Folks who have been watching my saga recently (detailed in my post Another Social Media Struggle (Reddit Has Decided To Kick Me In The Teeth, And I Could Use Some Help)) have likely noticed that one of the major challenges that every creator in the world is dealing with is that we simply cannot reach our potential audience. And the reason we can't seem to reach people is because the social media sites and groups that used to help us connect are now throttling our signals, restricting our ability to post, and trusting to bots to determine what kind of posts are allowed, and when an account needs to be shut off... even when it's wrong.
And while I'm taking several steps at present (seeking out new Discords that might appreciate my work, coming up with a fresh Reddit strategy, trying to figure out why the hell Facebook stops me from making posts anywhere but my own personal pages, etc.), there is one thing that I would like all of you reading this to do for me. I would like you to please go to my Patreon and my Ko-Fi pages, and subscribe/follow me there.
If you want to tip me or support me for what I'm doing, I appreciate that. But mostly I'm going to be using those accounts a LOT more, because they seem to be some of the only places that I can actually let people who enjoy my work see what the hell it is I'm making.
Because a lot of what I'm putting out is getting lost in the screaming void, and I'd like you to see it.
But before I get into the meat of today's post, remember, don't forget to sign up for my 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 Get A Direct Feed (And It's Technically Free)!
The entire point of social media, from a creator's perspective, is to connect you with your audience, and your potential audience. As someone whose hair is more gray than not these days, I remember when it basically did this, too. I've quoted the numbers before, but a decade or so ago I could get hundreds of impressions from Facebook, thousands from Reddit, and tens of thousands on a good day from Digg or Stumbleupon (both of which have gone down into the dark depths of websites murdered by AI slop). These days, though, it feels like the same 17 people see all my posts on whatever social media I'm part of, and when I do manage to fly through the storm of algorithm interference it's like trying to get an emergency message to someone through a time machine.
Dearest Allies, I request your aid in this time of dire need...
Which is why I wanted to take this week's post to ask everyone who made it this far to follow me on Patreon and Ko-Fi. Because while both of those are crowdfunding websites, you can follow me for free on both of them, and get notified when I share things on them (it's usually once or twice a day in the evenings, so not a huge inbox stuffer). And I'm asking this because, just like my newsletter that I mentioned above, it's one of the only ways for you to actually see and hear what I'm doing without the algorithm getting in the way, waiting for moderators to approve a post (which can take hours, days, or weeks), or depending on your For You Page to decide that you get to see stuff that I've made, as opposed to your 19th advertisement of the day.
My hope is that if I can get enough folks onboard with this request that I can get direct feedback from people who want to be in my audience the way that I used to on the sites that have slammed all their doors, and which are burying creators under restrictions and inertia. Because I post dozens of things (sometimes as much as a hundred posts or more) every day... and there are a lot of people who have tried to follow me who just don't hear about it because the algorithm won't slide it into their feeds.
So get a direct line, and let me know what you think of my work today!
Lastly, speaking of Reddit, there are two subreddits that I moderate that I would like to invite folks to. I am the moderator of Tabletop Homebrew! So if you have things you'd like to share, or if you want to see the sort of things creators are making and sharing, stop in, get comfortable, and take a look around. We'd be happy to have 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!
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!
We've all heard that philosophical argument about how if a tree falls in the forest, but there's no one around to see it or hear it, did it actually fall? Well, that's kind of what being a creator is like. Because it doesn't matter how amazing your art is, how engaging your book might be, or how deep and thoughtful your video essays are, because if no one knows they exist, they can't actually become fans of your work. And since most creators don't have money to spend on advertisements, or doing dozens upon dozens of conventions where they take a loss every time as they try to build an audience, we rely on social media to get the word out about what we do.
And while social media enshittification has been hitting hard, I've been managing to tread water... until recently. Because the last piece of driftwood I was clinging to seems to have snapped underneath me, and now I'm back to trying not to drown.
