It's (Not) Dangerous to Go Alone: Death of the Author

Welcome to the (much delayed) second entry in It's (Not) Dangerous To Go Alone, my ongoing series about playing and critiquing solo TTRPGs!

 

When Samantha Leigh reached out to ask if I wanted to review their latest game, Death of the Author, I was an immediate and enthusiastic yes. I love solo games, I really admire Samantha's work, and the premise of the game was fascinating: a game about "a Character who attempts to gain control over their story, despite the wishes of their Author." Compelling stuff!

So I sat down with a Necronomicon deck of tarot cards that a friend gave me this past Christmas and about an hour later I had played through all five chapters of the game. I created a Character so obsessed with avoiding death that they began manipulating cancer cells to achieve eternal life, a Friend who betrayed me after seeing what I planned to do to their ailing great-uncle, and a Foe who tried to stall my research in undergrad and continued to stalk me even after their initial failure.

But the most interesting outcome was how the confrontation with the Author went. Throughout the game, your Character has the ability to change their story by altering the tarot cards drawn during various scenes, each time drawing the attention and ire of the Author. The Author retaliates by drawing Major Arcana cards, trying to steal your victory from you by altering the story to subvert your desires. But in my game, the Author was not an all-powerful force of nature; he was a puddle of nerves, afraid of where his own story was going and uncomfortable with what was being revealed about himself by him writing it. His interjections into the story weren't in the form of acts of God but warnings to the Character about pursuing this path, pleas to turn back, feeble attempts to dissuade them from their research. In the end, the Character stood over their Author, barely even sparing them a glance before walking out of the story (and beyond their influence) forever. They did not achieve their original goal, but they had still essentially defeated their creator.

Now a large part of this outcome depended on the deck of tarot cards I was using, and not just the value of the cards that were drawn. As I said, this was a Necronomicon-themed deck filled with Lovecraftian monstrosities, so the genre and tone of the game was basically set from the jump. On top of that, all the Major Arcana cards represented fears of some sort (fear of death, of madness, and of science being the Character, Friend, and Foe cards respectively), so the Author that the deck conjured up did not feel like a godlike figure of power but rather a sniveling puke of a man afraid of his story, his characters, and what they said about him. How to square this, then, with a game that is supposed to be about fighting for control?

The deck is quite horrific but set the scene beautifully.

Well it can't be. Not really. Because this game is less about fighting against a malicious tyrant trying to force you to conform than it is about bracing yourself against the relentless onslaught of the tyranny of chance. As Cezar Capacle recently pointed out in a post about how to make our cognitive biases work for us, we're wired to find patterns in a set of random data and create stories to explain it. It's arguably how reading tarot works in the first place, and it's the basic function of any solo game with a randomizer. This story might have an Author, but that Author is subject to the rules of the game the same as the Character is. More, even, as the Character always has the player on their side; the tenor of the Author depends largely on the cards you draw, which are then open to interpretation and pattern-creation by the player. The Author you end up with is the Author that you create to fit the story you're in, not the other way round.

Any misfortune that happens in this game is created by random chance and what the player brings to the table rather than by someone with their own ideas about what your Character should be doing. You could almost say that this game is a better simulation of real life than it is a character in a story since things tend to actually happen for a reason in stories (even if those reasons aren't necessarily nice or good). In this game, the characters and Author alike are swept along by the whims of the tarot deck, with only the player to steer the ship through the treacherous waters.

Pictured: your average Death of the Author player.

So does the game deliver on its premise? Are you playing "a Character who attempts to gain control over their story, despite the wishes of their Author"? Well, yes and no. The prompts in the early access version of the game that I played almost leave too much open to interpretation and don't try to force the Character in the direction that the Author wants enough. Indeed, it's never set out what exactly it is that the Author wants for the Character in the first place. I rarely felt like I was butting up against invisible walls or the dreaded railroad of the authoritarian GM. But in the end I had a fascinating relationship with my Author that probably couldn't have happened with a more heavy-handed approach to the game!

My best advice to people interested in this game:

• The Author is only as rough as you make them, so if you want the experience promised by the game you've got to be willing to get in the mud and put your Character through it.
• The tarot deck you use is going to influence you more than you might think, so be careful what you pick. I know that my next playthrough will probably be with my Mystical Cat deck and I'm sure that experience will be wildly different.
• Don't let the cognitive biases get you down; put them to work and enjoy the ride.
  

 

 

Death of the Author comes to Backerkit on May 14.

March TTRPG Crowdfunding Retrospective

For an overview of my methodology, please refer to my original November post. The only things that have been added this time around are some median metrics for various variables (campaign type, platform, AI campaign performance).

As always, the raw data are available for you to peruse at your leisure.

The big picture statistics:

• 267 campaigns
• 21 Backerkit
• 14 Crowdfundr
• 232 Kickstarter
• $5,866,948.48 raised
• $939,594.09 on Backerkit
• $30,063.15 on Crowdfundr
• $4,897,291.24 on Kickstarter
• Types of campaigns
• 20 accessories
• 73 adventures
• 1 advice
• 10 campaign settings
• 2 fundraising campaigns
• 66 supplements
• 93 systems
• 2 zines
• 129 distinct systems used (81 original)
• 69 campaigns (25.84%) used D&D 5E and raised $1,918,554.37 (32.70% of all money raised in March)
• 34 campaigns used AI in some form (12.73% of total)
• These campaigns raised $95,239.73 (1.62% of all money raised in March)
• 15 of these were D&D 5E campaigns, accounting for 21.74% of all 5E crowdfunding campaigns

Backerkit's March

The top 5 TTRPG campaigns were:

