A Peek Behind the Curtain

I put Crisis on Christmas on itch.io on 25 Dec 2019 for free, where it has since been downloaded 375 times. On 15 Dec 2020 I significantly revamped the material and, as an experiment, changed it to PWYW. (Although as before, an unmonitored free download was always linked from here, after some early complaints about getting downloads from itch to work.) Since then, 11 people have opted to pay a total of $31 (which warms my heart).

From 5 March to 31 March this year (2021), Crisis on Christmas was part of the Independent Troika Creator Bundle. I do not know how much information it is appropriate to share about the numbers behind that, but it contributes $8.88 of revenue. These sales are accounted for as a separate product by itch.

As easy as it is to put things on itch, getting your money back out can be complicated. You will have to choose one of two payment modes: direct or payouts. In direct mode the money goes straight to you, but you are responsible for record-keeping, taxes, chargebacks, etc. In payout mode itch handles all of the overhead. Itch recommends payout mode, and I use payout mode, and despite the complications, I would still also recommend it.

Upon selecting payout mode, you will need to complete a one-time tax interview process (it's just an online form) and identity check. This costs $3, which appears as a debit on your itch account (not as an up-front cost).

Seven days after a payment is completed, it becomes available to you as a payout. Payouts are delivered either through PayPal or Payoneer (I use PayPal and so cannot comment on Payoneer). PayPal takes a fee from the payout, which in the US appears to be a flat $0.25. (The "payout fee" is distinct from the payment processor fee, which I think is the fee charged for the initial purchase.) I think this may have changed between my first and second payouts, as the fee is not present on the first one.

While requesting payouts less frequently will minimize these fees, leaving earnings in your itch account for longer than a year will result in itch charging a monthly 10% maintenance fee on the balance. However, at least when I started writing this, it is not possible to initiate a payout on an amount less than $5. This meant I awkwardly had $3-4 sitting in my account for a long time, and because of the seasonal (and low-volume) nature of my project, could not access it.

Because I hadn't requested any payouts during the 2020 tax year, I didn't receive any tax documents for it. Itch did not automatically withhold any taxes for me, so I expect I will have to pay taxes on what remains this year. Given the US dedication to the worst possible tax system, I have no idea what that may come to, but I'll estimate local tax at 5% (arbitrarily) and federal tax at 20% of the remainder (also arbitrarily). Since both these numbers are entirely made up, I don't think the error introduced by calling it 25% is significant.

Itch lets you configure what percentage of revenue you want to share with them for their services. The default is 10% of gross revenue, which sounded fine to me, so I left it.

We can also consider the other costs of the project: a font a liked a lot ($10), and an old Dover clipart book, purchased c. 2000 (maybe $4?). If we don't value my time at all (my friend insists this is what makes a "real game developer"), that's $14.

$39.88	gross revenue
-$4.65	payment processor fees
-$3.97	itch revenue share
-$3.00	identity verification
-$0.25	payout fee
=$28	payout
-$7	taxes (estimated)
-$14	costs
=$7	profit

As bit of fun, I have no regrets about the project, and I remain unreasonably proud of it. There's a lot I could have done to try maximizing profits that just doesn't appeal to me, so this is not a perfect look into "the business," but I hope a little light on such an intricate and hidden part of the hobby might be instructive to others.

Best wishes to you and yours going into this holiday season, and if you haven't had a chance, I'd love for you to check out Crisis on Christmas. If you like it, maybe even leave a tip

Crisis on Christmas: Coin Hunt

I’ve enjoyed hearing how people have made use of Crisis on Christmas Prime in the last few weeks. I hope that by providing a brief sample adventure it might be more approachable. I rolled “Rag-tag adventurers are buying up candy!” on the crisis table, so that was the starting point.

Hook

Ol’ Gran Yule has realized that Santa’s bag is a few thousand chocolate coins short. Can you find some before he leaves tomorrow?

Investigation

Loosely, here are some places around town that players might think to look for coins:

• Pharmacy: none stocked, busy.
• Rabbi: has a few hundred, will play dreidel for them if you have the time.
• Candy store: none stocked, bored.
• Chocolate factory: out of coins, suspicious of anyone who might be an inspector.

All the coins were bought up by three people. Clues given by people who are out of coins:

• They were all bundled up like they’d trekked in from out of town.
• They were dirty like they’d been digging or playing in dirt.
• They paid with palm-sized coins.

These clues should point to the giant-barrows outside town.

Other information available:

• There were three of them, one blind. They talked about a fourth person too.
• They were all squinting and smelled burnt.
• You shoulda seen the shooting star last week!

