Radio Hour: Documents and Daggers

UPDATE: Thomas spoke with Paizo CEO Jim Butler after we recorded this. Come back here after you've listened to us talk about the layoffs to read more.

Industry news looms heavy over the Episode 38 of the Rascal Radio Hour, but Chase, Thomas, and Caelyn find plenty of time for regularly scheduled shenanigans. The episode leads with Paizo's recent layoffs, how Diamond Comics Distribution caused it, and where the publisher goes from here. Afterward, they move on to the new, indie-focused storefront RPG Trader. What does it do differently from the major players, and where is it emulating what people already like about itch.io and DriveThruRPG?

Stay tuned for an infiltration-themed Question Dungeon that veers back into industry discussion on the value of distribution and what other creators should (and shouldn't) learn from the meteoric success of Neon Odyssey. Finally, Thomas brags on his extremely satisfying week of games and Chase explains his digital dalliance with duplicity.

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Here's an excerpt:

Caelyn: I think there's a lot more room for digital platforms selling tabletop RPGs than there are video games. Those other platforms exist. I can't say that I think any of them are good. Both itch and DTRPG on some level are kind of a pain in the butt to use for different reasons. And I personally think that, from a customer point of view, there's absolutely nothing stopping me trying RPG Trader. The fact that it's got relatively few products on it at the moment makes me much more likely to browse and see what's there.

One of the big reasons that people are loathe to move away from Steam is because it is very full featured. It does lots of things. And it's also the thing of having your entire collection in one place. Whereas with RPGs, you generally download your PDF and store it wherever.

Thomas: Steam is functionally a monopoly in video games, and DriveThru is pretty close to being a monopoly in tabletop PDFs. We talk about itch a lot, but I think the place that itch holds for me is as a creative platform rather than specifically in terms of its market. The reason you sell on DriveThru is because that's where all the customers are. That's where the majority of customers are because DriveThru has been around longer, but also because DriveThru had those deals with Wizards of the Coast and has a much bigger audience.

But there's a lot of complaints about the site's design. It shows that the redesign was started 10 years ago. I don't know anything about RPG Trader right now, which we will hopefully resolve. But I think the biggest challenge for them is not getting sellers on there, but getting customers. If the only way of getting the word out is through Bluesky, then mostly it's people who make games who would know about it. A subsection of a subsection kind of thing.

Chase: Caelyn, you brought up a really interesting point, which is that like there's no impetus amongst tabletop games to create a storefront monopoly. There's certain things that Steam does as far as updating game files, putting all your collection in one place, a lot of integration with friends and creating games, etc. that helps keep it up there at the top. The only thing DriveThruRPG has going for it as far as a monopoly or near monopoly is the exclusivity publishing right, which garners you an extra 5%. It's just the place that everyone already knows.

There's not a lot of stuff that RPG Trader, or something like it, needs to overcome. And yet there is a lot to do in order to get that word of mouth recognizability within the hobby to a point where people want to sell their games on your platform. For a lot of folks, using itch.io is less about the money that you make and more about being a part of this community. There's a sort of hobby scene thing that goes along with it, but it is also a money issue. If we add a third, a fourth, a fifth major retailer platform, that's a lot of work for a team to do. They're gonna start making mercenary decisions about whether or not they want to put their games on there.

I will say The Bear is not on there, yet. Honey Heist has not made it onto RPG Trader, and I think that's a mark of legitimacy that we can look forward to.

Caelyn: My buying habit is usually I find a game that I want to buy, I look where it's available for sale, I buy it from that shop. So if a developer is saying, hey, yeah, I've released my new game, it's available from RPG Trader, and they're leading with that, that's where I'm most likely to go buy.

Thomas: Creators actually think of it the other way around. They want the platform to bring them customers. If the platform is hoping that the creators will bring them the customers, then that's a circular thing, right? I remember, when reporting on that Lancer story, one of the people I spoke to called itch.io a Lancer delivery platform. I think there is something to a large number of people use itch, or discovered itch, through Lancer. That is the exception. It's the only game for which that could be said.

Caelyn: I don't think that you're wrong in that expectation. I'm just sort of thinking that, unless RPG Trader figures out some way to broadly advertise and bring people to the platform, a lot of people are only going to discover it through creators. Whether or not the creators want to actually do that is another matter entirely.