Category: meta

Stuff about me and or the blog

The guide to marketing games in a zero-click world
Marketing new tabletop roleplaying game supplements and games is harder than ever. Social media is less dominated by a single platform than at any time since 2010. Successful crowdfunding seems to demand being a previously known brand. No one clicks on links any more.

Probably the most frustrating nature of the zero-click world is that the early tricks are now also being suppressed — “link in comment/bio” doesn’t help. Second most annoying is that even on platforms that do not suppress links no one clicks on links.

For authors and other RPG creators that’s horrible. You have a product to sell and all the tracking data and systems you grew on no longer work.

Sales are down because for a decade or longer you pointed people where to go and they went there. Big tech changed and people changed behaviors. Small tech didn’t solve that.

Your new book feels dormant. Your maps aren’t selling. Your Etsy page is dead.

What can you do?

Lean into Zero Click Marketing.

First coined by Amanda Natividad, Zero Click Marketing is the general concept that if people aren’t clicking on your links you must interest them in ways that make them seek your product and/or brand. Natividad and her full-time boss at SparkToro have a book coming that explains the concept.

Applying these concepts can be a difficult transition for those of us that worked in marketing for the past 15 years or so. Being trained on calls to action, UTM tracking, click-through rates and more established a system you wanted to work forever. It didn’t last.

Zero click feels wrong at first. Attribution is harder than ever for numerous reasons (dark social, generative AI, Google summaries). And yet you need to sell your game, your supplement, your art.

Here’s how TTRPG creators can lean into zero click marketing to help others find their products

Now, I’m going to include more links. I don’t pretend that you will click all of them. I don’t need you to do that, because these fundamentals are what I’m currently using in my full-time marketing gig and how I see others who buy-in to zero-click marketing operate.

Remonstered! The Monsters Know What They’re Doing

Owning a lot of Ammann’s books, I’m going to present practical examples building on his latest book. These examples may be extremely basic or they may be new ideas for Keith Ammann and his team.

Find your audience

This isn’t necessarily a zero-click fundamental, but without it zero-click can’t work. Audience dispersal is huge. There’s more platform choice than at any point in the internet’s modern history — the Fediverse, ATProtocol, Meta’s suite, LinkedIn, forums, Discord, YouTube, TikTok (both versions), newsletters, blogs, etc. The gaming community on all of those is strong enough to sell unique products.

Being on all of them effectively is nigh-impossible for all but the largest gaming corporations. Do not attempt this.

Find your audience using your past, using an audience marketing tool like SparkToro, or copying those who are most like yourself. Then you build or continue to build there.

Exist on rented land

Yes, being on social platforms means you are likely on rented land and the owners of that land can tear away the systems and methods that used to work at any time. That can be devastating emotionally and for your business — unless you build on the rented land in a way that is natural, individual and participatory. No platform change has ever removed that.

You aren’t there to constantly push a product. You are there because you offer a unique personal voice about the games you love. Sometimes there’s a product involved. Mostly there’s not.

Case study: Remonstered! The Monsters Know What They’re Doing

According to SparkToro, D&D gamemasters improving monster combat tactics over index on the following social platforms when compared to the general public — reddit, Discord.

Yes, this is different from the two other similar audiences I tested. Non-D&D fantasy players tend to over-index on X/Twitter while D&D social players and world builders see Pinterest enter the top 5.

I’m using a free version of SparkToro for this example.

Ammann needs to be present where the conversations about D&D monster tactics happen. Being on Discord is an easier win because that audience is very present there. Reddit is also popular. Paid Sparktoro likely shows presence in Bluesky, TikTok, Threads and more.

Build your distinct voice there

Knowing where your audience is and where you are comfortable means that’s where you should build your brand for marketing. Those are often seen as dirty words because of the style of commodity marketing, click bait and outright lying that can exist.

Here, for the small creator when using the word brand I’m talking about the identity of yourself and your creations. When I’m talking about marketing that’s a reference to building interest in your creations. That’s it.

Your voice should have a clear identity, as should your products. If I were selling a creation from Full Moon Storytelling it would be “story creep within D&D that empowers more support for the social pillar, especially by leaning into third places, cultural differences and building distinct enemies who challenge player characters across all three pillars.” If I were building towards marketing a product I would extend those conversations without necessarily linking or even naming my product every time.

I would just be me, more often.

Case study: Remonstered! The Monsters Know What They’re Doing

Ammann does build on rented land currently. I think his most popular platform currently is Bluesky and Discord, though there are certainly other rented lands where he exists.

Extending those conversations regularly that lean into what Remonstered! is without necessarily mentioning it every time would be natural and normal.

It’s not about selling; it’s not even about marketing.

It’s about identity.

