Taberna Celeris Is Out Now!

I even printed a few copies.

I've hit the Publish buttons on my Itch store and my RPG Trader store to get Taberna Celeris out into the world. I realized I didn't publish Tabula Mortis to my DriveThru RPG shop, so I'll rectify that oversight this week for both trifold products.

Go grab a copy while it's still Pay What You Will:
Get Taberna Celeris On Itch, and At RPG Trader.

I told y'all it would only be a few days, and here we are.

Yes, this is title number 2 in what I'm calling the Trifold Triptych. It'll be three trifold zines containing random tables for generating things in your TTRPGs. I'm still brainstorming a topic for #3, but stay tuned. I'm hoping to get that one published sometime in September.

Let's Go Behind The Scenes

WARNING: I'll be talking about running a TTRPG business and selling zines from here on out.

Creation Timeline

I had a brainstorm back on 17 June, and I scribbled some notes about a Random Tavern Generator. It was just a list of table titles at that point. The following week, I copied Tabula Mortis's Affinity Publisher file, renamed it, and cleared out the text. I scrounged up some images to use, and I wrote the random table contents over a couple of work sessions. By 05 July, I had the bulk of the tables and text written.

It turns out that copying from cells in Libre Office Calc to tables in Affinity Publisher sucks. Formatting got borked no matter what I did, so that took me some time to iron out. Fiddling with the layout and adding some non-table text took some more time, but I had a draft done on 14 July 2026. It took about 8 hours to get from initial notes to a first draft. Add some tweaking, editing, and setting up listings, and we'll call it 10 hours of work to get Taberna Celeris out into the world.

Breaking Even

Based on my editing hourly rate, I've invested $500 of my time to get this trifold published. To break even on that cost, I'll need to sell about 200 copies across PDFs and physical items. The current sales figures on Tabula Mortis since publication on 28 April 2026 stand at 114 downloads for 2 payments, and 4 physical copies wholesale to a local game store.

Note To Self: I need to focus some effort into opening a shop to sell physical products online and sell digital products with less overhead. It's in process, but priorities keep shifting. Soon.

Am I hopeful I'll break even on Taberna Celeris? Eventually, but not this year. I think I'm still climbing the curve to some sort of Product Catalog Critical Mass. Taberna Celeris marks the 12th title in my itch shop, and I've been noticing views going up slowly but steadily with every title I publish. So maybe sometime next year the long tail might kick in and I'll see some sales across the whole catalog. Or maybe publishing at least a playtest version of MoteWright will spark some interest. We'll see.

On Charging What I'm Worth

If the inflation calculations on what AD&D product prices should be if a similar product sold today, one-page products should be in the $5-$12 range, or probably around $8ish. I'm planning on charging $5 per physical copy of my one-page zines, as making change will be easier in person. Also, I'm still a one-person shop without a flagship title/setting, which means I'm an unknown quantity. Buying one of my products presents a risk, and offering a lower price means buying something presents less of a risk. I had hoped to garner a couple of ratings and reviews while my catalog is free, but I haven't pushed that effort either.

I'm planning on switching most of my catalog away from PWYW later this year, probably in September. Will this move help me break even? Maybe, but again, probably not this year. Will this give me the air of a more legitimate business? I have no idea. I think I have enough interesting titles available that sending freebies to reviewers might be worth the effort. Plus, I believe this is a move in the correct direction to build the business.

Moving Forward

It's about trust. It's filling niches. It's gathering reviews and finding people who can help educate others about who I am and what I offer. It's about community, and I don't have quite enough scaffolding built to support a community yet. It's about helping and being helped, and both sides benefitting from the exchange (which ties back to The Positive Sum Project, which I should really do something with other than write a mini-manifesto and order some pins).

Do I have all the answers? Absolutely not. I'm lucky if I remember a single correct answer in any waking moment, honestly. But I'm trying things and attempting to plan a move forward in this hobby that I've spent so much time and creative energy one.

So let's get to it. These products rarely write themselves.

Until Next!
-w