Dan Went Outside

An interaction over the weekend with a 14 year old comic artist while working a faire made me think, again. Comics seem more indie from the outside, but there is objectively more money in them, and is easier to get started and sell stuff. You can be truely indie, a little bit punk, in comics because there is so much more money there. You can be sub-optimal as per the rules of living in a society and still eat. RPGs look more commercial because the commercial stuff is all that survives impact with the world at large. Those of us who are surviving (and sometimes thriving) selling to the market as it is are not building exactly, at least not in an efficient or especially impactful way, rather a selfish one. By selfish I mean they are not reproducible in any real sense by some 14 year old with a TTRPG idea, on any time scale. And I suspect the scale of these big(ger) names does not translate to any trickle down. Yes it makes new TTRPG people, I meet them often, but it generally makes…