1. Adventures On the Purple Planet...and Beyond! by Goodman Games ($294,820 from 1,859 backers)
2. Dagger in the Heart by Rowan, Rook, and Decard ($219,802.07 from 2,575 backers)
3. Battlezoo Ancestries: Classic Creatures for 5E and Pathfinder 2e by Roll For Combat ($90,435 from 993 backers)
4. The Bird Oracle by Shing Yin Khor ($83,902 from 913 backers)
5. Perfect Draw! A Card Game Anime Roleplaying Game by Double Summon Games ($45,161.01 from 1,413 backers)

March was a respectable showing for Backerkit, bringing in just under $1 million dollars. Over a third of that ($380,505) can be attributed to Goodman Games' Purple Planet event, combining 9 projects across 8 publishers into one big push for funding. This is, by all accounts, quite successful overall, with all 9 projects getting fully funded and then some. Certainly it was most successful for Goodman Games, which received 85.85% ($326,680) of the money, raising the question: who's getting the best deal from this arrangement? The other participants are presumably much smaller than Goodman Games and benefitting from the increased exposure that a larger company can give them, but Goodman Games receives the lion's share of the money. I'm absolutely not suggesting impropriety here (that could only happen if Goodman Games was demanding some kind of licensing fee for participating in this event, which is not happening), but it makes me wonder: what is the best way to collaborate across artists and companies? Do smaller creators benefit most from working with other similar-sized creators, or from riding the drafts behind a larger entity?

Crowdfundr's March

The top 5 TTRPG campaigns were:

1. Bahía Gris, un juego en solitario de pesca y enigmas con un toque de horror by ¡Rol o Barbarie! ($6,789.61 from 452 backers)
2. No-Tell Motel: A Single Player Murder Mystery RPG by Ken Lowery ($5,425 from 192 backers)
3. Beth and Angel Make a Campaign by Beth and Angel ($3,297 from 177 backers)
4. Teldramir: The Northern and Southern Stillwilds by Adam Ma ($3,125 from 60 backers)
5. Random Realities: 60+ oracle results on every single page to aid any solo RPG! by Cezar Capacle ($1,934.72 from 97 backers)

Crowdfundr closes out March still riding the end of ZineMonth, albeit pretty successfully. Bahía Gris is the big winner here, but barely scratches the money made by some of the lowest-funded campaigns on other platforms. Still, it's really interesting that a campaign leading with a Spanish title tops the chart here considering how much English-speakers dominate the TTRPG crowdfunding sphere. We also have some RPGLATAM projects successfully funded this month with Random Realities and From Midgard to Eternity, both solo TTRPG projects.

Kickstarter's March

The top 5 TTRPG campaigns were:

1. Legend in the Mist RPG by Amít Moshe / Son of Oak Game Studio ($855,686 from 8,156 backers)
2. The Tomb of Gyzaengaxx: Adventure & Campaign Setting by Gooey Cube ($635,750 from 2,964 backers)
3. Veil of the Eternal Night - Gothic Horror for 5e & MythCraft by Grant Mielke ($454,638 from 2,803 backers)
4. Vampire: The Masquerade - CHAPTERS (Definitive Edition) by Flyos Games ($392,676.74 from 3,953 backers)
5. The Map Library – A Huge Box Set of RPG Battle Maps by Roll & Play Press ($340,838.58 from 3,028 backers)

The top 5 campaigns on Kickstarter in March are interesting, as it's mostly well-established systems that are making more money than the biggest campaign from February. We're probably still seeing the knockdown effects from ZineQuest/ZineMonth with larger indie campaigns (Legend in the Mist excepted) perhaps not having launched until the beginning of March and thus likely to end sometime in April.

That said, the average Kickstarter campaign raised more money in March ($21,109.01) than in January ($11,435.03) or February ($11,487.04) while the median campaign raised less ($2,956.05 vs $4,190.04 and $3,701.65, respectively). I'll be very curious to see how these numbers compare to April's, by which time any ZQ/ZiMo effects should be well and truly over.

February 2024 TTRPG Crowdfunding Retrospective

For an overview of my methodology, please refer to my original November post. The only additions this month is tracking when campaigns begin and how long they run for.

As always, the raw data are available for you to peruse at your leisure.

The big picture statistics:

• 232 campaigns
• 12 Backerkit
• 5 Crowdfundr
• 215 Kickstarter
• $3,374,090.03 raised
• $884,266.93 on Backerkit
• $20,109.28 on Crowdfundr
• $2,469,713.82 on Kickstarter
• Types of campaigns
• 16 accessories
• 47 adventures
• 5 advice
• 1 audiobook
• 1 bundle
• 4 campaign settings
• 1 fundraising campaign
• 78 supplements
• 78 systems
• 1 zine
• 108 distinct systems used (55 original)
• 54 campaigns (23.28%) used D&D 5E and raised $568,095.60 (16.84% of all money raised in February)
• 35 campaigns featured AI (15.09% of total)
• These campaigns raised $236,973.58 (7.02% of all money raised in February)
• 21 of these were D&D 5E campaigns, accounting for 38.89% of all 5E crowdfunding campaigns

Kickstarter's February

The top 5 TTRPG campaigns were:

1. Tales of the Valiant Game Master's Guide 5E by Kobold Press ($461,868 from 5711 backers)
2. Vault 5e: Crafting & Alchemy by Cubicle 7 Games ($159,284.21 from 1973 backers)
3. Tomb of a Thousand Doors: A Mausritter Megadungeon by Matthew Morris ($94,305 from 1336 backers)
4. Battle for the Realm (5e) by Midnight Tower ($86,882.76 from 1371 backers)
5. Level Up: A5E Gate Pass Gazette Annual 2023 by Morrus ($72,695.11 from 901 backers)

ZineQuest and ZineMonth always bring a mind-boggling amount of TTRPG projects to Kickstarter and 2024 was no exception. Three times as many campaigns ended in February as did in January, and that's with fewer days to actually work with. Interestingly, the average Kickstarter campaign raised about the same amount of money between the two months ($11,435.03 in January vs $11,487.04 in February) but the median amount was nearly $500 higher in January ($4,190.04 vs $3,701.65).