And this, of course, involves the hive of scum and villainy that goes by the name Reddit.
A hand up would be deeply appreciated right now...
But before I get into the meat of today's post, remember, don't forget to sign up for my 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 Social Media Saga (And Why This Is Such A Problem)
The official term for what we're all struggling with these days is Platform Decay, but most of us refer to it as Enshittification. Essentially social media started off as a free, functional way for us to keep in touch with our friends, family, and creators, celebrities, etc. that we liked to follow, and it mostly worked. But over the past several years it's been deliberately sabotaged, twisted, and made impossible to use as a creator (and nearly impossible to use for regular people, too). I talked about this more in-depth in The Reason Social Media Sucks For Everyone These Days (Not Just Creators) a while back, for those who missed it.
For those who like numbers, I have a couple of Before and After averages to share, from about 10 years ago, and today. Keep in mind that my subscriber count has only gone up between these two time periods, so if anything I should have held steady, instead of decreasing to a fraction of engagement.
- Average Facebook spread used to net between 400 and 1,000 impressions. Now it's barely 25.
- Average Twitter blast used to net between 100 and 250 impressions. Now it's less than 20.
- StumbleUpon netted me between 50 and 500 impressions. The site is unusable anymore.
- Digg would net between 25 and 1,000 impressions. AI slop broke the site entirely, and it's closed.
For sites that aren't listed, Tumblr and LinkedIn both have significantly lowered engagement. Pinterest is a ghost town that's jam-packed with AI slop. Google+ is gone, of course, and sites like MeWe have never been worth more than a few dozen views. Blue Sky has never been great for creators (though it's quite a nice platform for journalists and news creators), and places like Discord and Mastadon have no discoverability because all the servers are separate, with no way to cross-pollinate.
And in the midst of all of that, Reddit was a website that has been chugging along. You could even keep using the old version of the site, which made it easy to see and understand at a glance what was happening. My current Reddit account has over a quarter million karma (not bragging, just pointing out the amount of positive interaction I've had on the site), and it's been active for 11 years.
Then I was shadowbanned last week. No warning, no explanation, just POOF, your account is gone. I appealed, and got it back, but the issue I was facing was that even though the decision was made by a random bot (and was immediately overturned by a human), being shadowbanned immediately hid all of my submissions to the website.
So while my karma count was still intact, over a decade of posts were just swept under the rug, and unable to be seen by users. And while I don't usually use language quite this strong around here, this incident has fucked me as a creator... and to make it worse, at time of writing, I was randomly shadowbanned again, likely because a bot just decided that I'd crossed an unspoken line and had to be removed, even though nothing about my behavior has changed in a decade on the site, and it's never been a problem before today.
Why This Is Such A Big Damn Problem
The reason this is a massive problem for me is two fold. The first is fairly obvious; if I'm shadowbanned on Reddit (or if I keep getting shadowbanned by AI-driven bots) then I cannot share links to either my work, or anyone else's work. I try to maintain the balance and not just talk about my stuff all the time, and I mix it up with videos, RPGs, etc. by other creators that I enjoy, and think more people should hear about.
However, I want to circle back around to how it has hidden a decade of my submissions, essentially making them unusable. Put another way, that's somewhere between 50,000 and 100,000 posts just poofed out of existence like a Thanos snap. That's also a low-balled guess as to just how many posts I've made over the past 11 years.
If you want to know what that's worth, most days when I check my DTRPG earnings, I had between $10 and $25. That's not an amazing income, but it adds up at the end of the month, and it paid most of my half of my rent. Ever since I was shadowbanned, and all those posts were removed? I'm making somewhere between $3 and $8 a day. This past weekend I had the first day in 4 years where I didn't sell a single thing on DTRPG at all, and it's directly correlated with this decision.
This shadowbanning didn't remove any of the blog entries I'd written, of course. It didn't delete articles or videos. It just made all those things less visible, effectively slamming the door on people randomly stumbling across my work while running searches or browsing the site. And again, if people don't see this blog, my videos, my supplements, etc., then they can't interact with them, which means I can't pay my bills.
