Fulfillment is Finished!
After nine months and a few delays, I'm happy to finally have One Way Out out the door. It wasn't an easy path, and I made a lot of missteps on my first foray into the world of crowdfunding. I thought I'd share this to help ease the voyage for future travelers heading this way.
One Way Out?
One Way Out is a quick-play dark fantasy tabletop roleplaying game of escape and betrayal.
Designed for two players, each fast-paced 30-minute session pits you against the terrible dangers of the all-powerful High Mages—and each other.
In each session, you and your companion will attempt to escape a magical dungeon through a series of challenges. During each challenge, players make a decision whether to fight together or flee apart, leading to a dark choice at the Final Door.
Gameplay combines card-game mechanics with dice rolls and evocative prompts to determine the who, what, and how of each scenario. Together, you and your companion will weave these elements into a short story of triumph or doom.
One Way Out is Tabletop Bookshelf's first original game and was created for Zine Quest 2025. I served dual roles, both designing and executing the project, along with all the operational tasks such as communication and fulfillment.
Looking back, I perhaps overburdened myself, juggling this work with the shop's expansion (not to mention my personal life!), but for the shop's future plans to stay on track, it made sense to take the plunge, even if I wasn't entirely prepared.
Lesson 1: Finish 80% Before You Launch
This isn't a hard rule, but you'll be much better off if you have the majority of your project finished before you move forward with funding. There are three reasons for this. The first benefit is that you have shorter timelines that will attract more backers. The second big thing is that you avoid missed deadlines.
The third reason is that you're advertising the actual product, not a concept. There's a lot that can change between the concept and the final product—for this project there wasn't a ton, but you can imagine for bigger, more complex projects there could be quite a divergence from the original plan.
Lesson 2: Don't Go It Alone
For this project, I handled the design, writing, and layout on my own, with Eric Lazure providing editing (and patience) while I worked through the revisions. It was too much. In retrospect, it would have been easy to delegate much of the prompt-writing and layout work. Identify where your strengths and desires are early. Delegate the rest.
The other reason I'll be leaning much harder into collaboration in the future is that the success of a title is magnified and the payoff is better when it's shared across all the creative people who work in this space. And that's central to Tabletop Bookshelf's purpose.
Lesson 3: Use Industry-Standard Tools
For this project, I used Canva. I fell in love with Canva since I started the shop. It's my go-to for all my content creation, and I'm extremely comfortable and proficient with it now. But it's not a publishing tool. It has templates, but they are really only adequate for small projects. Even a 50-page zine becomes unwieldy. Furthermore, it created unnecessary friction with the final printer, who had to reformat the final export. The printer also had issues with resolution quality, despite my investments in high-res images.
Going forward, I'll bite the bullet and use industry-standard software. Otherwise, I'm creating unnecessary operational friction that's taking away from the time I could be creating.
Final Thoughts
Did I make mistakes? Yes. But I'm still glad I made the effort early, before I was ready. The timing of life is rarely convenient, and all of these mistakes are valuable lessons as Tabletop Bookshelf continues its publishing journey. You didn't think this was it, did you? Our next title emerges in fall 2026. 🍄
Furthermore, as we continue the mission of expanding the indie tabletop RPG scene, I feel it's important to become an established designer myself, to fully understand what it means to be a creator in this space, and to build stronger connections with my partners.
Finally, I hope this encourages you to take the plunge into creation yourself. It's never been a better time to be an independent creator. There are so many tools at your disposal, and if you approach the community with kindness and generosity, that will be reciprocated.
Make something new today. There are no mistakes, only lessons.
