How does the TTRPG industry works?

[TheAlkaizer]

Hi!

I know there's several people on these forums that designed games, made books out of them and got to printing them, and today I'm interested in seeking a bit of knowledge. I work in video games and for months I've been trying to convince the stakeholders of the company to diversify and attempt something in the tabletop RPG market. I love video games, but I'm really interested in trying to design a tabletop RPG of some kind. I don't know what yet, but that'll come. I've got projects going on right now that won't finish for another year or two anyway.

Anyway, I'm curious as to how the tabletop RPG industry works when it comes to printing material. Designing a game and giving PDFs is one thing, but the printing business is something else. Let's say I had a game already designed. I do a crowdsourcing campaign, and I want to offer the option to buy print books.

What's the chain? There's the company that creates the game, there's distributors in different areas of the worlds, there's a printing company? How do you find informations about these distributors and these printing companies? Does any regular commercial printing company would be able to do products like that? How is transport, storage and shipping handled? Do most tabletop companies outsource that part or take care of that themselves?

I've tried to learn a bit more about the process at my local gamestore but they've been pretty secretive about it, and the couple of searches that I've done haven't yielded much results. So maybe a few nuggets of informations from ENWorld will help me start my market research and hopefully allow me to work on something cool in a year or two!

 

[Morrus]

There’s a handful of printing companies that the industry typically uses (in China, Europe, the US). You contact one of those and arrange the print job. They ship the pallets of books to a location of your choosing — usually the warehouse of a fulfilment company, but some publishers maintain their own warehouses. Customers are fulfilled directly from there. You then contact distributors and try to sell them as many copies of your game as you can. They’ll buy X number and then local stores get their stock from them. That’s the super short version.

We print with Standartu in Europe, then ship to ShipQuest in the U.K. and another company in the US.

 

[Marc_C]

I used to work for travel industry and designed travel brochures of 148 pages with soft cover. Starting the presses has a minimum fee. Thus the more you print the less it costs per copy. Below 5000 you won't get much savings with big printers.

In Montreal you can call Transcontinental for an idea of prices. They use large multi-page continuous paper roll printers like newspaper but in full colour. Green Ronin prints books in Montreal which are then distributed in the US.

You can get lower price if you can find a deal with a printer that does printing on individual sheets 8 pages. Those are good for print runs of less than 5000.

Rule of thumb: a book is always a multiple of 8 pages (interior) + 4 pages for the cover.

 

[TheAlkaizer]

We print with Standartu in Europe, then ship to ShipQuest in the U.K. and another company in the US.

Thank you! I'll look into these companies just to see what's the vocabulary, their services, etc. But what about distributors? Are they distributors specifically for game shops, or they distribute a ton of other stuff? How do you find information about them?

In Montreal you can call Transcontinental for an idea of prices. They use large multi-page continuous paper roll printers like newspaper but in full colour. Green Ronin prints books in Montreal which are then distributed in the US.

Transcontinental was on my list, my dad works for them! But I didn't know Green Ronin printed there. Very interesting. Thank you for the informations regarding the 8 pages sheets and the minimum fee!

 

[Morrus]

Thank you! I'll look into these companies just to see what's the vocabulary, their services, etc. But what about distributors? Are they distributors specifically for game shops, or they distribute a ton of other stuff? How do you find information about them?

There’s a handful which deal with TTRPGs. It’s a pretty small industry.

 

[Marc_C]

Thank you! I'll look into these companies just to see what's the vocabulary, their services, etc. But what about distributors? Are they distributors specifically for game shops, or they distribute a ton of other stuff? How do you find information about them?

Transcontinental was on my list, my dad works for them! But I didn't know Green Ronin printed there. Very interesting. Thank you for the informations regarding the 8 pages sheets and the minimum fee!

Montreal is a hub for a lot of US printing. Don't know if it has changed but a lot of comics titles used to be printed in this city (and paper porn).

 

[Marc_C]

Thank you! I'll look into these companies just to see what's the vocabulary, their services, etc. But what about distributors? Are they distributors specifically for game shops, or they distribute a ton of other stuff? How do you find information about them?

In Canada one of the major gaming distributers is Lion Rampant. In Montreal there is Universal Distribution.

 

[TheAlkaizer]

In Canada one of the major gaming distributers is Lion Rampant. In Montreal there is Universal Distribution.