EDIT: Apparently it's just regular banned, as my account was basically shuttered up. There's no "shadow" about the whole process.
And since no other sites are working either... you see where this is going...
The bigger kick in the nuts here is that while Reddit can absolutely erase over a decade of submissions to the site on the word of a bot, it can't restore them. You basically have to ask the subreddit mods to pretty please go through the removed posts and reapprove them, or resubmit those posts. Mods are not willing to do this, and certainly not to the extent that would be required for some of the subs I regularly post in where there are hundreds (potentially thousands) of posts going back for years (since some I posted in weekly, and others I posted in daily). And while there's nothing stopping me from resubmitting my posts (except the site's bots deciding that me submitting things is suspicious), I built up that 11 year archive organically. I didn't just show up all day, every day blasting my own signal for hours at a time. I shared my own stuff, yes. And then I shared actual plays that I'd seen. Or I commented on a topic. Or I told everybody about this other game, supplement, etc. that I'd seen. Or I shared bundles, such as the Owen Stephens Summer Survival Spectacular to help Owen Stephens pay the bills for his fight against cancer. You get the idea.
You can't just replace all those posts in a few months, or even a year. It took me 11 years to submit them in the first place, it would take me a decade to get back to that point. And even after that decade of posting, assuming everything went perfectly and I wasn't randomly shadowbanned, I still wouldn't have my archive restored. Because you see there were a lot of subreddits that I was no longer allowed to post in, but they still had all my previous posts acting as one more place someone might stumble across me... those are gone, and cannot be replaced.
So... yeah. I was already trying to crawl out of the muck, and now because an overzealous collection of 1s and 0s decided I wasn't up to their secret standards, I've now been kicked in the teeth, and thrown back down into some fairly desperate circumstances as a result.
What I'm Going To Do (And How You Can Help)
Wallowing isn't going to help me, especially since I need to get back on my feet before yet more bills come due. Unfortunately, there's only a few things I can do. First and foremost, I'm trying to appeal the shadowbans, to get some statements from the site about what's happening, and to stop this cycle from happening again. I'm also looking for alternative sites, Discord servers, and communities where I can make up at least some of the lost audience potential. And, lastly, I'm going to keep making stuff for people to enjoy, and hope that I can overwhelm the algorithms with the sheer volume of projects I'm churning out.
I don't really have any other options.
However, I'm basically at the mercy of you all. I'm in the Colosseum fighting for my life, and I need the crowd to roar in my favor so that I can be allowed to live and fight another day. So if you made it this far, I have a list of things you can do to help me for free, and a list of things you can do to help that will cost a bit of money... not much, though. As art goblins go, I'm a fairly cheap pet.
- Share my articles, videos, RPG supplements, and anything else I make on your own social media pages (and if you're a Reddit user, tell your favorite subs about stuff I make out of spite)!
- Buy Some of My TTRPG Supplements (link goes to a pin board, but you could also search "Neal Litherland" on DTRPG to get the full 200+ list of things I've made)
The reason I put all of this out there is that I literally do not care how my bills get paid. If 50,000 people decide to buy copies of my hardboiled cat novels Marked Territoryand Painted Cats, then I'm going to pause a lot of projects to write a third installment in that series. If a bunch of people decide to support me on Patreon, then I'm going to make sure my blogs are polished up, and that everyone is getting their money's worth. If a couple thousand people decide they want to get my RPG Army Men: A Game of Tactical Plastic, then I'd focus on expanding that game, or if folks picked up supplements like The Blade Itself: Corrupt Equipment For Hunter: The Vigil, Like A Good Neighbor - Portraying True Fae in Your Chronicle, or Night Horrors: Primordial Peerage, I'd put a lot more time and energy into extra content for Hunter, Changeling, Beast, or other spheres of the Chronicles of Darkness.
