To Influence Creators, You Have To Actually Support Them

Given that we just had a bunch of elections, I want to describe a political situation that happens in the U.S. among more left-leaning people, and their reaction to power.

So, the Democratic Party puts out its representative. This person is usually pretty unacceptable to those who want meaningful, structural change, and they typically have a bunch of status quo policies. They might be good on one or two issues, and neutral on others, but a lot of folks see them (and not incorrectly so) as a lesser evil. So these voters fold their arms, and refuse to participate until they are given a candidate who is more in-line with what they actually want. When this happens, though, the democrats don't push further and further left to court their votes; instead, they track further toward the American center (the global right) or the American right (the global far right).

The reason for this is that folks who are center-to-right vote reliably, they engage with the process, and they are going to make a more reliable base for that candidate to actually get into office. Yet over and over again folks seem confused why their attempts to punish these candidates drive them toward conservatives, rather than making them more leftist.

In general, this is because if you aren't supporting someone (you aren't voting for them, donating money to them, giving them volunteer hours, etc.) then you have nothing you can take away from them. So your opinion on their platform, what they're doing, etc., is irrelevant because they lose nothing by ignoring you, and it's uncertain that your support would be worth the investment it would take to get you on their side.

This post isn't about politics, though. It's about people who make art, and understanding why your criticism may not be getting the reaction you want from the creators whose work you're trying to shape.

Why aren't they listening to me!?

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!

You Have To Have Leverage If You Want To Use It

I've been in this game for a while now, and I've got over 200 titles with my name on them. I've worked for a dozen or more publishers as a freelancer, and I am (knock wood) still managing to survive. However, this week I wanted to address the connection between consumer behavior (that is to say all of you, out in the audience) and creator behavior (folks like me who are making things for all of you to use, enjoy, and consume).

Generally speaking, your feedback is extremely important to us. And while some of that will be comments on social media, or the reviews of the things we've made, feedback also comes in terms of sales numbers and general audience attitude.

For a specific, let's take the whole OGL situation that Wizards of The Coast stepped in a few years back. They were going to tear down the Open Game License agreements that allowed everyone to use the Dungeons and Dragons ruleset, turn the screws on creators by demanding big shares of their sales, put up walls around D&D, add in AI, force it to go digital, and a whole bunch of other stuff I can't even recall now. And they backed off of basically all of that because people started cancelling their subscriptions, and no longer buying DND 5E materials. The company was bleeding profits, and it was that action from the audience that forced their hand and made them change direction.

If Wizards had been bombarded by messages from people who weren't actually buying their books, or who weren't people with accounts on their digital platform who were telling the company, "Well, I'm not going to give you any of my money now!" they would have utterly ignored it. Because you're threatening not to give them phantom sales that they don't have. But people who were paying the companies' bills closing their accounts and leaving en masse? That got the suits' attention really fast because they were losing actual, measurable profits and the brand was taking a nosedive.

Oh... those numbers aren't good...

And this is a point that I want to drive home to people out there. Creators will absolutely listen to you... but if you're not part of their fan base, if you're not actually buying their books, playing their games, watching their channels, and so on, then they aren't going to change what they're doing just to please you. Creators (and companies) change to keep the support they have, not to roll the dice and take a gamble on support they might maybe possibly get according to unverified accounts online.

Two strong examples of this come to mind for me, personally.

Somewhere between 3 and 5 years ago there was a person on Reddit who raised a big stink about the way I posted in a particular sub. They were very mad about my behavior, accused me of just being in it to make money, and said that he and his entire table who supported me on Patreon were going to delete their pledges immediately. I found that somewhat alarming, worried that I'd pissed off a not-insignificant part of my own fanbase (since I've never had more than 35 paying patrons at a time)... but one day after another went by, and there was no change in my numbers. I even reached back out to the person, wanting to make sure he hadn't deleted a pledge to someone else he'd mistaken for me. At the end of the day, it was just an empty threat made by someone who just wanted me to stop posting in his group.

