Publish Your Own Tabletop RPG Material

1. 1

   Get the licensing ground truth straight

   Wizards of the Coast released SRD 5.1 under Creative Commons CC-BY-4.0 in January 2023 and SRD 5.2 (the 2024 core rules) under the same license on April 22, 2025. CC-BY-4.0 is irrevocable: you may publish and sell compatible material using SRD content forever, with attribution, no permission needed. Paizo's ORC license covers Pathfinder-family and other opted-in systems. What you may not do is use protected identity (beholders, mind flayers, named settings, logos) or imply official endorsement. Read the license and the SRD's attribution requirements before writing a word.

2. 2

   Know each storefront's split and role

   DriveThruRPG pays publishers 70 percent of revenue if you sell exclusively there, 65 percent if not. DMs Guild pays 50 percent but lets you use D&D's protected settings and characters under its community content license (in exchange, the Guild owns distribution of that work). itch.io lets you set its cut yourself (10 percent is the suggested default) and is the indie community's home turf. Many publishers run DriveThruRPG plus itch.io for original work and reserve DMs Guild for setting-specific material; choose deliberately per title.

3. 3

   Start small and finished, not epic and abandoned

   The proven entry is a 10-to-30-page adventure, a monster collection, a class option pack, or a system-neutral setting drop, priced modestly or pay-what-you-want to build reviews. A finished small product outsells an unfinished masterpiece by an infinite margin, and each release teaches layout, pricing, and marketing for the next.

4. 4

   Invest your budget where buyers judge

   Cover art, interior spot art, editing, and layout are what separate amateur listings from professional ones. If you are the artist, your illustration skill is the cost advantage every non-artist publisher envies; if not, license stock art or commission within a defined budget. Affinity or InDesign layout skills pay for themselves across every future release.

5. 5

   Ship, then market where the hobby lives

   Launch pricing and bundles on the storefronts, an itch.io devlog or newsletter, actual play and review channels, community events like game jams and ZineMonth-style crowdfunding windows, and convention presence when scale justifies it. Crowdfunding (Kickstarter or BackerKit) works best once a small audience exists; it is a preorder amplifier, not a starting point.

6. 6

   Build the catalog flywheel

   Backlist is the whole economics: each new release lifts sales of the old ones, storefront metals (copper, silver, gold badges) compound discoverability, and print-on-demand editions add margin on proven sellers. Track which formats and systems sell, and double down; a catalog of twenty small products is a real income stream in a way one big book rarely is.

7. 7

   Respect the community's honesty norms

   Disclose AI-generated content where platforms require it (DriveThruRPG requires flagging AI-generated material), credit collaborators, fulfill crowdfunding promises, and never scrape other creators' work. The TTRPG scene is small and elephant-memoried; reputation is distribution.

Do not take our word for the money. Put your own numbers in and see what this idea has to earn before it works. Free, instant, no account needed.

Best for: Game masters and artist-writers who finish projects and enjoy building a backlist

Not for: Not for perfectionists who cannot ship small, or anyone expecting one product to pay rent; this is a catalog business where early releases earn modestly while the backlist compounds. If you want to design physical card and board games for manufacturing, that is a different business covered elsewhere in this library.