One effect that ZineQuest/Month may have had, though, is tamping down the higher-profile indie campaigns. As you can see, the top 5 campaigns in February are unusually D&D 5E heavy and also primarily from well-established companies in that sphere as well (Kobold Press, Cubicle 7 Game, Morrus). From completely anecdotal evidence, this is likely because larger indie creators tend to not launch campaigns during ZineQuest/Month to allow smaller creators better access to the money and energy that these events create.

Backerkit's February

The top 5 TTRPG campaigns were:

1. The Covens of Midnight - A Tarot-Based GM-less RPG by Crossed Paths Press ($425,908.06 from 4504 backers)
2. Memento Mori - A Roleplaying Game of Dreams and Corruption by Two Little Mice ($230,847.67 from 1630 backers)
3. Can You See Them? A Scenario Book for the Horror RPG. by DMDave Publishing ($105,076 from 1095 backers)
4. Punk is Dead - a Mörk Borg compatible songwriting TTRPG by Critical Kit Ltd ($91,416.03 from 1422 backers)
5. Advanced Rules by RV Games ($7,781 from 295 backers)

Unfortunately we cannot make the same comparisons between January and February for Backerkit for two reasons: 1) there were only 4 campaigns in January; and 2) one of those campaigns was MCDM RPG. As such, the 'average' campaign in January raised $1,152,213.92, while the median campaign raised $3,777.61. Compare this to the average ($73,688.91) and median ($6,662.59) campaign in February. These are just not comparable numbers.

Most notable in February's numbers, I would say, is the vast gulf between the top 4 campaigns and everything else. Covens of Midnight and Memento Mori hold the distinction of being original systems with glossy production values, while Can You See Them? and Punk is Dead are both supplements for fairly popular systems (Year Zero Engine and Mörk Borg, respectively), but all 4 are operating in (or close to) the six-figure realm. This is several orders of magnitude higher than the fifth spot game, which is also a supplement for a very popular game (Mothership). I have to wonder if this is due to Backerkit's baffling ranking system, which seems to push already successful and popular campaigns to the top of the Tabletop/Role-Playing categories (sometimes even putting already finished campaigns above ones that are still running).

Crowdfundr's February

The top (and only) 5 TTRPG campaigns were:

1. Return to Perinthos: A Memorial Book Fundraiser in the Memory of Jennell Jaquays by Violet Ballard ($11,590 from 277 backers)
2. Making a Tabletop RPG for YOUR Particular Kid by TTRPGKids ($4,340 from 153 backers)
3. ARKYVR by Alewood Games ($2,200 from 86 backers)
4. The H.O.M.E. Handbook - A Tiny Supers Expansion by Gallant Knight Games ($1,852 from 114 backers)
5. Glaive-Guisarme-Glaive: Historical-ish Wargaming by Chris Longhurst ($127.28 from 8 backers)

Crowdfundr is back babyyyyyyyy! And it even has enough successful campaigns to fill out a top 5! Unfortunately this is still a marked decrease from last year's Tabletop Nonstop event, which had 10 successful campaigns end in February. There's also a pretty steep dropoff from the top-performing campaign to the other four, and that's with the significant social media attention that Jennell Jaquays' unfortunate passing received in the broader TTRPG community. I really wish that Crowdfundr was performing better, as I have had a pretty good experience running campaigns on the platform, but I'm struggling to understand what exactly it's bringing to the table that would really entice people to choose it over Kickstarter or Backerkit.

ZineQuest/Month retrospective

In the big picture, what does the glut of TTRPG campaigns for ZineQuest/Month do for the space? Well, the main thing is the influx of creatives inspired to actually make something and crowdfund it, because the money surprisingly stays fairly consistent.

Across all platforms in January, the average campaign (excluding MCDM RPG) raised $11,079.28 and the median campaign (including MCDM RPG) raised $4,031.06. In contrast, across all platforms in February, the average campaign raised $14,543.49 and the median campaign raised $3,875.61.

Be aware that the x-axis is not spaced out proportionally

The stacked bar graph above shows that in both January and February, the vast majority of TTRPG campaigns raised $10,000 or less. Interestingly, the first four bins have an almost identical distribution of campaigns relative to the total for each month:

• January (74 campaigns)
• $0-$10,000: 56 (75.7%)
• $10,001-$20,000: 9 (12.2%)
• $20,001-$30,000: 3 (4.1%)
• $30,001-$40,000: 1 (1.4%)
• February (232 campaigns)
• $0-$10,000: 177 (76.3%)
• $10,001-$20,000: 26 (11.2%)
• $20,001-$30,000: 9 (3.9%)
• $30,001-$40,000: 4 (1.7%)

I certainly can't say anything qualitative about ZineQuest/Month, but quantitatively? It has an enormous impact on the money that enters the field, and crucially does not appreciably dilute the amount that any individual (successful) campaign sees.

January 2024 TTRPG Crowdfunding Retrospective

For an overview of my methodology, please refer to my original November post. The only additions this month is tracking when campaigns begin and how long they run for.

