There's A New Online Gaming Store In Town

Billing itself as the home of open gaming, particularly D&D 5th Edition OGL products, a new online store has just opened up. It has been planned by a consortium of top OGL-supporting companies, including Kobold Press, Frog God Games, Troll Lord Games, Green Ronin, Rite Publishing, Super Genius Games, Expeditious Retreat Games, Hero Games, and more. Already it stocks 5E products from these companies, both in electronic and print form. The store is called Tabletop Library. They have announced themselves with a press release which you can see below.

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The new store's main competition is, of course, the monolithic OBS (DriveThruRPG, RPGNow, and now DMs Guild, etc.) and, to a lesser extent, Paizo.com, Warehouse 23 (over at Steve Jackson Games) and smaller outfits like d20pfsrd.com's web store. There have been other stores in the past - YourGamesNow closed a couple of years ago (a casino now appears to have the domain) and the EN World GameStore was bought by OBS about 10 years ago. It's a tough market. In terms of sales, I'd estimate that 95% of my own (EN Publishing's) direct PDF sales are at DTRPG, and about 5% at Paizo (not counting Patreon, Kickstarter, and so on, which are an entirely different story). I have tried products on YGN and d20pfsrd's store, but never sold a single item on either of them, which speaks to how tough a nut to crack that segment of the industry is.

The fees at the new store are pretty low. For PDFs, it only takes 25% of a seller's revenues, which is 5%-10% lower than the competition (and 25% lower than DMsG which takes 50%).

PRESS RELEASE

Kobold Press, Frog God Games, Troll Lord Games, Green Ronin, Rite Publishing, Super Genius Games, Expeditious Retreat Games, Hero Games, Rogue Comet, Metallic Dice Games, Pacesetter Games and Simulations, Eldritch Enterprises; Far Future Enterprises and TableTopLibrary.com

March 10, 2016

Kobold Press, Frog God Games, Troll Lord Games, Green Ronin, Hero Games, Rogue Comet; Pacesetter Games and Simulations, Eldritch Enterprises; Far Future Enterprises and TableTopLibrary.com are jointly announcing that, effective immediately, our companies will all be offering our Fifth Edition products through a new RPG download store called TableTopLibrary, as a one-stop shop for OGL Fifth Edition products. TableTopLibrary, website https://tabletoplibrary.com/ is a newly-formed online store for RPG books and pdfs designed to offer both electronic versions and hard copy versions of books produced by your favorite publishers. TabletopLibrary will also offer a full slate of products and resources for other role-playing games, including Pathfinder and OSR-games. All of us will continue our own websites and stores, but TableTopLibrary offers a place to draw all these products together in one place for convenience.

At this time, by coming together as a consortium, we can offer the high-quality products we pride ourselves on; provide a one-stop shopping spot with outstanding customer service; and allow a better experience for publishers, and more importantly, for customers . Centralized electronic book fulfillment, kickstarter fulfillment, and single-location warehousing will improve our delivery speed, accuracy, and customer service in the RPG download market.

Our reasons for setting up a consortium at this time include (1) each partner retains ownership and editorial control over the individual campaign worlds and other “intellectual property” that our fans have known and loved for years; (2) our desire to offer physically higher-quality printing, paper quality, and binding than print on demand outlets offer; and (3) the desire to continue drawing upon and increasing the vast resources of Open Game Content as opposed to other alternatives.

TableTopLibrary is committed to offering a deep and broad-based marketplace of Fifth Edition products, superior to any other online store, as well as many other game system products. We are joined in a partnership of many large publishers in this project, and expect many more to join us as time goes on. TableTopLibrary will be issuing its own press release soon, describing the advantages and the procedures involved in joining.

You can continue buying products directly from each of us, as always. But if you want to browse the whole library of Fifth Edition and other products produced under the Open Game License over the years, we’re letting you know that there’s a new online game store in town.

Check out TableTopLibrary at TableTopLibrary.com - The Leading Source for RPGs and watch us grow! We think you’ll be impressed.

 

[Gnarl45]

Lastly, the comments about "quality of traditional POD" makes me wonder if anybody has actually looked at the POD offerings from DriveThru in the past 2 years or so. The premium color options, and the heavier-weight paper for black-and-white are literally not discernible from short-run offset printing.

The problem isn't the paper or even the color, it's the ink coverage. With a 240% ink coverage, you loose contrast and color depth compared to higher quality prints. It's still nice but it could be better.

If your eye isn't train to see these things, you'll need to put your D&D books and your print on demand books next to one other to notice it. Your D&D books have a higher ink coverage (it appears to be 300%) and that's what gives them rich and vibrant colors.

