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!

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!

Digital Game Products Don't Come With Tariffs! (A Run Down Of This Nonsense)

There are always a contingent of people who say that you should keep politics out of gaming... the problem is that politics affects everything, your games included! There has been no more obvious, on-the-nose example of this than the American Republican regime's intention to put huge tariffs on countries across the world without any seeming rhyme or reason. And this is going to hit everything, tabletop games included.

In fact, one might argue this is going to hit tabletop gaming particularly hard.

We're doing what we can, but you need to understand what's happening.

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!

What's Happening (And What You Should Be Ready For)

For those who've been living under a rock, the U.S. is currently doing the same thing it did in the early 20th century that was a major contributing factor to the Great Depression... putting tariffs on across-the-board imported goods. A tariff, for those who don't know, is basically an extra tax the government puts on a good imported from a specific country. The company pays that tax to the government, and then (typically), they pass that cost along to the customer by increasing the price of a good.

So if you wanted to get a 12 pack of a particular soda that comes from overseas, and there's now a 10% tariff on that good, the company importing it has to pay the U.S. government that extra cost, and they'll typically just raise their prices to compensate. So if it cost you $5 before, that extra 10% tariff will now raise it to $5.50... at least.

And that's not a big deal for an individual unit, perhaps. But when your inventory is thousands, tens of thousands, or hundreds of thousands of units, that cost adds up. And that tariff has to be paid as soon as the goods come in, and you pay it regardless of whether or not those goods sell.

With me so far? Good.

Now, the stated purpose of a tariff is generally to discourage trade with a particular nation, and to make businesses and customers seek out goods produced in their own country. Given the massive interconnected modern world we live in, that isn't what happens, but that's at least the stated purpose.

The problem, however, is that America is not a nation of manufacturing, and hasn't been for decades. Ever since the 1980s (and arguably earlier), corporations have been moving manufacturing overseas, shutting down domestic operations, and reaping the benefits by paying foreign labor a pittance to make goods they then sell to the American public, pocketing the difference. This is how it's possible at all for us to buy goods that seem ridiculously low-priced. From fast fashion to Wish.com's rock bottom prices, it's a shell game of companies making things overseas for a cheaper cost, then shipping them to the U.S.

And this is where we circle back to tabletop RPGs and board games.

Because practically every part of your games are manufactured overseas and imported. Books, dice, board games, playing cards, and all the little bobs and bits that go into these games are all made somewhere else. And there are two major reasons for that. The first is that companies who make these games have paper-thin profit margins, and so they are forced by necessity to seek out the lowest-cost options possible just to make sure they don't take a loss on their games. I believe my own RPG Army Men: A Game of Tactical Plastic was printed in China because it was the only viable option for keeping costs down.

The second reason is, of course, these facilities don't exist in the U.S. So when there is no alternative for you to turn to, you're just stuck with your costs being blown up astronomically for no real reason by the government, which has the potential to take a bat to the knees of the entire gaming industry.

We're Going To Need Your Support More Than Ever

Making a living in TTRPGs is already hard. Anyone who's watched my series Tabletop Mercenary over on the Azukail Games YouTube channel knows that already. This obsession with tariffs and trade wars is already leaving gaming companies scrambling because even if companies started setting up U.S. manufacturing today for the things we need, it will be at least 5 years (and more likely a decade) before there's even a robust enough sector to handle what it is gaming companies would need to produce.

And, honestly, that's really unlikely to happen. The best case scenario is that we manage to hold out long enough for someone to undo these disastrous decisions, and ensure that the industry can function at least as well as it was this time last year.

Between now and then, though, there's going to be a lot of creators and companies scrambling to stay afloat. And we are going to need you to help us get to the other side of this!

As the war bonds posters said... we need you!

If you aren't sure how to help the companies and creators you like, but you want to make sure we can keep making games for you to play, then consider the following options:

- Purchase Digital Options: Whether you get digital supplements and books, or if you want to purchase 3D printing schematics to make your own minis at-home, putting something in the coffers is going to be key to helping people survive. If you want to help me out specifically, you can find my 191 titles on Drive Thru RPG at this link, or you can check out my Pinboard for them!

- Subscribe To Their Channels and Social Media: A lot of creators and companies make more than just games. So check to see if the people you want to support have podcasts, blogs, YouTube channels, and follow them on every social media platform you can. The more engagement they get, the more views, listens, and comments you provide, etc., the more they will get paid, which will help balance out the hits from the current tariffs. Again, subscribe to the Azukail Games YouTube channel if you want to help me out!