As always, the raw data are available for you to peruse at your leisure.

The big picture statistics:

• 74 campaigns
• 4 Backerkit
• 0 Crowdfundr
• 70 Kickstarter
• $5,409,307.59 raised
• $4,608,855.66 on Backerkit
• $800,451.93 on Kickstarter
• Types of campaigns
• 6 accessories
• 21 adventures
• 4 campaign settings
• 25 supplements
• 14 systems
• 27 distinct systems used (11 original)
• 31 campaigns (41.89%) used D&D 5E and raised $363,665.69 (6.72% of all money raised in January)
• 19 campaigns featured AI
• 12 of these were D&D 5E campaigns, accounting for 38.71% of all 5E crowdfunding campaigns

Kickstarter's January

The top 5 TTRPG campaigns were:

• Setting Guide to Retia - A D&D 5th Edition Handbook (~$156,000 from 1664 backers) by Nat19
• 2D6 Realm - A Classic Overland Crawler Solo Player Game ($90,829.89 from 1593 backers) by Toby Lancaster
• Wayfinder Compass for Paizo's Pathfinder ($79,370.81 from 695 backers) by TYPE40
• Periodic Table of Elementals, by Catilus ($65,648.46 from 1961 backers) by Catilus
• Evolved - Superhero TTRPG - Powered by DCC RPG ($35,907 from 427 backers) by Eric Bloat

Not the most promising start to the year for Kickstarter, especially after declining revenue from the tabletop category for the second year in a row. I highly recommend reading that article in whole, however, as it shows that there were more successfully funded projects this year than ever before (and that revenue from tabletop campaigns is still above what it was pre-pandemic). Take these trends with a grain of salt when applied to TTRPGs though, as it's almost definitely board games that really fuel the money in that field.

The main campaign of note from January is the physical Wayfinder Compass, which started at AU$135 (equivalent to about US$87.50 at the time of writing) and saw all 5 of its Deluxe Wayfinders (AU$1425/US$925) claimed. This kind of luxury item really sets the upper limit of what some hobbyists are willing to spend (living among the 3-book base set of D&D, scrolls of Fall of Magic/City of Winter, Monte Cook's infamous Black Cube, and the rewards offered from the MCDM RPG that will be discussed later in this post). If I may editorialize briefly, I don't really think these kinds of items are necessarily the best for the hobby as a whole (and this comes from someone who was recently gifted both Fall of Magic and City of Winter at my own request). High-priced luxury items are already status symbols of conspicuous consumption, and the more that this industry is pushed toward that level of production value the more smaller creators will get left behind. They also promote a sunk cost fallacy; having invested a considerable amount (both financially and emotionally) in a game, people might feel like they need to get the money's worth out of that game.

To be perfectly clear, I do not blame TYPE40 for wanting to make this product (though I might slightly blame people for backing it) or Heart of the Deernicorn for making their high quality scrolls. I'm simply identifying something that is already troubling as a trend in terms of the pressures it places on smaller artists/games.

Backerkit's January

This is an easy one, as there were only four campaigns in January:

• The MCDM RPG (~$4,600,000 from 30,177 backers) by MCDM Productions
• One Dollar One Shot - Legend of the Silver Colosseum ($3,876 from 748 backers) by Penny Dragon
• The Dead Mines: Reforged ($3,679.22 from 160 backers) by Dragonshorn Studios
• Dead Wedding A Solo 5e Adventure ($780.44 from 116 backers) by Parts Per Million Limited

Weird month for Backerkit. The MCDM RPG leaves everything else in the dust, helped in no small part by the $500 Ajax Edition of the game (all but 2 of the 1874 offered were claimed). But even those expensive options 'only' raised $937,000, meaning $3,663,520 was raised by roughly 28,303 other backers. As I said before, I feel deeply ambivalent/anxious about these luxury offers, but clearly this campaign did not need the luxury option to drive it to success. This game is going to really be the thing to watch as the campaign begins fulfilment. Will it prove a serious challenge to D&D or just be something of a flash in the pan? If I had to guess, I'd say that this is the beginning of another Paizo-esque challenger: an alternative to D&D that will have its set of devoted adherents but will claim a slice of market share several magnitudes smaller than D&D's.

Conclusions

It's hard to draw large conclusions from this set of data. I suspect that January is always a slow month just because people don't have much energy for running crowdfunding campaigns during the holidays and might be putting money into other places in their life. (Many assumptions going into this - that people live in a country that celebrates Christmas, that they celebrate Christmas, that this changes their behavior - but I think they hold up since Kickstarter is mostly a Western platform to begin with.) I don't feel like doing any graphs this month, but the next installment should be fascinating what with ZineQuest/ZineMonth happening.

Review: Cats Have No Lord double feature

Sometime mid-December, Luke Simonds posted on Bluesky asking if anyone was interested in reviewing two of his games (A Tomb of Twins and Won't Someone Think of the d100 Polearms?) as he had extra physical copies of them. I said I would, he sent them off, and now here we are about a month later.

Full disclosure: these reviews are based solely off reading the zines. I have not had the opportunity to put them into play, so interpret my opinions accordingly.

A Tomb of Twins

A Tomb of Twins is a 32-page (counting the covers) low-level dungeon zine for OSR games with writing and layout by Luke Simonds, art and map by Molomoot, and editing by Allison Miller Simonds.

 

A mysterious priesthood conducts monthly rituals inside the tomb of twin necromancers while rumors abound that great treasures and wealth is locked up inside. The twist is that the treasures in question (or at least the ones that the adventure hooks center around) are the phylacteries of the twin necromancers-turned-liches, while the monthly ritual keeps them from reforming and terrorizing the region.

