OSR: How To Become A Hundredaire On DriveThruRPG

I've got 4 products up for sale on DriveThruRPG. In order of publication date, they are:

• Kidnap the Archpriest (Megapost) 
• Epochrypha: A Book of Speculative Ages (Megapost)
• Tomb of the Serpent Kings - Deluxe Print Edition (Megapost) 
• Magical Murder Mansion (Megapost)

Tomb of the Serpent Kings is a free PDF and an at-cost print on demand copy, so it doesn't really count. The Megaposts contain links to reviews, supplemental information, etc.

Anyway, people sometimes ask how the books are doing. Here's a look behind the curtain. I'm going to be as blunt and transparent as possible about sales figures. I think this kind of analysis is important. If you publish stuff, consider giving it a shot.

If you want to actually make money, read Cecil Howe/Swordpeddler's article How To Become A Godzillionaire On Drivethrurpg. The title of this article is a loving reference. Notable advice that I do not follow:

• I don't pay for ads.
• I don't use PPP for anything.
• I don't do sales or bundles. You want the thing? Pay for the thing. You want the thing cheaper? No thing for you!

I'm not in this for fat stacks of cash. Ideally, each book pays for its own costs and provides enough money to start work on the next project. In practice... well, you'll see. I'm mostly in it to make things exist. If you want my advice on writing and designing a book, check out this post.

Sales Per Month

Here's a breakdown of sales per book per month. Fairly useless at this point, except to show that sales usually start high and drop off, with an intermittent spike. More on that spike later.

Since the Tomb of the Serpent Kings free PDF massively skews everything, I'm going to leave it off for all future charts.

Cumulative Sales Per Month

Ah, that's better. Flat line = few sales, steep line = increase in sales.

For ease of use, here's the charts split out by Print and PDF. It's sort of amazing that there are only 21 print copies of Kidnap the Archpriest out in the wild, and only 38 copies of all books (not counting Tomb of the Serpent Kings).

Total Cumulative Sales Per Month (with comments)

Here's the most interesting chart. With print+PDF sales combined some trends become clear. I've added a little star whenever a Questing Beast review came out; there's a spike in sales, but it almost immediately returns to normal.

Cents per word is estimated. The total, across all paid books, is ~6.5 cents a word.

You can compare rates per word to the rates on this site, and note that those rates don't include image editing, layout, and locating editors, artists, etc. If you factor in time (or blogging) you'd probably be better off (financially) sticking a magnet on a pole and going through storm drains for loose change.

Book-Specific Notes

Kidnap the Archpriest
The bestseller by far, but why? It fills a niche. 5E's attempt at a heist... isn't; Kidnap the Archpriest does a much better job, and seems to get regularly brought up whenever heists are under discussion. The art also helps. Let's face it, Luka would be worth hiring for an RPG project even if his art was photocopies of old publicity stills with black marker moustaches because he's Got Reach. Luckily for everyone, his art is amazing. The sneering Archpriest on the cover is probably responsible for 50% of all sales.

Epochrypha
This was a passion project. It didn't exist and I wanted it to exist; making money was incidental. Two contributors (Dan D and Dunkey Halton) were paid up front for their work. This is why you never take a percentage of the profits unless you're absolutely certain the book will make a profit; if they'd cut a royalty deal they'd still (14 months after release!) be waiting to make the rate they were paid up front.

Tomb of the Serpent Kings
There are still revisions I'd like to make if we ever do a new version, but I think it's a solid book as-is. It's certainly my most famous work. Like Kidnap the Archpriest, it fills a niche. I'm not sure how many downloads go through the Megapost vs. DriveThruRPG, but it's still fairly successful: 4,100 PDF downloads and 141 print copies.

Magical Murder Mansion
Costs for this book were lower than expected thanks to the generosity of the artist (gooooo Frenden!), but playtesting and writing time was much higher than expected. The whole thing was revised several times before ever it ever saw an editor. It's the most tested module I've produced to date. While I think MMM fills a niche (a modernized and easy-to-run funhouse dungeon), I suspect demand for that kind of dungeon is lower than expected. Either that, or the book just hasn't found a following yet. I suspect the demise of G+ has made launching a new book much harder. Twitter and Discord are poor substitutes.

