What does a healthy roleplaying game look like? I’m not talking about one where the core stats are your BMI and half-marathon time – rather something like a game’s constitution save, the thing that stops it slipping into oblivion and out of the TTRPG culture’s collective consciousness.
How would we even work out the stat value we were using? Would it be the number of core books sold or how much it made on Kickstarter? Or would it be something more organic, how many people are playing it – or even – how many people are busy creating new content for it?
Certainly one way of quantifying the latter is to look at the prevalence, or not, of third party content and how vibrant a community exists around programmes like Dungeons & Dragons’ Dungeon Masters’ Guild or Chaosium’s Miskatonic Repository.
The latter are places where game masters and would-be game designers alike can upload their work, created for a specific system, for all to use. More often than not with these programmes there’s some kind of deal with the dragon/dagon to be had: you get to use the good name, mechanics and monsters of, say, Dungeons & Dragons or Call of Cthulhu, and in exchange you give up a slice of your earnings. Whilst it can be a nice little revenue stream for publishers there’s a lot more than just money going to the licence holders here – with every new adventure published they’re receiving a fresh transfusion of blood into their game and a boost to its vital signs.
Launched in 2018 The Miskatonic Repository, a space where Call of Cthulhu scenario writers can share and sell their work officially on DrivethruRPG, had its 150,000th sale earlier this year. We spoke to Michael O’Brien, one of the owners of Chaosium, about this milestone and what he thinks it says about the health of both the game and the industry at large.
‘Hundreds of independent creators were involved in getting to this significant milestone, many of whom were publishing a TTRPG title for the first time’ said O’Brien, ‘there's even a dedicated Storytelling Collective stream for first-time Call of Cthulhu creators. Today you'll find a thriving and dynamic community of Miskatonic Repository creators, with groups on Facebook and Discord to support each other and share ideas.
‘Creators can draw from our published works, and we provide templates and art packs which they are welcome to use,’ he explained, ‘unlike a standard third party licence, there's no approval process and community content creators don't pay any up-front licensing fees. Instead, you can publish when you want, and there's a revenue split of sales.’
This split gives 50% to the creator, 30% to DriveThruRPG – who host both the Miskatonic Repository and finally a 20% slice lands with Chaosium. This is the same split as creators get on the DM’s Guild and many other similar programmes hosted by DriveThruRPG such as the Free League Workshop or Modiphius’ 2d20 World Builder program.