The tomb itself is broadly twin-themed, with mirrored left and right sides of the dungeon presenting players a choice of where to go. A band of tunneling swampkin (blue humanoids who live in a nearby swamp) have entered one side of the tomb and pose an obstacle to the PC tomb robbers as well as a way to break up two otherwise identical routes.

From a design perspective, this adventure works well as an introduction to OSR-type play for new players. There's a dungeon, treasure, some inventive traps that can be circumvented with clever play, a puzzle, monstrous enemies, and a boss battle that can either be avoided or easily decimate the characters. Nothing here is really reinventing the wheel, but it also doesn't have to. The whole adventure could be completed in 1-2 sessions, and depending on how the crawl goes there is the potential for a number of further directions:

• Accidentally release 1-2 liches
• Make enemies/allies of the swampkin
• Make enemies/allies of the Thieves Assembly or Arcane Academy for failing/succeeding to bring them the vials

My favorite part of the adventure has to be its take on the random encounter. The tomb traps spirits inside it, so it's positively full to bursting with ghosts. And not just ghosts of humanoids either, there's all sorts of ghostly vermin scurrying around to add a fun atmosphere to the whole thing. These vermin could pop up as random encounters, but more frequent an intelligent ghost will appear with their own motivation and information to share (or hoard). There are wizard ghosts who want to get to the center of the tomb with you, priests who want to keep you from advancing, and goblins who just want to cause pranks. This is a slight combination of the classic random encounter + reaction roll, but it works really well as a way to spice up the delve. You can't treat every ghost the same, and you have to approach them like any other NPC in order to suss out how they feel about you.

I have two primary critiques of the adventure. First, as I said above, it doesn't feel like it's doing much that's new. I know that I said it doesn't have to, and I stand by that, but there's a lot of design space that feels unexplored here. The two halves of the dungeon didn't have to be identical, for example. They could have been themed to each of the two necromancers, or have opposite versions of the other's traps/puzzles, or require various actions to be taken exactly simultaneously. I'm not trying to say "Well this is how I would have designed it," but the overall theming of the adventure just feels like it's begging to be taken one or two steps farther.

My second critique hinges on the swampkin. They add variety to the adventure, breaking into the left half of the tomb and keeping it from being exactly the same. This is fine, and two of the first swampkin you meet pose interesting roleplaying challenges. One is floating on the ceiling, having triggered an antigravity trap and willing to give information in return for help, and the other is described as kind-hearted and fascinated by humans. These are great moments but they're completely undercut by the bestiary's description of swampkin as "ruthless and indiscriminate killers." It just leaves a bad taste in my mouth to play into the portrayal of monstrous humanoids as intrinsically savage (perhaps not evil, but certainly violent and not prone to diplomacy). And the adventure itself doesn't bear this out! The two swampkin priestesses have opposing views on their expedition into the tomb, the warlord is insecure about his position and just wants a win to shore up support, and that one grunt just wants to get off the ceiling. The stereotypical "hyper-violent monstrous humanoids" just didn't need to be in the adventure at all and seems like an archaic holdover from early dungeon-crawling games. It would be more interesting to explore how both the swampkin and players are tomb robbers, and therefore have both a natural common cause and common conflict. This is already a sensibility reflected in the random ghost encounters, where the ghost is turned from a standard combat encounter with a monster into a variety of other things. Obviously nothing is stopping you from approaching the swampkin in the same way, but if that's the case I just don't understand the description in the bestiary. Much like my first point of critique, the swampkin feel like they're begging to be pushed just a little farther beyond the standard (and boring) 'savage' enemies.

If you're looking for a game to introduce players to the OSR, this is a fine choice. But if you're already familiar with the playstyle, I don't know how much will be here for you.

Won't Someone Think of the d100 Polearms?

Won't Someone Think of the d100 Polearms? is a 16-page (counting covers) system-neutral zine for crafting your own unique polearms with writing and layout by Luke Simonds, character illustrations by Evlyn Moreau, and editing by Allison Miller Simonds.

Quite simply, the whole zine is three d100 tables you can use to make 1,000,000 unique polearms. Granted, most of these variants are completely cosmetic (one table is for the design of the blade and one describes the decoration on the shaft), but don't knock the cosmetic elements of this zine. The blade design table is 100 silhouettes of polearm blades, all illustrated by Luke Simonds. If you scan these silhouettes onto a computer, it's an incredible resource for giving out polearms that players can see and get really attached to.

I know that I'd be more attached to something like 36 or 50 than the generic idea of a polearm.

The table describing the shaft's appearance is a little more repetitive (a lot of different colors, a lot of different inlaid items), but again, being able to grab some descriptive inspiration for a magic item is great.

But it's the "What Makes It Special?" table that really makes this zine, well, special. 100 (mostly) very different abilities, some good, some bad, some ludicrous, but all very different than a +1 polearm. For example, you could get a polearm where the blade functions like a camera, or the shaft turns into a ladder, or it smells really bad, or it gives you the ability to command stags (but they'll seek revenge afterwards). There's really something there for everyone and every type of game, from the serious to the comedic to the gonzo.

It's a good zine Bob!

Interview with ttrpgbrackets

Recently, a very cool project on tumblr reached its conclusion: the TTRPG Ability Bracket (won by "Survivor Final Ability" from Shxll Casxings by Legendary Vermin). I thought it would be interesting to interview the person behind this project, see what inspired it, and ask about their plans for the future. What follows is that interview (edited and condensed for space).