- Donate To Their Crowdfunding: Whether there's a Kickstarter going on, something on BackerKit, or there's a Patreon or Ko-Fi that you can drop some cash into so they can survive one more month, consider getting directly involved. And even if you don't have the money to do a lot right now, use your social media presence to boost signals, and spread the word. And if you're inclined to help me out, I have a Patreon and a Ko-Fi.

Everyone is reeling, and a lot of us are tightening our belts. But if you have the ability to help creators get through this storm, that's the only way they're going to still be making games when we come out on the other side of it. We're all in this together, and escapism is going to be a big part of what is going to help a lot of us maintain our sanity.

So please, help if you can, and understand why things are getting so ridiculously expensive right now. We are (for the most part, at least) just trying to keep making stuff so we can keep you all entertained!

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!

Supplemental Merch For "Army Men" (What Should Make The Cut?)

As most regular readers on this blog know, my game Army Men: A Game of Tactical Plastic dropped earlier this year. While the base book gives you everything you need to play the game (including a sample mission for you and your fellow troopers), since then we've also released Army Men: Threat Assessments (for extra creatures and dangers), Army Men: Medals of Honor (which introduces the Medals system for rewarding player achievements in the field), and Ungentlemanly Warfare: A Baker's Dozen of Booby Traps (which is full of deadly traps to sprinkle across the battlefield).

While I've got at least one more supplement awaiting release (which will mark the first mission outside of the sample one in the base book), I've also been taking Army Men to various conventions since it came out. Though I intend to start running some game demo sessions in the future, I was thinking that I should have more than just the base book for sale at my booth. And since the supplements mentioned above are digital-only offerings, it's got me thinking... what other things would folks like to see?

I don't have the resources for making medals yet... but...

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!

Some Ideas I'm Currently Kicking Around...

Now, I'm planning on doing more conventions (and more different conventions) starting in 2025. While there are a few smaller events left in 2024, I'm not going to scramble to try to get any merch ready for this year. And while I'm reaching out to manufacturers, trying to get quotes, and to see what's feasible, the feedback and interest from my audience is also extremely important to me. So if there is an idea you particularly like, make sure that you let me know in the comments below, along with why you like it, and what you would consider a fair price for the item in question (so I can see if it matches up with what it would cost to get it made).

Also, Army Men is getting it's own show over on the Azukail Games YouTube channel! So check out the first episode if you haven't, and leave your comments for what you'd like to see on it.

Now, the current ideas include...

#1: Faction Dice Sets (And Crate)

Standard-issue, of course.

Custom dice were, of course, one of the original items we were hoping to get with the Kickstarter stretch goals for Army Men, but we fell a little short of the numbers we needed to make that a reality. However, good ideas often take on a new life in a new form, which is why I had the thought of offering faction dice at my booth for those who want a little something extra for their next mission (or who just think it would be cool).

The modified version of this idea is faction dice. Each set will be a standard, solid-color set of d20 dice that is largely representative of a particular nation of the Plastos Federation, as well as a set for the Federation itself. The dice won't be custom, in that they won't have unique pips, inclusions, or anything like that. The idea is that these are the "standard-issue" weapons you're given before going out into the field. While custom dice could still be something done for a future Kickstarter, these are going to be a more humble, more reliable, offering.

What makes them special, then? Well, my hope is to find a unique case for them, such as a metal, slide-top tin that will have the Army Men logo either etched or printed onto the lid. While I would love to find a tiny ammo crate, I'm still trying to find an option that will be affordable for both myself, and for folks interested in this offering!

#2: Uniform Patches & Pins

Acrylican 301st: "No Horizon Unexplored"

I'm a sucker for patches, and I had a few made a year or so ago featuring my Literary Mercenary skull, and a motto that got me a lot of dirty looks from parents who didn't want their little ones reading a bad word. But given the military setup of Army Men as a game, I thought it might also be fun to have patches for the various nation's militaries, or even pins made to go on one's lapel, pocket, etc.

However, there are additional hurdles with this option.

