The Business: It's Time To Reconsider The Tabletop RPG Business Model

By now you should be wondering what I think a commercial tabletop role-playing game business should look like.

Let me make this plain: You are selling a gameplay experience, not a stand-alone product.

We have seen previous companies get so close previously. The original TORG business model was that you bought into an ongoing campaign. Organized Play campaigns are close approxmiations of how a real RPG is to be run. Legend of the Five Rings almost achieved this early on until the storywankers in the head office decided to fuck with the results. World of Darkness LARPs were already most of the way there.

The biggest problem previously was that the technical infrastructure to do more than Play By Mail campaigns effectively was not there, or was not appreciated early on. This is no longer the case. The infrastructure now exists to support a truly global Jeffrogygaxian Braunstein campaign that is always on and unfolding in real time.

Therefore, it is time to spell out what a real business would look like.

• The Product

  Your game's foundation is that of a tabletop wargame. It works at the level of a skirmish, and it scales without issue all the way up to epic mass battles without any changes to core gameplay procedures.

  Your game's manual is clear, concise, and consistent in its language. It is available in all major languages. It is available worldwide. It is always available, it is available in all major digital formats as well as a Print On Demand product.

  It is available in both a cheap (at-costor nearly so) edition without bells and whistles as well as a premium coffee table hardcover (with a slipcase) made with premium materials because why not. Everything you need to both play and run the game is in this manual and NOWHERE ELSE.

• The Service

  You maintain online spaces speifically to faciliate dissemination of information to players, and to assist players in finding tables to play at but you run no official tables of your own. There is a reason for this, and that reason is to avoid Cult of Officialdom to overrun user experiences.

  Players are encouraged to post play reports, complete with mechanical breakdowns, to the official spaces (or, more practical to do, would be to link to such reports; encourage users to put up their own campaign journals, be it blogs, YouTube channels, or whatever).

  You will collect these reports, collate them together, and report their impacts upon the global campaign on a regular and frequent basis; expect to make this a full-time position if your business takes off.

  You maintain something like Patreon or Subscribstar to allow users to help defray the costs of keeping this thing going.

  You will have Whales--very rich users with more money than sense--so give them something to spend upon; this is where paywalled extras come in handy, but by no means do you all them to do Pay To Win bullshit.

  Instead, let them pay money for the priviledge of playtesting new things (and allow them to sponsor others to do so); they feel like they're getting to use their money, while you're protecting the integrity of your business and the hobby.

• The Structure

  You don't need many people at all. Your office needs you, maybe a secretary, and maybe one or two other office specialists that you can't outsource- and the others only once you've scaled up enough to need them.

  You are location-independent. Your accounting can be outsourced. Your technical writing can be outsourced. You can certainly outsource your online moderation. You can outsource translations. You can operate this business from anywhere in the world with a solid Internet connection.

  You don't need to maintain inventory. What you need to do is oversee the product development and the marketing, and you likely want to be the global Game Master that processes play reports and puts out regular campaign updates--you know, the fun stuff--while running your own table privately.

Hell, I bet you could put this together as a side-hustle and scale it up enough to afford to move to and live full time in Dubai.