Another incident came with the recent project I was part of, Night Horrors: Primoridal Peerage. This supplement was met with a lot of flak because one of the major names on the original Beast: The Primordial turned out to be a predator, and it sort of tainted the game in the eyes of a lot of players. To be clear, that person was not involved with this supplement, and the folks I worked with on it appear to be a pretty solid team of people as far as I know. However, there were a lot of comments saying how we shouldn't make anything for Beast, how they didn't play that game and weren't going to buy this. There were event a few folks who said they'd moved on from the Chronicles of Darkness entirely because there were too many problematic designers who'd contributed to the games. At the end of the day, though, the supplement hit Silver status (minimum 101 sales), and there were some folks who liked it despite its pedigree. And the folks who left those comments... well, all they were telling us was that this wasn't a game they were going to play. It apparently never occurred to them they weren't the target audience, so their criticism didn't exactly move the needle all that much.

In Summary... Don't Go All In When You've Got No Hand

It's true that creators and businesses will listen to their fans when they make themselves heard. But you need to have something you can take away from them if you expect them to change their behavior. If you're a member of their crowdfunding audience, people cutting off that support and telling the creator why might get them to change their behavior. If people start unsubscribing from their YouTube, unfollowing them on social media, and telling them why on the way out the door, that might get their attention.

But if you aren't subscribed, you don't buy their books, and you don't support them, then what are you threatening to take away? Because in that situation you're the angry woman loudly proclaiming, "You just lost yourself a customer!" to a store you've never actually bought anything from as you storm out the front doors. If you didn't actually establish a pattern of supporting them, then they lost absolutely nothing when you left.

All right... have a nice day, or something...

Please, if you've read this far, understand what I'm saying. You are absolutely free to support or not support any writers, game designers, or companies you want to. No matter what kinds of products they make, it's your money, and you can do whatever you want with it.

With that said, if you want to actually use your buying power to shape the kinds of products that creators put together, then you have to actually have support you can take away from them. Because you can't give people less attention or fewer sales than zero, so you don't really have anything you can threaten them with if you don't have any skin in the game.

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!

Explaining The "Attention Economy" And Why It's Killing Creators

I had planned to write this up over on my sister blog The Literary Mercenary, but I know that this blog gets far more eyes on it, and this is a topic I feel quite strongly about. Not just because it affects my life, but because it is the way the entire publishing and entertainment industry works, and so I feel it's important for as many people as possible to really understand this struggle, their place in it, and what the creators they love need from them in order for us to stay out of the grave for one more day.

In case you haven't heard the term, we're all stuck in the Attention Economy... and it's drowning a lot of us.

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!

The Attention Economy: What It Is, And How It Works

The short version, as Coursera explains, is that the attention economy is just that; attempts to get people's attention (their engagement in social media parlance). There are only so many hours in a day, after all, and there's only so much content someone can consume in that time period. With millions of books, thousands of TV shows, decades of archived films, and untold hours of uploaded videos on the Internet, there's only so much that people can look at, and be engaged by before they run out of steam, and give-a-damn.

This is not, strictly speaking, a new phenomenon. It's the same basic principles that were used by TV and radio stations, as well as by movie studios and publishers in days gone by. People only have so many hours in the day, and with all the things they could be doing with what free time they have, how do you make them engage with what you're making? Especially since that engagement is what determines whether you have enough to eat this month, or if you have to pack it in?

After all, if you sell more copies of a book, then you make more royalties. If you can prove you have more people listening to your radio show, or watching you on TV, then you can sell more advertising spaces and get more sponsorship. The concept isn't new... but like so many things in our day and age, it's been pushed to such an extreme that the magnitude of it can feel insurmountable.

Gimme, it's mine!

That last part is important. Because your attention has always been a resource... but now it's more limited than it's ever been before, and there are more people using more tricks to try to get it through means that feel like something out of 1984. You receive notifications for every app you use, social media blasts you every day, advertising blares before nearly everything you consume, and there is so much happening so fast that you can only absorb a small part of it before you're utterly spent. Add to that all the misinformation, cickbait, and out-and-out bad actors stirring up drama solely because more eyes on them means more money in their pockets, and it's like being at a rave, in a concert, being held inside an active combine harvester.

