Troikanary
There was a joke I heard some trad publishers make when I was in university about how every year another radical author cooperative appears to disrupt the publishing world. Then they decide one of them should do the admin. And another should deal with the printing. And another will do the marketing. And then they've become another publisher.
I am that joke.
Melsonia's great strength and weakness is my inability to do what I'm told. We'll always be "cool" but never rich. Probably punching above our weight in terms of notoriety. Our authors do ok-ish, nothing wild though. We can't make a star out of anyone. We're a very creative-first kinda place and that's great but doesn't make for a powerful business. Most of those things people consider "indie" on reddit and whatnot are just the tip of the tentacle of a pointy beaked business somewhere. Think of creative-first as the hood of the squid, instead. Tentacles are expendable, disposable, exploratory, ready to grab and consume at the larger body. Hoods are head first, all in, one bite and they're gone. Cephalopod business modeling.
It's much more fun to go head first than to fanny about making money. If we wanted to be safe and rich we wouldn't be doing this! Big risks, all on red, etc.
That being said, it's no secret I'm working on Troika 2. It's not exactly a concrete thing, I have just accumulated so many house rules and sub systems and monsters and adventures that it's almost time to roll them all up. I'll just be updating the rest of the world to my version of Troika. The game is something that will happen regardless of anything else, 'cos it exists already. What I'm curious about is the release. In many ways it will be the ultimate test of everything I believe I know about publishing and crowdfunding. Not a test of me, or us, we'll do what we always have done. But a test of what Troika means, what is possible with the way we do things, and whether there is any hope for a creative-first approach to work in TTRPGs. It won't change anything we do, probably. If it did, for instance, about half of a typical youtuber campaign we'd be set for the next 20 years and could make all the stuff we want without having to figure out how to pay for it AND tell others that it is, apparently, possible to just brute force it head first. If it did regular amounts we'd just keep on but without the burden of aspiration. My lama would be proud!
I hope (sorry lama) that it does well as much for the sake of the wider TTRPG industry as for the sake of my peace of mind. Maybe more industry even, 'cos I can get peace of mind elsewhere.