Getting to the Barrows

This is an opportunity to check for random encounters, and to make sure everyone has taken precautions against the cold. Checking for encounters here reinforces the sense of distance between the town and the mountain, but I didn’t come up with a good table. Aeval and Valmr are out finding supplies and leads, so they might be encountered on the road.

The Giant Barrows

  /--B-D
A<
  \--C-E

A - Entrance

Hewn into mountain base. Checking under snow on wall reveals a carving of a balance with a cross-legged figure on each side.

⚖

B - Cold Chamber

Drafty, tall, light filters in through natural chimney above. Snow and ice on the ground, large boulder in middle of room next to a chain extending from the floor to a massive wooden beam protruding from the wall on the right and leaning downwards. (Strength to move boulder.)

C - Warm Chamber

Mirror image of B, except with light filtering up from a large hole in the ground and no opening in the ceiling. (Chain and beam are too high up to be visible.)

D - The Last Giant

Jorg is still meditating very hard and will attempt to ignore all disturbances (damage will rouse him). Some large coins and religious texts free for taking.

E - Order of the Blue Lantern

A band of adventurers between expeditions recuperate in the cave with their new pet, Shiny. Shyren is here, lounging and playing with it, and Istwell is meditating. Remaining coins needed are here. They know they are the mirror of whatever group of misfits finds them, and do not trust them. They would like Shiny to go to a good home, but currently could not lose it if they wanted to. Will not give up the coins until a suitable replacement foodstuff is discovered. All have stats as Knight of the Road. (Names are from The Black Hack.)

Shyren (Thief)

Despite the fur trim, her winter clothes are wildly impractical. Likes Shiny most of all the order, and is trying to teach it tricks.

Istwell (Cleric)

Dressed in Saffron robes, meditating. Can be distracted by the religious texts in D or meeting Jorg. Believes that Shiny cannot see him because he is free from the cycle of birth and redeath, but in fact it is because he is blind (and sees only with his second sight). Knows Coal Resolve, Peace, and Zed.

Aeval (Wizard)

Jumpy, tattooed, elfin. Knows Open, Thunder, and Undo.

Valmr (Fighter)

Bored, aggressive, bearded. Speaks with a heavy, archaic accent.

Shiny

A blinding pinprick of light dropped by the comet last week (Jeffry’s Comet). Its nature is unclear this young, but it could grow up to be another comet, a star, a galaxy, a nebula, or a whole new sphere. Shiny wants food and company. It has only a loose understanding of the people around it, but does try not to hurt anyone.

Food

Shiny will consume any metal or alloy with a melting point below 700°C and be frustrated by metals it is not yet hot enough to consume.

Company

Shiny can only see people whose eyes its light can reach, and will try not to be left alone.

The Barrows’ Gimmick

The construction is a giant scale, currently weighted down by the boulder in B. If the boulder is moved, D is uncovered, and if a weight is added to the other side (in the warm room), E can be covered. It can be used as a trebuchet.

Ancilimander of Argon

A mad marble astrologer in an observatory atop the mountain (“So close to the North Pole, the stars barely wobble at all!”). Everyone in town knows he’s there, but the Blue Lantern and Jorg do not. He can provide the following information:

• Shiny can likely find its way home if you can get it up past the atmosphere.
• Melting points of any metal.
• Jeffry’s Comet passed last week, has been erratic since.

Treasure

Ideally, Gran Yule would have a unique gift for each of the characters. Recommend using Oddmas Oddities from The Hunt for the Great Goose.

Crisis on Christmas Prime!

Last year I put together a little seasonal Troika! supplement and put it up for free on itch.io. This year I’ve reworked the whole thing, and I made it pay-what-you-want. Briefly, it has eighteen backgrounds, six spells, twelve adversaries, miscellaneous tables, and a sketch of the land of Arctica. It’s 48 pages of A5, all black-and-white.

Please don’t let the pay-what-you-want feature discourage you from downloading it. If you like, consider it my gift to you. Some people last year had difficulty with the itch.io interface, so there’s a copy here also.

It’s been a long, weird year, and I hope that this brings you some joy.

Automatic Tables

In 2012, I was (and still am) fascinated by the random table. A random table presents an exponential number of ideas in a linear space. Recombinant elements play in the gap between improv and rationalization, making each idea potentially unique and interesting. At the same time, raw probability can be leveraged against this massive scale to emphasize recurring themes or elements, building up a world solely through repeated use and implication.