Your attention is valuable, and this economy turns every minute you watch a video, every click of the Like button, every review you leave, and every follow on a page into a transaction as you signal what you want to see more of... but at the same time, that economy moves the goal posts for creators, and makes it even harder for us to reach our perpetually more tired audience. Because it also refines your searches, your feeds, and what you see and hear based on your previous activity. So if you don't take control of your own behavior, you're only ever going to see and hear the same things over and over again, because that's what this modern media landscape (and the algorithms that power them) are designed to do; keep feeding you whatever it is that will keep you reading, watching, or playing.

Attention and Exposure

I've said this before, but creators are like gladiators. If the audience isn't watching us, and isn't cheering for us, then no one cares what we do, or what happens to us. The more you cheer for us, and the more you follow our careers, and talk about us, the more successful we become. Your attention, your raised voices, make or break whether we live to fight another day, or whether we die on the sands to the indifferent silence all around us.

And that is true... but it's not the entire story.

There is no signalling for mercy in this economy.

Take a moment, and think about the creators you follow in the TTRPG space. Maybe they're bloggers, or YouTubers, or podcasters. All of those watched hours of content, all those reads, all those listens, as well as the likes and comments on social media, those are worth something in the attention economy... however, it is often not worth as much as you think.

It is, to use a dreaded word to every artist out there, exposure.

Consider that Weird Al Yankovic, arguably one of the most accomplished musicians of an era, was paid $12 for 80 million streams on Spotify. Consider the fact that, according to Descript, YouTubers need to get hundreds of thousands of people to subscribe to their channels, and to get hundreds of thousands of views on those videos before they make anything approaching a living wage. And that's on top of the fact that YT doesn't pay creators at all until they have at least 500 subscribers and 3,000 hours of watched content on their channels... until you hit that point, the only person making money is them. Over on Vocal, if you're a Vocal+ member, it takes 90,000 reads on your articles just to make $500. And that's the good rate.

We are competing for eyes and ears every day, yes... but to add insult to injury, even if we get the input and attention from people that the platforms and publishers want, that's still no guarantee that we actually get anything out of it. Because unless that attention is mystically transformed into dollars through ad revenue, sponsorship deals, or merch sales, it's the same as getting a million upvotes on Reddit.

Utterly useless if you need to pay your rent.

As I said in Writing Isn't What Makes Writers Succeed, this is a two-pronged problem for us. Because we need a sizable audience to know about us, and our work, and to give us all the things that make social media happy (clicks, follows, likes, etc.), because when that happens it means we get promoted by the algorithm. Which means that more people will see us, which means more people will find out about us and our work. But even if you manage millions of shares and a huge following, that exposure is no guarantee of income... and it's exhausting pursuing fame, but then having the powers-that-be refuse to give you fortune to go with it.

Which is why, as a consumer, you need to know the value of your attention, and your power, but also its limitations, and the reality creators you love are dealing with. Because as I've said, your actions are all tallied on the board by the machines that run the media landscape. They count your likes, your follows, your retweets, comments, and all those other social transactions. At the same time, if the 700 and change people following my Facebook author page all gave me $5 a month on my Patreon page so I could keep doing what I'm doing, I would never need to bother with social media again.

Just saying.

I want to end this with some words of commiseration. Because I know it is frustrating as someone who just wants to play a game, or just wants to watch videos or listen to podcasts that you are constantly bombarded with the knowledge that your support is what determines whether or not a creator can afford food, and pay their rent. You are often more interested in whether a novel is entertaining, or a comic is funny, than what your impact on the creator's life is going to be.

I get it. Feeling responsible for other people, even if you have a parasocial relationship, is exhausting. However, this is the unfortunate reality we live in. If you want to see creators you like keep making games, videos, podcasts, music, art, or whatever other product you want to see from them, they need your support in order to make that happen.