And, of course, if folks want to see more of The A.L.I.C.E. Files, I'd be making bigger, longer, and more complicated soundscapes to tell some of my rather... involved stories.
This whole situation has put me in something of a bind, but I'm not just sitting here twiddling my thumbs hoping things get solved. If you can help, please do so, because I need every hand up I can get. Even if you just follow my Patreon as a free supporter to stay up-to-date, or you just subscribe to the YouTube channels, or share my supplements online when you see them, it makes a difference. And if a few hundred individuals who think their efforts won't matter all pitch in, then you're going to be a damn potent force.
As always, stay tuned for more updates, and thank you in advance to everyone who helps me stop this slide toward the cliff's edge before I go over.
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!
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!
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:
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:
- 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:
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!
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!
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!
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!
It's that time of year again. The decorations are going up, Mariah Carey has been defrosted, and everyone is looking for the best possible deals on what to get their loved ones before the upcoming holiday, and the end of 2024. And because I know that money is tight for everyone, I try to provide as much free content as I possibly can, both here on Improved Initiative, but also on our sister blog The Literary Mercenary for the writers out there, and in my Vocal archive, which has over 300 free articles (most of which are about gaming).
However, 2024 has been rough as hell with Drive Thru RPG basically slashing my earnings in half. Adding in the projections for 2025 that are all doom and gloom, I would like to take this week to ask for a favor from my audience... because I could definitely use a bit of that holiday spirit to help carry me through.
Every little bit helps...
But before I get into the meat of today's post, remember, don't forget to sign up for my weekly newsletter to get all my updates right in your inbox. Also, if you've got a bit of spare cash that you'd like to use to help keep the wheels turning, consider becoming a Patreon patron! Also, be sure you're following all of my followables, check out my LinkTree.
Lastly, for hundreds of extra articles on gaming, weird history, and for more free fiction, check out my Vocal archive, too!
I Could Really Use A Hand Up This Holiday
Things have been rough all over for creatives the past few years, and the seas are looking pretty stormy right now. To make things worse, this is typically the time of year when folks decide to cancel Patreon patronage, stop tipping creators they follow, and so on because of all the other holiday costs they're amassing; gifts, travel, time off work, and so on, and so forth.
So, before I get into all the other stuff, if you want to help keep this blog going please consider becoming a Patreon patron, or buying me a Ko-Fi as a tip. That's the best bang for your buck, honestly, and that goes for basically any other artist out there you want to support this year, too.
That's not the ONLY option I'm asking folks to consider, though...
I know that's not for everyone. However, I wanted to lead with that one because it's the easiest way to ensure that I keep the lights on, and have a minimum of hardship as I pay all of my big bills in the coming year (taxes, renew car insurance, things like that). If you do want to help me keep the wheels turning, but you'd like other options, consider the following categories...
Free Stuff That Helps
Like I said, I know that everyone is having a tough time right now, and not all of us have cash to spare. So I wanted to list a bunch of stuff you can do for free right now that will help boost me up as a creator, and which will put money in my hand, and help me do more, without costing you a dime.
Watch My Azukail Games Videos
I have been making videos for the Azukail Games YouTube channel for going on 3 years now, and in all that time I've made a pretty wide variety of content. From audio dramas and channel updates, to talking about my settings Sundara: Dawn of a New Age and my RPG Army Men: A Game of Tactical Plastic, to industry talk in Tabletop Mercenary, and shows like Discussions of Darkness where I talk about the World and Chronicles of Darkness settings.
As of time of writing, we only need about 100 hours and change of watched content... meaning we need our audience to clock in a little over 100 hours more so that we can get monetized. Because for all the episodes I've put up (and all the work Adrian has done on his crafting videos), and all the signal boosting you see here and on social media, we haven't seen a single, red cent from YouTube because we haven't met the creator minimum yet on the amount of traffic we've generated. Hell, if everyone who subscribes to me @LiteraryMercenary on Blue Sky (far and away my smallest social media following) watched 1 video a day for the month of December, we'd clinch that number, and start the new year off right.
