TTRPG Earnings Breakdown 2025 (For Those Who Want A Glimpse Behind The Curtain)

So, even though we're entering a new year, I wanted to take a few to look back at 2025 and do a breakdown of what my experience as an independent TTRPG creator was like. Normally I just do this as a single FB post, but I wanted to get a little more detailed than I thought a single post could handle, and try to make some educated guesses about how and why things wound up the way they did. So if you're here for numbers and suppositions, strap in and take this journey with me!

Because autopsies can get messy.

But before I get into the meat of today's post, remember, don't forget to sign up for my weekly newsletter to get all my updates right in your inbox. Also, if you've got a bit of spare cash that you'd like to use to help keep the wheels turning, consider becoming a Patreon patron! Also, be sure you're following all of my followables, check out my LinkTree.

Lastly, for hundreds of extra articles on gaming, weird history, and for more free fiction, check out my Vocal archive, too!

So, What's The Breakdown?

First things first, I want to go back to my 2024 wrap up. In that year my earnings on Drive Thru RPG were:

- Royalties: $1,984.45

- Affiliate Earnings: $1,242.20

- Top Seller of 2024: World's Oldest Profession: 100 Courtesans and Concubines (379 copies)

- Worst Seller of 2024: Three-way tie between A Baker's Dozen of Christmas Feats, Ghosts of Sorrow Marsh, and False Valor (1 sale each)

Something worth noting was that 2024 was the first year my affiliate earnings were lower than my royalties, and it was by a lot. However, in 2025 we see:

- Royalties: $1,517.62

- Affiliate Earnings: $1,184.86

- Top Seller of 2025: 100 Random Encounters For On The Road or In The Wilderness (SWADE Edition - 177 copies)

- Worst Seller of 2025: Seven-way tie with 1 sale each, but the most expected bottom seller was 100 Primquakes for my Sundara: Dawn of a New Age fantasy RPG setting.

So, the hard numbers are an overall loss in sales of $466.83 in royalties, and a loss of $57.34 in affiliate earnings... with a net loss of $524.17 overall.

That's... not great, if I'm honest. However, I didn't just want to post numbers for the year; I also wanted to list some of the factors and causes that went into generating this result.

What Led To These Numbers?

There are a lot of people (creators and critics alike) who will point at sales figures as some kind of divine proof of a writer's skill and creativity (or lack thereof). However, I want to remind folks that absolute trash sells gangbusters all the time, and works of genius can languish unseen for years until they find the light of day. Sales is about the market, and the trends in that market. Which is why I wanted to go step-by-step and lay out specific things that I saw which led to this result.

If you're a fellow creator, it's likely these things affected you as well. If there's something you feel belongs on this list that I didn't cover, please share it in the comments below!

Because there are a LOT of factors that go into things like this.

#1: The DTRPG "Upgrade"

I am one of several people who thought the Drive Thru RPG site change was unnecessary, and generally speaking as long as users had the option to use the legacy site things were fine. However, once the new site became the standard homepage, sales across the board for myself and every creator I know took a sharp dip. We're talking like a 50% per month dip. The algorithm stopped showing my work to anyone organically, and the only way people find my supplements is through this blog, the Azukail Games newsletter, or seeing a post I made about it on social media.

That was a bat to the shin. It didn't break the bone, but I felt that, and it hurt things in the marketing and sales departments.

#2: The Reddit "Update"

For folks who haven't seen me complain about it on social media, Reddit is basically one of the only social media platforms that actually gets results when it comes to moving copies of games and supplements... but it's a rough platform to ride. In early Fall of 2025 there was a ripple from the DTRPG upgrade that meant you could no longer share links to it on Reddit. The links would screw up, and look like ghosts; no preview image, no preview text, and without those two things nobody was going to be clicking, much less buying.

This screw up reduced my earnings from $250-$300 a month to about $180 a month... and that was after using workarounds to try to get the previews seen when making posts. Once DTRPG fixed this problem, and links went back to displaying properly, sales and traffic immediately shot right back to their previous levels and started climbing.

But that was about 2-3 months of trying to run the last part of the race with a ball and chain around both my ankles.

#3: Choice of Releases

I'll be honest, I did take a couple of risks in 2025, and I put out some supplements that I figured were long shots in terms of things that would get interest from readers and players. As an example, I released 4 supplements for the Whispers & Rumors phase of my Sundara: Dawn of a New Age fantasy RPG setting, starting with 100 Whispers & Rumors to Hear in Moüd City of Bones, and finishing with 99 Whispers & Rumors to Hear in Archbliss, City of The Sorcerers. While I'm glad I finished up that phase for the setting, and all of those releases sold more than 1 supplement, none of them managed the 51 copies sold it would take to hit Copper metal status. So that's 4 releases that weren't great in terms of adding to the year's achievements.

Sundara wasn't the only issue, either. I wanted to make sure there were fresh releases for my RPG Army Men: A Game of Tactical Plastic to try to maintain interest in it, and to give players and GMs some fresh things to bring to the table. Because I dropped my second mission module for the game Assault on Outpost 13 (which is an homage to the movie Assault on Precinct 13), as well as the supplement Boots on The Ground: Baker Team, which provides a collection of 5 detailed characters that can either be handed around the table to players, or used as NPCs at the GM's discretion.

Some of my other releases were calculated risks that didn't really go over well. For instance, since folks were asking me for more Werewolf: The Apocalypse supplements, I decided to release Dark Reflections: 50 Sights to See in The Penumbra... sadly, it just didn't catch on the way my 100 Kinfolk Collection of NPCs did (with something like 1,500+ NPCs the last time I checked).

On the other hand, I did have some projects that were surprise successes. I was part of the supplement Night Horrors: Primordial Peerage for Beast: The Primordial, and that one was a close second-place for my top seller of the year. I also had a pretty good success with the sci fi supplement Beyond The Black: 100 Dread Scenarios on Stranded Starships... though I fancy part of that success was due to the audio drama I made to go with it.

All in all, though, I had 20 some-odd releases in 2025, and about a quarter of them flopped. Not due to lack of quality, or marketing efforts, but because they were for specific games and settings that just weren't really jiving with my audience. I rolled the dice on those, and they did poorly... which is a partial factor, but far from the only one that led to the year's losses.