It is your decision when it comes to what kind of support you want to give, and what you are comfortable with. But there is no secret hand of fame and fortune that will pluck only the worthy and the talented from the dirt and ensure their success. 50 Shades of Gray isn't a bestselling record-breaker because it was an amazing work of literary brilliance... it got where it is because people bought copies, talked about it, left reviews, and supported it. The same is true of Alex Jones, Steve Bannon, and every other rich fraud, dodgy host, and terrible person who made fat stacks of cash.

It wasn't the quality of their art. It was the support of their audience, plain and simple.

On that note, if you haven't heard about the changes of on the Azukail Games YouTube channel, a fairly recent update talks about some of the things you can do to help support us if you want to be sure we keep making videos going forward!

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!

How To Help The Creators You Love This Holiday Season!

The holidays are upon us once again, and now that Spookyween and Turkey Day are behind us, we move onto the expensive one. However, with everyone out there getting their last minute shopping trips in, I wanted to take a moment to remind folks out there that independent creators need your help more than ever around this time of year.

So please, take a moment, and consider what you can do to help support the TTRPG creators, writers, artists, YouTubers, and others you depend on for entertainment and content so that we will still be here once 2024 rolls around, and we can keep giving you what you've come to expect from us.

Any and all help you can provide is much appreciated.

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!

The Struggles of The Year

Being a creative professional is no cakewalk. We're called "starving artists" for a reason, after all. However, 2023 has basically been kicking most of us in the stomach while we're trying to get up off of our hands and knees... and a majority of this is related to recent changes in the social media landscape, and the fresh set of hellish problems this has given all of us to overcome.

What was once a boon has turned to poison in our mouths.

At the top of the list, we have the dumpster fire that Twitter has become. This website was a central gathering place for authors, RPG creators, and YouTubers (along with a huge number of other creative professionals), and it has been absolutely gutted since the owner-who-shall-not-be-named acquired it. This completely destroyed the platform that a lot of us had built over years of time, and even those of us who didn't use Twitter as our main source of social media promotion still felt the impact as it damaged all of our efforts to share our creations with an enthused and engaged audience. It still exists, but only as a shadow of its former self.

That would have been bad enough, but then things got worse.

This past spring, Facebook underwent some major changes to how the site works. While we've always had to fight the algorithm to get seen on that site, it's been absolute mess for most of 2023. Only a handful of posts actually get through into groups, and the rest are pushed into spam folders that many admins don't even see, effectively throttling your signal as a creator. On top of that, the site has grown even more restrictive with who sees your posts on your personal or business account, with the latter prodding creators to buy a signal boost with every post we make if we want our followers to actually see them.

Even Reddit hasn't been immune to this. Dozens of subreddits were shut down over the summer, and there were blackout protests over the tools being removed from the moderators. The list of websites and content varieties that the site's spam bots automatically removes grows daily, or so it seems, and there are several communities that were once oases that are now dry as deserts, as far as creators are concerned.

When you add in the massive surge in generative engines that are plagiarizing work left and right, the sectioning off of audiences under platforms like Discord and Mastadon, and how even the YouTube algorithm is making it more difficult for smaller creators to get their voices heard, the end result is that only those people who already had a large, vibrant following are still being seen and reacted to... and even they aren't immune to the squeeze being put on all of us by platforms that are getting more and more restrictive by the day.

What this means is that our reach has been cut, our views, our reads, and our sales (to say nothing of patronage and sponsorship) is drying up all across the board because no one can find us, and attempts to actually get seen are shut down almost before they begin. And if no one follows us and supports us, then creators simply cannot afford to keep making things.

Direct Support is The Best Support

If you want to help the creators you care about keep a roof over their heads, and food on the table, there are some specific actions you can take to make that happen. Not only that, but you should do as many of these things as you possibly can, because we need all the help we can get!

First and foremost... buy our merch!

Seriously... this is the MOST important thing you can do.

