping cover that's posted everywhere.

Identity recognition is important, and you'll get nowhere without a visually interesting/unique cover.

You can find a lot of free resources around, such as Unsplash, Pexels, and Pixabay

Editing and Playtesting too

If you want to make money, you need a good editor. You need to read through your game several times and have others read through your game several times. You're looking for spelling and grammar errors, sure, but you're also looking for readability issues, overall organization issues, structural issues, etc. etc. etc. There should be going through several stages of this.

Furthermore, you should be testing the rules and mechanics over and over, too. You should be asking if they add up to make sense with what you're trying to capture with the game. Honestly, editing and playtesting is its own whole separate post, probably. And likely better written by someone else.

Why is it so important here? If you want to make money, word of mouth is going to be your biggest seller. To get people to talk about your game after buying it, you have to have a polished product. If this is your first game, it's even more important that it's as good as you can make it.

Ads

This goes into the Time section a bit because you might not have to pay for ads, but you're going to have to talk about your project all the time. You need to be in Facebook groups, on reddit, on tiktok, on twitter, on tumblr, etc.

If you don't want to be in all those places, but you still want to make money, you need to pitch your game to people who are in those places to talk about it. Some of these people may even want money to talk about your game. They're more likely to talk about your game if you have visuals too.

Don't lie about your game. Don't say your game is something that it isn't. Don't overpromise. People will remember, they'll tell their friends, and they'll leave bad reviews. People are far more likely to leave negative remarks than good ones, especially if you charged them money.

Last thoughts on making money

There are outliers, games that do great without all of this, but you're going to have a tough time convincing people to give you money if you're not going the extra steps to deliver what you believe to be great experiences.

And after all of that, you may not break even. Or it may take months to years.

🎲You want to share something you think is cool

Then do it. Skip all the stuff above. Seriously. Share the thing wherever it's easiest.

Hopefully whatever you made is for you. Sure, it'd be nice if others looked at it, but you should be proud of what you made regardless. Just post it. Never stop talking about it. Like two years from now, still be posting about it somewhere. You made a thing and should be very proud. It's hard to make a thing.

Kofi

I'm against Kofi for many reasons. I wrote about it in a Patreon post recently, so I'll just paste that section here:

Some folks really swear by Kofi, and I'm happy it works for them. In the future, I'll only use Kofi for commissions. A big issue I have with Kofi is that it lacks privacy if you don't have a business paypal account. Anyone who bought my product What Crooked Roots though Kofi had access to my legal name. Plus, I have theirs. When you have 100+ transactions go through in a day, that's pretty scary to think about. The cost of my private information was only a $1 PWYW product. YIKES.

Kofi doesn't have discoverability.

Folks don't go to Kofi looking for something. They go because they know what they want is there. Itch and DriveThruRPG have their own audiences that browse for fun, and while they take a cut of the sales, they also protect my privacy. I make quite a few passive sales on DTRPG without mentioning my product. Kofi dropped dead when I stopped talking about it.

Kofi doesn't have a review system.

I made quite a few sales on Kofi, and none of those folks have anywhere they can leave feedback as far as I'm aware.

Kofi doesn't have analytics.

Most tracking has to be done manually, and it's nearly impossible to generate a clean report compared to DTRPG. 

Other thoughts

Please don't release a game in PDF format in standard letter size. It's hard to read on desktop and mobile devices. The reason I recommend notion is that you can export your file as HTML when the text is locked in. You can even add images to Notion. Once you have the HTML file, you can convert that to an Epub using Calibre (another free and easy-to-use program).

It's not perfect, but an Epub is a lot easier to use than a PDF, and you don't have to worry about learning layout... At least not right away.

Final notes

My journey was a strange one, and I had a leg up for several reasons:

I used to work in publishing, so I have a basic knowledge of layout and editing.

I have a master's degree in professional writing, which includes technical writing training.

I illustrate my own work, which gives me unique visuals that match my games. (I use an iPad Pro and Procreate for this.)

I work from home, and when it's slow, my day-job doesn't mind if I work on personal projects.

I'm in a privileged position. While it may seem like I sort of sprang up out of nowhere in TTRPGs, I've been in the writing world for over 10 years. The transition wasn't extremely easy, but I also wasn't starting from nothing.

Anyway...

It's Return of the King!

What are you hoping to accomplish by publishing this game? Do you want to...

See what the process is like and learn?

Make money?

Share something you think is cool?

Your goal might be something else, or it might be a combination of these. That's ok, but do decide which is the most important. The most important goal should guide the rest of your decision-making process.

No matter which goal you have, you'll have to write your game first. Lately, I recommend Notion.so for that. It's a free, always-online word processor. It has a bit of a learning curve compared to Google Docs, but you can export files as HTML or PDF, and exporting in HTML is a killer feature (more on why later).

Whatever you do, DON'T WRITE IN A DESIGN PROGRAM. Don't write your game in InDesign or Affinity! Bad! No!

Ok, so you have your game written or at least a draft of it. What next? Well, that depends on your goals.

🏫You want to see what the process is like and learn...

If you are completely new, I recommend a low-stakes approach. It's sort of a release as you go option.

Write your game in a word-processing program.

Check it for spelling and grammatical errors.

Upload to Itch.

Have a term like one of these in the title: Alpha, Beta, Preview, Draft, or Ashcan. (Ashcan is a TTRPG term for unfinished, but it can be confusing for newcomers to the hobby, so I resist using it.)

Make it pay what you want or free.

Congrats. You've published your game. You may have told a few people about it, but mostly this was for you. Now you have a better sense of how Itch works too, and you can start experimenting with your page.

