Check out the latest on the TTRPGkids works in progress to stay up to date on upcoming releases! This Dev Log will cover status on the StoryGuider and Mystery Snacks projects, how much the TTRPGkids site costs every year (and how I plan to pay for it), and EVERYTHING ELSE that has been going on this summer (and how I’m planning on moderating my time better in August).

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Find my previous update (Dev Log #22) here!

Jump to:

• StoryGuider: print-on-demand distribution and… one more proof
• Mystery Snacks: layout and proof order
• Yearly Site Budget: target and plan
• Everything Else!

StoryGuider: POD distribution and… one more proof

Proof approvals and POD keys

The StoryGuider proofs arrived this month, and everything in the Big Book of Dragons, Big Book of Friends (both variant covers), and coloring books (big size and zine size) looked great! Because of that, I’ve started distributing the at-cost print-on-demand keys for these five books along with any other previously released books (like a Making a Tabletop RPG for YOUR Particular Kid) that were add-on options from the campaign.

What POD keys mean

With the at-cost POD keys, this means that folks paid for the digital/print-and-play version of the book during the crowdfunding campaign, and now, if they want a physical copy of the book, they can order one at-cost. So, backers will still need to pay for the printing of the book, but there’s no additional profit tacked on.

For me, this was the only way that I could see that I’d be able to feasibly fulfill a physical book version of this project because I have 36 small books + 4 big books (includes one variant cover version) + 2 coloring books (large and zine size) = 42 books.

And I am one person doing my own distribution.

And international shipping has been in flux (which is partially bypassed since DTRPG has a POD printer in both the US and Europe).

I did the math, and it wasn’t going to be effective for me to order a large amount of stock of anything and then ship so much variation in order kits out to folks, especially internationally, so, while this puts an extra step of work on backers and I don’t make as much since I’m not marking the physical copies up… I feel better about it. For future projects, I’m reducing the scope (i.e. making one book instead of 42), so I’ll be doing bulk printing to reduce steps to backers and rebalance the cost side of things, but, I think for this particular project, POD is what allows me to have all these books as physical copy options.

So… that’s a bit of a ramble on the choice to go with POD.

The Big Book of Heroes…

From here, I will point out that I mentioned only two of the three big book titles in the POD distribution list, and that’s because… I found one remaining error in the Big Book of Heroes.

And it was one I thought I had fixed already.

Basically, the words “zebra” and “lemur” were swapped on two pages, and it made a difference to where you went in the story. I’d fixed both before ordering proofs round 2, but I think what happened was I checked it off on my “fixed errors list”, the software I was using crashed, and I didn’t realize it hadn’t saved one of the two fixed spots. So, I saw the correction on the first instance, was relieved it was fixed still, and didn’t realize it hadn’t saved the second instance, then it didn’t get caught in proofreading.

So… the Big Book of Heroes is going through proofing round 3 now. I’ve triple checked that spot, so I hope we’re good, and I should be getting that one out in August based on how long it took other proof iterations to arrive.

Small books

I’ll also be distributing POD keys for the small books over the next few weeks. I’m not releasing them now because… it just takes a while to set the pages up and wait for everything to load, and I don’t have a full day chunk of time to sit down and crank it out. With kiddo on summer break, I’m getting little blocks of time scattered through the day to work on things (this article, for example, was written in about 6 different chunks already), so I’m going to get them out as I’m able.

The home stretch

With all that, the end of the project is near with hopes to close things out in mid August when the Big Book of Heroes is OK’d. It’s exciting (and a relief) to be getting this close to the end… only a few steps to go!!

COMPLETED:

• Oct – campaign funds released from Backerkit
• Oct – send contracts for funded art to artists
• Oct – draft the Tome Traveller Trilogy (part of the Heroes series)
• Oct → Nov – collect first round of art from early artist kick-offs (from itchio and ko-fi prefunds)
• Nov – artists working on Heroes series
• Nov/Dec – finish writing the new Dragon series adventures
• Nov → Jan – reformat the Heroes series
• Jan – Heroes series art due
• Jan – order Heroes series proofs (round 1)
• Jan – artists working on Friends series
• Feb – Friends series art due
• Feb – Heroes series proofs arrive, review, update (round 1)
• Jan – Mar – reformat the Friends series
• Jan – Apr – artists working on Dragon series
• Mar – Dragon series art due 
• Mar – send backer surveys
• Apr – update + order Friends series proofs (round 1)
• Apr – update + order Heroes series proofs (round 1.5)
• Apr – set up digial pages for Friends and Heroes series
• Apr – fulfill digital print-and-play for Friends and Heroes series
• May – Friends series proofs review, update, reorder (round 2)
• May – Heroes series proofs review, update, reorder (round 2)
• June – reformat the Dragon series and make coloring book
• June – order Dragons series and coloring book proofs (round 1)
• June – set up digial pages for Dragons series
• June – fulfill digital print-and-play for Dragon series
• July – Friends series proofs arrive, review, update (round 2)
• July – Heroes series proofs arrive, review, update (round 2)
• July – Dragon series proofs arrive, review, update (round 1)
• July – start distribution of Friends and Dragons POD keys
• July – order Heroes series proofs (round 3)

NEXT STEPS:

• Aug – finish release of small books
• Aug – Heroes series proofs arrive, review, update (round 3)
• Aug – distribute Heroes series POD keys
• Sept – close pre-order store

Mystery Snacks: layout and proofs ordered

Layout done!

