A while back I commented that if you gathered the applicants for any given job in the RPG industry, you could start a company.

**Disclaimer** This is nothing against anyone I may be working for or with in the future. Everything is fine, honestly.

My original comment was if you gathered a handful applicants applying for a specific writing job at (well known RPG/TV show) you could start your own company. I stand by this statement because within any given five or six applicants for a writing job, you’ve got enough combined skills and experience to write a book, create artwork/ maps, promote the book, start a Kickstarter, and sell the thing. It’s really not a surprise that this sort of thing has already happened.

Actually, I think the bigger question is: Why doesn’t it happen more often?

I can speculate quite a bit on this. I know one person who is doing exactly this. He’s bringing together writers, map-makers, and artists while doing all the editing and promos himself. Kudos to him for all of that hard work. I think it would be a lot tougher to do it while holding down a 9:00-5:00 job and raising a family.

I think that’s a lot of what happens in the industry with a lot of us part time, amateur game designers. I used to see a lot of absolutely brilliant games on the convention scene that never went mainstream because it’s pretty tough to support a family and stay afloat without a steady income.

If COVID 19 has taught us anything, it’s that we can be largely cut off from society and still contribute something meaningful.

When I think of lockdown time, (I live in a state with a Republican governess, so we had frightfully little of it,) I think of spending more time online, watching live streams and watching the Virtual Tabletop industry blossom. It goes without saying a lot of small companies and independent writers began to flourish around that time, too. Now it’s just a matter of keeping the ball rolling. Online sales of electronic books, especially pdfs are still going strong.

If you think about it, even a Pay What you Want title or even $.99 goes a long way when you have little-no overhead beyond time invested. It’s not like the grand old days of RPGs when you had to send submissions to Dragon in the vague hopes of getting noticed and published. Add some social media moxie and free advertising to the mix and you can pull in some good money.

You can also work miracles without a few million viewers on YouTube or a major show on Amazon Prime. I know I’m a bit ‘critical’ of everyone’s favorite actual play show, but I’m sure one minor detractor isn’t going to dissuade people from tuning in every week. Good for them. More on that in another article.

Hope everyone is having a marvelous weekend. Stay safe. Take care. Be back soon.