You can buy TTRPGs in various formats on DriveThruRPG and sister sites like the Storytellers Vault and the DMs Guild. There’s even a Pocket PDF format.
Until this week, if you’ve wanted a softback or hardcover from DriveThruRPG, you would need to have found a TTRPG for which the publisher has submitted the right layout files and then ordered a print-on-demand.
The print-on-demand comes from partners, such as Lightning Source and DriveThruRPG have worked hard to keep the costs down. It also gives them printers around the world, which is handy if there are trade wars brewing.
However, you’ve not been able to buy the same style of book as you’d find in retailers.
Now, DriveThruRPG is testing with “Retail Version – Publisher Fulfilled” books. As the label implies, these books don’t come from a third-party printer but from the publisher themselves, who have previously ordered a print run. It’s the same books as retailers had or once had.
Onyx Path Publishing are once such tester and I’ve been able to spot the following core rules in the system.
- Trinity Continuum Core Rulebook.
- Scarred Lands Creature Collection.
- Scarred Lands Player’s Guide.
- They Came From Beyond The Grave!
- They Came From Beneath the Sea!
- Scion Second Edition: Demigod.
- Legendlore Core Rulebook.
It’s a powerful upgrade for DriveThruRPG and great for customers, too. It means that publishers can err on larger quantities of books because even if traditional bricks-n-clicks retailers can’t or won’t sell the books, even if they send unsold back, the publisher could sell via DriveThruRPG.
In America, the suspension of “de minimis” at customs means that even small imports of printed books will be taxed. Whereas it was unlikely that many publishers were printing internationally at that level before, it’s radically less likely now. DriveThruRPG now makes bigger print runs a bit more palatable.
However, the publisher still has the fulfilment of the delivery to work out, and that might be terribly expensive for international or cross-tariff orders.
Photograph by Alexander Simonsen.
