Art by Goblins and Gardens
The Annotated Archive of Game Design Resources
A cataloged archive of different resources to demystify the steps that go into creating, publishing, and selling ttrpg products.
What is The Annotated Archives?
Curated by Goblin Archives, this site’s goal is to lower the barrier of entry for designers. It brings together twitter threads, blogs and youtube videos.
Cataloging these resources aims to demystify the design process. The push to open practice helps support the community. The Archives is a place that makes these practices easy to find.
Where to start (a great overview)
- Making An RPG Zine Start To Finish by the Highland Paranormal Society (Nate Treme). This is a fantastic overview of how to make a zine, especially since it guides the viewer through within the context of an actual ttrpg zine over its 4 and a half minutes runtime.
- Digital Zinemaking Basics: A Guide by Zeshio is a fantastic overview to making a zine from start to fnish (through 8 detailed steps), guiding the reader through the process of developing Adventurer’s Guide to the Yol’Najj Forest as the framing.
- Markdown is increasingly being a format that designers are using when writing. I find it really helpful in both the process and what it allows me to do (output in epub, html, and this website). Two great resources that are also included below are Luke Gearing’s “Using Markdown and Pandoc to Make RPG Documents for Free” and Nate Treme’s Making an HTML Dungeon. I think it is definitely worth looking into as a tool to use when designing.
- 5 Tips for Making Money in TTRPGs by John Battle is a great overview about how they got to where they are currently (both their games and channel are top tier).
- Designing a tabletop rpg: day 1 - laying groundwork by Adam Bell is the start of a video series that has Adam making their practice visible as they design a ttrpg called Promise the Moon.