Reviews

Because DriveThruRPG doesn't allow external links, it's hard for a buyer to get a detailed sense of what a book contains. The Megaposts help, but only if the buyer searches for them. If you write a review, consider sticking some excerpts on DriveThruRPG.

	★★★★★	★★★★	★★★	★★	★	Reviews
Kidnap the Archpriest	17	1				6
Epochrypha	3					1
Tomb of the Serpent Kings	26	6	1		2	5
Magical Murder Mansion	3

Tomb of the Serpent Kings has the highest number of reviews and ratings by far. If I had to guess, it's because of the negative reviews. If people really like a product and see it's rated 5 stars, they might not bother to add a rating. But if people really like a product and see it's got a few 1 star reviews they disagree with, they might rate it highly "to balance things out". Who knows.

Conclusions

When it's charted out like this, it's clear how small this side of the industry really is. Kidnap the Archpriest is a gold bestseller. The other books are silver. Retweeting "pay authors" or "support indie publishers" is free; don't expect those people to turn up when the hat gets passed around.

It's also rather alarming that I've only made ~1,000 paid sales on DriveThruRPG.. and then managed to get 569 Kickstarter backers for a new project. That seems... not right somehow.

Anyway, hopefully the charts help. If you've got questions, ask away.

OSR: Magical Murder Mansion Megapost

I wrote a funhouse dungeon. You can buy it in print and in PDF form here.

Why?

I wanted to try writing a dungeon full of traps and unusual encounters, in the style of classic funhouse dungeons like Tomb of Horrors, White Plume Mountain, and Tegel Manor. 

Some of the traps in classic funhouse dungeons seem like jokes designed for the module’s author and the GM to share, with the poor players left frustrated and baffled. I’ve tried to make Magical Murder Mansion entertaining for everyone; even the deathtraps and surprises should get an joyful “oh no, I can’t believe we walked into that one” from the players. The GM knows it’s a trap. The players know it’s a trap. But someone’s got to open that door.

Magical Murder Mansion isn't revolutionary and it's not designed to be. It's just a solid, playtested, fun, cleanly laid out, and tightly edited dungeon designed for immediate use.

Art

Frenden did the art and it's excellent. From the tasseled fez of the Auburn Bulk to the grin on Hubert Nibsley's smug face to the screaming hordes of ravenous Veggie-Mites, Frenden did an excellent job in capturing the mansion's flavour and tone.

Layout

David Shugars, once again, stepped in to polish the layout and make the PDF do all those lovely fancy hyperlinked things. All page references are linked, all layers optimized, all... other things I don't completely understand done to make the PDF product as convenient to use as possible.

Editing

Shane Liebling helped find what felt like hundreds of spelling errors and suboptimal phrases. He also ran a playtest of the module.

Print Copy
Oh yes, way back in this post, Brian Ashford and Chris Wilson provided
the prompts for the Corpulent Callowfex and the Tooth Fairies.

Reviews

Before you stands a bizarre creation: a funhouse dungeon that tries to make sense. It is a neatly engineered mishmash, an IKEA nightmare that would pass an EU inspection. You see, the killer cucumbers are all according to directive, and the death ray room will kill you in a fair way. Do not run. You will, in fact, have fun. Welcome to Magical Murder Mansion.

-Gabor Lux, Beyond Formalhaut

In 30 pages, Skerples manages to detail almost 75 different rooms. It's an extremely easy read and the material is whimsical and fantastic. Another one written for an unnamed OSR system. Another strong recommendation.

-Edgewise, Artifacts and Relics

Video Review - Questing Beast

Anyway, Murder Mansion continues Skerples’ trend of excellence as well as providing a really FUNNY dungeon crawl experience. Plenty of adventures have jokes or puns, but few are actually funny. This one is. My players were laughing and sweating through the entire adventure.

