Welcome home.
It’s January 3rd, and the episode title is “The Yuletide Limbo”
[The following is a transcript of Audio EXP: #315]
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d20play won the RPG Publisher Spotlight. We don’t yet have answers back from Gear Games, and despite being through the Yuletide limbo of Christmas and Hogmanay, I still think we’re in the holiday season, and so I’m not chasing. Come Monday, though, I’ll be politely emailing.
The same is true for d20play, who I hope has a less frantic month than Gear Games faced in December.
If you’re one of our great patrons, then you can vote for one of the following publishers for the February poll.
- Monkey Business Games
- Surbook Press
- Hero Level Games
- Demons & Dungeoneers Gamebooks
- Monster Mage Games
Now, I hope you like lists because I spent my holiday copying data from sites like DriveThruRPG and DMsGuild into spreadsheets. I used a semi-automated process for this, one I developed to help keep up with Kickstarter launches, and one which avoided AI analysis, which I did not trust. In previous years, the Roll20 team (formerly OneBookShelf) helped me with a quick database query, but they did not want to help this year, so we’ve not been able to look at genres yet or highlight indies.
On the plus side, rather than getting blind data, I know exactly what I collected, and I’m wondering what other analyses I could do with it. I’m considering revisiting the live pages and adding extra details to my spreadsheet, such as the PDF price and page count, so I can comment on average costs. I’m not sure it’s worth it. What do you think? Let me know.
Anyway, of all the products added to the DriveThruRPG catalogue this year only two his Adamantine Best Seller status which means more than 5,000 sales.
- You can guess one – it’s Daggerheart.
- The second is harder to predict – it’s Need Games’ Fabula Ultima Atlas: Natural Fantasy.
In the tier below, there were seven Mithril Best Sellers. They are;
- Grimwild: Cinematic Fantasy Roleplaying by Oddity Press.
- Daggerheart NEXUS Corebook by Darrington Press.
- West Marches Campaign Playstyle Guidebook by Karl Otto Kristoffersen.
- The No-Prep Gamemaster: Train Your Brain to Run Tabletop Roleplaying Games by dicegeeks.
- The Fat Dragon Guide To Printing FDM Miniatures by Fat Dragon Games.
- Interface RED Volume 4 by R. Talsorian Games Inc.
- Single Player Mode by R. Talsorian Games Inc.
There’s some concern in that list, as at the time of writing, Grimwild’s creator and author, J.D. Maxwell, is still, in effect, missing.
It’s a different story at the DMsGuid. The highest tier achieved there by a 2025 release was gold.
Heroic Maps was a runaway success, with chapters one through ten of their Dragon Delves maps all ranking. Outside maps, there were two other gold hits.
- Gristlecracker’s Hags & Grimoire by Daniel Chivers.
- Fleshing Out Curse of Strahd: Vallaki by MandyMod.
It’s different again over at the Storytellers Vault, where we had a Platinum Best Seller, which means more than 1,000 sold, and four gold. But, wait, there’s a catch.
- Library – Domain of Evernight – Action Modifier by Black Chantry Productions took that Platinum, but it’s a single Vampire: The Eternal Struggle Card.
There’s another Black Chantry card in the Gold Best Sellers, as well. The four Storytellers Vault downloads that did 500 or more are;
- Abyssals: Sworn to the Grave by Onyx Path Publishing.
- Pillars of Creation by Onyx Path Publishing.
- Library – Outside the Hourglass – Combat by Black Chantry Productions.
- M20 Forgotten and Forbidden Orders by Onyx Path Publishing.
As I noted in my analysis, the Vault is the only platform where official partners go toe-to-toe with community content. Not that that’s a bad thing. It’s a different thing.
I wanted to look at both Pathfinder and Starfinder Infinite, since I had gone to all this trouble, but discovered that, by accident or by design, the metal bestseller tables are exactly the same on both sites.
- Magic+ by Team+, et al scored a Platinum hit.
- Tian Xia+ by Team+, et al also got the only Gold best seller hit.
Roll20’s metal tiers are very logical so I was able to assign points to each one and start adding up the points. For example, a copper badge for any product released in 2025 got a publisher 1 point, gold gets 10 points and adamantine gets 100 points.
Here are the winners.
- At DriveThruRPG, the winner is Darrington Press with 151 points.
- At the DMsGuild, the winner scores even higher as Heroic Maps takes home 174 points.
- At the Storytellers Vault, the winner is Black Chantry Productions with 95 points.
- At the combo of Pathfinder and Starfinder Infinite, the winner is Derry Luttrell with 39 points.
As I said, I didn’t collect price and page count as it was already a time-intensive project but I did take a note of whether or not products declared the use of AI.
The news is that among these best sellers, only a few products use or disclose AI. The highest number are copper-tier DriveThruRPG downloads, where 14.4% disclosed use, 32% did not comment, and 53.4% are entirely human. 100% of the adamanatine downloads are entirely human.
In the Storytellers Vault and the Paizo community content, no one who uses AI gets into the charts.
I guess the only slight concern is at the DMsGuild, and it does not seem heavy there – with only 15.9% of copper best sellers there declaring the use. However, disclosure is terrible. 100% of gold best sellers did not disclose and neither did over 80% of electrum best sellers.
It’s not all been stats this week. Other highlights include our summary of the upcoming changes to Cairn, which include a setting book or three, a Barebones edition and a convention called Between Two Cons.
I reviewed the Batman Gotham City Chronicles quickstart and found it good enough to grumble again that such a high-profile RPG is lost under the tailcoats of a board game.
Bronwen reviewed the Gwent card game, which, I swear, she bought for her husband and not herself, and also found it good enough to bring back pleasant memories of The Witcher, but the rules a little disorganised.
On that note, we’re getting back into the regular swing of things, and I’ll speak to you next week.
