2025 Stakeholder’s Report

Despite being over a month late (though I believe for a good reason), I was finally able to finish my 2025 Stakeholder’s Report!

If you have not read a Stakeholder’s Report yet for Paper Dice Games, I started writing these two years ago (you can read my 2023 report here, and my 2024 report here). The purpose of the Stakeholder’s Report is to update the Stakeholders of Paper Dice Games with how the small business is doing, what went well last year, and what can be improved for the coming year. My hope is that this report can give a sense of direction and improvement for the games I design at Paper Dice Games.

The target audience for this report are all Paper Dice Games stakeholders – which includes gamers, collaborators (like artists, designers and playtesters), subscribers, and fans. Most importantly, if you are reading, this includes YOU!

Paper Dice Games

Paper Dice Games is a small part time business primarily run by one person – me. I do collaborate with a number of different people on projects (see below), and am very grateful to all of them.

My goal with Paper Dice Games is to create fun games with paper and dice that people can play by themselves or with friends.

2025 Highlights

Here are the highlights from Paper Dice Games in 2025:

Fantasy Civ Solo: Discovery and Doom was released! This release has been by far my most successful to date, no matter the metrics I measure. It’s a design that has been around in some format since 2014, and I am extremely proud I was able to release this game in 2025!
Grim Space: Horror for your Space RPGs was released! This product almost broke me, from a release perspective. It ended up being A TON of work, almost double the hours I predicted. Even so, I am proud of the unsettling horror inside!
Dwarf Mine is now a gold seller on DriveThruRPG! This happened last year sometime between April and May, and I am very proud to have a game that is within the top 6% in sales on DriveThruRPG!
I worked with a designer to create a new logo (see above)! I’m very far behind updating the areas I live online with the new logo, but I am hoping to get that finished up in the next few weeks.
Most importantly, I was able to treat Paper Dice Games like a part-time job for myself in 2025. This is really important for two reasons. First, I’m able to commit regular hours to working on games for all of you (and I’m able to do this because I can finally pay myself something for my time)! Second, I LOVE designing and sharing games. It’s what I would be doing full time if I could. So, being able to do it part time, rather than only when I have hobby time available, is a huge change that occurred in 2025.

2025 By the Numbers

Here are some metrics I track each year to help identify how my games and small business are doing throughout the year.

New Games: 2

Fantasy Civ Solo: Discovery and Doom

Fantasy Civ Solo is a design I started back in 2014! I was finally able to finish it in a publishable format, and I am incredibly proud of it! It’s a fun solo 4x RPG that is, from what I can tell, unique in the RPG space.

It also did incredibly well upon release. It broke all my internal records for first week sales, first month sales, and has already broken my record for sales in the first 12 months!

Grim Space: Horror for Your Space RPG

Grim Space is the follow-up to Distress Calls for Space RPGs. I am very proud of it, and I think it offers a fresh (and often unsettling) perspective on horror in Space RPGs. While I would consider it successful (it has exceeded Distress Call sales so far across comparable time periods), I do think the release was underwhelming. I think there are two main reasons for this.

The first is how I approached the book. Grim Space is a collection of creative and spooky scenarios that can be used in your space RPG. The main feature is creativity. This is different when compared to Distress Calls – which is both creative but also mechanically useful to a GM of a space RPG. If I were to redo Grim Space, I would spend more time focusing on how these spooky scenarios could be used in the game, rather than outlining the story of the scenarios themselves.

The second reason I think the release was underwhelming was an error on my part. Grim Space is written for skill-based space RPGs like Traveller, Alien RPG, and Mothership. I was particularly excited to share the release with fans of Mothership, because I thought the horror scenarios from Grim Space compliment the vibe and gameplay of Mothership well.

Unfortunately, I am not a frequent member of Mothership communities online. As I learned post-release, many Mothership communities now have a rule around sharing only “Mothership-specific” resources and content. Since Grim Space is system agnostic, I was unable to directly share the release of Grim Space within Mothership communities online. I think this contributed to the muted release for Grim Space.

Overall I am still incredibly proud of the release. It’s probably my most polished release yet, and stretched my ability to design, publish, and launch an RPG book. But, if I were to go back in time, I would probably do things a bit differently to address the two above points.

New Expansions: 1

Star Solo is still a game I am actively developing. I would likely be on the precipice of releasing a paid version of the game, if it wasn’t for Microsoft Publisher becoming unsupported later this year.

Regardless, I released a new Star Solo expansion in 2025. There were more releases planned, but due to the Microsoft Publisher news, I had to instead shift to rebuilding Star Solo in Affinity Publisher 2.

I still have incredibly lofty plans for Star Solo. I think it has the opportunity to be possibly the biggest game I’ve released (see below for more details). I’m excited to get a new streamlined version of the rules out this year.

Lifetime Game Sales

The section below takes a holistic look at the lifetime sales of each of my games, since I started publishing games back in 2018. These figures are specifically sales figures gathered across my three main marketplaces (DriveThruRPG, itch.io, and Gumroad). Free bundles and giveaways are not included in the below numbers. It’s also worth mentioning that these are all PDF sales, as that I am not currently dealing with print products.

Dwarf Mine: 1,296 Sales (Gold Seller on DriveThruRPG)

Dwarf Mine: Barrier Mountains Expansion: 575 Sales (Electrum Seller on DriveThruRPG)

Dwarf Mine: Magestone Mountain Expansion: 567 Sales (Electrum Seller on DriveThruRPG)

Dwarf Mine: Underdark Expansion: 551 Sales (Electrum Seller on DriveThruRPG)

Dwarf Mine: Artifacts and Curses Expansion: 298 Sales (Silver Seller on DriveThruRPG)

Distress Calls for Space RPGs: 275 Sales (Silver Seller on DriveThruRPG)

Fantasy Civ Solo: Discover and Doom: 146 Sales (Copper Seller on DriveThruRPG)

First Role: 55 Sales

Grim Space: Horror for your Space RPG: 38 Sales

Unicorn Party: 24 Sales

I also have several free games and expansions that I still track downloads for.

