Accessible Games

Accessible Gaming Quarterly Year 2 Financials

The final issue of Accessible Gaming Quarterly, Year 2 has shipped. Now that issues 5 through 8 have been released, it’s time to take a look back at the year and see how we did.

Like last year, we started with a budget of $4,000 USD, which translated to $1,000 per issue. This time around, we added ePub as an additional file format for digital editions of the zine. We also hit a +$500 stretch goal to add ePub to previous issues (1 through 4), but since that applied toward last year’s issues I’m not going to include the stretch goal funding in my budget analysis.

For reference, our Kickstarter campaign raised $5131 from 166 backers (an average of $30.90 per backer).

If you would like to compare our numbers to last year’s, check out our previous post in this series: Accessible Gaming Quarterly by the Numbers.

Costs Per Issue

Let’s begin by looking at …
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Organizing Your Files to Send to Layout

Introduction

“Dude, this is way more prepped than I am used to. It’ll definitely speed the process up and allow us more time to get particular with all the details.”

This is the response I received from Todd Crapper, the production designer behind Survival of the Able, after sending him the files for the book. If you had read any of my past posts about laying out a PDF, or perhaps this guest post from Ruben Smith-Zempel, then you may have an understanding of what a big process it can be. Anything a designer can do to make the process run smoother is a huge boon.

What did I do that elicited such a response?

Let’s talk about how I organized my files to prepare to send them to layout.

Manuscript

The entire manuscript for Survival of the Able is only about 38,000 words long. As complete RPGs go, I’d say that’s on the low to …
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Rising Soon – Survival of the Able

On Kickstarter September 28th through November 1st, 2021

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Accessible Gaming Quarterly by the Numbers

When I launched the Kickstarter campaign for Accessible Gaming Quarterly, I set a budget of $1,000 per issue. At four issues for the first year, that meant a goal of $4,000 USD. I wasn’t entirely sure how reasonable that goal was, but I was confident in my ability to make it work as long as my assumptions weren’t wildly off base.

Now that all four issues have been published, it’s time to take a look at how I did. This analysis is as much for my benefit as it is for yours. I hope that by publicly announcing my costs and numbers, I can give you an insight into what it might take to produce a zine of your own someday. If nothing else, I feel I owe it to my backers to be transparent with where the money went.

Let’s dive in, shall we?

(Note: You can purchase individual issues …
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Accessible Gaming Quarterly Issue 2 Now Available

It’s October. The weather is getting colder, the daylight hours are getting shorter, and we’re all stuck indoors for various non-seasonal reasons. What better time to curl up with a book that will give you several new perspectives on Game Mastering?

Accessible Gaming Quarterly Issue 2 – Game Masters is now available on DriveThruRPG. It features seven articles written by disabled gamers and their allies, all of which have something different to say about our favorite hobby. In this issue, we have:

1. “Weight of the World” by Austin Vanderwilt
2. “Neurodiversity in Role-playing”by Thomas Carter
3. “Gaming from the Blind Side” by Richard Bennett
4. “GMing at Public Events” by T Dave Silva
5. “GMing on your Own Terms” by Justin Oldham
6. “Predictably Unpredictable” by Damon King
7. “Interview with Tara Clapper” by Jacob Wood and Tara Clapper

The digital edition of this zine includes Vision Layers, which allows users to toggle between different viewing options in the PDF. Choose from color or …
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How RPGs are Illustrated

Introduction

I recently hired a new disabled illustrator to join the Survival of the Able team. Like I did when hiring an editor, I gave them a sample design to illustrate for me to see if they were a good fit. Here’s the final result:

This illustration depicts Agnus, one of the iconic characters from the book, fighting a zombie. It didn’t start out looking like this, though. In fact, we went through a few rounds of sketches and edits before seeing the final product. Before I could do that though, I had to find an artist for the …
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How RPGs are Edited

I have been hard at work preparing for the Survival of the Able Kickstarter, with a tentative mid-October 2019 launch. That means preparing and planning the campaign, but it also means hiring artists, editors, and layout professionals to help finish the book.

Since Survival of the Able is all about representing people with disabilities, it’s important to me to hire a diverse team. I put out the call to Twitter to find a disabled editor, and within hours was talking to someone who wanted to help.

Side note: Before working with a new team member, I like to order some sample work to see if they’re a good fit. It’s important not to ask for work on spec–that is, it’s important not to ask for someone to give you a sample of any work without paying them for it. If they don’t work out then you’re out a little money, but …
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Game Design Occupations Explained: Art Director

Introduction

It has been a while since we’ve updated the Game Design Occupations Explained series, but we’re back with another informative article. This week we have a guest post from John Arcadian. John is a freelance Art Director who has worked on multiple books through various companies including Cubicle 7, Engine Publishing, Silvervine Games, and Encoded Designs. John is happy to share some of the ins and outs of art direction and shed a little light on why everyone wants to do it themselves once they get a taste for it.

Your manuscript is in your hands, your words are polished and edited, but if you want to get premium shelf space or sales on Drive Thru RPG, you know your book needs to look good. That’s what makes people pick it up and consider the purchase that lets you keep doing making books and gaming products. What makes the product look good  is …
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Style Guide for Writing About People with Disabilities

I recently came upon this helpful style guide for writing about people with disabilities. It’s geared toward members of the press, but useful for anyone who might be writing about disabilities in general.

Link: NCDJ Style Guide

The style guide has a helpful A to Z list of common terms, their backgrounds, and recommendations for how to use them when referring to people with disabilities. There are a couple of common themes among their recommendations:

• Use people-first language. This means you should use phrases such as “a person with a visual impairment” rather than “a visually impaired person.”
• Only refer to the disability if it’s relevant to the story. One example they use is that of residents of a neighborhood complaining about noisy airplanes flying overhead. One of the residents uses a wheelchair, but that fact isn’t relevant to the story because it has nothing to do with the noisiness of the …
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  Tags: publisher advice, accessibility

Accessible Games Year One Sales Figures

Introduction

I sold my first book on May 5th, 2013. On May 23rd of the same year, Psi-punk went on sale and it truly kicked off my start as a small press RPG publisher.

I had intended to post regular sales updates to help others get an idea of what a small press publisher’s sales figures may look like, but alas that goal had fallen by the wayside. Now that it’s been over one year since my first major release went public, I decided to go back and take a look at how the year has gone.

I started by taking a look at my sales on DriveThruRPG. To date, I’ve only sold one PDF through any other channel (a copy of Diviner’s Dissertation on d20pfsrd.com) so I really only have one source to pull from. These sales don’t include the initial Kickstarter backers, of which there were 111 pledges totaling $4,669 …
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