So I took this fascination and built a bunch of tables that required rolling lots of dice to arrive at vaguely “fine?” results (if we’re feeling generous). Now I have the technology to easily automate these things, and I have done so. They might be more useful this way but mostly it was just fun to revisit them.

Snake Oil

“Doc, get me some more of that bottle…”

Sage Names

“All this we know from the writings of…”

Pulp Materials

“You’ll never stop it! It’s made of solid…”

Pub Names

“Not here! Meet me at…”

Holiday Crises

“I’ve called you all here because the holiday season is under threat!”

Crisis on Christmas

The problem with Troika! is that it’s written in a bunch of encapsulated little thought-forms. And they’re infectious ideas, like the way you start counting every word’s syllables after you first learn about haiku. What started as an entry in my running note of bad ideas blossomed into a week-long distraction from work, and now this thing.

I wanted to get this out on Christmas day, but I didn't want to take myself away from the festivities to write this post. So happy Boxing Day! It wouldn't be a proper gift if I'd given myself time to finish it, but I may go back and finish it later.

Secret Santicorn 2019

Sky Seeker asked:
Dear Santicorn,
Please bring me

New ways to mess with time/space/fate, be it mechanics, spells, worldbuilding or beyond. If pokemon can reboot the universe to patch in a baby god we can do better: https://youtu.be/GxC1kXm_AVs

The Slipsoul – a Character Option

Infinite parallel universes teem around us, multitudes branching out with every decision and movement. Normally, these worlds are inaccessible and inhospitable. But when you die, your mind does not go gently into the night, but casts about wildly to find purchase on any reality that will take it. When you’re lucky, it’s relatively close to the world your remember.

These rules assume a D&D-ish game, but could be easily adapted to others. Mechanical effects, if any, are left as an exercise for the referee and the effects of further re-rolls are left open to negotiation.

Whenever you fail a death save, roll on the slide table and appear stabilized, but in a different reality. That this reality is different is apparent only to you. For example, if you roll “No eyes” the wound is old, and your companions may remember how you lost them. If you later re-roll the same number, you find yourself instead in the universe the next column over, as your mind reaches for further and further branches of reality. For example, if you roll a “1” a second time, then you still have no eyes, but find yourself able to see spirits.

The Slide Table

d12	First	Second	Third	Fourth
1	No eyes.	See spirits.	See the past.	Something else sees what you see.
2	Covered in tattoos.	Know and can cast random spell.	Spell casts itself when you take damage.	No one else can cast the spell.
3	Dave loyally follows you everywhere.	Davinia also follows you everywhere.	Dave & Davinia are retired in the city.	Nobody has ever heard of Dave or Davinia.
4	Pockets full of money.	Warrant for your arrest.	Owe a criminal favor.	Run a small gang.
5	Forsaken by religions.	Resting grants no benefit.	There are no stars.	Free from the wheel of death and rebirth.
6	No fingers on off hand.	Off-arm is a tentacle.	+d6 tentacles.	You are an octopus.
7	Lycanthropy.	Contacts despise you.	Covered in scars.	+d6 wolf companions.
8	Slide on any failed save.	Slide instead of save.	Optionally, slide instead of skill check.	Roll twice when sliding.
9	Super nice clothes.	Parents look for you.	Assassin targets you.	Inherit a small estate.
10	Require double rations.	Do not need sleep when you rest.	Cannot heal naturally.	Begin to rot.
11	Very short.	Darkvision.	Stonecunning.	Ancestors will aid you.
12	False leg.	Key hidden in leg.	Compartments in limbs.	Need regular maintenance.

Printout

I also made this printout of the table, so that you might have the satisfaction of striking the universes you've already rolled.

Licking the Bowl

Taking the prompt as "petty uses of cosmic power", I also sketched out two other ideas.

Fold Self – a GLOG Spell

When you rest to heal, you can choose not to heal any number of HP, instead leaving part of yourself (astrally) in that location. When casting the spell, roll [dice] over (max HP - HP at that location) to transport yourself and your carried objects to that location. This isn't really teleportation, it's more like squeezing a four-dimensional water wiggly.

Johnny Luckturner – an NPC Outline

Recently broke off from a larger organization and they're not happy about it. All their best people have returned broken or not at all. Maybe a bunch of bumbling patsies could get the job done?

Whenever multiple dice are rolled against Johnny, only the worst value is used (even if they would normally sum). Sneak attacks, advantages, fireballs, etc. all fall flat before his absurd luck. He doesn't know how this works though, and he's a pretty average combatant.