One Historical Tidbit

I. Dear Reader,

Long week, short post. So if you wander over to this link, you can freely download the Classic Traveller Facsimile Edition, which is a slightly corrected version of the 1981 sci-fi RPG. I mention that because in the updated introduction, they have these numbers:

I think we can take production to roughly mean sales here. Just adding the first two rows, you see that Basic Traveller (including the revised version) has sold roughly 135,000 copies.

To give some more context, Blades in the Dark has sold roughly 75,000 copies over its lifetime as per Evil Hat’s public reports.

I don’t mean to say these numbers are directly comparable – they were priced differently, had different profit percentages, etc. The Traveller PDF was uploaded in 2021 so I’m assuming its counting 40-ish years of sales. Blades in the Dark has been out for around 7 years. I’m just sharing this because I think its really hard to keep a grip on the actual scale of the indie RPG world.

Yours fun-factually,

Thomas

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II. Media of the Week

• Over on Yes Indie’d, I speak to Josh McCrowell about His Majesty the Worm, a big ambitious megadungeon game that is all about character relationships as well as pragmatic problem-solving. It’s an interesting take on the most studied genre of game ever.

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• Thank you to David, Ash & JD! You too can support the newsletter on patreon!
• If you’ve released a new game on itch.io this month, let me know through this form so I can potentially include it in the end of the month round-up.

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III. Links of the Week

• Sidney Icarus discusses some nice concepts to analyse RPGs: conspicuous mechanics (mechanics that you can’t skip over) and elasticity (the quality of a mechanic to be retroactively applied): “Conspicuous Mechanics are the funnels of RPG Design: They take a very wide selection of states of play and mandate them toward certain buckets. I ask of you (especially those of you designing in PbtA or FitD systems) to really consider when you want to interrupt the flow of play and where you intend to redirect that play.”
• Aaron Marks writes about what the next disruptive innovation in RPGs: “If we’re to see a huge influx of new players as the result of a new RPG innovation, that innovation will be the one that solves scheduling.”
• On the Asked Questions newsletter, a nice post about Escape from Dino Island‘s neat design: “[The] peril-safety split produces the basic flow of the game by making trouble harder to escape and rewarding players for getting to safety eventually. In a way, it’s like this game integrates the idea of success at a cost into its general structure. It then proceeds to build on these metatriggers with the moves themselves.”
• The Open Hearth online gaming community is organizing another public event, Shared Hearth, from Sep 5th to 8th. You can sign up for games from Tuesday. (I’m hosting a game as well!)
• On Age of Ravens, a really nice set of spark tables for city adventures that has a lot of ideas I’d never think of: Amnesty (Pardon for the Powerful), Divine Intervention (Striking Down), etc. Makes me wish I was running a city game right now.

From the archive:

• Something I wish had been discussed more: Randy Lubin talking about “plot guides” as a tool for RPGs. Also, this was the same issue I was writing about imagining Full Metal Alchemist: Brotherhood as an RPG campaign. (Issue 45, June 2021)

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IV. Small Ads

All links in the newsletter are completely based on my own interest. But to help support my work, this section contains sponsored links and advertisements. If you’d like your products to appear here, read the submission form.

• Get enmeshed in a mystical conspiracy of the Arcana, and hunt the kings and queens of the secret world as occult assassins, in Threadcutters, a TTRPG funding now on Kickstarter!

This newsletter is sponsored by the the wonderful Bundle of Holding.

• 2300AD, the scifi RPG from Mongoose, based on Traveller
• World’s Largest Dungeon, World’s Largest City and other supplements for d20 fantasy games

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Hello, dear readers. This newsletter is written by me, Thomas Manuel. If you’d like to support this newsletter, share it with a friend or buy one of my games from my itch store. If you’d like to say something to me, you can reply to this email or click below!