#4: Miscellaneous Issues

Rather than going into deep detail on the other problems of 2025, I figured I'd just crack off a rapid list. These don't get their own, detailed list because I don't really have numbers for them, but they were trends I noticed.

- AI Slop Tainting The Market: I've lost count of the number of people who accused my supplements (including ones written back in the 20-teens) of being AI-generated. It's a bad faith argument because no one took the time to look, but it shows that the format I favor (despite it still being the strongest seller) is meeting a lot of criticism from the audience (even if it's because they can't be bothered to check the sales page, and see the No AI label on my work).

- Platform Enshittification: So many platforms got worse in 2025. YouTube's algorithm took my videos from hundreds of views on debut, to 50 views and change, meaning that I'm reaching a much smaller audience, and have a significantly smaller chance of making sales from views. Facebook basically made it impossible to post more than a handful of links before it cut you off (while all but shadowbanning posts with links in them), Twitter exploded into a cesspool of Nazi nonsense and bots, and most remaining platforms actively stop posts and content from spreading. Hence why Reddit is my big earner.

- Economic Downturn: With massive layoffs, stagnating wages, and people everywhere running out of options for paying their bills, this means discretionary spending is going to go down. While it didn't really start hitting for my audience that I could tell, those rumblings are getting much louder now that 2025 has ended, and 2026 is beginning.

What You Can Do To Help Keep Me Afloat

Most of what I just described is outside of my control. All I can really do is try to make more engaging posts, expand the groups I post in, try to draw more attention to my work, and maybe play it a little safer with the supplements I work on. Far as the economy, algorithms, platform decay, and the insane schemes of world leaders go, I'm shit out of luck on those scores.

So if you want to help, please consider the following options:

- Follow My Facebook

- Follow My Blue Sky

- Follow My LinkTree

- Join My Weekly Newsletter

- Subscribe to The Azukail Games YouTube Channel (where I contribute video content)

And if you happen to have some spare dosh lying around, and you want to be sure my supply doesn't run low, consider become a Patreon patron, or leaving a tip by Buying Me a Ko-Fi! And if you want to help me move copies of my games, consider buying copies of some of the supplements I linked above, or just search my name on Drive Thru RPG and see if any of the 200+ supplements I've contributed to really catch your interest!

I've said it before, and I'll say it again; creators need the help of their audience to succeed. Whether that's buying copies of their books and merch, watching the videos they make, reading their blogs, or helping spread the word on social media, we only have so many things we can do ourselves; we need your help. And if everyone grabs the rope and pulls in whatever way you can, some of us might actually win this tug of war with the algorithm and manage to get some forward momentum again!

Like, Follow, and Stay in Touch!

That's all for this week's Moon Pope Monday. To stay on top of all my content and releases, make sure you subscribe to my newsletter at the bottom of the page!

Again, for more of my work, check out my Vocal archive, and stop by the Azukail Games YouTube channel, or my Rumble channel The Literary Mercenary! Or if you'd prefer to read some of my books, like my dystopian sci-fi thriller Old Soldiers, my hardboiled gangland noir series starring a bruiser of a Maine Coon with Marked Territory and Painted Cats, my sword and sorcery novel Crier's Knife or my latest short story collection The Rejects, then head over to My Amazon Author Page!

To stay on top of all my latest releases, follow me on Blue Sky, Facebook, Tumblr, Twitter, and now Pinterest as well! To support my work, consider Buying Me a Ko-Fi, or heading to The Literary Mercenary's Patreon page to become a regular, monthly patron. That one helps ensure you get more Improved Initiative, and it means you'll get my regular, monthly giveaways as a bonus!

"Army Men: A Game of Tactical Plastic" Earns Its First Metals!

My first RPG Army Men: A Game of Tactical Plastic dropped a little over a year ago, and I've been doing my best to get it into folks' hands, and to provide as much supplemental material for it as I'm able to. And while it can sometimes be discouraging to get lost under the constant crush of new posts and fresh games out there, I have made at least some progress on my goals.

Because so far both Army Men, as well as its first supplement Army Men: Threat Assessments, have both hit Copper metal status on Drive Thru RPG!

In case you needed even MORE of a target-rich environment.

But before I get into the meat of today's post, remember, don't forget to sign up for my weekly newsletter to get all my updates right in your inbox. Also, if you've got a bit of spare cash that you'd like to use to help keep the wheels turning, consider becoming a Patreon patron! Also, be sure you're following all of my followables, check out my LinkTree.

Lastly, for hundreds of extra articles on gaming, weird history, and for more free fiction, check out my Vocal archive, too!

One Step Closer To Taking The Hill!

As most folks know, Army Men was a game that actually went to Kickstarter, and that's how it got made. So since a majority of the people who knew about it already had their books bought and paid for before it went up on Drive Thru RPG, it's been tough trying to keep getting it into fresh hands. It's been Deal of The Day, we had an Anniversary Bundle for it a little while ago, and I try to cover it on this blog as often as I can, along with putting together a show titled Tactical Plastic Report over on the Azukail Games YouTube channel to give viewers a run down on what's in the game to try to increase interest.

While it's definitely been an uphill battle, early this year I finally managed this little bit of progress! And even though Copper metal status is just the first tier you can hit (50+ sales), more than half of games and supplements that appear on DTRPG don't even hit that mark. And while I mentioned a while back that the core book had hit Copper, it wasn't until last month that Threat Assessments joined it!

However, if you're a fan of Army Men, why stop there? Consider grabbing yourself copies of some of the other releases that have come out so I can keep expanding the setting going forward!

- Army Men: Medals of Honor: A supplement that introduces the Medals System to help Game Masters reward players who have survived various missions, and conducted themselves in a way becoming of a trooper.

- A Baker's Dozen of Booby Traps: A collection of nasty surprises for Game Masters to deploy in the event you plan to conduct some guerrilla warfare in your games.

- A Night At Brekon's Beacon: An Army Men Mission Module: A stand-alone mission for Army Men, this brings your squad to an abandoned ruin far off the beaten track... will you avoid the fate that befell the squad that came before you?