__________________________________________________________________________

ttrpgspider: Let’s jump right into it! I’m trying to think, I don’t remember when I even first saw the blog on tumblr, but can you tell me a little bit about when you had the idea for it, when you started it, what the whole timeline of it has been?

ttrpgbrackets: You know what, I can actually give you an exact day because I messaged a friend and said, “I have this idea.” Looks like it would’ve been late September when I came up with this idea. I started bouncing things around in my head, and I believe it was mid-October or so when I launched it because I know I started doing the polls in November.

For people who have no idea what this was, what was the TTRPG ability bracket? What was the point of it, what was the structure of it?

To be completely honest, I didn’t expect it to get the attention it did. Once the authors of the games involved started reblogging things, I was like: Whoa. It kinda spun out of the current tumblr zeitgeist of fun little popularity brackets. There are a million of them right now: best villain song in a musical, best duo, best little meow-meow who did nothing wrong. And then it hit me that I was seeing some about cartoons and video games but none about TTRPGs. So I started thinking, what would I like that bracket to be about?

And how did you decide on abilities specifically?

Part of it was that I wanted to submit something that wouldn’t have fit my original idea of “TTRPG classes.” When I was thinking about what I would submit, I really love a lot of games that don’t really have classes. And specifically, one of my favorite games I was thinking about was Exalted, which has some of the most insane abilities that I personally knew at the time. And I was like, I bet there are a million games out there like Exalted and I want to know more of those.

So how did you go about collecting submissions?

I submitted the first couple, just because once I made it I had five or six I wanted to throw in there. And then towards the end, submissions started to peter out and I realized I was about 8 short of another tier. So I did another 8 or 9 myself and the rest were submitted through a Google Form that I threw up when I started the bracket. It was just a post that said “Hey, here’s some guidelines on things I do and don’t want to see in here,” and a little bit of rules about how I was going to be selecting things if I did have to cut stuff. Mainly I had a rule that I didn’t want more than two abilities per game.

Beyond cutting - well, even with cutting the stuff from the popular games - how did you go about making decisions? Both which 2 abilities you kept in and how you decided on the brackets?

I’m going to be completely honest and say that I didn’t put that much thought into the seeding portion of it. Once I had the entries in, I just randomized the seed until nothing was going against itself in Round 1 and that was good enough for me. But as far as cutting things down, I didn’t have to do a lot of that. I think I only ended up cutting maybe 5 things total. I got 3 submissions from Pathfinder, and I got 12 different people submitting things for Lancer. But that was kinda easy because 8 of them submitted the same ability so that was a shoo-in.

Do you remember what ability that was?

Castigate the Enemies of the Godhead. It’s a Manticore ability where you basically declare “Until the end of the round if anything kills me I vaporize my mech and everything in a 30-yard radius.” Then there were two others where 3 or 4 people submitted each one. It was either Ushabti Omnigun or the other one that’s on the Pegasus, and for that one I just went with whatever was the most elegant or eloquent propaganda that was submitted with it.

Tell me a little bit more about the “propaganda,” which is such a funny way to talk about that.

Full disclosure, I follow a lot of these bracket-type things and most of them refer to any kind of - if anyone reblogs it with “hey, here’s why you should vote for this one,” they’ll reblog it and say “look, propaganda.” I felt like it was especially important for something rpg-related to have that aspect of it. Especially with indie TTRPG abilities, you might not understand what’s so cool about the ability if you don’t know the context of the game it’s from.

Yeah, I was scrolling through the blog and saw “Man with a Gun” from Spire, and it’s not just ‘a man with a gun comes into the room,’ it’s ‘you’re a pulp novelist wizard writing tropes into reality.’

Yeah, it gets you that context of “Oh, this is a weird thing.” You don’t just have a friend that shows up, you’re messing with reality.

Now I’m going to declare you a minor expert in minor TTRPG abilities - 

Appreciate it.

- and as such what do you think (personally or based on observed voting trends) makes a good TTRPG ability?

At least in terms of what makes it interesting (as opposed to what makes it powerful), the ones that did the best were the ones that pushed the fiction forward the most. All of the ones that gave a +2 to doing something got buried out behind the shed very quickly. Most that made it past the second round did something special within the world of the game.

For example, there’s this Pathfinder ability that essentially lets you say, “Well I’m not a doctor but I’ve seen one on TV” and once a day you get to pick an ability from another class that you can use for the day. Like, “I may not be a barbarian but I can figure out how to rage.” And that ability made it to round 2 or 3.

The Omnigun from Lancer also made it pretty far, which is funny because it’s just a gun that automatically does one damage every turn. But it was the wording of the book that got it that far. Its gimmick is that it always deals one damage no matter what, armor-piercing, can’t be dodged, but there’s a line that a lot of people seemed to like. It ends with the line “This cannot be superseded by any ability in this or any future book.”

Yeah, it’s interesting because when I think about TTRPG abilities (and obviously not every game has them), I think about D&D, Pathfinder, Lancer, those kinda crunchy, trad, modular games. And yeah, they have so many abilities, but by that same logic they can’t be as interesting or impactful and, say, give someone something entirely new they couldn’t do before.

I think that’s why we got so many submissions from PBTA and Forged in the Dark games. You get three things to do in those games, so they all need to be really cool. There’s no room in the book for a +1.

You don’t advance very quickly or that much, and even when you do advance you don’t take that many new moves.

A lot of characters in those games are in their final form at the start of the game. You’ve already hit that fantasy!

A lot of indie games also emphasize shorter campaigns, they’re not assuming the big 4-year Lord of the Rings campaign. You sit down, you make characters, and you play one season of a TV show. With how much a lot of these games lean into genre, a lot of these moves are very much, “Yeah, this is a thing I’ve seen in that show before.” One of the moves that made it a little farther was Beam Saber, one of the more anime dramatic Gundam mecha rather than something super tactical, was an ability that gave you bonus dice if you reveal a dramatic secret to someone and immediately use it against them.

