If you made a game, and you know its pretty good but you would never have the means to publish it, would you share it with /tg/ so people might actually have the chance to enjoy it, knowing that people are way less likely to play unestablished games? Is the risk of someone taking your idea and putting it to better use than you can offset by the reward of people actually possibly enjoying something you made?
pic unrelated obviously
Put it up on DrivethruRPG or some other distribution site. Just because you can't print physical copies doesn't mean you can't make some cash off it.
>>46632951
I already did. Surprisingly, if you do good work people will offer you money for it.
Publishing is irrelevant in the digital era for gaming materials. Just getting them to people who want them is far more important.
>>46633011
What game?
>>46632951
Pretty much this >>46632987
Use pay-what-you-want model and you'll get respect AND cash, if it's good.
>>46632951
>not using /tg/ as your beta testers
OP's pic is super fucking cute.
And yeah, share it. It is better to make some people happy than no people happy.
>>46633119
Absolute worst thing you could do.
>>46633186
where else do you get testers
my friends are self-selected for "not being mouthbreathing retards", they don't reflect the hypothetical general gamer public
/tg/ is closer to that population
reddit would probably be the closest but, y'know
>>46633177
>OP's pic is super fucking cute.
Anyone know if it's a boy or a girl?I want to know if I'm FTM for wanting to look like that.
>>46633696
Female, you fucktard. Almost everyone in the world is what they appear to be.
>>46633791
Well she the exception then, because she looks like a cute asian boy.
Will post my game "the things among us" in a new thread tonight.
>>46633855
Look however you want to look, senpai.
>>46632951
I'd call it a beta, give it to tg to play with and collect advice and feedback, because if I had the means to playtest it on that scale myself then I for sure have the means to publish it.
After that I'd take all that feedback and use it to balance everything and fix any issues I missed and then publish it at a low price, then just drop a pdf on tg because I know it will get there anyway and I may as well just do it myself to say thanks and make the system slightly less unknown.
>>46633105
>Use pay-what-you-want model and you'll get respect AND cash, if it's good.
Respect, yes. Cash...yeah, all 28 dollars of it. Just ask Viral how much he's made off of Engine Heart. Not worth it to even put it up for sale.
>>46633105
i like to design games in a traditional card game paradigm, where you can whip out a 52-card ace-thru-king deck and play anywhere. ive got a few other ideas but that's generally where ive always ended up.
right now im in the midst (actually, mostly completed) a card-based combat system. it's pretty fun on its own merit but i feel like it has enough design space that you could use it as some sort of digression from a main rpg-type game, with overworld situations affecting the combat itself. id like to expand on it but i dont know where the point is that it becomes too complex to stick with the 52-card model (there is definitely a point). this system particularly was not specifically designed for 52-card, just incidentally works with it, so I figure Im free to design outside of it but Im gonna see what I can do.
>>46633696
>>46633855
it's agirlandsheis perfect
>>46633905
looking forward to it, anon. is it board, cards, dice, some or all of the above, or something completely different?
>>46634073
i did a google search and he got backed on kickstarter for his game and is on shelves all over the place now.
>>46632951
>Is the risk of someone taking your idea and putting it to better use than you can...
Wait, how is that a bad thing?
Also
>implying the only reason I make games is not that I enjoy making them
>>46635269
>>Is the risk of someone taking your idea and putting it to better use than you can...
>Wait, how is that a bad thing?
because you lose any credit or creative influence in your own creation because they had more capability than you
>>46635752
Yes, and?
>>46635915
you may not, but i assign value to that.
>>46636103
The thing is, the creation is not 'mine' after I'm done creating it. It is finished, and I've had my fun, so I don't care what happens to it in the future. If anybody else has some use for it, I'm glad, but it ultimately doesn't matter.
>>46633260
your game idea, whatever it is, is dumb, and stupid, you're full of shit, and should make it a grimdark steampunk 40k rules lite complex 3.5 dice pool erotic hentai game.