In addition to all of these supplements, at time of writing I also have a second mission module that's currently in layout... so stay tuned for a mission that takes place in the Styric Republic (the northern faction inspired by the Soviets)!

What Would You Like To See Next?

Army Men, as a game and a setting, is still very young. Additionally, we were only able to fit so much into the core rulebook, so there's all kinds of room for further expansion in gear, enemies, missions, and more!

The question is... what do you all want to see? And to help folks avoid getting decision paralysis, I'll make a few suggestions:

- Mission Modules: The Army Men equivalent of adventure modules, these one-shot supplements do all the heavy lifting for the Game Master.

- Additional Equipment: From weapons and armor, to tool kits, vehicles, and more, Army Men's challenge is largely decided by what kinds of gear your troopers bring to the fight.

- Bigger Books: In the past I've had such suggestions as Motor Pool for vehicle rules, Soldier of Fortune for a mercenary-style secondary way to play that's geared more toward media like the A-Team, and a few others. These would take significantly more work, and would likely need to be Kickstarted.

- Fiction: Whether in text form or as an audio drama/podcast, Army Men has the potential for some really fun fiction, if that's something folks would like to see more of (consider the sample below if this interests you!)

However, as all the war bond posters said, we can't make any of this happen without your help!

If you're someone who wants to see Army Men expand as a game, and as a setting, then you need to help me make sure the signal grows, and that we find a group of folks who want to play it, and see more stuff come out for it! As such, please do as many of the following things as you can:

- Buy Copies: The more sales a game and its supplements get, the easiser it is to get more projects green lit, and the more the algorithm pays attention. So the best thing you can do is help our numbers go up!

- Leave Reviews: If you already bought your copy of the book and supplements, leave a rating and a review on them! You don't have to get in-depth, just tell people you liked it, and maybe mention something that sticks in your mind about it. Reviews are also key to getting the algorithm to take notice.

- Subscribe to The Azukail Games YouTube Channel: Maybe you've already done the first two, or you simply can't afford new game stuff right now. Either way, subscribing to the Azukail Games YouTube channel is free, as is watching episodes of Tactical Plastic Report, and all the other Army Men-related content on the channel. Again, upvote videos you like, leave comments, and so on, because that helps us get paid, and sends a message that at least some of our audience wants MORE Army Men stuff!

Like, Follow, and Stay in Touch!

That's all for this week's Moon Pope Monday. To stay on top of all my content and releases, make sure you subscribe to my newsletter at the bottom of the page!

Again, for more of my work, check out my Vocal archive, and stop by the Azukail Games YouTube channel, or my Rumble channel The Literary Mercenary! Or if you'd prefer to read some of my books, like my dystopian sci-fi thriller Old Soldiers, my hardboiled gangland noir series starring a bruiser of a Maine Coon with Marked Territory and Painted Cats, my sword and sorcery novel Crier's Knife or my latest short story collection The Rejects, then head over to My Amazon Author Page!

To stay on top of all my latest releases, follow me on Blue Sky, Facebook, Tumblr, Twitter, and now Pinterest as well! To support my work, consider Buying Me a Ko-Fi, or heading to The Literary Mercenary's Patreon page to become a regular, monthly patron. That one helps ensure you get more Improved Initiative, and it means you'll get my regular, monthly giveaways as a bonus!

A Holiday Wish From Improved Initiative

It's that time of year again. The decorations are going up, Mariah Carey has been defrosted, and everyone is looking for the best possible deals on what to get their loved ones before the upcoming holiday, and the end of 2024. And because I know that money is tight for everyone, I try to provide as much free content as I possibly can, both here on Improved Initiative, but also on our sister blog The Literary Mercenary for the writers out there, and in my Vocal archive, which has over 300 free articles (most of which are about gaming).

However, 2024 has been rough as hell with Drive Thru RPG basically slashing my earnings in half. Adding in the projections for 2025 that are all doom and gloom, I would like to take this week to ask for a favor from my audience... because I could definitely use a bit of that holiday spirit to help carry me through.

Every little bit helps...

But before I get into the meat of today's post, remember, don't forget to sign up for my weekly newsletter to get all my updates right in your inbox. Also, if you've got a bit of spare cash that you'd like to use to help keep the wheels turning, consider becoming a Patreon patron! Also, be sure you're following all of my followables, check out my LinkTree.

Lastly, for hundreds of extra articles on gaming, weird history, and for more free fiction, check out my Vocal archive, too!

I Could Really Use A Hand Up This Holiday

Things have been rough all over for creatives the past few years, and the seas are looking pretty stormy right now. To make things worse, this is typically the time of year when folks decide to cancel Patreon patronage, stop tipping creators they follow, and so on because of all the other holiday costs they're amassing; gifts, travel, time off work, and so on, and so forth.

So, before I get into all the other stuff, if you want to help keep this blog going please consider becoming a Patreon patron, or buying me a Ko-Fi as a tip. That's the best bang for your buck, honestly, and that goes for basically any other artist out there you want to support this year, too.

That's not the ONLY option I'm asking folks to consider, though...

I know that's not for everyone. However, I wanted to lead with that one because it's the easiest way to ensure that I keep the lights on, and have a minimum of hardship as I pay all of my big bills in the coming year (taxes, renew car insurance, things like that). If you do want to help me keep the wheels turning, but you'd like other options, consider the following categories...

Free Stuff That Helps

Like I said, I know that everyone is having a tough time right now, and not all of us have cash to spare. So I wanted to list a bunch of stuff you can do for free right now that will help boost me up as a creator, and which will put money in my hand, and help me do more, without costing you a dime.

Watch My Azukail Games Videos

I have been making videos for the Azukail Games YouTube channel for going on 3 years now, and in all that time I've made a pretty wide variety of content. From audio dramas and channel updates, to talking about my settings Sundara: Dawn of a New Age and my RPG Army Men: A Game of Tactical Plastic, to industry talk in Tabletop Mercenary, and shows like Discussions of Darkness where I talk about the World and Chronicles of Darkness settings.