Thank you! Knowing some actual ones will make it easier for me to look around and find others. I'm still very early on in the process, but I've got much research to do.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Hi!

I know there's several people on these forums that designed games, made books out of them and got to printing them, and today I'm interested in seeking a bit of knowledge. I work in video games and for months I've been trying to convince the stakeholders of the company to diversify and attempt something in the tabletop RPG market. I love video games, but I'm really interested in trying to design a tabletop RPG of some kind. I don't know what yet, but that'll come. I've got projects going on right now that won't finish for another year or two anyway.

Anyway, I'm curious as to how the tabletop RPG industry works when it comes to printing material. Designing a game and giving PDFs is one thing, but the printing business is something else. Let's say I had a game already designed. I do a crowdsourcing campaign, and I want to offer the option to buy print books.

What's the chain? There's the company that creates the game, there's distributors in different areas of the worlds, there's a printing company? How do you find informations about these distributors and these printing companies? Does any regular commercial printing company would be able to do products like that? How is transport, storage and shipping handled? Do most tabletop companies outsource that part or take care of that themselves?

I've tried to learn a bit more about the process at my local gamestore but they've been pretty secretive about it, and the couple of searches that I've done haven't yielded much results. So maybe a few nuggets of informations from ENWorld will help me start my market research and hopefully allow me to work on something cool in a year or two!

Why? Take however much you can make on a game in the videogaming industry, and multiply by about 0.00001% and that's what an RPG is going to make, lol. This is a HOBBY, unless you are, basically WotC. There are a couple (literally) other companies that publish games and make more than trivial money. There are a handful of other publishers that are conservative enough in their ambitions that they only release material that doesn't actually LOSE money, and maybe makes a bit.

And there is everyone else, who just plain doesn't make a dime, and maybe at best gets lucky and publishes a 'successful' game that makes a small profit. Usually they try again, or make a supplement, and away it all goes. This is why there are so many games with 0 or 1 supplements, and so many publishers that are pretty much one-hit wonders.

There is just very small amounts of money in the industry. Even today, in 'boom times' for TTRPGs the size of the entire business roughly approximates the weekly take of a single successful box store, actually only on an off week for the box store! lol.

I mean, there are many reasons to publish an RPG. Maybe to increase the value of some other IP, or just because you love doing it, etc. It is not wise to approach as a business opportunity, that is a really good way to be disappointed.

 

[TheAlkaizer]

Why?

The first motivator is not money. I'm interested in doing that. That's about it.

From a business perspective, the goal is to diversify. I will not go into too much details but we have several different video game projects and are trying to build strong IPs. There's interest in diversifying through different mediums (animated shows, TTRPGs, collectibles, etc). I'm probably the individual with the most experience and interest in reading up, dissecting, understanding and playing TTRPGs.

The TTRPG by itself doesn't need to break the bank. It needs to not be a financial disaster and create some synergy and movement between different demographics and populations of customers.

Also, I probably would not undertake such a project by myself, trying to get some money to pay artist left and right and cobble up together a game on my off time. But, depending on how things go financially at my work, we have over a hundred professionals with relevant skills (testing, localization, design, artists, programmers, etc) that are always looking for work.

Lastly, and this is entirely a personal opinion, I think the TTRPG hobby is quite obscure and hard to get into. It's pricy (or at least the entry point can be), it's time consuming, it demands that multiple people schedule time together and most of the time, the rules are daunting, numerous and require a real investment from at least one person to master them. These are all entry barriers. No wonder the hobby hasn't grown as much as other hobbies.

I think there's an unfilled space in the market and that TTRPGs can be spun into something that's:

• Easy to learn, easy to try and streamlined.
• That's heavily supported by technology. For example, Paizo products have some unofficial websites and databases for feats, spells, etc. I don't understand why companies don't do this themselves.
• That's not too pricy because it doesn't require people to buy multiple 50-60$ books.

Tabletop Games are gaining in popularity, video games are the biggest commercial media on the planet by a huge margin, play is becoming more and more prominent in education, formation, therapy, etc. We have many clients that think that the only solution to their solution are pricy technological apps and softwares that cost hundreds of thousands to develop when tabletop games could be a solution.

Anyway, I'll stop here. It would be short-sighted to say "it's a small market, there's no money to be made, why do it".