For Mystery Snacks, the layout for the book finished up this past month! It took a little bit of adjusting to get blocks of text and the layout to mesh, but with some expert help from layout artist BoRyan, it is done! Here’s a couple samples to check out:

Writer reviews + editing

After layout was complete, I sent a copy to all the project’s guest writers to make sure that any changes we made to wording to get it to fit on the page still had the same meaning they intended when they wrote their work. For me, this step was really important because I’d heard of folks having their writing heavily edited, to the point where they felt it wasn’t their work before, and, while I think my edits were light, I wanted to have full consent from everyone. If someone’s name is on it, I want to make sure they feel the work is still coming from them.

In parallel to this, the final laid out pages went through some line editing and a quick review from a family member who helped give some additional feedback and then… all adjustments made… I sent it for proof copies!

Proof copies ordered!

I’ve ordered proofs from Mixam (where I’ll order in bulk), Lulu (used for POD through RPG Trader), and DriveThruRPG (POD through… DTRPG itself). The hardest part of this was that that all had very slightly different templates for their interiors and covers, so it was a lot of small adjustments to get the pages to fit and still satisfy bleed requirements. I’ll keep you updated on the differences as proofs come in too since I’m very curious out the quality differences between the three printers myself.

Everything so far is on track, and I’ll keep you updated at our next check in!

COMPLETED:

• Feb – fund project
• Mar – kick off guest writers (send guidelines, formatting + style guide)
• Mar – set up pre-order store
• Apr – guest writer check in
• May – guest writer 1st drafts due
• May – review 1st drafts
• May – kick off guest writer 2nd drafts
• June – guest writer 2nd draft due
• June – kick off layout artist
• July – final layout due
• July – order proof (round 1)

NEXT STEPS:

• Aug – proofs arrive, check, review update (round 1)
• Aug – order proof (round 2)
• Sep – finalize surveys
• Sep – distribute surveys
• Sep – close pre-order shop
• Sep – proofs arrive, check, review update (round 2)
• Sep – order bulk
• Sep – digital fulfillment
• Oct – bulk order arrives
• Oct – ship to fulfill project (physical)

Yearly Site Budget: target and plan

This past month, I hit my ko-fi goal to cover the 2026 TTRPGkids website expenses!

With that, I’m setting a new ko-fi goal to cover the 2027 expenses and wanted to share how much it costs to keep the site going for transparency and show what the plan is to meet that every year.

$240 – webhosting

$20 – business email

$25 – business license renewal (MI)

$590 – scheduling aid

$180 – design tools

TOTAL = $1055

Spaces saved on from 2026 to 2027 to account for increased costs elsewhere:

• Changed newsletter service to free model that allows more subscribers
• Switched design software to lower cost option

While I think webhosting, email, license renewal, and design tools are a bit more self explanatory, so I wanted to go over the scheduling aid since it’s solid chunk of the yearly expenses.

The scheduling aid is calendar software that helps me pre-schedule my social media posts (that I write myself) to go out across multiple platforms at the same time as my article releases even if I’m not around that day, and it helps me to manage not being on social media all the time. It lets me simultaneously post across bluesky, instagram, linkedin, etc, format them side-by-side, more easily include alt text, and categorize posts so I can reach more people and get them over to the site when new info is out. It has helped A TON with saving time, which has been more and more precious as workload has increased, and giving me some felxibilty to have screenfree days or focus on answering peoples’ questions on socials instead of having to cross post between different platforms. I’ve seen more engagement with this, so it means the site reaches more people, and I feel like that’s a critical to the site being an effective tool as well. I’m also sharing this tool with Gaming the System(s), an applied gaming non-profit org, now (I had an extra channel slot on my plan), so it’s getting some extra good done out in the world too.

So… to meet all this… I’m relying on my ko-fi subscriptions from site sponsors (who I post about monthly on socials as a thank you) and will start adding anything that I earn on Patreon to this as well by manually updating the ko-fi tracker each month with any additional earnings. I anticipate I’ll meet my 2027 site fees goal by early to mid 2027, and then… instead of jumping right to the 2028 goal right away, I want to target hiring a graphic designer to help me update the webiste a bit. It’s grown A LOT since I started this in 2021 and was figuring out web design on my own for the first time, so I want to give it a little polish, if I can.

Anyway, that’s my goals! If you’ve been finding the site useful and would like to help with meeting this and improving the resource, here’s my ko-fi (best for sponsors who want to be in the monthly shoutout) and my Patreon (best for folks who want perks like early game access and creator chats). I appreciate the support, and I’m excited to have met the 2026 goal already! Thank you all!

Everything Else!

This week, I’m running aStar Trek Adventures TTRPG summer camp through Young Dragon Slayers, and next week is GenCon!

(check out my Gen Con schedul here)

And then after that… I think I’m going to collapse for a bit.

This summer has been a lot (StoryGuider, Mystery Snacks, surgery recovery, physical therapy, kiddo’s b-day party, my brother’s wedding, Origins, Gen Con, summer camp, “2026 Secret Writing Project #2”, “2026 Secret Writing Project #3”, “2026 Secret Writing Project #4”, and then also being on fulltime parent duty with kiddo), but it has been very fun, so I’m planning on rolling along and also protecting my schedule and sanity and time with kiddo during August so we can maybe do a family camping trip or just have a break week in there. Basically, this is me trying to make myself accountable to you all that I’ll fit a rest in and to remind everyone else out there to try to get a rest where you can too.

Happy summer to you all, I hope to see some of you at Gen Con, and I’ll be back with more updates (and hopefully a well rested brain) in August!

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Thank you for checking out this update and just kind of being interested in what TTRPGkids is doing! I hope it helps with seeing some of the self-pub, crowdfunding, and blog writing process for anyone who is thinking of getting into that themselves, and…

Until next time, happy gaming!

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