As of time of writing, we only need about 100 hours and change of watched content... meaning we need our audience to clock in a little over 100 hours more so that we can get monetized. Because for all the episodes I've put up (and all the work Adrian has done on his crafting videos), and all the signal boosting you see here and on social media, we haven't seen a single, red cent from YouTube because we haven't met the creator minimum yet on the amount of traffic we've generated. Hell, if everyone who subscribes to me @LiteraryMercenary on Blue Sky (far and away my smallest social media following) watched 1 video a day for the month of December, we'd clinch that number, and start the new year off right.

This is such a big deal to me because, though it isn't my channel, if it is earning revenue for my publisher, that's money that can be reinvested to make bigger, more engaging videos, TTRPG supplements, and a variety of other projects as well! So if you want to help me avoid stagnation, subscribe to the channel, watch some videos, leave comments on them at least 7 words long (that's the magic number on the algorithm), and share the ones you like on your social media pages. It makes a much bigger difference than you know!

Read My Vocal Articles

I have SO many of them...

Vocal.media is a website where authors are able to write whatever they want, and we get paid based on how popular our articles are. So if you wanted to read my classic top story It's Okay To Admit There Are Problems In Your Hobby (which always seems to light flame wars when I share it), you can do that for free, and I'll get paid for it. If you're a Warhammer 40K fan, my Leagues of Votann story Pyramid Scheme is on there as well, or if you're looking for a new character concept for your next Pathfinder game, consider my article The Beer Brewing Witch.

The issue is, of course, numbers. Because I make $6 for every 1,000 articles that get read on Vocal. Not clicked, mind you, but read. The pages have crawlers and bots on them that track who's reading, and their pace, ensuring that only read, organic reads go through.

Still, there's 321 stories on My Vocal Archive at time of writing, and I add at least 1 per month. So if 1,000 people all decided to just read 1 of them per day, I'd make about $6 a day for most of the next year. That doesn't sound like much, but I can confirm right now that an extra $180 or so a month would, in fact, be life-changing for me as a creator. So if you enjoy my gaming content on this blog, bookmark my Vocal author page, and make it part of your daily routine to dig through and see what's in there! I've got character conversions, character concepts, horror articles, short stories, instructionals, and a slew of other nonsense that's just waiting for you!

Follow My Social Media (And Interact With Me)

Social media is the backbone of modern creatives. We don't have money to buy ad banners on websites, and getting organic word-of-mouth about us and what we do is amazingly helpful. However, every platform out there has been choking our signals, and making it impossible for us to reach anyone with the stuff we make. A post we make today will get maybe 10% of what we would have gotten a few years ago, if we're lucky... and unless you can count your followers in the tens of thousands, the algorithm is going to put its boot firmly on your windpipe.

So help me overcome this by following my socials (listed below), and interacting when you see me post stuff! Hearts and shares are good, but so are 7+ word comments, because those get the algorithm to notice you... a good tip for any other creators you follow, too!

- Facebook

- Blue Sky

- Twitter (for now, at least)

- Reddit

- LinkTree (I promise I'm trying to update this more)

Also, as a bonus, subscribe to my newsletter to make sure you get all my content sent to your email every two weeks so you don't miss anything!

Things You Can Buy (Which Also Helps)

If you're looking for the ideal gift for a friend or family member, I've got a lot of stuff that's out there for-sale! And, as a bonus, the more numbers these things do, the more likely I am to put out additional stuff for these games, novel series, and so on!

And, as a bonus, all of these links (as I mention in my fine print on this site) are affiliate links... so even if you just click through to check something out, that still helps!

My Novels/Short Story Collections

I've had a lot of fiction come out over the years, and it's been a time and a half trying to get any of it into people's hands. So if you or someone you know is a reader, check out some of the following stories (and listen to the audio drama above linked from my Rumble channel The Literary Mercenary).

- Old Soldiers (A dystopian sci fi novel about a defunct super soldier solving a mystery)

- Crier's Knife (A witchborn mountain boy goes to bring home his wayward cousin by any means)

- The Rejects (A collection of short stories that never quite made the cut in other anthologies)

The Hardboiled Cat

My noir series about Leo, a hardnosed Maine Coon from the Bronx, deals with the problems going on among the street beasts throughout the city. So if you want to make sure Leo gets a few more stories under his bottlebrush tail, grab the three books he's been featured in so far!

- From A Cat's View (The debut short story for Leo can be found in this anthology)

- Marked Territory (Leo ends up doing a favor for the raccoon mob, and stumbling on a conspiracy)

- Painted Cats (Leo ends up looking for a missing stray, and take care of her abandoned kitten)

Army Men: A Game of Tactical Plastic

A game where you take on the roles of troopers fighting for their homelands in the Plastos Federation against the insectoid monsters of the vespoids!

- Army Men: A Game of Tactical Plastic: The base book for the game, this is technically the only book you need to play this game... but it never hurts to get some of the others as well!

- Army Men: Threat Assessments: The first collection released after the original game dropped, this supplement is full of new creatures for your squad to have to deal with when out in the field.

- Army Men: Medals of Honor: This supplement introduced the Medals System, allowing players to earn medals for their troopers, gaining unique bonuses and abilities usable for the rest of the campaign.

- Ungentlemanly Warfare: A Baker's Dozen of Booby Traps: Giant bugs and enemy combatants aren't the only threats you'll have to deal with in the field. Booby traps are a serious concern among troopers looking to leave their service with as many limbs as they started.

- Army Men Missions: A Night At Breckon's Beacon: When a squad goes missing while they're on patrol, it's your squad's mission to find them, and bring them home... or to avenge them, if that can't be done.

Sundara: Dawn of A New Age

This is a setting I've been gradually expanding for several years now, and there's a new series of supplements coming out for it in the near future! Sundara can be played on its own, or it can be added piecemeal to your own settings to fill in gaps and blanks so that you don't have to do as much heavy lifting the next time you get folks around your table!

Cities of Sundara

The setting first began with the Cities of Sundara splats. Self-contained guides to some of the larger and more powerful centers of trade, industry, arms, and magic, these unique locations provide plenty of fodder for character generation and plots. Not only that, but each one comes with unique, mechanical goodies for players and GMs alike to take out for a spin!

