Building a TTRPG in 10 days: Setting Up The Marketplace and Bringing People To It.
Building a TTRPG in 10 days: Setting Up The Marketplace and Bringing People To It.
How I set up a marketplace for my TTRPG and brought people there in two days.
If you’re new, welcome! I’m Arjun Agarwal and this is my newsletter. I hope it convinces you and helps you to make a game that will make you first game designer to become a billionaire.
So you have made your TTRPG, you have playtested and finetuned it, you have edited and proofread it, you have had other people look at it and give feedback and you have seriously acted on the given feedback.
Now the only thing left is to get it to the customer.
A good product is nothing if it cannot be accessed by the consumer. We have two days left and we are gonna go online.
Why Itch.io
I have said this in my one week startup series also, you don’t need your own website for literally everything.
It is more than okay to use a public marketplace. It allows you access to their network and infrastructure and website support in return for a cut in revenue. Itch.io is quite a good option for a TTRPG for two reasons.
It has a game based audience. Basically their is a big zone of confluence between your target market and their existing network. It’s a good thing.
It has an open revenue sharing system. Basically you get to decide what cut of revenue they take from the money you make on their platform. I have set it to the suggested 10%. While you may decide not to pay a single dime, I suggest you keep it between 5-30% respecting the service Itch offers.
If you decide not to use itch.io, the only alternative I know of is DriveThruRPG. You can also use the Google Form method described in my one week startup series, but I doubt it’s success in this area.
In conclusion: Just use Itch.io
How to make a killer itch.io page?
Before this, I had never used itch.io personally. I had helped a few friends around with it but never completely.
So I didn’t know what would work and what would not. So I hopped on to r/rpgdesign(which I have been using a lot lately) and asked them for suggestions and advice. All the advice summed up:
Put up a lot of content in regard to the game.
Give a clear description of what your game does.
Keep it simple. If you try to do too much with the page, it turns into garbage.
Use good art
Remix ideas from some good pages.
I also received a list of good itch.io pages which will help gain inspiration for your own page.
You can also go through the Dicebreaker archives for lists upon lists of good RPG’s and their pages. Another point to keep in mind is to make sure that the font reflects your style or your RPG.
Now let’s talk about…
Telling People About Your Game.
You may have the best TTRPG in the world but it means nothing if people don’t know about it.
You need to spread the word about your RPG, and it is not that hard.
First thing: USE REDDIT
I have said it a lot of times and will say it again. For promoting my games, I used r/rpgdesign and r/rpg
I made a very short, quick post in both the communities, almost a tweet. I can’t give you statistics about r/rpg (Made the post only half-hour ago) but r/rpgdesign drove 91 visitors on my itch page, got me 10 purchases and brought 21 visitors to this newsletter, all in less than 12 hours. Those are good numbers
Second thing: Game stores
If you have a few game stores near your place, you should design a flyer/poster with a QR code to your itch.io page, and place it or distribute it over their.
I don’t have a gamestore near my house so I decided to pass on this.
Third thing: Friends and relatives
The title says it all. Tell your friends and family about the game.
Fourth thing: Discord
If you use discord and are in a server about RPG or RPG design, you should tell them about your new TTRPG.
Fifth thing: Existing social media
This goes without saying, if you have a following elsewhere, tell your followers about it.
Giving Back
I believe that with everything you do, you should try giving back. That’s something I admire about The Body Shop. Anita Roddick showed that business can be a form of protest and you can use your profits to fund causes close to your heart.
In that spirit, I am going to give all the money raised(in form of books) from Intrigue and Cops and Comedy to Narmad Central Library. It is no news that I like reading. And for the last 9 years, my reading habit was supported by Narmad. In the last nine years, I have read above 1500 books, which would be worth 12000 USD. Along with that the librarians have also recommended me many books which have shaped my personality as well as my writing. Therefore, it makes sense that I dedicate this project to Narmad.
Thanks for reading. Despite the number of Reddit mentions, I am not sponsored by Reddit. To support me:
Buy something.
The first one is called Cops and Comedy and is inspired by Brooklyn Nine-Nine.
The second one is called Intrigue and is inspired by Blindspot.
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