You've likely heard the numbers recently regarding how Weird Al Yankovic, who had millions of streams on Spotify, was paid $12 for all of that listening time. That is the unfortunate reality that a lot of creators are currently dealing with. We might have gigantic numbers when it comes to pages read on Kindle Direct, or a huge number of reads on our blogs, or a massive amount of streams... and when the year is over, all of that effort is good for a sandwich. Whereas if someone pays to download one of Al's albums? Or buys a tee shirt, or other piece of merch? That single sale likely pays him as much (if not more) than 80 million streams on Spotify.

So whether you buy an album, a tee shirt, a novel, a TTRPG supplement, a patch, a pin, or even a sticker, you will have done more to support a creator with that single purchase than if you left their podcast or YouTube channel running in the background every hour of every day for an entire month!

And if a given creator doesn't have something for sale that you want? Well, you can sign up to become a Patreon patron, or buy them a Ko-Fi to essentially just put a tip in their jar so they can keep things going. This is especially important for creators who produce mostly free content (like my blogs, YouTube videos, etc.), because it's a form of direct support that has immediate consequences for us.

Incidentally, check me out at The Literary Mercenary on both Patreon and on Ko-Fi if you want to help me weather the holidays in one piece!

There Are Other Things You Can Do, Too

If you don't have the spare scratch to buy merch and leave tips for every creator, does that mean you just can't help anyone? Of course not! However, it is important to remember that these steps are the next tier down... so they do help, but not as much as just giving artists money to help pay their bills.

We must do battle with the algorithm.

First and foremost, do interact with the stuff made by creators you love. If someone makes a video or writes an article you like, watch it, upvote it, leave a comment (even if you're just saying, "I'm so excited to see where this series goes from here!"), and share it on your own social media pages, or in your groups. If you bought a book or a TTRPG supplement, do all of these things, but also leave a review on Amazon, Drive Thru RPG, Goodreads, or whatever other platforms you can find it on!

As I explained in Leveraging The Algorithm: How You Can Help Creators You Love Get Seen, while your individual interaction may be very small, every one of these things helps meaningfully boost a creator's signal. Each interaction makes us more popular in the eyes of the algorithm, and that makes it more likely to work for us, rather than against us, helping us actually reach more people. The more people we reach, the more fans we can find, and the more interactions we will get... it's even possible that we'll make more sales, too!

Perhaps most importantly, though, is to remember that even if the traffic we generate doesn't pay us a lot of money (whether it's a Spotify stream, a Twitch chat, or a YouTube video), creators who have a sizable audience are also the ones who get approached by companies with sponsorship deals. So while we might only get a handful of dollars in exchange for hundreds of thousands of views, a sponsor might pay us a thousand or more to mention their product, or even to create a piece of content around it to help promote it to our audience, if we have enough reliable eyeballs on us.

I talked about this back in Unfortunate Facts: Without Sponsorship, Most Artists Can't Eat, for those who want a more detailed breakdown.

Lastly, make sure that you're connecting with the creators you want to support so that you don't miss when they're releasing new stuff, or working on new projects. Whatever social media sites they're on, follow their pages. If they're on video platforms, subscribe to their channels, and turn on your notifications. If they have a newsletter, subscribe to it (and make sure you actually get it, and it isn't just being eaten by your spam folder).

We don't ask you to do these things for funsies... we do it because these are literally the lengths we have to go to in order to make sure our audience actually sees the posts we make, and that we aren't being throttled to death by the algorithm!

Where You Can Support Me!

So, everything I've said up to this point could apply to any creator out there, and I fully support everyone who has read this far in going and helping as many artists as you can so we can all get through the holidays, and start 2024 off on the right foot!

But if you're someone who specifically wants to help me, first of all, thank you. Secondly, please consider the following:

First, check out the Azukail Games YouTube channel, which hosts a lot of my audio dramas, in addition to the shows Speaking of Sundara, Discussions of Darkness, and now Tabletop Mercenary! We're about a thousand watched hours out from getting monetized by YouTube, so please put on a playlist while you're wrapping presents, or just trying to avoid awkward family discussions!

Also, If you want even more content (particularly bigger, more expansive audio dramas) you should also subscribe to my Rumble account, The Literary Mercenary!

