Roll20 launches a bundle on the Humble store, sidestepping the two store platforms it owns
Also: A quick virtual tabletop pricing guide. TTRPG publishers collaborate with HeroForge on new custom minis. Backerkit rolls out star backers.
Welcome new folks! I’d like to personally thank Dale from Wyrmworks Publishing for referring Tabletop Marketplaces to his circle. I wrote about audiobooks in a couple places this month, and each time I was thinking about Dale’s work on making Limitless Heroics accessible to more people by including an audio version.
Top story: Roll20’s choice to sell on Humble, was it a user acquisition experiment?
Virtual tabletop company Roll20 launched their first ever Humble bundle this month in what they call “a new partnership” with Humble. It includes a free month of Roll20 Pro, and VTT versions of books from Modiphius, Paizo, Evil Hat, Kobold Press, and an animated tarot deck from Hit Point Press. This is interesting news given they could have provided a bundle of products on their own Roll20 Marketplace, or on the DriveThruRPG store (which they acquired last year).
I’ll introduce just a touch of speculation here: the now decade-old VTT website is slowly ramping into user-acqusition mode, with more in store for the future. But that doesn’t mean they’re struggling or strapped for cash. They’re more likely making calculated steps towards a larger push.
Let me explain.
For a good cause?
Perhaps we should take a step back and consider whether Roll20 took this direction to get in more of a giving mood.
Starting tomorrow November 2nd, DriveThruRPG and their D&D-brand marketplace DM’s Guild will be launching their own charity bundles in support of Extra Life, a Children’s Miracle Network fundraising event. DriveThruRPG will be donating a whopping 95% of each sale (the last 5%? Likely reserved for their affiliate program). Before “joining forces” with Roll20, DM’s Guild played host to Extra Life fundraisers every year due to content partner Wizards of the Coast’s longterm support of the charity.
Humble seems to be a natural partner for giving. The Humble brand is synonymous with charity bundles: on their about page, Humble writes “Every type of product we sell contributes a portion of proceeds to charity. On many products, you can allocate part (or even all!) of your purchase to a charity of your choice.”
The reality is a little more disappointing: while the rate you choose to give is flexible, Humble’s default is a modest 5%, and it caps out at 70% donated to charity.
Given that Roll20-exclusive products can be sold on DTRPG, it’s worth asking, why not do the bundle there? Why give Humble 30%? While the Humble bundle page claims to have raised over $7,000 for charity, could it have raised even more if they used DriveThruRPG, or the Roll20 Marketplace?
Hostility to VTT exclusives in DriveThru’s community
It’s worth speculating if DriveThruRPG’s customers would even want this bundle, or if they would once again riot against Roll20’s “influence” on the platform.
Roll20 and DriveThruRPG are a single company, but some of their customers had strong words about the company’s direction when the Marvel Multiverse RPG was released as a first-ever Roll20 exclusive this August on the DTRPG marketplace.
Dozens of negative comments can be found on its store page. Consequently, sales are dismal for a game published by Marvel: it has remained a Copper Seller (less than 101 sales) for a full quarter. I’d like to think, however, that this wouldn’t cause Roll20 to forego selling a charity bundle on their platforms.
In software, user acquisition is a necessary evil
The problem remains that Roll20 isn’t invulnerable to user churn, and competition is fierce in the VTT market. One of Roll20’s advantages should be their many years of experience running a marketplace–they even acquired the #1 TTRPG marketplace to level themselves up!
Unfortunately, I believe it’s still fighting against customer sentiment that the store doesn’t have any worthwhile content. Most Roll20 Marketplace sellers offer products like tokens and adventures for $4.99, the minimum, because of a belief that users are looking for the cheapest possible content.
In my estimation, running a VTT platform is a lot more like the mobile app business than the PC/console game business or the tabletop game business. Subscriptions and “microtransactions” are supposed to pay for server costs and development costs over the long term. The marketplace needs to be a winning part of their strategy.
Roll20 is introducing its marketplace to thousands more gamers on Humble
Looking at the ways Roll20 can expand their audience, it becomes quite clear that Humble is a natural first step. Many tabletop publishers have sold bundles on Humble themselves, and the Humble website has a good chance of crossover exposure with new types of gamers from all walks of life. If their own marketplaces aren’t attracting paying VTT users on their own, they need to branch out.
Even though Roll20’s bundle isn’t sold through the Roll20 marketplace, everyone purchasing the bundle is now much more aware of the types of offerings they can find there. “There’s a Fallout RPG? And it comes with art from the games that I can drop right onto the grid?”
That’s why we’re seeing several high quality products on offer in this bundle. If it inspires more curiosity about the Roll20 Marketplace, and reaches new gamers, all while raising a tiny amount for charity, that’s a win for everyone! And especially good news for Roll20 Marketplace sellers.
A willingness to elevate small VTT creators
Roll20 also reached out to small creators through their Discord community to round out the offerings in the package. Those creators listed here (and their crowdfunding stats, shared for a sense of their audience size): Brave New Worlds ($540/mo on Patreon), Loke BattleMats (largest Kickstarter campaign raised £226.7K with 6,081 backers, 10 campaigns total), and Eugene’s Workshop (no public numbers, appears to be quite small but has a lot of Roll20 products).
For any VTT creators who want to be included in the next one, it’s a good idea to look for which big games are being sold on the Roll20 Marketplace and make sure to offer something similar. Even though D&D-compatible content is generally going to outsell sci-fi content on the marketplace, I think that cyberpunk maps were chosen here as a natural complement to Tales from the Loop, Fallout, and Starfinder. While any creator could signup, not all creators that signed up were chosen for this bundle. More content is coming to this bundle on November 2nd, so we’ll soon get to see who else made the list.
