There's not a lot of info out there for indie wargame designers, and so this article intends to shed light on my experience releasing my first game, Bronze Shield, Silver Coin. I'm going to go over the steps I took during the design and playtesting steps, preparing for launch, and post launch results. Designing and Testing According to Google Docs, the first drafts of BSSC began in November 2023 and I released the game in November 2024, so almost exactly a year of writing and development. The game's working title was Misthios and one of the first steps I did was to write down the "core principles" of the game. This is a step that wargame designer and youtuber Vince Venturella suggests to help you understand what you want players to get out of the game. The original principles I had in mind were for a much more narrative type of game with lots of random tables (a la 5 Parsecs and 5 Leagues by Ivan Sorensen). If you've played or read BSSC however, you'll know that this original conception is quite different from the finished product. I'm fine with that and still consider it a success--I'm a big proponent of "finding the fun". After playtesting several iterations, I made a conscious decision to focus on what I was finding most interesting in the gameplay (tight, brutal combat and the intricacies of the Intrigue system) and focus less on the original conception of a RPG-lite game. My next step was to outline out the entire rules doc, or at least what I could imagine needing at the time. Not filling in anything, simply listing out the section headers something like this, based on what I knew I would eventually need to make a working game:
As soon as I had just enough rules that the game wouldn't "fall over" as soon as I set it up, I got it to the table to test myself. Guess what--it did fall over as soon as I set it up, but that's OK! My first few playtests were just me by myself playing both sides. After it was no longer embarrassingly broken, I coerced a friend to play with me (thanks Reid!). I asked him what he liked most and least about the experience. After the mechanics were starting to feel good, I tested with some other friends. I sent the working doc to a couple friends who had not played before and asked them to walk me through the game, in order to understand if my writing was understandable and the mechanics made sense to someone reading them for the first time. This is as close to true "blind" playtesting as I was able to get to. Optimally you would send your ruleset off to a pair of players and then be a fly on the wall while they try to figure it out. Because of busy schedules and finite friends this is hard to accomplish in "real life". In addition to testing with friends I brought the game to a local wargaming convention and got a couple of strangers to test out the game with me. Wargamer have a lot of opinions so I highly recommend this even if you don't implement every change! Layout and Prep for Launch In June I bought the Affinity suite to start setting up the book's layout in Publisher. Up until that point the rules had lived as a Google Doc, which is far easier to edit. I highly recommend putting off layout as long as possible as you iterate on your rules. Affinity took a bit of getting used to. I am a digital designer "by day" so some of the concepts were familiar but I've never done print work or book layout. The software has a learning curve but if you've ever used complex creation software (video, audio, graphics), it's very approachable. If you're planning on publishing through Drivethru/Wargamevault, they also have templates that will get you going pretty quickly. I also want to shout out Icarus Games, a Youtube channel with a seriously helpful guide for getting started with game layout work. Find the video here. I went with WargameVault because they cater to wargamers specifically and also offer Print on Demand, as it was important to me that players could buy a printed copy. I play from printed books pretty much exclusively (pdf expansions are OK sometimes I guess) and so this was a necessity for me. I also do NOT want to deal with shipping or storage or anything like that myself--I went into this project as an extension of my wargaming hobby, and am trying to keep it fun. In the months leading up to launch, I started a spreadsheet of media and content creators who I thought might be interested in the game (everything from the print magazine Wargames Illustrated to Youtubers with a couple hundred followers). I also paid close attention to how other releasing projects were being advertised online and read articles about how video game producers prepare their product for launch (since there's really not much info on tabletop games). I created a sharable press kit in Google Drive with the following:
As launch got closer I tightened the list of publications and content creators to a shorter list that I:
I ended up reaching out to ten news websites, only one of which shared an article (wargameterrain.blogspot.com). I contacted two wargaming magazines (Wargames Illustrated and Wargames, Soldiers, and Strategy), who definitely appreciated the press kit and both graciously published reviews for BSSC. In the future I will reach out to these publishers sooner since they have the longest turnaround times. I contacted them 1.5-2 months before launch and it really should have been more like 3-4 months. I sent an email to 17 youtube content creators, several of which replied, with two publishing videos as of this date. Special thanks to World of Wargaming and Modelling for Advantage. I'm not really expecting more content at this time, it's a huge time commitment to create videos and most are doing it for the love of the hobby. Community Building Even early on in the design process, I wanted to start building up a community of gamers who would be interested in BSSC. I decided to host my community on Discord because it's the social media I'm most comfortable with and because I was inspired by being a part of Ivan Sorenson's amazing Discord community (amazing except for the brussels sprouts haters). On my discord server I also had a link to a "quickstart" version of the rules that I made sure to explain as a beta version. Downloading the quickstart was the incentive for folks to join the server (which is a much more committed act than, say, "liking" a Facebook post). I posted pics of my own painted minis in wargaming communities on Reddit and Facebook and mentioned that I was painting these for a game I was writing. I focused on Facebook pages dedicated to Ancients and Skirmish wargames. I put a blurb and a link to my Discord. These were communities where I was already active and sharing my paintjobs for other games and projects so this came very naturally. I didn't do Instagram, Twitter, or anywhere else because I don't use those services. I did open a thread at Lead Adventure Forum about the game. Slowly my own Discord community grew and by the time of launch I had about 80 people who had joined because of their interest in the game. Since I have no life I also created a Youtube channel of my own last year, and posted battle reports of games that I enjoy. This grew to around 250 subscribers by the time I posted a flipthrough video and a how to play video for BSSC. Publication and Results On November 14, 2024 I released BSSC and posted in the same communities that I had shared my painting pics in. I published the rulebook flipthrough on Youtube the same day and made sure it was in the Wargamevault description for folks to get a better look. With 20 sales on the first day, the game rocketed to the number four spot on the Bestselling Titles list (which should tell you that Wargame Vault is kind of a sleepy shop most days). So here's the business part--like I mentioned before, I consider this part of my wargaming hobby and my goal was to make some beer money! I decided to stick to around a $20 price point, in the range of some wargames books I consider similar in page length and "value" (whatever that means): Osprey's blue books and Snarling Badger games. I also wanted to make about $10 per purchase, which aligns with my "beer money" goal. So I priced the Softcover/PDF combo at $20 and after paying for the book to be printed and giving Wargamevault their cut I make $11.03 per book sold. I priced the PDF by itself at $15 and make $10.50 for each sale. In the first 30 days I sold 76 copies, with the vast majority being in the first three days after launch. 57% were printed copies versus 43% PDF only.
In the first 30 days I netted $821.33. My total costs for creating the book were:
I hope this has been helpful to any aspiring game designers and has given you a better idea of what to expect and what strategies might help you self publish your own games! Now go join my discord
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Raymond WeilacherThe official blog of Small Batch Miniatures Games Archives
February 2025
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