Welcome to the Independent Publishing forum - please read here first

[Ron Edwards]

This forum is for a wide variety of discussions about publishing role-playing games. The topics can be how-to, or what-you-have-done, or how-does-it-work, or what-about-this, or just about anything. The only constraint is that you must be talking about an independent game, i.e., creator-owned and self-published. You and those who reply to you can refer to non-independent games for various reasons as part of the discussion, but you can't post a topic about publishing a non-independent game. Email me or send me a private message if you're not sure whether your intended topic fits.

One thing to clarify: I'm using "publish" here in the broadest sense possible, to mean, "make publicly available." Whether you are selling it or giving it away, and no matter what physical form it's in (including electronic), and no matter what method is used to deliver it, as long as people can find and get your game ... then you've published it.

Please keep in mind as well that nobody knows what the right way to publish RPGs is. This hobby is newly developing in terms of commerce as well as design. Please keep your judgments focused upon your own experiences and observations rather than claiming you know how "things" work at a general level. So, please help everyone by avoiding speculation and gossip. Don't assert things you have only heard but do not actually know. Don't reply about things you aren't qualified to comment upon.

This point especially applies to copyright and legal issues. Every nation has its own intellectual property and copyright laws. Publishing RPGs is no different from anything else, so the best thing you can do is to learn the laws where you live. It's also worthwhile to forget anything you've heard about these issues, and also not to repeat such stuff when someone else is trying to learn something.

The good news about all this, fortunately, is that independent publishing is no longer an unknown, marginal bit of the role-playing hobby. A lot of us have been doing it, with many different ideas about what success is, and with many different results. As long as we stay clear about what's being asked, and to what extent an answer is based on real experience, then this forum can be a great resource for everyone.

One final point: the current Forge forum only goes back through 2008. The older posts dating back to 2001 may be found here.

Best, Ron