Having done this whole bracket, how important are abilities in terms of what you’re looking for in a game?

Personally, I love them. I enjoy a good Honey Heist, but I like looking through abilities and seeing what pushes my character in a specific way. They’re not necessarily required for a good game, but I find they do a lot in games with more mechanics or character options. Having these unique abilities, especially with newer players, helps them see what their character can be, what they can do. I’ve often found with newer players that introducing them into a game they’ve never played a lot of times the big question is “Ok, but what can I do? My character has 3 Strength and 2 Charisma, what does that mean?” Sometimes players like to have the direction of, “Oh, that’s what I do! That’s my thing!” Even something as simple as getting a +1 in a particular situation encourages you to put yourself in that situation, to build a character who would want to do that.

Alright, I think that basically wraps it up! Last question: what’s next for ttrpgbrackets?

Right now submissions are open for the TTRPG class bracket. Any kind of character archetypes or classes or suggested builds are an option. Depending on how many I get, that could take a couple of months, I like to leave them up for a while to get votes in. After that, I might go back to another round of abilities and just disqualify anything that made it past round 3 because I got a lot of message toward the end of people saying they would have submitted or voted for something. I’ve also thought about setting up something for board games because I’m a big fan of those and I think there’s a lot of crossover there.

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If you're interested in submitting something to the TTRPG Class Bracket, you can do so here.

December 2023 TTRPG Crowdfunding Retrospective

For an overview of my methodology, please refer to my original November post. The only addition this month is tracking what campaigns feature AI.

As always, the raw data are available for you to peruse at your leisure.

The big picture statistics:

• 119 campaigns
• 7 Backerkit
• 0 Crowdfundr
• 112 Kickstarter
• $3,178,874.35 raised
• $116,631.00 on Backerkit
• $3,062,243.35 on Kickstarter
• Types of campaigns
• 9 accessories
• 40 adventures
• 10 campaign settings
• 35 supplements
• 24 systems
• 24 distinct systems used
• 48 campaigns (40.34%) used D&D 5E and raised $999,475.20 (31.44% of all money raised in December)
• 32 campaigns featured AI
• 24 of these were D&D 5E campaigns, accounting for 50% of all 5E crowdfunding campaigns

Kickstarter's December

The top 5 TTRPG campaigns were:

• The Seeker's Guide to Enchanting Emporiums (~$628,000 from 6759 backers) by Eldermancy
• The Electric State Roleplaying Game (~$419,000 from 5715 backers) by Free League
• Amsel Suite : The Game Master's Swiss Army Knife (~$364,000 from 6224 backers) by Ollam Technologies
• Mythic Bastionland RPG - Before Into the Odd (~$338,000 from 5213 backers) by Chris McDowall
• Knock! Issue Four (~$141,000 from 3347 backers) by Olivier Revenu

Overall, an interesting bunch of highly successful campaigns! Still largely dominated by D&D (outperforms the next best by over $200,000) and sequels to preexisting games/products (I'm including Knock! Issue 4 here), but this is more or less to be expected. The most interesting factor here is the big dip in money ($9,018,619.50 vs $3,062,243.35) and campaigns (164 vs 112) from November to December. I'm inclined to attribute this to holiday fatigue (as I certainly wouldn't really want to be running a campaign in the leadup to Christmas) and money being spent in other places (such as on gifts for family/friends), but these are complete speculation.

Backerkit's December

The top 3 TTRPG campaigns were:

• Grand Guignol & Harvest ($46,160 from 858 backers) by Possum Creek Games
• Deck of Many Insults ($27,902 from 1417 backers) by Loke Battle Mats
• Star Crossed: Love Letters ($22,717 from 786 backers) by Bully Pulpit Games

HUGE dropoff in money ($1,256,857.98 vs $116,631.00) but not in campaigns (10 vs 7) between November and December. None of the 3 campaigns mentioned above would have cracked the top half of last month's campaigns. This time around, it seems like there's a lack of big company names (Possum Creek and Bully Pulpit are big for indies, but don't compare to Monte Cook or Goodman Games) to drive traffic and money to Backerkit.

Crowdfundr's December

Literally nothing. Probably won't be much until Zine Month 2024/Tabletop Nonstop in February. Time will tell if Crowdfundr will become any kind of major player in this space.

Graph Time

Once again, we must ask: is D&D 5E a sure bet? The average money raised by a 5E campaign in December 2023 was $2934.00, not far off from the median value of $2868.75. Once again, there was a big outlier campaign so I'm excluding that from the jump. 

But the bigger question I have is: does using AI have a significant impact on the results?

This graph shows the difference in money raised between the groups of 5E campaigns using AI vs not (once again, the most successful campaign has been removed for ease of visualization, but the statistics are calculated still involving it). The average AI campaign raised $5,226.51 while the average non-AI campaign raised $36,418.29 ($10,708.13 without the most successful campaign). But even with the most successful campaign included, there is not a significant difference between the two averages (two-tail paired t-test p-value was 0.224, way over the significance cut-off of 0.05), meaning that we can't say for sure whether AI helps or hurts a 5E campaign.

No big takeaways this month, but stay tuned for a big 2023 retrospective.

A Modest Literary Analysis of "Use of AI" Sections on TTRPG Kickstarters, Part 1

As you are no doubt aware, the use of AI-generated content in TTRPGs is increasing. I was unfortunately reminded of this fact by @Ettin64, one of the creators of the fantastic Hard Wired Island.