If videos aren't your thing, though, I've got plenty of other options for you!

For example, in addition to my blogs The Literary Mercenary, and Improved Initiative, I also have a Vocal Media archive! It just hit 300 articles this week, and I make $6 for every 1,000 reads those articles get. So if you want something to scroll through on your lunch break, consider checking out some of my stuff over there, and sharing it around if you find something you really like!

And, of course, you can always buy some of the stuff I've written!

My novels and short story collections are all listed on my Amazon author page, and there should be some new releases getting added there in the near future! These are particularly nice stocking stuffers, which is worth keeping in mind this time of year. Additionally, I currently have 168 titles on Drive Thru RPG, which vary from World/Chronicles of Darkness, to DND 5E, to Pathfinder, general genre supplements, modules, and more! Whether you buy one, a few, or a slew of them, that would go a long way to keeping the wolf from the door!

Lastly, you can follow me on all my social media spaces. Facebook, Twitter, Reddit, and Pinterest are the places where I'm most active, but you can also get a bunch of my news and updates by checking out my Link.tree, or subscribing to my bi-monthly newsletter... that's twice a month, not once every two months, to be sure you know what you're in for!

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!

If You Want To See More of a Game, Help Make it Popular!

There's an old two-panel comic that I couldn't find a copy of, but it's something I think about fairly often these days. The first panel is a gaming group sitting around a table, and a friend of theirs comes in to tell them that the company in charge of their favorite game has elected to discontinue it. Everyone expresses outrage and frustration because they love that game, and they play it every week. The second panel is one person at the table talking about how they printed off a pirated version of the rulebook, and someone else who stole several of the game's official minis, and a third player talks about how they use these other dice rather than the game official dice to play, but they're so much prettier than the ones the company put out.

And I get it; as a gamer who lives below the poverty line and has for the better part of a decade, I really do. Today I wanted to address that disconnect that so many of us have between audience lack of support, and a game, line, or setting being written off and discontinued. Because every time it happens there's gamers scratching their heads wondering why, when the answer is right in front of them.

This is not the way.

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!

Lastly, to be sure you're following all of my followables, check out my LinkTree!

RPGs Are a Business

I've said this before, but it bears repeating; RPGs are part of the publishing industry. The purpose of the publishing industry is to sell books, and things related to books. At the end of the day, the publishing houses that make up that industry don't care if an author is supremely talented and created a rich setting full of amazing stories, or if they're a hack who spits a load of regurgitated dreck onto the page. What they care about is which books are moving copies, and which titles are sitting on the shelf taking up space?

The books that sell copies? They get sequels greenlit. The ones that don't move copies? Those authors get form letters as the company moves on to the next thing.

Prospects are bad. On to the next thing!

And for all the folks out there who are about to point out the very large market of independent creators, I want to make it clear that this applies to all publishers great and small. Whether you work at one of the big-name game companies, you're part of a smaller game publisher, or you're an independent RPG creator, anyone who does this for a living is paying attention to their numbers. If they write something that gets a lot of positive reactions from readers, or which gets a lot of positive attention, that is what they're going to want to do more of in the future. If they put out something that does poorly then regardless of how much love they have for that kind of product, or how much effort they put in, it gets abandoned.

At the very least it goes to the bottom of the priority pile.

But what about passion? Love of the game? The thrill of seeing a thing you made finally show up on the market? Those are all good things to have, and I've never met anyone who writes RPGs (or any kind of fiction, for that matter) who doesn't care about those things. However, you can't pay your rent with love of the game. You can't put passion in an envelope and send it to the power company. You can't trade your pride as a creator for groceries.

We can hem and haw about that all we want, but at the end of the day companies and creators are stuck living in the economic system we have. As such, if a game or product isn't earning enough money at the end of the day, it's not getting greenlit for expansions, sequels, or in some cases even being kept in the catalog.

So What Can You Do To Make a Game Popular?