- Ironfire: The City of Steel (Pathfinder and DND 5E): Built around the Dragon Forge, Ironfire is where the secret to dragon steel was first cracked. The center of the mercenary trade in the region, as well as boasting some of the finest schools for teaching practical sciences, Ironfire is a place where discovery and danger walk hand in hand!

- Moüd: The City of Bones (Pathfinder and DND 5E): An ancient center of trade and magic, Moüd was lost to a cataclysm, and then buried in myth. Reclaimed by the necromantic arts of the Silver Wraiths guild, this city has once again become a place teeming with life. Despite the burgeoning population, though, it is the continued presence of the undead that helps keep the city running, ensuring that Moüd is not swallowed up once more.

- Silkgift: The City of Sails (Pathfinder and DND 5E): Built on the cottage industry of Archer cloth (an extremely durable material used for sails, windmills, etc.), Silkgift is a place that prizes invention and discovery. From gravity batteries that store the potential of the wind, to unique irrigation systems, to aether weapons, the city positively churns out discoveries... and then there's the canal they cut through the mountains that makes them a major center of trade across the region.

- Hoardreach: The City of Wyrms (Pathfinder and DND 5E): A center of power across an entire region, Hoardreach is ruled over by a Cooperation of five different dragons. A place for refugees and outcasts of all sorts, Hoardreach boasts some of the most unusual citizens and creations from across Sundara. Infamous for their sky ships, which require the cast-off scales and unique arcane sciences of the Dragon Works to take to the air, one never knows just what they'll find in this city built atop a mountain.

- Archbliss: The City of The Sorcerers (Pathfinder and DND 5E): A floating city in the sky, Archbliss has been a refuge for sorcerers for thousands of years. It's only in relatively recent years that the city has allowed those from the ground below who lack the power of a bloodline to join them in the clouds. However, while there are certainly amazing wonders to behold, there is a darkness in Archbliss. Something rotting away at its heart that could, if not healed, bring the city crashing to the ground once more.

Gods of Sundara

- Gods of Sundara (available for Pathfinder and DND 5E): In a world with no alignment, and where the gods are often genuinely mysterious forces that are far too large for mortals to truly comprehend, the divine feels genuinely strange and unknown... something that really does have to be taken on faith. This supplement provides a sample pantheon for Sundara, but also provides instructions on how to easily make your own gods in a world where you can't cast a spell and tell whether someone is good or evil.

Species of Sundara

Sundara is filled with creatures that many of us recognize, but I wanted to give greater depth to their cultures, and a wider variety of options. After all, humans always get 15+ ethnicities, languages, and unique histories, while elves, dwarves, orcs, halflings, etc. are almost always left with footnotes, or maybe with a handful of offshoots. So, in short, I wanted to give all the fantastical creatures the treatment that humans usually get in our games.

And there is no human book yet. If readers demand to know more, then I may sit down to pen one... but I figured that humans didn't need to be front-and-center in this setting just yet.

- Elves of Sundara (Pathfinder and DND 5E): Elves are one of the most quintessential fantasy creatures... but if you want to see more than just high elves, wood elves, and elves of the sun and moon, then this supplement has you covered!

- Dwarves of Sundara (Pathfinder and DND 5E): The children of the primordial giants who were meant to fill in the details of the world they'd made (or so the myths say) there are as many kinds of dwarves as their are kinds of giants... and possibly more, depending on who is keeping count.

- Orcs of Sundara (Pathfinder and DND 5E): Supposedly a creation of the elves, none can say for certain exactly how or why orcs have been made. What most agree on is that these creatures are far more than most may think at first glance.

- Halflings of Sundara (Pathfinder and DND 5E): Little cousins to the dwarves, halflings are tough, clever, and not to be underestimated. From living beneath the hills, to taking up residence in the deep forests, halflings in Sundara come in quite a variety!

- The Blooded (Half-Elves and Half-Orcs) [Pathfinder and DND 5E]: When orcs and elves mix their bloodlines with other creatures, the result is one of the Blooded. This inheritance takes many forms, and it can even wait generations before manifesting when the right combination of individuals come together to have a child.

- Gnomes of Sundara (Pathfinder and DND 5E): Gnomes are strange creatures, found in places where the spirit of the land has coalesced and made children of its own. The sons and daughters of the ancient nymphs, they are the stewards of these places, and they change as often as the weather and the land.

Organizations of Sundara

Phase 3 has been going strong, but there's still a few titles left in it! So if you haven't seen them, consider checking out:

- Sellswords of Sundara: With power structures being smaller in scale in Sundara, standing armies aren't often maintained for long. As such, soldiers of fortune are quite common! This supplement contains 10 mercenary companies, their history, uniform, sample members, whispers and rumors, as well as either an archetype or subclass for playing these unique warriors. Grab your copy for Pathfinder of DND 5E.

- Cults of Sundara: Faith comes in many forms in Sundara, and there are as many gods in the Prim as there are dreams in the minds of people. This supplement contains write-ups for 10 cults, their histories, sample members, rumors about them, their beliefs and tenets, and a unique magic item for each. Get your copy for Pathfinder or DND 5E.

- Guilds of Sundara: While cities and villages may be relatively local, guilds are spread across the length and width of Sundara. From professional orders of skilled miners and dredgers, to monster slayers and bounty hunters, this supplement has 10 guilds with histories, sample members, rumors, as well as unique feats one can take to represent the skill and benefits of joining this order. Available for Pathfinder as well as DND 5E.

- Merchants of Sundara: While city states might be the largest form of government you find in the setting, merchants hold an outsized amount of power. From huge mercantile houses, to small brands infamous for their quality as much as for their price, there are a lot of options listed in this particular world building supplement.

Like, Follow, and Stay in Touch!

That's all for this week's Moon Pope Monday. To stay on top of all my content and releases, make sure you subscribe to my newsletter at the bottom of the page!

