A Quick and Dirty Guide to Building a Local RPG Design Scene
I was involved in organizing Designed in the DMV, a local group of mostly-but-not-exclusively-RPG designers in the DC-Maryland-Virginia area. I’ve had to leave the area for family reasons, and my current work schedule doesn’t give me a lot of good time to build a local scene where I live, but now that I've heard people from other countries name-drop DitDMV I wanted to put together a quick guide for doing the same thing where you live.
I think it’s valuable to build a local RPG design community for a few reasons. It provides a more accessible way to make connections and get advice than going to the big conventions, which require massive investments of time and money. It gives people a chance to have discussions in person, which in my experience has always been more positive and constructive than online discussions. And when you have a niche hobby, it’s just nice to hang out with other people who get it.
As always, I am not an expert. I did this in a single time and place, learning by trial and error. My goal is to pass on what I learned there. You may find things are different where you live.
The thing that I found best was the “stone soup” model: one person gets a pot of water boiling and announces they’re making stone soup. Everyone else is free to put in effort and ingredients to that pot of soup as they feel like. Unless RPG design gets a lot more popular, I don’t expect most places will have more than a few dozen designers at most, so you don’t need any more structured than that. The important thing is that each different project is being done by someone who cares about it, and nobody feels pressured to take on work they don’t want, which can lead to burnout. If there’s a pot of soup that nobody feels like making, it doesn’t get made, and that’s okay. If nobody else has potatoes, then either the soup-maker brings their own or the soup won’t have potatoes, and that’s okay. This is also how funding can work. RPG designers come from a diverse range of financial circumstances. Putting down money is something that should only be done by people who volunteer on their own initiative – but as long as people are contributing labor, a lot of this doesn’t require any cash.
Here are some of the projects and infrastructure that you can choose to have in your community:
1. Hold a regular, casual, in-person meetup.
Once every two weeks is what worked best for me. Make it flexible and low-effort, like having a coffee or beer with some friends. Not too early or too late. If you live somewhere urban, hold it somewhere accessible by public transit. That big library in the middle of your city is probably a good place. Cafes and food halls are great too, but don’t pick somewhere people will feel pressured to spend money they might not have. The secret to making this work is to always have it at the same time, and always show up with something to talk about. At first you might be alone some weeks, but eventually you’ll get something going. Don’t try to change times to make it work with people’s schedules. If you’ve scheduled meetings or game nights, you’ll know that no time will ever work consistently for more than 4 adults. Instead, encourage people who can’t make it to host their own meetups at the times that are best for them.
At the meetups, be ready to talk about anything, and always be interested in the games people say they’re working on. If nobody else has a game to talk about, be ready to talk about some game design ideas you think are neat. If you have more than 7 or so people, start splitting into smaller groups (this will usually happen naturally). If one person is loud and dominating the conversation, politely make room for others to talk. Be welcoming to everyone. Someone showing up with a fantasy heartbreaker or someone who is maybe thinking of writing down an adventure soon is still a game designer who actively engages in the dream of creation!
This section is longest because this was my particular pot of soup to make, not because it’s particularly hard or complicated. If you’ve been a GM you probably already have a lot of useful skills for this. And while I'm here, a shoutout to Side Quest Books & Games who have been doing monthly meetups for designers in the Somerville/Boston area.
2. Coordinate somewhere online.
That’s probably a Discord server as of January 2026 in the US. In theory it could be Telegram or a forum or IRC or a Facebook group or something else.
3. Find fellow designers at RPG design-adjacent spaces where you live.
There’s probably at least one big “D&D” discord where you live, as well as communities around local game stores and game cafes. There may be an existing group like Break My Game that has boardgame playtest meetups. If you look on Bluesky, you may find designers who self-identify as living in your region. Check out your local convention scenes as well; there’s probably some small and less-famous local conventions in your area. You can also spread the word on local Reddits, Facebook groups, etc.
