Indie role-playing game

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An indie role-playing game is a role-playing game published by individuals or small press publishers, in contrast to games published by large corporations.^[1][2][3] Indie role-playing game designers participate in various game distribution networks and development communities, both in person and online. Indie game designer committees grant annual awards for excellence.

Although there is no consensus on the exact definition of an "indie role-playing game," users of the term typically emphasize creative freedom and fair financial compensation for game designers. For example, an organizer of the 2022 Queer Games Bundle on Itch.io told Chase Carter for Dicebreaker:

“Our goal is a future in which there are no more starving indie developers. Where corporations don’t rule our brains pumping out endless sequels but instead we have a vibrant games community that produces countless works...To get there we need developers to gain experience and make many games, and that can only happen with time and a livable income.”^[1]

Some definitions of "indie role-playing game" require that all commercial, design, or conceptual elements of the game stay under the control of the creator(s), while others only specify that the game should be produced outside a corporate environment. All definitions agree that an indie role-playing game can be self-published.^[4] Some definitions additionally include small press games, because small press publishing frequently involves creator ownership and/or higher degrees of creative control for writers.^[5][6]

Multiple annual awards are given to indie games for excellence in multiple categories of design. The Indie Game Developer Network grants the Indie Groundbreaker Award in the categories of Most Innovative, Best Rules, Best Setting, Best Art, and Game of the Year.^[7][8] IndieCade offers awards for indie role-playing games in addition to video games.^[9] The ENNIE Awards^[10][11] and Diana Jones Award^[12] frequently honor indie role-playing games, though both awards are also awarded to games published by corporations. The Golden Cobra Challenge grants the Golden Cobra Award for freeform live action role-playing games, including indie tabletop role-playing games with freeform-like design elements.^[13]

Several previous award committees for indie role-playing games are no longer operational. The Indie RPG Awards were presented to indie games from 2002 to 2018, with the main category of Indie RPG of the Year and sub-categories Best RPG Supplement, Best Free Game, Best Production, Most Innovative Game, and Best Support.^[14] Dicebreaker launched the Tabletop Awards in 2022^[15] and awarded it yearly until the website was shuttered in 2024 following the sale of the Gamer Network to IGN.^[16][17] The 200 Word RPG Challenge granted awards from 2015 to 2019.^[18]

Since independent role-playing game publishers lack the financial backing of large companies, they often use different forms of publishing than the traditional three-tier model of publisher, distributor and retailer.^[19]

Crowdfunding is a common model of promotion, funding, and distribution for indie role-playing games. Both individuals and small-press publishers frequently use Kickstarter and BackerKit^[20][21] for this purpose.

Some publishers have no interest in financial success; others define it differently than most mainstream companies by emphasizing artistic fulfillment as a primary goal.^[22] Some independent publishers offer free downloads of games in digital form, while others charge a fee for digital download.

Indie distribution is often achieved directly by the game's creator via e-commerce on Itch.io, DriveThruRPG, Kickstarter, BackerKit, or via in-person sales at gaming conventions. However, some fulfillment houses and small-scale distributors do handle indie products using the traditional three tier system of publisher, distributor and retailer.

Starting in 2018, itch.io became a significant digital distributor of indie role-playing games, primarily in PDF form.^[23][24]

Several organizations specialize in sales of indie games using a two-tier system of publisher and retail outlet. Indie Press Revolution distributes games that it labels as independent.^[22]

Independent publishers may offer games only in digital format, only in print, or they may offer the same game in a variety of formats. Common digital formats include PDF and EPUB. Desktop publishing technologies have allowed indie designers to publish their games as bound books. The advent of print on demand (POD) publishing lowered production costs.

Some designers of indie role-playing games also participate in related tabletop role-playing game design movements such as Old School Renaissance, indie video game development, or live action role-playing game design such as Nordic LARP. Examples of indie role-playing game designers also working in related movements include Anna Anthropy, Sharang Biswas, Emily Care Boss, Banana Chan, Lucian Kahn, Jonaya Kemper, Jason Morningstar, and Jeeyon Shim.

Indie game designers use itch.io to host game jams as inspiration for the development of new games using specific themes or game mechanics. Indie designers also sell games from multiple authors together as "bundles."^[25] Large indie roleplaying game bundles sometimes support political or charitable causes, such as Black Lives Matter,^[26] trans rights advocacy,^[27] abortion access funds,^[28] or material support for victims of war.^[29]

Local gaming conventions provide dedicated space for playing, playtesting, and/or selling indie role-playing games. These include PAX Unplugged in Philadelphia,^[30] Breakout Con in Toronto,^[31] Big Bad Con in San Francisco,^[32] the Double Exposure conventions in Morristown, New Jersey,^[33] and BostonFIG.^[34]

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A number of communities have developed over time where designers and publishers can share experiences, collaborate, and support each other.