Again, for more of my work, check out my Vocal archive, and stop by the Azukail Games YouTube channel, or my Rumble channel The Literary Mercenary! Or if you'd prefer to read some of my books, like my dystopian sci-fi thriller Old Soldiers, my hardboiled gangland noir series starring a bruiser of a Maine Coon with Marked Territory and Painted Cats, my sword and sorcery novel Crier's Knife or my latest short story collection The Rejects, then head over to My Amazon Author Page!

To stay on top of all my latest releases, follow me on Blue Sky, Facebook, Tumblr, Twitter, and now Pinterest as well! To support my work, consider Buying Me a Ko-Fi, or heading to The Literary Mercenary's Patreon page to become a regular, monthly patron. That one helps ensure you get more Improved Initiative, and it means you'll get my regular, monthly giveaways as a bonus!

World's Oldest Profession... Is The Third Time The Charm?

For those who haven't been paying attention to every TTRPG supplement I put out, this weekend saw something of a milestone for me. The supplement World's Oldest Profession: 100 Rumors To Hear In A Brothel went live, and it is the third installment in this particular series (behind the previous two supplements A Baker's Dozen of Brothels and 100 Courtesans and Concubines respectively). I don't usually work on series like this, but the runaway success of the first two supplements meant that I had to go back to the well for a third installment.

However, some things have changed since those first two splats dropped. There's some additional challenges I'm facing now, and there's some potential storm clouds on the horizon. So if you're one of the many folks out there who has grabbed one (or all) of these supplements, and were hoping this train would keep rolling a little while longer, this update is going to be important for you.

And grab a copy of the latest, if you haven't yet!

As always, don't forget to sign up for my weekly newsletter to get all my updates right in your inbox. Also, if you've got a bit of spare cash that you'd like to use to help keep the wheels turning, consider becoming a Patreon patron! Also, be sure you're following all of my followables, check out my LinkTree.

Lastly, for hundreds of extra articles on gaming, weird history, and for more free fiction, check out my Vocal archive, too!

What Happened Before (And Why There's A Struggle Now)

When the first two supplements from this series dropped, they were met with a rather surprising amount of audience demand. Both of the original supplements went Silver by the end of the first weekend (100+ copies sold), and both of them wound up at Electrum status when all was said and done. Not only that, but both of them spent a rather long time in the top slot of the #1 Bestseller Under $5 on the TTRPG front page.

So what's happened with this latest release?

Well, it went Copper by the end of its first weekend (50+ sales), and though it's made it to the top sellers chart, it's been sitting pretty around slot #5 for the past day or so. There's been a definite slow-down in demand, and the reaction doesn't seem as large as it was for the previous two.

We're going to dig into this a bit.

Now, a lot of this can be chalked up to the changes I mentioned a little while ago in Drive Thru RPG's New Site Isn't Great For Smaller Publishers (Now With Numbers!), but I'll touch on some of the bigger points here. In short, the new site (which was rolled out between the second supplement and the brand new one) has a terrible algorithm that makes organic discovery nearly impossible for people browsing the site. So the only ways people are finding new releases from publishers is if they're on that publisher's newsletter, if they catch them on social media, or if they happen to see a particular product on the top sellers section.

Given that social media of all stripes has been strangling creators' signals, and that getting sales off of FB, Twitter, YouTube, etc., is like wrangling a unicorn, the fact that this installment has done this well is a testament to just how popular the series (if I'm calling it that) has been so far!

With that said, if you're someone who wants to see more installments of this series, then please get a copy of World's Oldest Profession: 100 Rumors To Hear In A Brothel. And if you're one of the folks who has already done that, please leave a rating, a review, and share the link either on your own social media pages, or share the link to this blog instead. I say this because, at the end of the day, it doesn't matter the negative forces the market throws up in my way; numbers talk, excuses walk. If the numbers see a sharp decline, then it will be tougher to justify expanding this particular series of supplements.

This is true not just for the fantasy versions that are already on the market. In keeping with my strategy as a creator, I had been hoping to make sci-fi versions of these three supplements as well, kicking off Galaxy's Oldest Profession. Because whether you're spending your loot from a dragon hoard, or you're suddenly flush with credits after a big corpo job, we all know the kinds of "distractions" that mercenaries, enforcers, and so-called adventurers seek out once they've upgraded their gear and find they have a little scratch left in their accounts.

The OTHER Issue Looming On The Horizon

A lot of my readers might not have dug through the Project 2025 papers, or have been paying a lot of attention to the news lately, but there has been a major push to reclassify a lot of things as pornography, and to make possession or purchase of that kind of pornography illegal. We've already seen this with romance novels that were sold on Amazon and which have been taken down, as well as in state laws restricting access to particular kinds of content.

And while none of the World's Oldest Profession supplements have anything explicit in them (the worst they have is some PG, tongue-in-cheek innuendo), that hasn't stopped other books from getting banned from libraries, or becoming the subject of controversy all over America.

Trying to avoid this guy as best I can.

Because of this, even if I can get a few hundred folks to answer the call and help boost this series, there is every chance that the political winds might decide to remove anything deemed "adult content" from any markets, including the ones offered by DTRPG. So even if I manage to get these supplements expanded, and I get a sci fi version of them up to get a second version of them going, it's possible that something will happen in the next handful of years that will force them to be deleted from the site entirely.

Which is why I'd recommend everyone who likes these supplements download copies and backups of them to be sure you don't lose them in the event they do wind up caught in a purge.

And if you're someone who wants to see this series keep going (short-term or long-term), then please help me get the word out about the supplements that are available, and leave a comment down below telling me which future installments you'd most like to see! Fantasy, sci-fi, or even other genres we haven't thought about branching out into just yet, all input is welcome!

In addition to the supplements themselves, I wanted to remind folks that the silly little introuctory stories inside them get made into audio dramas. The two that are out actually tell a fun little two-part tale set in the underground brothel known as The Pit, staffed largely by tieflings, and a handful of aasimar. The first tale talks about the party cleric sneaking off to have a bit of fun...

And the second story, of course, is what happens when the rest of the party shows up, having tracked him to the brothel. They think he's joined a cult and made a bargain with dark powers, of course, which leads to some rather... awkward interactions.

Like, Follow, and Stay in Touch!