There’s another gap that Ammann could build towards — the second most important website for his audience is DnDBeyond.

It’s awesome to see that the audience description already knows of Keith’s owned land (I’ll discuss that more in a bit).

There are two ways to take advantage of that massive audience Beyond.
1. Offer advice on how to build in ideas from the book within Beyond. That could include how to use Homebrew, how to use the new scene prep or how to structure encounters within Beyond. Those tips should capture audience interest.
2. Participate in their forums. According to SparkToro Beyond has more than 7 million monthly visitors. Wizards of the Coast uses a much larger number, recently claiming 20 million. Whichever is accurate doesn’t matter. What matters is that this is rented land where an identity can be built via their forums.
Own your territory

Rented land must be used. There’s a potential to go viral there that is impossible on your own blog these days. But that doesn’t mean you abandon your blog.

It means your blog posts can become fragments to share on social platforms, useful references for your product, a way to send emails (every blog and newsletter service can do both things now) and establishes the home where you clearly link your purchasable products, crowdfunding and sponsorship opportunities (Patreon, ko-fi, itch, etc).

Your land is where you build what you send elsewhere.

This reinforces your identity when people search for it — zero-click marketing is essentially owning a search for your identity. Your clips and shorter content on various social platforms show people who you are in small bites. Your land (blog/newsletter) show people how to support that.

Case study: Remonstered! The Monsters Know What They’re Doing

The Monsters Know does a great job of owning the space. Remember that chart above? Gamemasters who want to know how to more effectively use the monsters in D&D and other fantasy games go there.

Ammann also sends out newsletters from that blog. It can be followed via RSS and it auto-posts to a few social platforms as well. You should do this with your blog too. Just don’t think that auto-posts are enough. That link back to your blog will be clicked so infrequently it won’t matter, until it does.

Chunking out your posts to send to the rented land is great. Don’t give away the whole hog though. Give people enough from a blog post that they are both smarter than they were while also searching to learn more.

Maintain your identity

No matter the platforms you are on you have to be yourself. Small RPG studios and independent creators don’t need to be everything at once. They can’t be.

Your identity, your brand, should be tight and understood quickly. It can still be diverse. See my presence as a story-first social DM who also enjoys sports, coffee and Puget Sound — that’s my space.

Use hashtags or topics to clarify specific posts, to connect a statement to a specific product, but also know that a distinct identity is what people want to see.

You may want to know what your audience is talking about throughout the open internet. While Google Alerts used to be a good way of tracking that I find it misses most social conversations.

AlertMouse can replace that for a single topic for free. I use AlertMouse to understand ways that other creators are using the 5e ecosystem to expand on non-combat pillars of play. Then I participate in those conversations either here on the blog or on their social platforms.

Case study: Remonstered! The Monsters Know What They’re Doing

Not studying Ammann’s presence on his primary platforms recently I’ll need to work from memory when we first met on a platform neither of use now, and his known presence on shared Discords.

On those Discords he’s present offering advice on tactics, on writing, on discoveries when using other systems. This is excellent.

One thing I’d like to see more is the chunking out of lessons from the old book to the new one — show us a bit of what’s changing. Show us the why.

Take those bits from the owned land and share them on the platforms where the audience either exists already or where he wants to build it. If either of those include Bluesky (ATProtocol) or Mastodon (Fediverse) setting up BridgyFed can dramatically expand that audience without more work.

*I asked Keith Ammann if I could feature his latest book in this blog post, but am not compensated for this work. Some of these ideas may not work for Remonstered! Some may. Modern marketing requires more experimentation and effort than the 20-teens.

*SparkToro, nor Amanda Natividad, sponsored this post either. I use their tools professionally in my full-time work and would do so if I ever decide to make gaming products. I strongly recommend Amanda’s podcast for short-form audio to understand modern marketing.

*I also use AlertMouse to track and build various stories on Full Moon Storytelling. Using this code gives you more tracking over the conversations that you need to monitor.

In review

No one clicks on links any more.

People are still buying things, usually using a search to find what they want after being interested in the product over time.

Establish an identity with creations that people are interested in using both rented (social platforms) and owned (blog, newsletter, podcast) land.

Participate as a unique individual worthy of support with consistent themes.

Blog again, and then use those posts as the foundation of smaller content. Do not include links, not even in comments, on most platforms.

No one clicks on links any more. Don’t worry about that.
Fediverse Reactions
September 7, 2026
Professional failure

Professionals fail all the time — in roleplaying games, in elite athletics, in special operations, in life.

The idea that they shouldn’t miss in a game is built on a foundation of water, not even sand.

There are still some valid reasons that one wouldn’t roll to hit, but they have nothing to do with professionalism.

