The Medieval Mountain Monastery Murder Mystery is a scenario in which all the characters are trans. All the characters. And it deals with some pretty deep trans issues.
I’ve done what I can to get the word out about it, yet there’s never been any serious demand. I could just publish it anyway, but if sales from the Bandit Map are anything to go by, I wouldn’t make more than US$1/hour for all the work it would take. Vastly, vastly less than minimum wage.
Diversity is a great goal. It would be nice if it was actually rewarding, though.
I suspect you might have increased interest if you packaged it with some D&D 5E stat blocks in addition to B&C.
Another big problem is just attracting eyes in the first place. It seems like all the big players in the tabletop market have at minimum a strong social media presence and their own discord server. If you’re not spending all your free time developing and promoting your game, it’s going to be tough to stand out.
Given that tabletop RPGs aren’t exactly a great moneymaker to begin with, it’s tough to look at making your own products as more than a passion project. At least that’s how I feel about it. I’ve lost a lot of enthusiasm for creating my own stuff beyond the level of a Homebrew or convention game.
Selling it via D&D feels like knuckling under. Heck, the amount I’d have to invest in D&D books would probably cancel out any money I’d make. WotC would be the only real beneficiary; and Hasbro doesn’t need any more money.
Yep, marketing is an uphill fight in way too many ways.
There are people who make their livings in RPGs, but they almost inevitably had huge head starts (often involving a ton of privilege). It’s all very exhausting.
I think it might be fundable on KS, even as a systemless scenario (and you could publish with B&C stats and still make it universal). Particularly publishable if the monastery had the potential for additional stories, which I think it would. So you could have the MMM story, floor plans/maps, the theology, NPCs, guidelines for creating new characters, and additional scenarios. Which might not be worth it to you. But I could see it as a viable product.
My estimate is that would mean doing 10x the work for a 50% chance at 5x the income. Not, as I said, rewarding.
Well, I’d be interested in checking it out. It sounds vaguely in the spirit of Harn’s “Dead of Winter”, but only because monastery. I had a great time running Bandit Map, but I think your $1/hr count already assume I’m buying 3 copies (and John T a few as well). Shame that it’s caught as a Convention notes package, but totally makes sense re: return on effort. Maybe the C&S community might be ore receptive, but again, more work … I like chapbooks, so if you ever decide to just slap a copyright notice on it and sell it as a GM’s Notes / chapbook, I’d be interested.