This is such a big deal to me because, though it isn't my channel, if it is earning revenue for my publisher, that's money that can be reinvested to make bigger, more engaging videos, TTRPG supplements, and a variety of other projects as well! So if you want to help me avoid stagnation, subscribe to the channel, watch some videos, leave comments on them at least 7 words long (that's the magic number on the algorithm), and share the ones you like on your social media pages. It makes a much bigger difference than you know!
Read My Vocal Articles
I have SO many of them...
Vocal.media is a website where authors are able to write whatever they want, and we get paid based on how popular our articles are. So if you wanted to read my classic top story It's Okay To Admit There Are Problems In Your Hobby (which always seems to light flame wars when I share it), you can do that for free, and I'll get paid for it. If you're a Warhammer 40K fan, my Leagues of Votann story Pyramid Scheme is on there as well, or if you're looking for a new character concept for your next Pathfinder game, consider my article The Beer Brewing Witch.
The issue is, of course, numbers. Because I make $6 for every 1,000 articles that get read on Vocal. Not clicked, mind you, but read. The pages have crawlers and bots on them that track who's reading, and their pace, ensuring that only read, organic reads go through.
Still, there's 321 stories on My Vocal Archive at time of writing, and I add at least 1 per month. So if 1,000 people all decided to just read 1 of them per day, I'd make about $6 a day for most of the next year. That doesn't sound like much, but I can confirm right now that an extra $180 or so a month would, in fact, be life-changing for me as a creator. So if you enjoy my gaming content on this blog, bookmark my Vocal author page, and make it part of your daily routine to dig through and see what's in there! I've got character conversions, character concepts, horror articles, short stories, instructionals, and a slew of other nonsense that's just waiting for you!
Follow My Social Media (And Interact With Me)
Social media is the backbone of modern creatives. We don't have money to buy ad banners on websites, and getting organic word-of-mouth about us and what we do is amazingly helpful. However, every platform out there has been choking our signals, and making it impossible for us to reach anyone with the stuff we make. A post we make today will get maybe 10% of what we would have gotten a few years ago, if we're lucky... and unless you can count your followers in the tens of thousands, the algorithm is going to put its boot firmly on your windpipe.
So help me overcome this by following my socials (listed below), and interacting when you see me post stuff! Hearts and shares are good, but so are 7+ word comments, because those get the algorithm to notice you... a good tip for any other creators you follow, too!
- LinkTree (I promise I'm trying to update this more)
Also, as a bonus, subscribe to my newsletter to make sure you get all my content sent to your email every two weeks so you don't miss anything!
Things You Can Buy (Which Also Helps)
If you're looking for the ideal gift for a friend or family member, I've got a lot of stuff that's out there for-sale! And, as a bonus, the more numbers these things do, the more likely I am to put out additional stuff for these games, novel series, and so on!
And, as a bonus, all of these links (as I mention in my fine print on this site) are affiliate links... so even if you just click through to check something out, that still helps!
My Novels/Short Story Collections
I've had a lot of fiction come out over the years, and it's been a time and a half trying to get any of it into people's hands. So if you or someone you know is a reader, check out some of the following stories (and listen to the audio drama above linked from my Rumble channel The Literary Mercenary).
- Old Soldiers (A dystopian sci fi novel about a defunct super soldier solving a mystery)
- Crier's Knife (A witchborn mountain boy goes to bring home his wayward cousin by any means)
- The Rejects (A collection of short stories that never quite made the cut in other anthologies)
The Hardboiled Cat
My noir series about Leo, a hardnosed Maine Coon from the Bronx, deals with the problems going on among the street beasts throughout the city. So if you want to make sure Leo gets a few more stories under his bottlebrush tail, grab the three books he's been featured in so far!