But what's next for your game?

Join a community and see if you can find interest for it. (Twitter is a good start, but finding a Discord group focused on game development would be better.)

Offer to run it online for people for free.

Be ready for crickets.

Offer to playtest others' games. See if anyone else is up for trading games.

At this stage, you're more focused on joining the community. You're taking in what others are doing. You're looking at Itch pages, layout, how people talk about their games, how people write about their games, and how people talk about everyone else's games.

We learn language by immersion. That's what this process is.

You can of course start doing these things before you publish your game, but things might click better after you've hit publish.

Once your game is published. You can continue to refine it, edit it, move it from alpha to beta, move it from draft to final, move it from final to remaster, and so on for as long as you want. Itch provides a great development log section for you to track changes.

💸You want to make money...

Oh no.

I have some news for you.

You're probably not going to make much if any money. It takes money to make money, and that's especially true in self-published TTRPGs.

So if you want to get attention and interest, you'll have to spend a lot somewhere.

Time

If you want to try to make money, be prepared to spend a lot of time in project land. All of your time is now your project. When you're not working on your project, you're writing ads or pitching it to people. When you're not doing that, you're performing health needs and day-job stuff. But otherwise, all of your free time is now in project land.

Art

There are games that sell without art. But even if they don't have art in the traditional sense (characters, monsters, landscapes), they're likely stylized professionally. Plus, there are likely nice visuals or a show-stopping cover that's posted everywhere.

Identity recognition is important, and you'll get nowhere without a visually interesting/unique cover.

You can find a lot of free resources around, such as Unsplash, Pexels, and Pixabay

Editing and Playtesting too

If you want to make money, you need a good editor. You need to read through your game several times and have others read through your game several times. You're looking for spelling and grammar errors, sure, but you're also looking for readability issues, overall organization issues, structural issues, etc. etc. etc. There should be going through several stages of this.

Furthermore, you should be testing the rules and mechanics over and over, too. You should be asking if they add up to make sense with what you're trying to capture with the game. Honestly, editing and playtesting is its own whole separate post, probably. And likely better written by someone else.

Why is it so important here? If you want to make money, word of mouth is going to be your biggest seller. To get people to talk about your game after buying it, you have to have a polished product. If this is your first game, it's even more important that it's as good as you can make it.

Ads

This goes into the Time section a bit because you might not have to pay for ads, but you're going to have to talk about your project all the time. You need to be in Facebook groups, on reddit, on tiktok, on twitter, on tumblr, etc.

If you don't want to be in all those places, but you still want to make money, you need to pitch your game to people who are in those places to talk about it. Some of these people may even want money to talk about your game. They're more likely to talk about your game if you have visuals too.

Don't lie about your game. Don't say your game is something that it isn't. Don't overpromise. People will remember, they'll tell their friends, and they'll leave bad reviews. People are far more likely to leave negative remarks than good ones, especially if you charged them money.

Last thoughts on making money

There are outliers, games that do great without all of this, but you're going to have a tough time convincing people to give you money if you're not going the extra steps to deliver what you believe to be great experiences.

And after all of that, you may not break even. Or it may take months to years.

🎲You want to share something you think is cool

Then do it. Skip all the stuff above. Seriously. Share the thing wherever it's easiest.

Hopefully whatever you made is for you. Sure, it'd be nice if others looked at it, but you should be proud of what you made regardless. Just post it. Never stop talking about it. Like two years from now, still be posting about it somewhere. You made a thing and should be very proud. It's hard to make a thing.

Kofi

I'm against Kofi for many reasons. I wrote about it in a Patreon post recently, so I'll just paste that section here:

Some folks really swear by Kofi, and I'm happy it works for them. In the future, I'll only use Kofi for commissions. A big issue I have with Kofi is that it lacks privacy if you don't have a business paypal account. Anyone who bought my product What Crooked Roots though Kofi had access to my legal name. Plus, I have theirs. When you have 100+ transactions go through in a day, that's pretty scary to think about. The cost of my private information was only a $1 PWYW product. YIKES.

Kofi doesn't have discoverability.

Folks don't go to Kofi looking for something. They go because they know what they want is there. Itch and DriveThruRPG have their own audiences that browse for fun, and while they take a cut of the sales, they also protect my privacy. I make quite a few passive sales on DTRPG without mentioning my product. Kofi dropped dead when I stopped talking about it.

Kofi doesn't have a review system.

I made quite a few sales on Kofi, and none of those folks have anywhere they can leave feedback as far as I'm aware.

Kofi doesn't have analytics.

Most tracking has to be done manually, and it's nearly impossible to generate a clean report compared to DTRPG. 

Other thoughts

Please don't release a game in PDF format in standard letter size. It's hard to read on desktop and mobile devices. The reason I recommend notion is that you can export your file as HTML when the text is locked in. You can even add images to Notion. Once you have the HTML file, you can convert that to an Epub using Calibre (another free and easy-to-use program).

It's not perfect, but an Epub is a lot easier to use than a PDF, and you don't have to worry about learning layout... At least not right away.

Final notes

My journey was a strange one, and I had a leg up for several reasons:

I used to work in publishing, so I have a basic knowledge of layout and editing.

I have a master's degree in professional writing, which includes technical writing training.

I illustrate my own work, which gives me unique visuals that match my games. (I use an iPad Pro and Procreate for this.)

I work from home, and when it's slow, my day-job doesn't mind if I work on personal projects.

I'm in a privileged position. While it may seem like I sort of sprang up out of nowhere in TTRPGs, I've been in the writing world for over 10 years. The transition wasn't extremely easy, but I also wasn't starting from nothing.

Anyway...