TTRPGs and tariffs, explained by a publishing professional
ฝัง
- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 9 ก.พ. 2025
- How might the US's 10% tariffs on China affect the world of TTRPGs? I speculate as a publishing industry professional.
Sources
Post-pandemic book sales: wordsrated.com...
Post-pandemic paper prices: thehill.com/op...
Music
Cheel - Blue Dream
Thank you for this insight.
RPGs and publishing and supply chains... feel like this video was made for me :)
Could smaller interests work together on production, even supposed competitors? Because large publishers have more DR against these sorts of problems (and more to lose), but smaller publishers and individual writers could sort of be large if they grouped together... maybe it's still a disproportionate investment unless there are a ton of people willing to buy in
Sort of wish I didn't have a pending KS book right now, but the threat of this sort of chaos is why I wound up not pledging on something else
And probably just for you! Haha. Very glad you liked it. What's your KS project?
There's nothing publishers can do about price increases since those come downstream from paper production. It's always a possibility to come together to share costs, though. I've imagined the possibility of something like an indie TTRPG publishing co-op before - basically something that can act a bit like a larger company, providing promotion and a basic level of funding, but with more autonomy for individual creators. It would have to be something very bare-bones, though, since indie TTRPGs are mostly net losers in revenue.
That's a big part of why I wonder whether the indie TTRPG market is/will be more interested in digital-only products. A co-op idea would be much more possible with digital-only games, since there would be so much less financial risk, but I don't know that there's enough interest in buying PDFs among indie players.
As I see it, the best solution is to just not have a trade war.
@@InnovationInRPGs Yeah, "the only way to win is not to play".
Digital makes sense but personally it feels too ephemeral for something I'd actually want to GM. I have some that I digitally backed but my relationship to them is tentative, even though I like them. Maybe I'm old fashioned? I like to have a tome around, even if it's a very slim tome, just to peruse naturally. If the power's out, I still have it, that sort of thing. It's also nicer if there's a backup solution, like DriveThru or some other place that hosts things in case you lose track of whatever random site had the originals. I guess that could be a co-op thing, if DriveThru doesn't meet that need for whatever reason. I don't know what it costs to host your games there if the majority of users bought it through a KS. You know about that sort of thing?
Mythic Bastionland is the KS I'm waiting on, hopefully it'll weather the storms.
With cross-promotion maybe indies might get a bump if they worked together more closely, especially if they centralize translation, and broaden marketing to more countries? There are a bunch of seemingly growing imprints like Exhalted Funeral I guess? But I only know the consumer side.
Not trying to make wotc money with this ttrpg, but this will suck.
Indie RPGs will survive as lo g as they drop the "woah art" nonsense and focus on. Reating better games overall. We don't need more silly artbooks.