>>46632951
Did it a couple times. The Sin City micro rpg i made is like you describe here, and is on 1d4chan. as is TURBO, a fighting game RPG, which had more depth but was incomplete. totally playable if you want to try it out.
>>46636103
This is how pharma corps justify charging your life savings for allowing you to get medical treatment.
>>46637106
Did you actually post this and think you were making a good point? This is so flawed i cant even fucking fathom
>>46637106
Yeah people totally shouldn't get paid for work they do.
Fucking pinko Bastard
>>46637290
You quoted the wrong post, friend.Though how you posted that earlier than the post you were replying to I don't know.
>>46637106
Good job seeing how big pharma ruins tabletop, stay woke pham.
>>46634073
I bought a hardcopy.
Viral may not have gotten rich, but he has my respect.
>>46637659
go home anon, youre looking dangerously red.
>>46634073
>>46634036
>>46633105
There are more ways to make money than to just sell digital copies. In fact, I'd argue that trying to make money per copy sold is an unnecessarily risky business decision because:
-In such a hard to monetize market like pnp roleplaying games you need to have a following to make money.
-Paywalling your game provides an incentive to purchase your game (they get the game after all), but it's a terrible way to build a following.
-Unless your game is absolutely paywalls usually go one of two routes:
--1.Nobody bothers to look at your game because people rarely buy an rpg they know nothing about/don't see a reason to buy. This options nets you no following.
--2.Your game gets popular, but only from people breaking your copyright and sharing the pdf files. This option could net you a following, but you'd have no control over it as you are not the distributor of the game so you have few meaningful ways to connect with your audience.
-Choosing a pay what you want model lowers the barrier to entry to absolutely nothing, giving you an easier chance at gaining a following, but it's a terrible financial model because it doesn't provide an incentive to purchase your game outside of just wanting to support you.
Once you break free of the idea that you need to sell copies to make money there are SO many ways to monetize your work outside of that you can explore if you put your work up for no charge.
Most go the Patreon route, monthly income coming in to justify spending your time supporting your product. This is a pretty stable route, but Patreon is still a middle man so some of your potential money goes to them.
You could have people vote for which content releases they want next with money. This doesn't require a middle man, and there's very little overhead, but at the same time you'd need to have some pretty compelling content releases for people to want to fund those.
(continued in part 2)
>>46632951
WENAGLIA: In the east, all interstate highways converge into a concrete whirlpool. In the west, there is an ocean of information magma.
>>46639446
(part 2)
You could monetize your own skills as the creator of the system. Have a paid hotline for people to ask quick questions about the system and they'd get a guaranteed chunk of your time for an answer to their questions. This one doesn't require a middle man, has no overhead, but it's also unlikely you could ever make a living off of this method alone. You could pair this method with other methods though.
You could have people pay to put their fan ideas in with the next content updates with you writing up some fluff for them and writing rules in as well. The creators would get their names in the books and get their fan ideas indulged nicely. This could backfire if your fanbase hates each other though
These are just a few ways to make money off of shit. You're on the internet, take advantage of that.
Also, it's best to put your content under either a CC BY-NC-SA license if you don't want others to make money off of your work while still being allowed to distribute it and alter it, or a CC BY-SA license if you want your community to last after you stop working on your game.
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/
>>46636287
hello Richard Stallman, I didn't know you played tabletop
If I wasn't planning on making any money out of it and I had play tested it for a couple of years sure.
I'm working on one right now, and, it's just a sexy system. Looks good, reads good, comprehensive yet not complex and bursting with flavour, but not in the walls of text way.
At least so far, I have it's skeleton so far.
My only concern is people might find the tables a bit tedious but in my experience people love critical tables and there's a fuck tonne of those.
TL;DR Yes.
Sorry for ranting, I'm actually working on it right now and everything just feels great so I'm happy.
