Experiences selling piddly stuff on Drive Thru?

Several months ago I started working on a little project related to early 20th century travel. It was originally just a forum post for Call of Cthulhu about the state of roads and headlights in the 1920s United States. Should have been 2 pages tops.

Well being a serious history nerd, I get into the history of everything from the development of the ball point pen, to the founding of the nation. It doesn't matter to me, history is cool big and small.

Anyway on this "little" project I went down a rabbit hole and what started off fairly simple has now grown to encompass Air, Sea and Land travel from the post civil war era to the 1940s, with some inclusion of travelling abroad (mostly travel to and from the US). I'm presently up to 13 single spaced pages, and still going, it could easily be 20-25 pages by the time I'm done.

I've now got a lot of time into this and am thinking maybe it would be worth developing it into a real little booklet (pdf). Laid out in a more pleasing way, with a few illustrations, some tables summarizing important facts from the body it would probably top out around 40 pages. Entirely systemless, basically a series of short essays about travel during the period.

I don't expect to make much money off if it, but if it paid for a game now and them that would be nice. I've never done any thing like this before, so it would be nice to hear from some who have, get some tips, encouragement, or an honest assessment of not worth the trouble.


A couple pieces of trivia as a reward for reading all the way to the bottom, did you know there were still sailing ships hauling cargo in the 1950s? In 2019 it is only 2 hours faster to travel from New York City to San Francisco by train, than in the 1880s.

I don't have any experience on this, but I'll spout my nonsense anyway:
if it's well done, do not give it away for a pittance.

Luca said:

I don't have any experience on this, but I'll spout my nonsense anyway:
if it's well done, do not give it away for a pittance.

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This is where I'm at with this. Initially I was just going to add it to the resources page over there (BRP forums) and here if there was interest, but I've now got some fairly serious time and effort into it. All hobby time so no different than researching for a game, so I'm willing to give it away, but if it could help pay for my hobby why not let it. I'll most likely still put up a cliffs notes version here and the BRP site if I do go the DTRPG route.

Whatever you decide please let me know. I love history and want to read it now.

Well, clearly now you have to try it and report the results!

Toadmaster said:

This is where I'm at with this. Initially I was just going to add it to the resources page over there (BRP forums) and here if there was interest, but I've now got some fairly serious time and effort into it.

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Not only good work deserves to be paid, but: many, many people will always think the quality is proportional to the price.

Luca said:

Not only good work deserves to be paid, but: many, many people will always think the quality is proportional to the price.

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What kind of people are those?

All kinds:

Premium Pricing theory

Just ask Apple.

AsenRG said:

What kind of people are those?

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People not in the RPG industry mostly.

I sell the odd piddly thing on DriveThru. 100 lists and adventures, that kind of thing. Up until now I’ve had a 50/50 split with a guy that does the actual publishing, art and layout, but It’s looking like I’m going my own way soon as the guy has vanished.

Anyway, I have access to the sales data. Piddly things sell slow and steady for small amounts. 100 City Encounters has now reached over 100 sales, got a 5 star review and got a copper sales medal…. Not something I was ever expecting.

The trick seems to be to build up a back catalogue. Selling one item probably won’t get much in the way of sales unless you advertise the hell out of it and hit some sweet spot. A back catalogue seems to keep a small but steady flow of revenue into your DriveThru account and could easily allow you to buy 4 or 5 new rpgs each year. It’s actually surprisingly satisfying to see your stuff sell, even if it isn’t earning you a fortune. I would suggest you give it a go, just to see what happens. You don’t need big fancy art. Hell, you maybe don’t need art at all.

Thanks for the encouragement, and Winterblight for your experience. It appears setting up as a seller at DTRPG is fairly simple.

When I am done and have it listed, I will follow up here for any interested.

While targeted at Call of Cthulhu, it is entirely system free. Mostly just describing travel in the period, what is available, time / costs involved, conditions (like passengers of early air travel often shared their space with mail bags) and options, like hiring on as a deck hand for sea travel if you don't have the means for paying for your passage. I also cover a lot of the travel related laws of the time.

I've sold a couple little things on DriveThruRPG and I've made a minuscule amount of money from it. But your product sounds like it could actually do pretty well because it's super useful for a lot of games. I think if you put some effort into layout and invest a small amount in art, it could pay off. Layout can have a big effect on usability, obviously, which is what you're going for with this document.

If you're going small scale and low overhead, the best marketing is positive reviews. A good community presence helps with this because it's a small community. If a couple reviewers know who you are from positive community interactions, you stand a much higher chance of getting it reviewed in the first place.

Winterblight said:

The trick seems to be to build up a back catalogue.

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I could imagine a really cool series about travel in different kinds of settings/technologies. That could have a tremendous amount of appeal, especially if you can provide some very simple system-neutral mechanics or useful statistics.

For instance, I'm working on an adventure in a fantasy setting: a hexcrawl where the party is charged with finding an overland route across the map for future traders. I'd love to have a good one-stop shop for information about travel. As it is, it's hard to know how to find realistic information about navigating through different terrain types, and what it really means to forge a re-usable trail. Would they have to cut through the brush or would there be any kind of routes you could follow in a wild setting? Right now, I'm plugging in made-up numbers until I can find better information.

Winterblight said:

The trick seems to be to build up a back catalogue

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I concur with this based on my experience. Those who are consistent, come across as doing their best work, and release reliably as periodic interval do the best. And it gets better as the back catalog grows. From paying for part of my hobby, to pay for a lot of my hobby, to paying for all of my hobby, to playing for my home office setup, and onwards to whatever level it winds up being.

You could get a whole lot of free reviews from right here on the forum! That would help draw sales, I think. I personally take a second glance at products that have more reviews, regardless of star rating.

Most important thing....do it if its fun!
2nd thing--I can't explain the joy of holding something that you created...make it a POD.

Finally...make sure you make a cut-off point. I fall into this trap, where I keep adding on and on and on...make sure you 'finish' first or get to a point where you are happy...then you can go back and add on some more ideas that pop up (write em down so you don't forget them).