- From A Cat's View (The debut short story for Leo can be found in this anthology)
- Marked Territory (Leo ends up doing a favor for the raccoon mob, and stumbling on a conspiracy)
- Painted Cats (Leo ends up looking for a missing stray, and take care of her abandoned kitten)
Army Men: A Game of Tactical Plastic
A game where you take on the roles of troopers fighting for their homelands in the Plastos Federation against the insectoid monsters of the vespoids!
- Army Men: A Game of Tactical Plastic: The base book for the game, this is technically the only book you need to play this game... but it never hurts to get some of the others as well!
- Army Men: Threat Assessments: The first collection released after the original game dropped, this supplement is full of new creatures for your squad to have to deal with when out in the field.
- Army Men: Medals of Honor: This supplement introduced the Medals System, allowing players to earn medals for their troopers, gaining unique bonuses and abilities usable for the rest of the campaign.
- Ungentlemanly Warfare: A Baker's Dozen of Booby Traps: Giant bugs and enemy combatants aren't the only threats you'll have to deal with in the field. Booby traps are a serious concern among troopers looking to leave their service with as many limbs as they started.
- Army Men Missions: A Night At Breckon's Beacon: When a squad goes missing while they're on patrol, it's your squad's mission to find them, and bring them home... or to avenge them, if that can't be done.
Sundara: Dawn of A New Age
This is a setting I've been gradually expanding for several years now, and there's a new series of supplements coming out for it in the near future! Sundara can be played on its own, or it can be added piecemeal to your own settings to fill in gaps and blanks so that you don't have to do as much heavy lifting the next time you get folks around your table!
Cities of Sundara
The setting first began with the Cities of Sundara splats. Self-contained guides to some of the larger and more powerful centers of trade, industry, arms, and magic, these unique locations provide plenty of fodder for character generation and plots. Not only that, but each one comes with unique, mechanical goodies for players and GMs alike to take out for a spin!
- Ironfire: The City of Steel (Pathfinder and DND 5E): Built around the Dragon Forge, Ironfire is where the secret to dragon steel was first cracked. The center of the mercenary trade in the region, as well as boasting some of the finest schools for teaching practical sciences, Ironfire is a place where discovery and danger walk hand in hand!
- Moüd: The City of Bones (Pathfinder and DND 5E): An ancient center of trade and magic, Moüd was lost to a cataclysm, and then buried in myth. Reclaimed by the necromantic arts of the Silver Wraiths guild, this city has once again become a place teeming with life. Despite the burgeoning population, though, it is the continued presence of the undead that helps keep the city running, ensuring that Moüd is not swallowed up once more.
- Silkgift: The City of Sails (Pathfinder and DND 5E): Built on the cottage industry of Archer cloth (an extremely durable material used for sails, windmills, etc.), Silkgift is a place that prizes invention and discovery. From gravity batteries that store the potential of the wind, to unique irrigation systems, to aether weapons, the city positively churns out discoveries... and then there's the canal they cut through the mountains that makes them a major center of trade across the region.
- Hoardreach: The City of Wyrms (Pathfinder and DND 5E): A center of power across an entire region, Hoardreach is ruled over by a Cooperation of five different dragons. A place for refugees and outcasts of all sorts, Hoardreach boasts some of the most unusual citizens and creations from across Sundara. Infamous for their sky ships, which require the cast-off scales and unique arcane sciences of the Dragon Works to take to the air, one never knows just what they'll find in this city built atop a mountain.
- Archbliss: The City of The Sorcerers (Pathfinder and DND 5E): A floating city in the sky, Archbliss has been a refuge for sorcerers for thousands of years. It's only in relatively recent years that the city has allowed those from the ground below who lack the power of a bloodline to join them in the clouds. However, while there are certainly amazing wonders to behold, there is a darkness in Archbliss. Something rotting away at its heart that could, if not healed, bring the city crashing to the ground once more.