-David Schirduan

The adventure has a clear goal in what space it's trying to fill, and it delivers in spades. Increased verisimilitude compared to other funhouse dungeons was something I liked and worked well, and the main adventure structure (with the 4 keys) was well received by my players. Deadly traps and situations are not too capricious or random; clever players will be rewarded. The whole adventure evokes a Saturday morning cartoon feel. [...]

The PDF version is more than enough, ideal for print & play, there's really no need for a physical version. Price to content ratio is a steal, and it belongs to any OSR collection as a masterclass in the space it's trying to fill: funhouse dungeons. Very much recommended. 

-Adrian Hammer, The Man With A Hammer

-Between Two Cains

Useful Tools

Virtual Tabletop Map (Tim Clark)

Final Notes

Backers at the $5 level or above level on Patreon get PDF copies of this book and all future books for free. If you read this module I'd like to hear about it! Feel free to post links to play reports or reviews in the comments below.

OSR: 10 Magical Murder Mansion Monsters

After many tests, I'm moving to the following system-less format for monster stats.

EDIT: Magical Murder Mansion is now available.

[Name]
HD: # (~4x# HP)
Found In / Number Appearing:

Appearance:
Voice:
Wants:
Morality: 
Intelligence:

Armour:
Move:
Morale:
Damage:

[Other Info]

Konstantin Kostadinov

And here's the justification:

• Name goes first, obviously, for indexing and reference purposes.
• Found In / Number Appearing: I've given up putting condensed statblocks into room descriptions. It saves time if monsters have nothing going on but HD and armour but how likely is that? Instead, I've put a page # reference to the monster section. To make it easy to flip back to the right room without having to use a page marker, I've included the room #s below the monster name. Number Appearing is for non-dungeon bestiary entries.
• A space because room #s can get confused with HD and HP#s without some way to separate them.
• HD goes next because it's an immediate indicator of danger and it's probably the bit the GM will need to look at the most.
• Appearance after that, because once the GM finds the monster they'll probably want to describe what the PCs see. Same with Voice.
• Morality is an odd one. It lets me add a bit more flavour to a creature's behavior without taking up too much extra space. It works for NPCs and slimes alike.
• Intelligence is another helpful tool for GMs. How well can the monster plan? Not a number, but a brief blurb.
• There's a space between the "descriptive" entries and the "combat" entries to allow GMs to quickly look at the relevant section. It might not seem like much but it really does help.
• Armour is expressed "as plate", "as leather", etc. Damage reduction and immunities go here.
• Move is expressed as "normal" or "1/2 normal" or "fly 2x normal", etc.  Useful for chases.
• Morale is a number from 2 (craven) to 12 (unbreakable).
• Damage deals with attacks (e.g 1d6/1d6/1d8 claw/claw/bite) and attack modes (1d6 claw or 1d8 bite) fairly elegantly. Damage is at 
• There's another space. This lets GMs scan upwards from the bottom of the statblock to quickly find the damage rolls for a monster.
• Special abilities, spells, etc. go below the main statblock.

Konstantin Kostadinov

Examples

Here are 10 monsters from my upcoming dungeon, Magical Murder Mansion, a funhouse dungeon in the vein of Tomb of Horrors or Tegel Manor, but with a bit less cruelty. You can see all 90 rooms (and get a free PDF copy) by backing at the $5 level or above on Patreon. Two of the monsters are adapted from a previous post. Thanks to Chris Wilson and Brian Ashford for the prompts.

Ancestral Statue

Found In: 17: HALL OF ANCESTRAL STATUES, 55: STATUE ALCOVE.

HD: 5 (22 HP)
Appearance: glowering men and women in antique costumes. All resemble Hubert Nibsley.
Voice: dolorous gravely groans.
Wants: to protect Hubert Nibsley's good name,
Morality: not vindictive but very thorough.
Intelligence: as smart as a very obsessive person.

Armour: as plate. ½ damage from slashing/piercing weapons.
Move: ½ normal, cannot leap or swim.
Morale: 12
Damage: 1d12 bludgeoning.

Ancestral Statues will rarely pursue more than one or two rooms away from their starting location unless antagonized.

Bound Ghost

Found In: 1: CLOAKROOM, 15: BOILER ROOM, 25: SIDEBOARD, Random Encounter Table.