Well, this sucks. There are a bunch of TTRPG crowdfunding campaigns and 500-1000+-page (!) books on DriveThruRPG that are obviously just AI-generated slop: https://t.co/2gJit8okGK

— lo-fi ettin to study/relax to (@Ettin64) December 13, 2023

The associated reddit post contains 13 links to DTRPG pages, of which about half have been delisted at the time of writing, and 4 links to completed Kickstarter campaigns that declare they have used AI.

I decided to revisit my November crowdfunding stats as well as my ongoing December crowdfunding stats to see exactly who is using AI and how. The full stats will come later (around the beginning of January), but right now I, like Ettin, am interested in the rhetoric these campaigns are using to talk about their use of AI.

Just so that we're all on the same page here, this is what Kickstarter has to say about using AI in projects on their platform:

Projects using AI tools to generate images, text, or other output must be:

• Open and Honest: Disclose in your submission and on your project page
  • what AI technology you plan to use in creating your work 
  • how you plan to incorporate the AI-produced content in your project

AND

• Original and Creative: Disclose in your submission and on your project page
  • the extent to which your project is your original work, and 
  • the specific elements you will be creating using AI output

Seems simple enough. So let's see some of the examples of this in action.

Standard Fare

First up is the standard stuff. I won't link any specific campaigns here, suffice it to say that it boils down to "We used Midjourney. We have a license to use Midjourney images." (Substitute Midjourney for whatever AI image creation was actually used). There's not much to say here. It's simple, it's to the point, it fundamentally misunderstands the question that they're allegedly trying to answer:

Do you have the consent of owners of the works that were (or will be) used to produce the AI generated portion of your projects? Please explain.

Almost by definition, artists whose work has been used to train these LLMs cannot consent because the training data is scraped from the internet. The one exception seems to be Adobe Firefly, which they claim is only trained on Adobe Stock and public domain images.

The question of credit raises its thorny head again in the next category of answers...

In the Current State of AI

Several campaigns use shockingly similar language (well not that shocking, two of those campaigns come from the same creator):

In the current state of AI we do not think there is a way that you can credit, but if such a thing occurs in the future we will be sure to implement it. 

Notice the use of "we think" and "if such a thing occurs in the future," creating a rhetoric of plausible deniability. "Well gee, we recognize that this is stealing from artists, but unfortunately there's just no way to get around it. Aw shucks, well if we can steal more ethically in the future we'll be sure to do that."

These campaigns also have identical answers to what parts of their campaign will use AI:

For the illustration of the pages we are using Midjourney, then use Photoshop to edit the illustration for the desired result.

So they're using Midjourney, but human labor is entering the picture to get the "desired result." If I had to speculate, this labor involves mostly eliminating the telltale signs of AI-generated art, but I will grant that there could be other goals here. Speaking of other goals...

Our Artistic Vision

One creator, Mizo Games, has a fascinating take on why they use AI art in all three of their campaigns:

The art generated for this project was created using Midjourney AI exclusively in response to our own unique prompts and direction. We did not use any pre-existing prompts or works from other Midjourney users as the basis for our art. While Midjourney's algorithm inherently draws on its training data, we made original creative decisions in iteratively guiding the AI output through descriptive prompting and deliberate selection. The resulting images reflect our artistic vision and choices alone.

There is a strong focus on "artistic vision" here, a real attempt to show ownership of the generated art by tracing its creativity through their human brains. Interestingly, they show more concern for the property and creative license of "other Midjourney users" than the artists whose work was used as training data in the algorithm. By focusing on how "unique" their prompts are, they seem to feel they can claim artistic legitimacy, ignoring presumably that anyone could use those same prompts and achieve exactly the same results. Still, this presents a fascinating rhetorical turn by virtue of recognizing that there is some illegitimacy tainting the use of AI-generation. If there weren't, there would be no need to defend it this way. Artists don't generally feel the need to disclose that their art was produced by their own unique thoughts and actions, as it's generally understood to simply be true. When it isn't (plagiarism, tracing, clear inspiration that isn't credited), people tend to take notice.

This concern about artistic legitimacy takes on a new form in the next category...

Specifically Not Writing

Too many campaigns to count have some variation of the following in their Use of AI section:

Covers are made with AI. All interior art is made by artists. No AI was used for writing any of the encounters, rules or any part of the product itself.

This one in particular is fascinating as it seems to admit that only humans can be artists (making AI what exactly?). But it's the latter half that bears closer inspection. "No AI was used for writing any of the encounters, rules or any part of the product itself." Well, if it's good enough for cover art, why is it not good enough for the writing? It appears to be almost a recognition that AI generation of writing in a TTRPG project would be illegitimate. The many campaigns that have some version of this all betray the same fundamental concern: that use of AI will render their products corrupted in some way. And while Mizo Games wrapped their use of AI into their overall creative vision, these other creators have instead divorced visual art from their TTRPG product. By separating visual art (cover or otherwise) from the writing, they are creating two categories of creativity in TTRPGs: the core (writing, pure creativity that cannot be touched by AI) and the periphery (visual art, incidental concerns that can be tainted by association with AI because they won't affect the perception of the core material).

Next time

 And with that, I'll leave the rest of the categories for next time. These are:

• Stretch Goals
• The Economics
• Outliers

As a final note, there is a small category of campaigns that report using AI tools like Grammarly to polish their writing. I don't know where I personally stand on this, except to say that a human editor is going to be able to do that job much better. On some level, I commend those campaigns for disclosing that information in the first place as it is certainly nowhere near the level of AI use that these other ones are.