This is a worth reading; I wanna come at this from the perspective of someone who, based on the economics of ttrpg right now, would have to win so unbelievably fucking hard at RPGs to transition away from my day job (software).

I'm a good example of Fully Privileged Designer. https://twitter.com/DeePennyway/status/1249694623418720257

The way our systems are set up, I'd have to exploit my peers/freelancers or be an astonishing long lived runaway success to have as much security and cushion as I do for my day job.

For lots of systemic reasons (mostly: white supremacy, being a cis dude), I play on easy mode.

That leaves me with a responsibility to *at least* not reinforce those systems and, where possible, chip away at them. I'm not a hero or a revolutionary activist and I don't wanna pretend to be.

I do wanna point out that when I and people like me participate uncritically, we DO reinforce those systems.

If I put up a polished game for free with inequitable pay structures because I/my team can afford to do that, I'm impacting the scene whether or not I intend to.

Chances are, most of the people who can contribute to your game for free? They're also comparatively privileged and the chances of your team being diverse plummets.

If you're paying shit wages, you're either hiring privileged folks or exploiting marginalized folx. Both are bad.

But let's say for the sake of argument you're a solo project runner: you do the art, the writing, the layout, and you're so good you don't have an editor (hahaha, get a fucking editor and other consultants).

If you drop a great game for peanuts, you're impacting expectations.

You may not mean to! You're not malicious, after all, you just want people to see/play your thing. I get it. Trust me.

But you're still putting out high quality for low cost and if that's not explicitly about accessibility (nb: there's other paths for this), you're goofing.

But also? Don't hide behind accessibility for this topic because you don't wanna change your behavior.

If you're concerned with accessibility, what other steps have you taken for this? If price is the *only* thing, I'm suspicious.

The scene has been coming up with ways to make paid games more accessible to folx without cash: discounts, community copies, pay-it-forward purchases, bundle drives, etc.

You can make a good game, price it reasonably, and be fiscally accessible.

Wrapping up: if you've got secure income that rpgs can't replace, please consider that defaulting to free/pwyw impacts everyone else in ways you're inured against.

If you make conscious choices, that's one thing, but don't blithely uphold inequitable structures, at *least*.