I'm personally excited that Tabletop Library doesn't use Lightning Source.

 

[BJ Hensley]

I checked out the Tabletop Library site and liked how easy it is to find 5e material. I was looking for something to introduce my young kids to DnD and see a "Family Friendly" tag. Only one item, but that's expected—the store is new. Also, the description looked interesting and I had never heard of Playground Adventures. But there is no preview. So I went to DrivethruRPG and searched for it, got to see a preview, see that the product sells at a lower price, and see links to other Playground Adventures content, including some bundles that have the product I'm considering.

Previews are so important for on-line book (whether PDF or print) selling. I may have bought the adventure for more money on impulse, but instead was driven to you competitor.

I'm sure this site will improve and I'm looking forward to it, because finding good 5e content in DTRG just seems like more of chore than having a more-focused site like TL. Also, more competition should be a good thing. Best of luck! Looking forward to shopping your site once previews are available.

We're looking forward to a preview feature at Playground Adventures too! Soon!

 

[barasawa]

I try to buy what I can, but my lack of usable finances tends to leave me drooling at the shop window so to speak.
I like the idea of another store, though I do have issues about having to deal with another store. I guess we'll see how it goes.
Hadn't heard about that product which cause the outrage at DTRPG, and though I can understand why, if it didn't break their rules, or the laws, if that kind of stuff is behind no-minors filters, I don't think there's any valid reason to get upset. After all, nobody is forcing you to view adult materials, and obviously not all adult material will be tasteful and nice. (You can argue percentages on that later.)
As to D&D, even 5th edition. Yes, it's something I play, but I'm actually more interested in other RPGs more most of the time.
So if you'll excuse me, I think I have a new gaming web store to check out.

 

[Olaf the Stout]

Are Kobold Press and FGG still going to offer their products on DTRPG, or will they only be available on this new store?

 

[Mythmere1]

Are Kobold Press and FGG still going to offer their products on DTRPG, or will they only be available on this new store?

5th edition products: will be only on Tabletop Library
Pathfinder and other products: will be on both sites.

Both companies will also continue to maintain their own websites. Tabletop isn't about using exclusivity to tie publishers into the site. The only reason for our 5e exclusivity is to help build the structure of a "5e OGL Marketplace" area, and it is exclusive only "by product," not "by publisher" as OBS does. So the same publisher can, if they want, publish one set of products on DM Guild (or in the general areas of OBS) and another on Tabletop. We're all about improving the overall quality/size of the 5th edition pool of resources under both licenses, we just think that the OGL side of the 5e marketplace would benefit by having its own site rather than "competing" with the DM Guild license on the same site.

It might be smarter for us to be thinking of it in terms of business competition between sites, but in reality it's about competition between two different WotC licenses and how they affect a publisher's options and intellectual property. We're obviously no measurable threat to OBS as a business.

 

[oreofox]

This interests me greatly. I haven't looked at the site just yet, but a place for 5e OGL stuff sounds good. The selection on DTRPG is abysmally small. I wish you guys luck in this, and hope that it succeeds and does provide competition in this area. Trying to go up against a giant nowadays can seem daunting. Now, to go check out that site.

 

[froggie]

26 new companies have joined us in the last 24 hours! We are continuing to load product and make site improvements. New stuff is literally happening hourly. Come check us out and show your support for the publishers, we are proud of them, and want to make sure the customers have great access to great products!

Bill

 

[thorgrit]

One feature I always wished DTRPG had (and I've since given up hope they'd implement) is, when searching for adventures, I could specify a level range. From my limited frustrated experience, a lot of adventure modules bury that information in inconsistent natural language in the description, if they even include it at all. If there could be some way to include level, both inclusive and exclusive, that would really get me to take a closer look.

Like for example, I have enough prepared material that I know my players will be level 7 by the end. For various reasons, I don't have the time/energy to plot out a whole exciting story arc, and want to look for something to slot in, and carry my players for a few sessions while I plan more beyond that. I'd like to search for adventures that:
1. Include Level 7 in their level range, and show level range in search summary results. For example, adventures designed for levels 5-10, 6-8, 7-9, etc.
2. Or, adventures that only start at level 7. So it would show a level 7 one shot, a level 7-9 adventure, but leave out the 5-10 and 6-8 adventures.
3. Or, adventures that exclusively are a level/range specified. So I could search exclusively for a level 7 one-shot, or exclusively search for adventures to go from levels 6-8.

I could see how all those use cases could be extremely difficult to implement though, going on impossible if one is tied only to a tag system.

 

[THEMNGMNT]

Looks great. I'm on my way now to give you some $.

 

[fjw70]

I have bookmarked it and will check it out when looking for new 5e content.