First and foremost, I'd have to work things out with our book's artist if I want to use any of her assets on these patches or pins (such as the versions of the flags she made). Alternatively, if I wanted to use different assets, well, I'd have to either make them myself, or commission new ones from someone. Both are an expensive process. Then there's the extra up-front cost for patches getting printed, the question of whether we want iron-ons, sew-ons, or velcro patches, and whether they're rubberized or not... it's a long list of nonsense!

Doable nonsense, of course, but nonsense nevertheless!

Now, my original idea was to pair this kind of merch with something like Army Men: Regiments of Renown (as a sample title), where I would provide additional lore for the setting through creating various irregular units and special forces for the different nations' militaries, while providing players with additional subclasses, gear, etc., that they could bring into the field if they wanted to be part of these units (or, at least, have been part of them at one time). That way in addition to the standard military choices, players could get a little niche with their loyalties.

#3: Stickers

All right, this one MIGHT be a little obvious...

In fairness, this is probably the most obvious bit of extra merch, and one of the most affordable. Whether you're using it to label your folders, everything from the logo to the flags (again, post-negotiation) could be on this list if that's something players are interested in. But I've found, overall, that stickers are a very hit-or-miss thing. On the one hand, they're very low investment for the dealer, and they can have a very low price point. On the other hand, there seems to be either a lot of interest in them, or absolutely none.

So what about you? Would you be interested in stickers? And if so, what kind would you like to see?

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!

World's Oldest Profession- Salacious Sales in The TTRPG Space?

For folks who don't keep a close eye on my releases, I recently had an impressive showing with my new supplement. World's Oldest Profession: 100 Courtesans and Concubines managed to do something that very few of my supplements have managed, which was to hit Copper status on its first day of release! Not only that, but it also hit Silver status by the end of 48 hours, which is something that's only happened a handful of times in the past for something I've made.

Oddly enough, the last time this happened was with the original supplement that led to this project, World's Oldest Profession: A Baker's Dozen of Brothels... a supplement which is now sitting at Electrum status, and still rising!

If something happens one time, it could be a fluke. Twice could be a coincidence. But three times? Well that just might be a trend...

Do you want to see more entries in this series?

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!

Does Salacious Content Generate Sales?

We've all heard the phrase sex sells, and even if we haven't heard it before we've all seen those commercials filled with bikini-clad supermodels, and voice overs from sultry performers trying to reach in through your ear to your wallet. And we've had our share of questionable covers of Dragon magazine, and occasional tables, monsters, and even asides in adventure paths, but outside of tomes like The Book of Erotic Fantasy (yes it's real, don't try to check it out if you're not of age) we don't have a lot of major examples of books predicated entirely on the selling power of adult (or at least mature) content.

Don't get me wrong, we have a lot of examples of this kind of content (such as the entire catalog of Lewd Dungeon Adventures), but it's usually been something we keep in the background, and which only bubbles to the surface from time to time.

And I'll be the first one to say that neither of my World's Oldest Profession supplements is particularly lewd. The first installment details brothels, as well as those who staff them, but there's nothing explicit in that supplement. The second installment is also more suggestive than anything else, with a lot of nodding and winking among the list of 100 prostitutes, but there's nothing in it that would prompt more than a PG-13 rating. At best.

Despite that, though, both of these supplements have sold like gangbusters!

What conclusions can I draw from this? Well, first and foremost, the price point for NPC and locations lists continues to be important for supplements I write. Secondly, cover art is also pretty important, and this particular piece by Dara Williamson is definitely eye-catching. However, the content is definitely responsible for both the initial sales, as well as the long-term viability of the supplement. And even with the age restriction on these supplements, they still outsell well over 95% of the stuff I produce.

Are the folks who buy either A Baker's Dozen of Brothels or 100 Courtesans and Concubines suddenly going to have uniquely spicy locations and NPCs in their games once they buy them? Probably not... but they at least have the opportunity, if that's what they and their players want to do!

A Final Note

As I so often say when I talk about the business side of TTRPGs, you have to follow the money. And while are all kinds of things I could work on (and things I definitely want to work on), this pattern has definitely drawn both my attention, as well as my publisher's attention.

So I wanted to ask... would folks like to see this become a longer-running series? Whether it's making sci-fi versions of these two supplements, or adding to them with other, similarly bawdy titles (things like 100 Laws Regarding Prostitution, 100 Slang Terms For Sultry Activities, A Baker's Dozen of Flesh Trade Guilds, etc.)?

I've got ideas... the question is, what would you all like to see 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!