Star Solo Free Version: 1,618 downloads

13 Dwarves and a Burlgar Free Dwarf Mine Expansion: 1,277 downloads

GridHack Free Version: 836 downloads

Beyond the Mountain Free Dwarf Mine Expansion: 674 downloads

Star Solo in particular performed really well in 2025, with almost 1,000 new downloads! It’s worth noting two things about this game. First, that this game is only available on itch.io – so all downloads are coming from a single marketplace. Second, Star Solo had a revenue of $14.25 in 2025. This means that the free game earned over $14 in tips in just last year. It’s pretty clear this game has a massive audience that wants more – and I am hoping to update Star Solo in a major way in 2026!

Interestingly, GridHack also had a bigger year in 2025 than in 2024. I would love to design a “map-pack” type thing for GridHack, or even create an RPG style campaign for that game…but I don’t think that will happen in 2026.

Revenue Streams: 6

Here is where the revenue from Paper Dice Games came from in 2025.

itch.io: 38.45%
DriveThruRPG: 37.82%
Gumroad: 9.78%
Physical Game Sales: 6.16%
DriveThru Affiliate: 6.02%
Youtube Channel: 1.76%

2025 was a very healthy year for Paper Dice Games from a revenue perspective. It was because of the revenue success in 2025 that allowed me to treat PDG as a part time business, rather than a hobby business. This allowed me to spend more time designing and creating games – and being able to pay myself at least a little for this time! The result is more games for all of you!

Last year, I did note that itch.io had a huge increase in revenue compared to DriveThruRPG. I hypothesized this was due to the game discovery opportunity on itch.io. In 2025 I dove deeper into referral data (where leads to game sales come from), and I have since changed my hypothesis. I actually think that DriveThruRPG has better in-marketplace discovery for games. Their “also bought” as well as “recommended” sections lead to a solid number of sales for me. Itch.io as a marketplace has been excellent when a new game is released – but once the game is out for over a month, discoverability seems low. However, sales and bundles are very visible on both marketplaces, and continue to be one of the main ways I am able to find new players for my games.

Independent Contractors and Collaborators: 12

I collaborated with 3 different artists and 9 different playtesters in 2025.

Artists I worked with included Alex Odinson and his incredible cover and map design for Fantasy Civ Solo. I also worked with Mac Teg again on Grim Space for the cover art, and Mark Gosbell for the inline art.

Playtesters that were credited in 2025 (though some of the playtests occurred prior to 2025) include Al Roth, Austin Lien, David Canillas, Dave Klink, Josh Hemmesch, and Neal Hanke for Fantasy Civ Solo. Beta Readers that were credited on reviewing Grim Space include Christian Razukas, Marcus Burggraf, and anonymous beta reader number 3.

I usually find artists just by browsing different communities online. If you are an artist looking for work, please let me know here!

I often ask friends who play games to help me playtest games. But I also reach out to fans of Paper Dice Games, as well as members of different communities to request someone to playtest a game. I always give the final game free to all playtesters. If you are interested in playtesting future games for me, please let me know here!

Overall, this was an excellent year for collaboration. I hope to continue growing in this area to bring even better games your way.

Outreach Metrics

I’ve said the same thing for several years now – a rising tide in RPGs lifts all boats. I believe this is especially true in the Solo RPG space.

One of my big predictions for the coming years is for a “Solo Mode” to become the norm for traditional RPG rulesets, similar to how The One Ring has a Strider Mode. I don’t see this as competition – rather, I see this as an opportunity to introduce a bunch of new players to Solo RPGs.

I have a few metrics I track to measure my outreach for the year. Here they are:

Mailing List Subscribers: 165 (up 90 from last year – incredible!)

Youtube Subscribers: 2.5k (up about 800 from last year!)

itch.io Followers: 397 (up 151 from last year!)

Website Views: 11.6k (up about 3k from last year!)

Outreach went very well in 2025. Most notably, the number of people who subscribed to my mailing list doubled! My mailing list (you can join here) allows me to speak directly to fans of my games who want updates, news, and occasional discounts and deals. It also lets me get direct feedback from fans of my games in an efficient way, like I did during December’s annual survey giveaway.

This mailing list gets monthly messages, and it continues to be one of the most important areas of outreach for me in 2026.

Looking Ahead to the Here and Now (2026)

I’m hoping to have my roadmap for 2026 out the first week of March.This roadmap was finished, but unpublished in early January. It’s obviously been adjusted, and I want to ensure I can hit the deadlines I set for myself before I publish it.

So you’ll be hearing about all the great things I will be designing with Paper Dice Games soon! But, since you’ve made it this far in the article, I can give you a few teasers.

Dwarf Mine will get a new release this year – kind of! It won’t be an expansion, but it will be related to Dwarf Mine. I am incredibly excited about this new game, and I can’t wait to share more in a few weeks!
Another of my games will be getting a new expansion! I won’t say which yet – you’ll have to tune into my roadmap release in a few weeks.
I am planning on releasing a brand new game this year as well! I actually have a few in development – one I had to pause that was supposed to be completed by now, one that I’ve been planning for a while, and one that came out of surprise inspiration! I’ll be announcing which of these will be completed this year, during my roadmap release!

Paper Dice Games will continue to be a part-time business for me in 2026! My efforts in 2025 with this transition paid off, and I am very excited to continue designing, sharing, and playing games with all of you.