That's all for this week's Fluff post. To stay on top of all my content and releases, make sure you subscribe to my newsletter at the bottom of the page!

Again, for more of my work, check out my Vocal archive, and stop by the Azukail Games YouTube channel, or my Rumble channel The Literary Mercenary! Or if you'd prefer to read some of my books, like my dystopian sci-fi thriller Old Soldiers, my hardboiled gangland noir series starring a bruiser of a Maine Coon with Marked Territory and Painted Cats, my sword and sorcery novel Crier's Knife or my latest short story collection The Rejects, then head over to My Amazon Author Page!

To stay on top of all my latest releases, follow me on Facebook, Tumblr, Twitter, and now Pinterest as well! To support my work, consider Buying Me a Ko-Fi, or heading to The Literary Mercenary's Patreon page to become a regular, monthly patron. That one helps ensure you get more Improved Initiative, and it means you'll get my regular, monthly giveaways as a bonus!

Drive Thru RPG's New Site Isn't Great For Smaller Publishers (Now With Numbers!)

Making a living as a writer of any stripe is hard as hell, and if you want to make tabletop RPGs for a living you have an uphill battle of Sisyphean proportions ahead of you. With that said, I've been in the game for over a decade at this point in my life. I've got nearly 180 products with my name on them, and I've worked for more than a dozen different publishers during my stint as a creator. I've released supplements that were smash hits, and topped the bestseller list for over a week when they came out. I've also released supplements that moved a handful of copies, and then vanished into the void, rarely to be seen again. However, with every year that's gone by I've had a bigger catalog of material, and that has translated to a larger, more reliable set of earnings.

Until this year.

And while there are always going to be fluctuations in the market, changes in what the audience wants, etc., this is far beyond those normal fluctuations. I've recently had my monthly earnings cut in half, and I've been struggling with it for the latter half of 2024. After discussions with other creators who operate on my level, I kept hearing the same stories. So I put my head together with Adrian Kennelly, my publisher at Azukail Games, and we started looking into things.

This week I wanted to explain to folks what we've found, and to present some solutions for those who want to help the creators they love ride out this storm so we can keep making stuff for you and your tables.

The numbers aren't great, I'm not going to lie.

As always, don't forget to sign up for my weekly newsletter to get all my updates right in your inbox. Also, if you've got a bit of spare cash that you'd like to use to help keep the wheels turning, consider becoming a Patreon patron! Also, be sure you're following all of my followables, check out my LinkTree.

Lastly, for hundreds of extra articles on gaming, weird history, and for more free fiction, check out my Vocal archive, too!

All Right, What Are We Looking At?

Let's take one of my most recent releases, 100 Helpful Hirelings. This NPC list actually performed far better than a lot of my other recent releases in terms of numbers, which landed it on the Top Sellers Under $5 bar on the front page of the site. At the time I checked the numbers, the supplement had sold 58 copies, with 35 of them coming from the Azukail Games newsletter (which is roughly 60% of sales).

Now, that is an outside performer that did better than average... but in the past if I had a supplement wind up on that top sellers bar, it would be because it crossed the 100 sales line in either the first day, or the first weekend. The fact that I got onto that bar with less-than-triple-digit sales tells me that sales are likely decreasing across the board, and showing up on the front page isn't enough to cover the deficit.

If that's the outsized numbers, and something that would be considered a successful release, then what does an average release look like?

Well, I'm glad you asked.

The numbers don't get any better.

Let's take page views. In the past when a new supplement dropped, we could regularly expect 60 page views on it in the first hour. That was what we got when the algorithm was working, and the site was encouraging organic discovery. Now? It takes several days for the page view count to get that high. And this isn't a one-off thing with a couple of supplements... this has been going on for months! It now takes Azukail Games products days to get the kind of views they used to get in a single hour!

As if that wasn't bad/frustrating enough, sales have absolutely cratered for our supplements. Our numbers are down so low because it seems that 90% of new release sales are coming from the Azukail Games newsletter, rather than due to traffic on Drive Thru RPG itself. This is damning in multiple ways, because it means that not only is organic searching on the DTRPG site itself tanked to the point where it is nearly useless, it means that all the social media platforms where supplements are announced (Facebook, Twitter, Reddit, etc.) also have terrible organic discovery. So it doesn't matter how many places we share our releases, or who we tell about them, a majority of our sales are coming from people who actually open the Azukail Games newsletter and read what's inside.

That's a lot of numbers. But what does that mean for me, personally, as a creator? In short, my sales/royalties income has been cut in half.

Around this time last year, I was regularly pulling in between $350 and $425 a month in combined royalties and affiliate earnings from DTRPG sales. My projection at the time was, if I kept growing the way I had in the past, that I'd be earning between $450 and $500 a month around this time this year.

However, I'm barely pulling in $150 to $220. And given that I already live below the poverty line, that was not the kick in the crotch I needed.

How You Can Help

If you are reading this, you probably can't stop the enshittification of social media platforms, or undo how DTRPG has completely screwed up the ability to connect creators with their potential audience. However, what you can do is choose to plug-in to the creators you care about to make sure that you don't miss any of our releases and updates, and to do your best to make sure you don't have to depend on the random and inexplicable tides of the algorithm to find out when we're releasing stuff.

And if you want to help me out, specifically, please do the following:

- Follow My Facebook

- Follow My LinkTree

- Follow Me On Twitter

- Subscribe To My Weekly Newsletter

- Subscribe To The Azukail Games YouTube Channel (where I contribute video content)

- Subscribe To My Rumble Channel (longer videos that won't show up on YouTube)

Lastly, if you want to hear about all of the releases from Azukail Games, go to the Azukail Games website, and sign up for the company newsletter! It's on the right-hand side of the page.

With all of that said (and I cannot stress this enough), make sure that you stay plugged-in to the creators and companies you actually follow. Subscribing to our newsletter does neither of us any good if it just goes into your spam folder and you don't see it. You don't have to buy everything we release, but every purchase, review, like, and share on social media helps us overcome the algorithm, and try to make up for the damage it's causing to us.

As always, we can't do any of this without you!

Like, Follow, and Stay in Touch!

