Alternatives and choices are good.  So I’ve stumbled across a couple of platforms that I’m looking at.

First, let me talk about itch.io.  I’ve heard of it before and didn’t pay it much mind.  Then Necrotic Gnome put the preliminary PDF’s of their latest Kickstarter up ther and lots of folks started looking more closely at it.

ithch.io is more focused on video games rather than table top games but you can still upload and sell PDF’s there. So yes. It’s basically a store front. On the plus side, they don’t take as big of a chunk as DrivethruRPG. I went the non-exclusive route so their take 35%.  But then DrivethruRPG does have the name recognition and that’s where most folks will go when they’re looking for RPG stuff.  So you get that virtual foot traffic there.  On itch.io, you’re kind of on your own to drive the traffic to your stuff.  So that kind of balances out.  So I think it’d be good for new products or may be sales or just a back-up type store front.  I haven’t uploaded anything yet. I’m deciding what to put up there.  But it does appear to be a viable alternative.

Now on to Locals.com.  This more like a Patreon alternative but there’s some differences.  First, Patreon seems to be more focused on delivering some sort of product while Locals leans more towards building a community.  Sure you can still give folks stuff for subscribing.  The one with Locals is that a community generally won’t go a subscription model until it hits about 100 members because unlike Patreon you can follow a creator without actually paying them any money.  You will still be limited to certain posts, content, and so on like Patreon. They also use Stripe rather than PayPal. For me, that’s a bit annoying since I need to create another account to move around money.

I don’t have a plan to shut down my Patreon.  I still plan posting the occasional PDF and beta rules and early announcements and that sort of thing.  But I went a head started an community over there on Locals.  My plan for this is another place where us old grognards can sit back and yak.  It may grow from there.  Who knows?

I ain’t trying to get rich off this stuff. As I’ve said before, I just want to make enough to cover the web hosting, buy more games, and the occasional pizza and beer.

So come on over and join up the They Might Be Gazebos Locals community.  We’ll see what happens.