Matt Colville on Mastering Dungeons

In a recent edition of Mastering Dungeons Matt Colville talked extensively about the business of RPGs. It’s a wonderful listen.

Something stood out to me though.

“You’re professionals; you shouldn’t roll to hit.”

Now, the idea of not rolling to hit is part of Colville’s quite intentional design. I’m certain he’s said it before and will say it again. There are reasons in games to not roll to hit.

They have nothing to do with the character being a professional.

Let’s break down the idea of professionals not needing to roll to hit.

Elite Failure

Elites fail regularly. They fail when contested. They fail when on their own. Failure at elite levels may not be as common as for us normal people, but it happens.

This is true for the real, actual elites, not those mere professionals. My personal history is blessed to experience a few elites in fashions that many do not.

Special operations

Assigned to 5th Special Forces as a peacetime soldier my Army days were defined by the Quiet Professionals — the Green Berets. Working alongside these masters in warfare I saw failure every single day.

On the range those trained to be snipers, an uncontested contest in gaming terms, missed. There are reasons for each miss, but missing happened.

When soldiers, even in highly trained units such as the Special Forces, go to war they miss even more. The human brain does not like to kill things, plus there is chaos all around you. Errors happen. They always will.

Elite failure isn’t limited to elite warfare.

High-level sports

Leaving 5th Group I decided I wanted nothing to do with my high school dreams or hard journalism. I turned to sports. During that era I worked as a producer for the Sonics broadcasting network, baseball’s best postgame show, as an on-air analyst for soccer and founded Sounder at Heart.

At the field and court level I’ve watched Ichiro, Ken Griffey Jr., Gary Payton, Michael Jordan, Megan Rapinoe, Kasey Keller and many others.

The list of these Hall of Fame talents failing would be immense.

But let’s use hard numbers.

Ichiro is the best contact hitter of the modern era. The ten-time All Star and MVP had a batting average on balls in play forty points higher than his contemporaries, but it was still only .338.

Jordan’s shooting percentage was just under 50%.

Now, both of those are contests. What about the best athletes when uncontested? Steph Curry makes only 91% of his free throws.

It doesn’t matter which sport we consider. Kasey Keller stops 74% of shots he faces. Megan Rapinoe put ~40% of her shots on frame, and scored even fewer of those.

Failure among the elite is regular and normal. They roll to hit and fail.

Business

Pick your favorite business leader and their success rate is higher than average, but whether its Howard Schultz launching a magazine, or Steve Jobs launching NeXT, or Warren Buffet investing in a shoe company, they fail too.

Gaming reasons to not roll to hit

So professionals do miss. Elites miss.

Are there good reasons to not roll to hit? Yes, absolutely, as part of intentional design choices for a style of play that has nothing to do with professionalism of the character

Hit points vs meat points

The long standing D&D debate about hit points being more than meat points can be ignored here. Games developing to-hit rolling or direct-to-damage techniques do not need to burden them with Gygax’s decisions.

Direct-to-damage rolling is excellent when hit points are, as in D&D, a symbol of morale, luck, fortitude, energy and more than merely meat. Since every attempt to physically damage an opponent wears away at those elements you don’t necessarily need to roll to hit. Missing still costs luck, energy, mental health and morale.

The meat of the opponent can be damaged eventually, even without rolling to hit.

Speed of play

Colville did this in MCDM monster design for his 5e books — minions and the like can be hit easily. And then eliminated easily. This speeds up the action at the table and mimics narratives from movies, TV, video games within role playing games. Slicing and dicing through waves of small threats feels great. Having that take only a few moments rather than many minutes is good.

Additionally in games like Draw Steel, with extensive tactical choices being a goal, eliminating a set of rolling helps speed gameplay up. This is a wise and intentional design choice that amplifies the other intent of bundling morale with meat.

This supports the designer’s desires for their game — and need not be connected to reality or even lore.

A wrong justification, with the right idea

Professionalism in the real-world elite activities includes failure. Even the arts that inspire our gaming include failure. Black Widow misses. Skywalkers miss. Robin Hood misses.

Designers should embrace failure when missing, because Ichiro, Rapinoe, every special forces soldier, every business leader, every legendary hero misses.

And when they do design away the miss they should do so with intent that supports their game, no matter what reality and lore suggest. Just as Colville’s done in Draw Steel.
Fediverse Reactions
April 4, 2026
Roleplaying games are stories

They’re different from novels, short stories, comics, theater, movies, and most other forms of storytelling. That does not remove the tale being told nor the concept of story.

If anything they are most similar to communal storytelling around a campfire and improv dramas. For the most part roleplaying games are communal events with a group.

How did I bump into this well-worn debate? Via a recent thread on EN World, the rare bright spot in RPG discourse.

