Don't Forget the Little People

Trolls, Kobolds, and Good Men are worthy of your attention.

♫ YouTube streams killed the RPG star... ♫

Matt Colville has made over $1 Million on his Kickstarter and well on his way to $1.5 M… That’s great. I’m not jealous. Really, I’m not… (ok, maybe just a bit).

I’ve been lucky enough to have a moderately successful blog that nets me just about enough advertising to buy 1 hardback book every 6 months or so. I’m reasonably pleased with my mild “success”, but I’m not trying to make a living in RPGs. Many others are (or at least supplementing their income).

This is a little reminder that there are a lot of creators out there working hard for the love of the game. Some have Patreons, some have Kickstarters, and some are full time game designers who really deserve your attention as well because they have amazing products. I’d like to highlight a few of them who have helped my game out.

Troll Lord Games - Creators of Castles & Crusades, one of (if not the) first Old School Revival games. They also publish some wonderful content for D&D 5th Edition. Their A0 and A1 modules are two of the best campaign starters adventures you will find anywhere.

Goodman Games - Creators of the Dungeon Crawl Classics line of adventure modules that grew into its own RPG. They also have a plethora of 5th Edition content available.

Add even more old-school flavor with Quests of Doom and 5th Edition Foes from Frog God Games.

Cubicle 7 will bring epic Adventures in Middle Earth to your D&D game.

Kobold Press' Beastly Tomes and Books of Lairs enhance any 5th Edition game, and Green Ronin brings the campaign setting of Critical Role to life.

Mike Shea (Sly Flourish) - the original “Lazy” Dungeon Master is running a new Kickstarter for one of his many books. Along with Fantastic Locations and Fantastic Adventures, he now has more advice for more Lazy Dungeon Masters.

In addition, there are several authors like Teos Abadia, M.T. Black, and Sean McGovern that provide amazing adventures and guides on DM's Guild.

Devon Jones - the 3D printing modeler extraordinaire. Devon has been making Dwarven Forge compatible models for the home 3D print market and putting everything out on the internet for free. This guy deserves a medal. https://www.patreon.com/masterworktools

DM Scotty - The Godfather of D&D crafting, who has created dozens upon dozens of awesome YouTube tutorials for building inexpensive terrain and other crafts for the game table. https://www.patreon.com/theDMsCraft

Wyloch - Another crafter with more excellent terrain tutorials. https://www.patreon.com/WylochsArmory

Elven Tower - Derek has been posting free maps on social media about once a week for a quite some time. In his Patreon, you can download full size maps. https://www.patreon.com/elventower

Source: FantasticMaps.com

Fantastic Maps - Another amazing cartographer that posts free maps and tutorials to social media all the time. He has quite a few items at DriveThruRPG and the tutorials are fantastic.

Heroic Maps - Battle maps, battle maps, and more battle maps for all variety of terrain and locations.

9th Level Games - Who doesn’t love Baby-Eating Kobolds? 9th Level created the KAMB character-funnel adventure long before there was a Dungeon Crawl Classics.

There are so many others that I haven’t mentioned here because I don’t have time to compile an exhaustive list. Please post links to your favorite artists, writers, mappers, and other creators in the comments!

It’s awesome that Matt Colville is so well supported by this amazing community. But let’s not forget there are tons people laboring in relative obscurity who are also contributing amazing creative works for DMs and Players alike. Please support them too!