HD: 10 (40 HP)
Appearance: ragged white shape with a human face. Foggy scraps of livery, mournful eyes.
Voice: deeply depressed grumbling or unnatural screaming.
Wants: to repeat memories of life.
Morality: deeply confused.
Intelligence: disjointed, like pages of a book put back out of order.

Armour: as plate. Can only by harmed by silver (½ damage), spells, or magic weapons (full damage).
Move: normal, through floors and walls.
Morale: 7
Damage: touch inflicts 1d8 cold damage or target ages 2d20 years. Target's choice.

Bound Ghosts were Hubert Nibsley's attempt at solving the servant problem. It didn't work.

Coal Golem

Found In: 16: COAL STORAGE.

HD: 12 (50 HP)
Appearance: a pile of coal, animated jerkily. Huge coal-toothed head, short coal fingers.
Voice: inarticulate roaring.
Wants: to crush intruders and stuff them in its mouth.
Morality: blind rage.
Intelligence: dumb as a rock.

Armour: as leather.
Move: ½ normal.
Morale: 10
Damage: 1d8+2 bludgeon / 1d8+2 grab. If grab hits, next round will try to eat for 4d6 damage.

The Coal Golem takes double damage from fire. If set on fire, it takes 6 damage per round and fills the room with thick black smoke.

Corpulent Callowfex

Found In: 30: CALLOWFEX MAZE.

HD: 2 (12 HP), +1 HD (+6 HP) every time it is hit.
Appearance: a sad fat iguana with mange. Lunatic eyes.
Voice: grunting at 2 HD, screeching at 5 HD, megomanical speech at 10 HD.
Wants: to bite things, to rule the world.
Morality: millions of years of cold lizard loathing.
Intelligence: dumb at 2 HD but rapidly grows smarter.

Armour: as leather, but cannot take damage (see below).
Move: ½ normal at 2 HD, normal at 5 HD, 2x normal at 10 HD.
Morale: 8
Damage: 1d6+HD bite / 1d6+HD claw.

The Corpulent Callowfex is a backwards castoff from an orthogonal timeline. Don't worry about it too much. Nobody understands time travel anyway. It needs to die to live. Every attack that hits it give the Corpulent Callowfex +1 HD instead of dealing damage. As it gains HD it gains power. By 10 HD it is as intelligent as a person, as large as a velociraptor, and as mean as the devil.

Anything that does not deal damage affects the Corpulent Callowfex normally. Tying it up works. Running also works; it wants to break out of the Maze and the Mansion and wreak havoc in the city.

Dire Phantasm

Found In: 33: GARDEN, Random Encounter Table.
HD: 0 (1 HP)
Appearance: a disconnected collection of parts. Giant clawed feet. Scythe-like claws. Slavering maw, teeth like railroad spikes, red glowing eyes.
Voice: heavy breathing, occasional raspy wheeze.
Wants: to feed off ambient fear.
Morality: animalistic.
Intelligence: minimal.

Armour: as plate+shield, but automatically hit by area-of-effect attacks.
Move: 3x normal.
Morale: 5
Damage: none.

The Dire Phantasm is mostly illusory. It feeds off ambient fear. The creature itself resembles and eyeless tailless mouse, but it creates the illusionary impression of a much larger, much more fearsome creature stalking through the grass. It is exceptionally quick and can scamper out of sight and range with ease.

Kiln-Fired Zombie

Found In: 5: VELVET BEDROOM, 11: BUTLER'S ROOM, 21: TORTURE CHAMBER, 27: MAIDS' QUARTERS, 56: LOUNGE, Random Encounter Table.

HD: 2 (8 HP)
Appearance: shuffling human corpse with spots of light brown baked clay. Dried, seared flesh, dense thumping step. Sometimes dressed in burnt and tattered livery.
Voice: silent.
Wants: to wring the life out of people.
Morality: none.
Intelligence: none.

Armour: as leather. Reduces all incoming damage by 1.
Move: normal.
Morale: 12
Damage: 1d8. Always strikes last in combat. Will only attack or pursue things they can see.