One self-identified indie RPG community was centered on The Forge. Overseen by Ron Edwards, this community generally defined indie games as those where the creator maintains control of his or her work^[35] and eschews the traditional publishing and sales model, though there are exceptions. The Forge was strongly influenced by Ron Edwards' essay "System Does Matter".^[36] The Forge was started in 1999 by Ed Healy^[37] as an information site,^[38] with Ron Edwards serving as the editorial lead. In 2001, Ron and Clinton R. Nixon recast the site, centered on the community forum that existed until 2012.

William J. White, a professor at Penn State Altoona, highlighted that the Forge went through several eras. During the Spring era (2001–2004), the Forge experienced massive growth; "by the end of 2004, there were eight general forums comprising 7,977 threads encompassing 94,733 individual posts—an expansion of almost 400% in thread volume since April 2001. The most active was the RPG Theory forum, with 28,322 posts in 1,639 threads, a thread density of 17.3 posts per thread. The next most active was the Indie Game Design thread, with 23,318 total posts and a thread density of 11.0".^[39]: 89 However, a decline in the quality of posts and other moderation actions led many people to leave the Forge for other online communities and this collective group became known as the "Forge diaspora".^[39]: 90 In 2005, Edwards closed the "two theoretical discussion forums [...] on the premise that the Big Model was fundamentally complete".^[39]: 91 White states that the Autumn era (2007-2010) was impacted by disagreements between Edwards and others who ran the community, such as Nixon who at the time was the Forge's technical expert. In May 2010, there was a "major server crash" and the recovery split the site into a read-only archive (2001 to mid-2010) and active forums (" beginning with January 2008").^[39]: 93 The Winter era (2011–2012) featured a much "pared-down forum structure" and the five remaining forums had "relatively low thread densities for all but the Actual Play forum".^[39]: 93 In 2012, Edwards announced the forthcoming closure of the community.^[39]

In the Forge community, indie RPGs often represented a more narrativist school of game design, focusing on strong characters confronting difficult moral choices.^{[citation needed]} These games were often strongly tied to a very specific setting; in this respect, they could be seen as the antithesis of generic role-playing game systems.^{[citation needed]} This was not always true however, since many games from that community instead focused on play dynamics that can be transplanted to a number of settings.^{[citation needed]} For example, a game might focus on the moral question "What will you do to get what you want?" but was not tied to playing the question out in any particular fictional world.^{[citation needed]} No matter the strategy, tightly focused designs were a hallmark of this community.

Games of note from the Forge community include, in roughly chronological order:

• Sorcerer: An Intense Role-playing Game (2001) by Ron Edwards
• The Burning Wheel (2002) by Luke Crane
• Donjon (2002) by Clinton R. Nixon
• Dust Devils (2002) by Matt Snyder
• My Life with Master (2003) by Paul Czege
• Dogs in the Vineyard (2004) by Vincent Baker
• Primetime Adventures (2004) by Matt Wilson
• Shock: Social Science Fiction (2006) by Joshua A.C. Newman

White commented that the Forge "served to champion creator-owned 'indie RPGs' and game design innovation. After an initial surge of conceptual discussion and design experimentation on the forum itself from 2000 to 2004, [...] it inspired a panoply of blogs and forums where further discussion took place [...]. Thus a 'prominent member of the Forge' could be anyone who posted there frequently and so was regarded as an authoritative presence".^[40]: 39

Story Games was a discussion forum dedicated to role-playing games that focused on shared story creation. A majority of the games discussed and created on Story Games were indie and/or small press games. While the site did not offer any games for sale, several creators used it to discuss design issues, report progress, and promote their games. Some games were hosted on the Story Games site. The wiki section hosted information on over 80 story games as well as a variety of related resources. The story-games forum ceased operation on August 15, 2019. The site intended to remain up in a read-only form until August 2020. Two sites that emerged to support the story-game community include The Gauntlet Forums and Fictioneers.

RPGNow and DriveThruRPG were two companies that sold indie role-playing games (as well as mainstream products) as downloadable PDFs. RPGNow created a separate storefront for low-selling or new entries to this market. Initial plans called for this storefront to use the "indie" moniker, but it was eventually decided to call the storefront RPGNow Edge instead. As of 2007, RPGNow Edge is not operating. RPGNow and DriveThruRPG were consolidated into a single company, OneBookShelf, which maintained both sites initially.^[41] In August 2007, the two sites were rebranded, with RPGNow bearing the subtitle: "The leading source for indie rpgs". Since February 2019, all elements of RPGNow (including purchase library) redirect to similar pages on DriveThruRPG.^[42]