Prediction: there’s more UA to come
As of this writing, 2,301 bundles were sold. Even if that directly translates to 2,301 new users, that’s quite small for the virtual tabletop market leader (if we don’t count D&D Beyond). I wouldn’t be surprised to see more from them in a slightly different package, with a different message, and possibly offering 3 months of Roll20 Pro or other offers to entice new GMs.
Looking at the aggressive UA tactics Epic Games Store and Xbox Game Pass took by having long periods of giveaways and deep discounts, Roll20’s first pass here is relatively tame. We might see them taking more steps to emulate those platforms, but they will have to be creative to counteract major challenges.
Top story links
Other stories this month
The custom-made minis company HeroForge, together with Coyote and Crow, announced an official collaboration on new model designs and add-ons inspired by Coyote and Crow’s RPG of the same name. It was the third ever such collaboration, starting with a “hat symbiote” and other hero gear created in partnership with Keith Baker in 2022. They followed that up this June with new character class models and gear from Hit Point Press’s Fool’s Gold. To get started creating C&C and Fool’s Gold figures, users require a special link (C&C’s link, for example). Clicking the link shows the game’s logo and custom figures inspired by the game during page load and in the HeroForge editor. Although both require a specific link, these partnerships are separate from HeroForge’s affiliate program, and it’s unknown how HeroForge shares revenue with the publishers.
Hasbro’s Q3 earnings report shows Wizards of the Coast “digital and licensed gaming” earnings more than doubled year-over-year, to $133.1M. Hasbro wrote a short thanks to “Baldur's Gate III from Larian Studios and to a lesser extent Monopoly Go!” from mobile game studio Scopely. Monopoly Go! is #1 top grossing on Google Play and “#1 in Family” on the Apple App Store as of this writing.
Backerkit announced its own answer to Kickstarter’s Superbackers: Star Backers. Any Backerkit user can earn a Star Backer 2023 badge next to their username by backing 10 projects before the end of 2023. This is not the only classic gamification feature we’ve seen from Backerkit recently. Creators’ repeat backers receive a badge of their logo, and can receive silver, and gold medals for being active commentors during a campaign. The community tab of every campaign also features a leaderboard, where users are encouraged to follow the top commentors. If you have a campaign on Backerkit, congratulating users on their badges and leaderboard positions could possibly boost campaign activity. It may also help campaigns cooperate rather than compete: encourage your backers to become star backers by checking out similar creators, and those creators just might do the same.
New tool for tabletop game publishers
For publishers experimenting with more book formats, what about audiobooks? Kickstarter announced a partnership this month with Spotify’s audiobook branch Findaway Voices. The two have reached a deal to give project creators as many free redemption codes as needed for every project backer (even if they Kickstarted more than one book), plus 100 extra complimentary codes. It’s currently the only DRM-limited way to give backers an audiobook on Kickstarter.
Previous Kickstarter campaigns have often delivered DRM-free MP3s on Backerkit, or through other services like Bookfunnel. Backers will have no choice but to listen to these books on Spotify, but the Findaway Voices service allows creators to sell their products through Audible, Apple App Store, and more marketplaces for a 20% cut. Spotify is taking big losses to catch up to Audible, providing 100% of royalties for all sales through the Spotify platform.
More digital releases this month
Donjons & Dragons, Sur les Chemins de Faerûn–a new D&D interactive audiobook targeted for children by Matt Forbeck, Anne-Sophie Lehrmann and Caroline Beaumelou. Forbeck is the prolific author and game designer behind the Marvel Cinematic Universe RPG, among others. Despite not speaking French, his involvement here is likely due to having written six D&D-licensed Endless Quest choose your own adventure novels.
The France-based platform, Lunii, sells children’s interactive audiobooks for their Flam smart toy and other smart devices. Their US store includes three interactive audiobooks based on different classic Disney films, and one based on Clue created in collaboration with Hasbro (that one is ages 8 and up). Most Lunii products sell for $12.99 to $17.99 and have a runtime of 30 minutes to 3 hours.
Recommended reads for publishers
D&D Beyond Community Spotlight: Koboa, a South America-Inspired Setting–Alyssa Fischer’s Community Spotlight features its first Creative Commons-licensed 5e title. The Community Spotlight column typically features DM’s Guild creators every month or so.
Hollywood is going to come for D&D actual plays sooner or later — will they survive?–An expansive dive into the possible silver-screen transformation of actual play, by Rowan Zeoli. We see a lot of behind the scenes of the podcast turned TV show Encounter Party. Hasbro still hasn’t announced which service D&D Adventures, their new FAST TV channel, is launching on (examples of FAST services are Pluto TV, The Roku Channel, and Samsung TV Plus).
First Impressions: D&D Beyond Partnered Content and Demiplane’s 5e Nexus–Jared Rascher does a really fascinating comparison between 3pp on D&D Beyond and 3pp on Demiplane’s “5e Nexus.” He partly concludes that while Wizards’ may self-limit the kind of content that could mess with the D&D formula, Demiplane could be more limited in resources they can devote to 5e products that would require new features to be programmed into their character builder.
Tabletop Marketplaces is written by Anthony from VTT Red, who specializes in virtual tabletop platforms. VTT Red is a registered affiliate for DriveThruRPG, Amazon, and Humble. I may receive a few cents if you choose to purchase something at any of these marketplaces after following one of these links.