Let’s talk about “plot”, “story”, and “play to find out.”

My response there focused mostly on the story and plot aspects, and the power of having more voices (something rare in written fiction, but common in other forms of storytelling).

There are people who are not good authors, nor good directors, nor good actors who are good roleplayers/gamemasters/etc. By leaning into the ways that community, plot and play-to-find-out work the creation displays, maybe even demands, story emerges.

This is the Potential of games like D&D.

Sometimes conventional Western storytelling formats can lean into the things that make the emergent and divergent story that happens in RPGs. This can be magical — because it shows how all story is really a reflection of point of view, or in our hobby — spotlight.

RPGs-as-story feel messy when considered through a lens of a literature class or mainstream television.

But, stories are quite messy

Two people can read the same story, watch the same film, listen to the same podcast and come away with different meanings, see different main plots even.

To me, RPGs are stories in the way that campfire tales are. They involve a lot of wandering, forgotten threads, lack firm outlines and are at their best when the tale is woven through multiple voices providing input.

Can they be a traditional novel after the campaign? Absolutely! But during the telling of the tale they are similar to writers who don’t edit as they go or a director who over films alternative concepts that aren’t on the script.

One of the more thrilling things about RPGs is that it is an ensemble cast of both PCs and recurring NPCs. Together they’re important, but the tale and spotlight as to who is most important can easily shift. Use any of them as the point of view to change the story as you understand it. Each can be vital.

The messiness is the fun part of RPGs as story.

The messiness is what helps me discover tales I cannot tell on my own. That’s part of the power of the table and broad casts in ensemble stories.

You think you’ve seen stories like this before, so you can guess what’s going to happen. Who’s important and who isn’t, but that’s because you’re trapped in your POV.
– later –
When you file people away as sidekicks you don’t realize their importance to the story, and this story belongs to a lot more people than you think. Where to shelve a book, it’s not a little thing. You’re telling the world what to value. Who to value.

From The Magicians, Side Effect (S4, E7).

RPGs are very much like that.

They remove your assumptions. You don’t know what’s going to happen. The POV constantly shifts and the importance of the broader cast shifts constantly.

From RPGs-as-Story we learn what and who to value by including others.

January 23, 2026
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The D&D Stranger Things boom is bigger than you think
This post will not contain spoilers for Season 5 because I haven’t yet watched Season 5 of Stranger Things, though I do know it features more Dungeons & Dragons than Seaons 2-4 combined.

If you were to go into Target this fall you’d see a massive Stranger Things display somewhere in the store. Part of that display would feature the D&D boxed set Welcome to the Hellfire Club, which is a continuation of Eddie’s D&D campaign. It felt late, because Eddie isn’t part of season 5.

It was not late.

Welcome to the Hellfire Club sold out at Target. It sold out on Amazon. A light informal survey of local-to-me stores have it as sold out. The physical boxed set can still be ordered on DnDBeyond.

Sure, that could be a lack of ambition from Wizards of the Coast by not manufacturing enough of the sets.

It’s much more likely that the heavy lean back into D&D by Stranger Things Season 5 drove more desire for D&D the game than previous seasons, Critical Role and Baldur’s Gate 3. BG3’s drive of interest into D&D is hard to quantify, but has an extended window over several years.

Google Trends can show you.

Search trends for Stranger Things

Here are the four adjacent media and D&D

Stranger Things is more popular than the others by far.

D&D, the game, had its biggest boom from the movie, but…

Stranger Things Season 5 nearly matches D&D: Honor Among Thieves

There’s one major difference — lack of tie-in gaming products.

Rime of the Frostmaiden contained a single adventure related to the movie. There was a boutique NPC download related to the movie, but nothing like the amazing boxed set Stranger Things got. Baldur’s Gate: Descent into Avernus was barely related to the video game and its release timing was horrible.

Nothing sold out because of Honor Among Thieves, the best D&D marketing in the history of the game, because D&D wasn’t run as a franchise system with business units failing to talk to each other.

Both the current starter set and Welcome to the Hellfire Club are selling out.

What’s that mean for us Dungeon Masters?
1. Be welcoming to new and returning players.
2. Reduce house rules when they join you.
3. Talk about the intent of your table and what type of play you focus on .
4. Be familiar with the most popular products.
5. Help teach your current players to DM.
6. See if local cafes, libraries, schools, pubs, etc need DMs.
We are responsible for growing this glorious hobby. Thanks to the Creative Commons, various SRDs, the eternal nature of homebrewing and the thousands of other roleplaying games there is always something that’s right for someone.

Find what’s right for your family, your friends and your community.

People are interested. It’s up to you to be the reason they stay interested.
Fediverse Reactions
January 10, 2026