So, the fate of the company, designers, and/or a game you like rests on your shoulders... what are you supposed to do? After all, you're just one lowly gamer, how can you make a difference on the scale necessary to get future expansions greenlit by publishers? Or to encourage an independent designer to make more of a game/setting you like?

Well, it isn't just about money. Don't get me wrong, money is nice if you have it, but there's other stuff you can do besides just spending your paycheck on new books, minis, tokens, dice, maps, supporting a creator's Patreon and Kickstarters, and so on to boost your game of choice.

Though by all means, inject cash flow if you have the dough.

In addition to buying the game and all of its expansions (again, money talks in publishing), the best thing you can do is to try to raise the profile of the thing that you like. Whether it's a core RPG, a setting, a supplement, whatever it is, boosting that signal is often the shout that starts an avalanche.

So how do you do that? Well, you can:

- Leave Reviews: Whether on Amazon, DTRPG, or elsewhere, reviews make games easier to find, and often persuade potential buyers. Just, "I love this, and I want more!" is enough if you aren't the sort of likes to leave essays about why you love certain things.

- Talk About The Game: Whether on social media or to your friend group, sharing stories of games and supplements you love is a big deal. Sharing links is also great, as creators often aren't allowed to do this in social media groups because there are rules against self-promotion. And as I mentioned in 5 Things You Can Do To Be A Better Ambassador For Your Hobby, bringing in new people helps a lot!

- Share Posts From The Creators: Whether it's the designer or the company, sharing news about latest releases, interviews, articles, and other content helps send the word along. It can also be a big help since YouTube channels, blogs, etc., often act as secondary sources of income for smaller companies and creators.

- Follow on Social Media: Just clicking that Follow/Subscribe button makes a difference. The more followers a page has, the nicer the algorithm is to it. So if a few hundred (or a few thousand) people just show up and click, that creator/company already has a bigger reach than they did before.

- Play The Game: Just playing a game is often enough to turn your friends into true believers; especially if you make the experience a great one. For bonus points, if you enjoy doing live plays then uploading your game where others can see it might be enough to spark interest beyond your immediate circle.

- Request Channels You Like Review The Game: Whether you run a game review blog, a YouTube channel, or some other sort of content creation outlet yourself, making content about a game can often be a huge deal when it comes to finding a new audience for that creator. And if you don't make content yourself, reach out to creators you like and ask if they'd check out a game/setting/supplement and help shine a light on it.

All of the things I've listed above may take varying amounts of time and energy on your part, but a lot of them are things you can do for free. However, the louder a creator's signal gets, the more likely it is to draw in more people. The more folks who show up, the more likely it is that some folks decide to buy copies. And if a YouTube channel run by the creator/company starts blowing up with views and comments, well, the revenue generated from that can help offset the cost of something a lot of folks seem to enjoy, but which hasn't exactly flown off the shelves. Yet, anyway.

I've said it repeatedly, but creators and companies need readers in order to keep doing what they do. A lot of us like building worlds, creating new classes, coming up with adventures, and exploring the possibilities of our game worlds... but we can't do that if it isn't keeping the wolf from the door. And if the choice comes down to working on a project we aren't as passionate about, or keeping the lights on, most of us will opt for the latter.

So make your voice heard, and make sure we know what you want from us so that we can keep the content coming!

Also, Check Out Sundara: Dawn of a New Age If You Haven't Yet!

As an example of something that I've put a lot of work into, but which I've had a tough time getting people to check out, consider taking a look at my "Sundara: Dawn of a New Age" setting for Pathfinder Classic and DND 5E. And if you're one of those folks who wants to hear a pitch before you make a purchase, I've been putting together episodes of Speaking of Sundara on the Azukail Games YouTube channel (which you should definitely subscribe to) talking about some of the design strategies I've used, breaking down what's in particular supplements, and explaining some of the changes I've made to what folks might expect from a traditional fantasy RPG setting, from how I chopped out alignment, to the uncertain nature of gods, to how technology and magic both lead to unique inventions among the people of Sundara!

Check out the full 26-video Speaking of Sundara playlist, in addition to the following supplements!

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.

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 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!