4. Put together a catalogue of games by local designers.
Share it with local game stores and online. Design the catalogue for the eyes of a purchasing manager: include easy to read information on where to order each game, what the MSRP is for each game, and what percent of that price they’ll be charged. This is the kind of project that usually needs someone with visual design skills.
5. Get a logo.
Anyone can make a logo. If three people want to make logos, congrats, now you have three logos.
6. Build relationships with libraries.
Many libraries are interested in having local creatives hold talks or workshops, and that includes you. They may also have game nights where you can run your games for people. Some libraries have game collections and some even have zine collections. They may be interested in purchasing local games or accepting donations. Personally, I’m always happy to donate copies of my games to a library - it’s easier and they need all the support they can get.
7. Build relationships with local game stores.
Different people in the group can build relationships with different stores. Talk to their people and ask them what they’d be interested in from a local game designer group. It’s hard to run a FLGS these days! Most rely on selling trading cards, Warhammer models, or D&D to pay the rent, but are interested in hosting events that can bring in extra foot traffic. Even better if they can sell some tickets.
Put the time in – go to their events, buy a thing or two. Figure out who makes purchasing decisions and get the catalogue into their hand. Be ready to make recommendations (but also prepared for, “I’ll buy it all”, or “I’ll buy anything as long as I can get it from the distributors I already use”). Figure out who schedules their events and talk to them about running events. You can do talks, hold game design workshops, demo your games, or hold launch parties for your games. Free RPG Day is probably the biggest day for in-store programming.
Game stores can also help bring local games and programming to big conventions. Big conventions in the US can charge $1000+ for space to sell games, which usually isn’t worth it for small creators with only a couple titles. Stores that are already planning to sell at cons may be interested in putting out a rack of local titles.
If you can provide game stores with a sticker or placard that has your group’s logo and name on it, it can help them sell your games faster. Local games are often a good product for many game stores. Locals want to buy them to support their community, tourists want to buy them as a unique souvenir, and people actually buy them because they can’t be ordered for a lower price off of Amazon (the bane of game stores).
8. Start an (email) newsletter.
Use it to publicize local gaming events, including ones at the game stores, small conventions, and libraries. Also use it to publicize new games by local designers.
9. Have a social media presence.
You can have an account and a hashtag on websites like Bluesky or Tumblr. The account should just be for promoting local events and designers. Make sure a few trusted people all have the account password.
10. Launch a website.
This is really cool but also one of the more complicated things you can do. Hosting fees can cost a couple hundred dollars per year, and someone needs to keep the website updated. Don't rush this; wait for people who have the skills, passion, and funds.
11. Help each other out for tabling at small conventions.
Carpooling, sharing supplies, and sharing tables can make it easier and cheaper for small creators to have a presence at conventions.
12. Hold a game fair.
You can do this in the style of a craft fair or farmer’s market. Find someplace willing to host, a nice day, and some kind of anchor attraction like GMed games or a talk. For the DMV ones, we had a bookstore and a comic store host, usually charging each creator around $25 a table. This is a chance to sell games directly to the public, including inventory that’s too weird, niche, or low-quantity to give to a game store. I found that tabling at a game fair and getting to pitch my work to random potential customers off the street was a great way to refine my sales pitches for my games and get a better idea of what really made them attractive to players.
13. Sell games directly to game stores.
This is a little different than telling them where to order your games from distributors. If people have physical stock on hand, you can sell directly to stores, usually getting a higher cut of the sales; most stores in DC in 2024 offered 50/50 for sales, or gave better terms for consignment. This may involve a more mobile individual traveling around town to collect copies from other designers and drop them off as a bundle at the store. While not every store and not every designer will be into this, I personally had a lot of fun playing game courier. Bonus points if you do it all by mass transit!
14. Publish a collection of local games in a zine.
This is one of the most complicated things you can do, especially if it involves paying out to different contributors. I was only involved in something like this once, and we did it purely as marketing on Free RPG Day, with no profits.
I hope this helps someone. Go out and build a local scene!
Sincerely, Lyme