That's all for this week's Moon Pope Monday. To stay on top of all my content and releases, make sure you subscribe to my newsletter at the bottom of the page!

Again, for more of my work, check out my Vocal archive, and stop by the Azukail Games YouTube channel, or my Rumble channel The Literary Mercenary! Or if you'd prefer to read some of my books, like my dystopian sci-fi thriller Old Soldiers, my hardboiled gangland noir series starring a bruiser of a Maine Coon with Marked Territory and Painted Cats, my sword and sorcery novel Crier's Knife or my latest short story collection The Rejects, then head over to My Amazon Author Page!

To stay on top of all my latest releases, follow me on Facebook, Tumblr, Twitter, and now Pinterest as well! To support my work, consider Buying Me a Ko-Fi, or heading to The Literary Mercenary's Patreon page to become a regular, monthly patron. That one helps ensure you get more Improved Initiative, and it means you'll get my regular, monthly giveaways as a bonus!

Genre Guides For Game Masters... What Would You Want To See?

This past summer was my first time attending World Con in Chicago. While I can't say it was a phenomenal experience, I did get the opportunity to meet a lot of fellow authors, and to be on some fun panels. One that stuck with me (both because it was my first panel of the convention, and because it turned out I was the moderator) was the panel about the genre of Midwest Gothic, what it was, and how to apply it to your stories as an author.

While it's been some time since that panel, I started rolling it around in my head, and wondering... would a guide about this particular genre be something that Game Masters out there would find useful? If so, should it be the first of a series about exploring such genres through the medium of TTRPGs?

It could be done... if it's something folks want to see.

Before we get into the nitty gritty this week, don't forget to sign up for my weekly newsletter to get all my updates right in your inbox. Also, if you've got a bit of spare cash that you'd like to use to help keep the wheels turning, consider becoming a Patreon patron! Also, be sure you're following all of my followables, check out my LinkTree.

Lastly, for hundreds of extra articles on gaming, weird history, and for more free fiction, check out my Vocal archive, too!

Genre Guides For All Your GMing Needs

Regular readers who've checked out my supplements before now know that I tend to stick to two major formats; 100 Random X, and A Baker's Dozen of More Detailed Y. In case you're one of the folks out there who hasn't gotten a copy of any of my supplements so far, the former category has entries like my Platinum-selling supplement 100 NPCs You Might Meet At The Tavern or the slightly-less-popular 100 Sci Fi Bands. The latter category has entries like my somewhat-controversial bestseller World's Oldest Profession: A Baker's Dozen of Brothels, as well as the Electrum-selling 10 Fantasy Villages.

While I've also written world guides, feat lists, modules, and other styles of supplements, these two formats make up the bulk of my catalog. What makes them so popular, based on feedback from the audience as well as observed trends, seems to be the following factors:

- Game Neutral: A long as you're playing within a given genre, the supplement is still usable.

- Supplemental Resource: These guides fill-in things that GMs don't want to make up on the fly, but they aren't, themselves, necessary for running any particular game.

- Evergreen: Whether you're playing now, or in 25 years, these resources will still be usable.

Looking at these broad strokes, the GM's Genre Guide project fits within all of these parameters, so I feel like it could work... if, that is, it's something readers show an interest in.

What Would Be Included?

I have not yet nailed down the specific format for how this guide would go, and what would be between the pages. With that said, I do have a general layout in mind, and some things I would like it to offer players. Those include:

- Introductory Story: This would set the tone, and be written in the style of the genre in question.

- Genre Overview: The first section would explore the broad strokes of the genre, giving GMs a foundation to work from.

- Genre Elements: Once the overview is established, and examples are given, we break down the genre's most important elements, providing them like the ingredients in a recipe.

- Running The Genre: After the genre has been explained and explored somewhat, this section would offer advice for how to run games set in this genre, along with tips and tricks to make the game stand out, and how to get your players in the spirit.

- Reading and Viewing Recommendations: Since genre can be a complex beast, I'd like to follow the best practices I've seen in other gaming books, and offer some examples for GMs to also take in to immerse themselves in a particular genre.

All of that would, ideally, come out to about 10,000 words or so by the time all is said and done. It might run a little longer, or a little shorter, but that's about the word count I'd be aiming for with these. And while I'd like to start with a Gothic line (Midwest Gothic, New England Gothic, Southern Gothic, you get the idea), if folks enjoy the project I'd be more than happy to stretch out to other genres and provide insight into how to best make those work, too.

How You Can Help

If this sounds like a neat idea, there's a couple of things you can do to help make it a reality. First and foremost, share this post around to get as many eyes on it as possible, and to help gather support. Secondly, leave a comment (here, as well as on social media if that's where you found this blog post) with the genre or subgenre you'd most like to see get its own guide in this series. Gothic preferred, but not required!

The other thing that will really help is, once the series starts coming out, make sure you pick up your copy, and leave a review so that more folks will see the supplement. The more copies something sells, and the more ratings and reviews it gets, the more likely it is that the algorithm will promote it, which creates a cycle where the publisher will want to keep the train rolling... so keep that in mind if you want to see this idea made into a reality sometime in 2024!

Also, if you'd like a short, snappy guide to tide you over till then (and to give you an idea of the sorts of advice I normally give in a project like this), you might want to check out 100 Tips and Tricks For Being a Better Game Master!

Like, Follow, and Stay in Touch!

That's all for this week's Moon Pope Monday. To stay on top of all my content and releases, make sure you subscribe to my newsletter at the bottom of the page!

Again, for more of my work, check out my Vocal archive, and stop by the Azukail Games YouTube channel, or my Daily Motion channel!. Or if you'd prefer to read some of my books, like my dystopian sci-fi thriller Old Soldiers, my sword and sorcery novel Crier's Knife or my latest short story collection The Rejects, then head over to My Amazon Author Page!

To stay on top of all my latest releases, follow me on Facebook, Tumblr, Twitter, and now Pinterest as well! To support my work, consider Buying Me a Ko-Fi, or heading to The Literary Mercenary's Patreon page to become a regular, monthly patron. That one helps ensure you get more Improved Initiative, and it means you'll get my regular, monthly giveaways as a bonus!