TTRPG Newsletter

Designing a RPG Ad

Issue #3. Exploring Design

Have you tried designing the RPG ad or flyer in the past? For me, I never had seen the flyer posted on the local store in my life. I only found out about Dungeons & Dragons, 5e (Dnd5e) when I decided to type in the keywords, “social play game” on Google because I wanted something different - outside of the coffee talks.

Other than that, I learned about Mothership (MoSh) 0e when Root (Dice Stew) posted on the Facebook group. It was just some texts with a link to the main page of Mothership RPG:

“Anyone want to try this RPG? I own a pdf copy and few supplements. Would love to play this over Zoom or Discord.

https://www.mothershiprpg.com/”

The embedded picture of Mothership RPG was what caught my attention. Can’t go wrong with the aesthetics or any kind of visual aids, really.

Fast-forward, I was involved with Deaf Tabletop Gaming Online (DTGO) where I used to run the west march campaign with a team of DMs and it was called Dawnhome - the history of Dawnhome is on DTGO’s Youtube channel if you want to check out¹. During that time, I wanted to run the oneshot games with different systems. The majority of my players are either ASL²-fluent or deaf/hard of hearing, which means the information needs to be visual. With that in mind, I designed a few ads using Canva and I got some varying responses. See a few examples below:

*This cover belongs to Brendan Davis and Jeremy Bai, the designers of* **Righteous Blood, Ruthless Blades***. Done in Canva. The flyer provided info about the system along with the story concept and extra details.*

The background is provided by Canva and the illustration of Mothership was hand-drawn and done by myself. These logos were provided by Dice Stew and DTGO. This flyer advertised about the west march campaign with **MoSh 0e/1e**.

Canva provided the background and various elements along with the alternative text for MÖRK BORG. DTGO and RPG logos were provided by DTGO. Note that MÖRK BORG’s logo was replaced by the alternative text to respect the designers of MÖRK BORG since the original ad was advertised in March 2022. This flyer covered the essential info about the oneshot’s story concept and the system.

You can notice the evolution of RPG ads during the COVID-19 pandemic. That was my first design experience to support this community. When the pandemic ended, we moved on with our lives - some moved out, some got busier than usual, etc. That did not stop me from trying different angles of the design though.

Recently, I had some opportunities to get together with players in person and I decided to resume making RPG ads. Naturally so, the design evolved as I picked up more skill sets from my work. Information is condensed and less words are highly favored over lengthy words. Sometimes a picture is worth many words to make an impact.

In addition, I did pick up some tricks while learning how to use Affinity Designer - it’s definitely a great tool and alternative to Adobe Illustrator!

*This flyer’s information was a bit vague on purpose to invite new players without mentioning the name of the system. This was done in the Electrum Archives RPG. The background was provided by Canva.*

This flyer is in drafts currently to prepare for next year’s in-person ads. The name of the system was also left out on purpose to have players focused on the thematics. Two pictures were shared from Canva’s photo library.

If you noticed the last two flyers lacking the name of the system, it is because I wanted my players to focus on the story concept that interests them enough to join and play. By doing it, they can get some experiences of trying different systems until one of the systems clicks well with them instead of going with the popular systems for “one-for-all” stories by default.

¹No captioning is available at that time.

² American Sign Language

My process behind the design of the RPG ad

It’s simple and straightforward, but also, because I am the one who schedule the session dates and prepare the game.

Knowing these details are beneficial to think about the elements and a picture that matches the story concept. Sometimes reading the corebooks, adventures, or any modules can help with finding the right pictures to reflect the story concept well.

If you have been following RPG designers, they have a great resource for the list of public domains - for example, Exeunt Omnes’ How do you create MÖRK BORG art?. Public Domains are definitely great sources of finding images. Pixabay and Pexels are other sources I usually refer back to, but I strongly encourage checking if some pictures are done by AI or not. I tend to focus on photography more than illustrations - for illustrations or art, I use Procreate to draw out instead.

Canva and Affinity Designers are my main tools to put together on RPG ads. Procreate app is incredibly useful for whenever I need to draw out digitally. Procreate Dreams was recently released and I’m thrilled to try that out soon.

If you are interested to see various RPG ads I made so far, feel free to drop a comment or reshare via the note. I’ll be more than happy to share some.

Campaign MOMENT!

As mentioned in the previous issue, I was involved with four campaigns. In The Hole in the Oak campaign, it’s safe to say that Obolm (void/voidself), my Halfling character, is officially traumatized after “positively” encouraged to face the danger because void wanted to overcome void’s hardship against the bullies from the past. I made two slides to illustrate what happened.