Gods of Sundara
- Gods of Sundara (available for Pathfinder and DND 5E): In a world with no alignment, and where the gods are often genuinely mysterious forces that are far too large for mortals to truly comprehend, the divine feels genuinely strange and unknown... something that really does have to be taken on faith. This supplement provides a sample pantheon for Sundara, but also provides instructions on how to easily make your own gods in a world where you can't cast a spell and tell whether someone is good or evil.
Species of Sundara
Sundara is filled with creatures that many of us recognize, but I wanted to give greater depth to their cultures, and a wider variety of options. After all, humans always get 15+ ethnicities, languages, and unique histories, while elves, dwarves, orcs, halflings, etc. are almost always left with footnotes, or maybe with a handful of offshoots. So, in short, I wanted to give all the fantastical creatures the treatment that humans usually get in our games.
And there is no human book yet. If readers demand to know more, then I may sit down to pen one... but I figured that humans didn't need to be front-and-center in this setting just yet.
- Elves of Sundara (Pathfinder and DND 5E): Elves are one of the most quintessential fantasy creatures... but if you want to see more than just high elves, wood elves, and elves of the sun and moon, then this supplement has you covered!
- Dwarves of Sundara (Pathfinder and DND 5E): The children of the primordial giants who were meant to fill in the details of the world they'd made (or so the myths say) there are as many kinds of dwarves as their are kinds of giants... and possibly more, depending on who is keeping count.
- Orcs of Sundara (Pathfinder and DND 5E): Supposedly a creation of the elves, none can say for certain exactly how or why orcs have been made. What most agree on is that these creatures are far more than most may think at first glance.
- Halflings of Sundara (Pathfinder and DND 5E): Little cousins to the dwarves, halflings are tough, clever, and not to be underestimated. From living beneath the hills, to taking up residence in the deep forests, halflings in Sundara come in quite a variety!
- The Blooded (Half-Elves and Half-Orcs) [Pathfinder and DND 5E]: When orcs and elves mix their bloodlines with other creatures, the result is one of the Blooded. This inheritance takes many forms, and it can even wait generations before manifesting when the right combination of individuals come together to have a child.
- Gnomes of Sundara (Pathfinder and DND 5E): Gnomes are strange creatures, found in places where the spirit of the land has coalesced and made children of its own. The sons and daughters of the ancient nymphs, they are the stewards of these places, and they change as often as the weather and the land.
Organizations of Sundara
Phase 3 has been going strong, but there's still a few titles left in it! So if you haven't seen them, consider checking out:
- Sellswords of Sundara: With power structures being smaller in scale in Sundara, standing armies aren't often maintained for long. As such, soldiers of fortune are quite common! This supplement contains 10 mercenary companies, their history, uniform, sample members, whispers and rumors, as well as either an archetype or subclass for playing these unique warriors. Grab your copy for Pathfinder of DND 5E.
- Cults of Sundara: Faith comes in many forms in Sundara, and there are as many gods in the Prim as there are dreams in the minds of people. This supplement contains write-ups for 10 cults, their histories, sample members, rumors about them, their beliefs and tenets, and a unique magic item for each. Get your copy for Pathfinder or DND 5E.
- Guilds of Sundara: While cities and villages may be relatively local, guilds are spread across the length and width of Sundara. From professional orders of skilled miners and dredgers, to monster slayers and bounty hunters, this supplement has 10 guilds with histories, sample members, rumors, as well as unique feats one can take to represent the skill and benefits of joining this order. Available for Pathfinder as well as DND 5E.
- Merchants of Sundara: While city states might be the largest form of government you find in the setting, merchants hold an outsized amount of power. From huge mercantile houses, to small brands infamous for their quality as much as for their price, there are a lot of options listed in this particular world building supplement.
Like, Follow, and Stay in Touch!
That's all for this week's Moon Pope Monday. To stay on top of all my content and releases, make sure you subscribe to my newsletter at the bottom of the page!
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!
