When to start publishing?

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

You can do a free quickstart version, or a plain-text-the real-thing-will-be-laid -out-with pics version, or just a series of blog posts which delve into it... but secrecy is your enemy, not your friend. I promise you.

It's worth noting that the big Ennies winner this year, Shadowdark, put out an enormous free quickstarter version of the game more than a year, as I recall, before the million-dollar Kickstarter campaign. And the quickstart rules have more content in them, by my read, than the old Basic D&D boxed sets of old did -- you could play for years with them.

And that meant that Kelsey Dionne was able to get massive amounts of feedback on the system and make it really robust by the time she did go to Kickstarter. As Morrus says, no one ran off to put out their own rip-off of Shadowdark before she could do that; everyone has their own RPG they want to publish, not someone else's.

 

[dragoner]

It's worth noting that the big Ennies winner this year, Shadowdark, put out an enormous free quickstarter version of the game more than a year, as I recall, before the million-dollar Kickstarter campaign. And the quickstart rules have more content in them, by my read, than the old Basic D&D boxed sets of old did -- you could play for years with them.

And that meant that Kelsey Dionne was able to get massive amounts of feedback on the system and make it really robust by the time she did go to Kickstarter. As Morrus says, no one ran off to put out their own rip-off of Shadowdark before she could do that; everyone has their own RPG they want to publish, not someone else's.

She is really on the ball though as well, and a nice person, helping other publishers.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

She is really on the ball though as well, and a nice person, helping other publishers.

Yeah, she had put in the work, in multiple ways, before becoming an "overnight" success.

 

[dragoner]

Yeah, she had put in the work, in multiple ways, before becoming an "overnight" success.

They all put in a lot of work, 10% inspiration, and 90% perspiration.

 

[Morrus]

It's worth noting that the big Ennies winner this year, Shadowdark, put out an enormous free quickstarter version of the game more than a year, as I recall, before the million-dollar Kickstarter campaign. And the quickstart rules have more content in them, by my read, than the old Basic D&D boxed sets of old did -- you could play for years with them.

And that meant that Kelsey Dionne was able to get massive amounts of feedback on the system and make it really robust by the time she did go to Kickstarter. As Morrus says, no one ran off to put out their own rip-off of Shadowdark before she could do that; everyone has their own RPG they want to publish, not someone else's.

Indeed!

Also see: Mothership. Entire game available for free for like two years. Then a wildly successful Kickstarter for a gorgeous boxed set.

Or our own A5E. Completely free on the tools site. But people still buy the PDFs and hardcovers.

Nobody wants to steal other peoples’ ideas. Ideas are plentiful, easy, and worthless. They want to make one of their own bucketfull of ideas into something! That takes work, and work is valuable.

So stick it out there fur free, build a fan base, and then sell something to them. Don’t worry about anybody staking it, they have 35,000 other games to steal from first!

 

[Thomas Shey]

Its going to be a hard question to answer. Are you already familiar with what's already out in the wild to any real degree? The reason I ask is that about 75% of what you mention I've seen before once you get outside the D&D sphere, and most of the rest I've seen people at least claim their games do before.

But that's almost irrelevant; the question ends up being if you're going to try to actually make a wave in the RPG sphere (and understand, you're probably not going to even make ripples in the D&D-adjacent end of it because that part is very, very full) you're going to have to figure out how. I own games that seem to me pretty decent designs (some that I backed on Kickstarter) that I'd be surprised if 5% of this board's users recognized if I named them.

If you don't care about that, keep your expectations low, do a decent layout, see if you can find some economic but interesting art and just publish as a PDF on DTRPG and call it good. Maybe it goes somewhere, maybe it doesn't, but all you're out is some time and effort.

Edit: As an example, though I knew Dragoner was a game designer, I don't think I'd ever heard of their game until I saw the pictures they posted above. And that appears to be multiple hardcover books and does not seem an amateurish product. As Morrus says, there's just an awful lot of stuff out of there vying for attention.

 

[Meahuys]

First of all, I would like to thank all the posters for offering me their points of view. I’m not going to respond to every single post but will try to summarize your ideas.

Expectations and Success: My expectations aren’t low—they’re zero. I don’t expect my work to become an immediate success, and I don’t intend to earn any money from it. I’m fully aware that everything has been done before, so I agree that ideas themselves are cheap and can strike you anywhere. However, the way they are combined and presented can be something new and even unique. That’s what I’m aiming to achieve. To do this, I’m trying to find a small niche where my game can thrive. Therefore, the number of people who might be interested will likely be small.

Publication: Thank you for all the pointers you’ve given me. I will get back to you once I’ve published the alpha version of my game. Thanks to your input, I’ve started working on a tutorial campaign, which I’m currently developing. Additionally, I’m creating a 'classic' rulebook, even though I initially planned to work without one. I will make both available once they are completed.