Audio EXP: #177 – Best sellers, ethics and the future of your D&D business

Welcome home.

This is Audio EXP for the 24th of December 2022, and the title of this episode is “Best sellers, ethics and the future of your D&D business”.

[The following is a transcript of Audio EXP: #177]

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Handiwork Games are in the Spotlight this month, as voted for by Patreons.

The interview with Jon is up, and we talk ethics, AI and business. Handiwork Games tested AI art, backed out when the landscape changed, pays full-time employees, and does their best not to rely on China.

It’s a good Spotlight piece to wrap up the year, and Handiwork feels like a wholesome publisher we can learn from.

As it is the end of the year and month, a reminder for Patreons to go vote in the Spotlight for January. I won’t go through the candidates on the podcast as there are a lot of other bullet points this week.

I will say it’s a wonderful week to become a patron; thank you. Not only do you get to vote in the Spotlight, but if you join before the end of the year, then there’s a thank-you gift in the PDF shape of the Ananthia Campaign Guide. That’s D&D branded content, and we’ll get back to the future of D&D branded content shortly.

Let’s first do Christmas. It’s a busy time of the year, you might have to juggle all sorts of commitments, but that might make it stressful. Or you might have no commitments at all; it’s a time of year when many people feel lonely.

I wanted to call attention to Jasper’s Game Day, an RPGers charity that works to make every life roll a 20 and that no one gets left behind. If you want to talk to a fellow geek, check them out.

Everyone’s Christmas is different. On the blog, I shared some art and unusual festive folklore. I had world-building in mind, but it’s still true and quirky.

Did you know in Lativa, there’s a Yule log tradition wherein the log is dragged through to your home and then burned to appease Mithras?

Apparently, a Polish superstition warns that children born during the twelve days of Christmas might be werewolves.

Shall we get back to geeky and gaming stuff? Okay, why don’t we go through music? Research from Dr Emma Gray, Spotify and others suggest that songs with a beat per minute ranging from 50 to 80 are best for productivity. Therefore we can calculate the best and worst Christmas songs to try and design a campaign too.

The best songs would be, and I’ll do three of each are;

1. Carol of the Bells with a BPM of 47
2. Rockin’ Around the Christmas Tree by Brenda Lee with a BPM of 67
3. Silver Bells by Bing Crosby with a BPM of 71

The worst would be

1. Mele Kalikimaka by Bing Crosboy with a BPM 208
2. The Happiest Christmas Tree with a BPM of 206
3. It’s The Most Wonderful Time of the Year with a BPM of 202

More seriously, we’ve had more significant distractions for professional D&D content creators this week. Wizards of the Coast have reminded people that One D&D, the new edition, will mean a new SRD and OGL. That’s a new Open Game License or the rules by which third-party creators can sell content.

There are some tweaks, the most significant of which are that if you’re making a salary off D&D, you’ll need to report your figures to Wizards of the Coast, and if it’s a large enough figure, you’ll have to pay royalties.

A few weeks ago, Wizards of the Coast told investors they could make more money from D&D. There you go.

However, for most people, the threshold won’t be made, and DMsGuild content needs badges and carries on pretty much as it did before. However, the devil is in the details, which we’ve not seen yet, and the concerned debate continues.

Against the backdrop of concern, Geek Native started the traditional look at what’s selling well on DriveThruRPG. Eeek. Still, the usual debate is back, and that’s whether the designer has tagged the game with the right genre.

I’ll take you through the top three RPGs published this year in fantasy, horror, modern and sci-fi. There’s more to come, and you can find links to the top twenty of each on the blog.

The best selling fantasy RPGs published this year are;

1. Winds of Magic by Cubicle 7 Entertainment Ltd.
2. Fabula Ultima TTJRPG by Need Games
3. Tome of Adventure Design (Revised) by Mythmere Games

Okay, so RPG is shorthand for RPG productions.

The best selling horror RPGs published in 2022 are;

1. Hunter: The Vigil Second Edition by Onyx Path Publishing
2. BLASTER: Volume 4 by BLASTER
3. Forbidden Religions (Vampire: the Masquerade 5th Edition) by Renegade Game Studios

Importantly, horror games can be fantasy, sci-fi, or likely modern era. I’m signing posting that as the best selling modern era games are;

1. Hunter: The Vigil Second Edition by Onyx Path Publishing
2. Forbidden Religions (Vampire: the Masquerade 5th Edition) by Renegade Game Studios
3. Shadowrun: Sixth World Companion (Core Character Rulebook) by Catalyst Game Lab

The latest reveal are sci-fi RPGs and the top three are;

1. Tales of the RED: Street Stories by R. Talsorian Games Inc.
2. Ironsworn: Starforged by Shawn Tomkin
3. Savage Worlds Super Powers Companion (SWADE) by Pinnacle Entertainment

It’s not just DriveThruRPG who are helpfully sharing top lists. Merchoid has done so as well, listing their top five franchises.

They are;

1. Stranger Things up a massive 13,000% and driven by Hellfire Club merch.
2. Batman up 106%, and probably thanks to The Batman.
3. Then, in third is Warhammer 40K, and I don’t mean minis, I mean merch such as huggable Great Unclean Ones or Space Marine ties.

I’m especially interested in the 68% fall in Harry Potter goods. Is that due to the relative lack of Hogwarts activity this year? Or are JKR’s political views beginning to harm the money-making franchise?

A manga success is Kaiju No. 8, which has gone from zero sales to over 4 million in just a few years. There’s now an anime on the way, not for 2023, but for 2024. The Kaiju trailer is out. It looks good and gives us a future where the Kaiju threat is real, and perhaps that’s a welcome contrast to the cyberpunk future, which seems a little less sci-fi than it did a few years back.

Now, that’s a whole bunch of stats so let’s move into the usual outro of freebies, where the numbers don’t matter, and bundles where they do again. We’ll call it balance.

BurnRaditation, who had a Kickstarter attempt thwarted by a real-life challenge on Saril, an RPG you can from one page, has a free intro adventure called Dead Exit: The Warehouse. It’s grim, dark and mature readers recommended.

Then there’s ChaosDream, a whole core book that also tries to do things differently.

The last freebie I’ll highlight this week comes from The Arcane Library and is the Shadowdark Quickstart. That’s enough content from the Players and GM guides to run a short campaign.

There are two bundles on my radar, both from the Bundle of Holding, and the first is The Fantasy Trip.

The Fantasy Trip can trace itself back to 1977, and this bundle has core rules set in it.

There’s also Pelgrane Press’ 13th Age Mega bundle, that’s very generous and also has core rules for his fantasy RPG.

So, let’s finish there; have a great holiday if you, and I’ll see you next week.