Hubert Nibsley attempted to combine legal golem technology with illegal necromancy. The results are less than spectacular. Kiln-Fired Zombies are slightly more durable than traditional zombies but are equally lousy servants.

Laser Rat

Found In: 8: BROCADE BEDROOM, 18: SOUTHEAST TOWER, 85: ARMORY ALCOVE, Random Encounter Table.

HD: 0 (2 HP)
Appearance: fat brown or grey rat with a glowing third eye on its forehead.
Voice: angry squeaking.
Wants: food, warmth.
Morality: none.
Intelligence: feral cunning combined with magical enhancement.

Armour: none. 25% chance to resist magic.
Move: normal, can climb anything.
Morale: 5.
Damage: 1d4 bite or laser beam (rat goes last in combat. Inaccurate. 30' range, 2d6 damage, Save for half damage. Hits everything in a straight line, reflected by mirrors and shiny surfaces. One use per day, makes a warbling raygun noise, sets paper on fire.)

Escaped experiments. If startled and threatened, the rats will blast threats with inaccurate laser beams and flee into the walls. They could potentially be tamed or trained.

Thirty-Inch Bookworm

Found In: 9: RUINED BEDROOM.

HD: 12 (50 HP)
Appearance: Fat grey worm, 30" diameter, coated in slime and bits of paper. Rotating lamprey-toothed mouth, no eyes.
Voice: gurgling.
Wants: books, to protect its eggs.
Morality: none.
Intelligence: moronic but dedicated.

Armour: as leather.
Move: normal, charge 2x normal.
Morale: 10
Damage: 2d12 bite or 2d6 thrashing (hits all adjacent creatures) or 1d20 charge (move at least 30', knocks target prone on a hit).

The saliva of the Thirty-Inch Bookworm dissolves paper on contact, ruining books and reducing them to a nutritious grey sludge. The Bookworm will pursue anyone holding a book, but will otherwise only try to drive explorers away from its eggs.

Tooth Fairy

Found In: 70: TOOTH FAIRY INFESTATION.

HD: 0 (1 HP)
Appearance: tiny flying insect-like humanoid. Pincer claws like a crab, wings like a dragonfly.
Voice: high-pitched shrieking. Nails on glass.
Wants: teeth. 
Morality: sadistic.
Intelligence: dim but cruel.

Armour: as plate + shield. No armour against area-of-effect attacks.
Move: fly 2x normal.
Morale: 8
Damage: 1 prodding or 1d4 tooth removal (only if target is being attacked by at least 2 other Tooth Fairies.)

Vicious little parasites, Tooth Fairies will try to pry an isolated target's mouth open and pull out their molars. They can be distracted by additional teeth. The lay eggs in molars, which hatch in 20 days to produce another full-sized Tooth Fairy.

Wrestling Angel

Found In: 38: "GOOD" CHAPEL

HD: 11 (45 HP)
Appearance: 10' tall glowing human in a white robe. Beautiful, androgynous. Has a gold halo and huge white wings.
Voice: booming, good-natured, excited.
Wants: to wrestle.
Morality: utterly and totally good and kind. Still wants to wrestle.
Intelligence: credulous.

Armour: as plate. None against unarmed attacks. Immune to non-magical weapons, except for unarmed attacks.
Move: fly normal.
Morale: 12
Damage: special.

The Wrestling Angel will pick one person and ask them to wrestle. If they show any signs of agreeing, or even if they hesitate, the Angel will try to grab them and throw them. The Angel does 1d4 temporary Constitution or Strength damage on a hit, or 2d4 if the Angel decides to throw their opponent through some pews. Using weapons will be greeted with "THAT'S CHEATING" and a vicious elbow to the stomach. It treats anyone who attacks it as an opponent and everyone else as an audience member. Once all opponents have been reduced to 0 Strength or Constitution, the Wrestling Angel struts around for a few seconds then ascends in a beam of light. Characteristic damage inflicted this way heals in 1hr and cannot kill a person.

Angel blood heals all wounds. A dead angel is worth at least 5,000gp but will probably attract questions.