On March 15th, 2025 I got to host a talk at Terminal City Tabletop Con. This talk focused on making games using free and cheap TTRPG resources. Several people requested a way to go back over the talk on their own time, so I’ve decided to upload a (slightly cleaned up) copy of my notes and slides here.

---

Welcome to making TTRPGs on a shoestring budget. 

This topic is super close to my heart because I’ve met many people who’ve told me they want to try designing TTRPGs but don’t think they can afford to. 

It’s easy to see why they think that, as TTRPG design can look like a massive and daunting task at first glance. However, it is possible to make a game without ruining your bank balance. In fact, it’s possible to design a game without spending a single penny. And today I hope to give you some tips on how to do just that.

Because to steal a quote from They Live:

“I have come here to spend cash and make games…. and I’m all out of cash”

Writing The Game

So, let’s start at the beginning. You’ve decided you want to dip your toes into the world of TTRPGs.

At the beginning you have a choice to make, do you want to make a new system from scratch, or would you prefer to build your game around an already existing system, so some of the design work is already done for you?

If you want to take the latter approach, you’re in luck, many indie systems offer open licenses that allow designers to design and sell add-on content for the game or remix the rules to create a brand new game, meaning that if you like a system it might be worth checking to see if it offers an open license.

Some popular open systems include:

• Apocalypse World – offers the Powered By The Apocalypse framework which has been the basis for many beloved and highly praised games, including Avatar Legends, Bluebeard’s Bride, Visigoths vs. Mall Goths, and Monsterhearts.
• Blades In The Dark – offers Forged In The Dark, which has been used to create  Scum & Villainy, Brinkwood, and  Girl by Moonlight.
• MÖRK BORG – which has a whole host of fan-created hacks and content.
• Fate – which offers Powered By Fate, which has been used as the basis for Dresden Files, Atomic Robo, and the Secret Of Cats

However, do make sure to read each game’s terms and conditions before forging ahead with your project, as every game’s open license will have slightly different rules. However, there are some common rules that 90% of open licenses include.

• Most systems require you to include an attribution somewhere in your game that credits and links to the original system and its designer.
• The vast majority also contain a morality clause that specifies that the system can’t be used to produce hateful or bigoted content, as no designer wants to be linked to something terrible.

Laying It Out

Once you’ve written your game, your next task is laying the text out and prepping the game for public consumption.

The first step is to decide what software you want to use for this task. Obviously, the two most well-known bits of publishing software are Adobe InDesign and Microsoft Publisher. 

Alas, both of these programs are expensive and require you to pay a monthly subscription to keep using them, meaning that unless you need them for something else, like work or school, most indie designers will tell you to steer clear of them. 

Thankfully, there are many cheap and free alternatives.

In the indie TTRPG space, the most popular software choice for game layout is the Affinity 2 suite of programs. This suite includes a photo editor, an illustration program, and a publishing one, all of which have most of the features Adobe or Microsoft programs have.

The only downside is the price: each bit of software costs around $90 and a license for all three costs about $200, which is quite pricy. But these are one-time payments, meaning you can use the software forever without paying again once you’ve purchased it. Plus, the company does decent sales once or twice a year, meaning you can get it at a lower price if you wait. 

There are also totally free options.

A popular choice is Scribus, an open-source alternative to Adobe’s InDesign. While it has a slightly clunkier UI and lacks some of Adobe’s more advanced features, it is a perfectly functional way to turn your text into a neat document quickly. 

Non-Traditional Publishing Software

There are also several more options if you’re willing to move away from traditional publishing software. For example, many designers use LibraOffice Writer (a free, open-source alternative to Microsoft Word) or Google Docs to lay out their game. 

While both of these lack advanced layout tools, if you want a quick and easy way to quickly turn some text and basic images into a neat document, they do the job without costing you a penny.

Similarly, some designers use photo-editing software to make quick layouts. This includes GIMP (a free and open-source Photoshop clone) or online tools like Canva and Photopea. Again, these all lack advanced layout features, but they do get the job done, provided you don’t mind fiddling a little bit.

Finding Images And Resources For Your TTRPG

Of course, when laying out your game, you’ll likely want to add some art or visual flourishes to enhance the game’s mood and make it more immersive. 

However, finding art can feel prohibitively expensive for people who are just dipping their toes into the world of TTRPG design. Thankfully, there are many places to find free or low-cost art.

The most well-known places to find free art are dedicated free stock image websites. The three most commonly used are Unsplash, Pixabay, and Pexels. Unsplash and Pexels focus on photography, while Pixabay focuses on vector graphics and clip art-style images. 

Though, I should note that these sites do have some downsides. Unsplash has recently launched a premium service and is putting an increasing number of images behind a paywall, and Pixabay allows AI images, so you will have to keep your wits about you when using it. 

Using Creative Commons

Another great way to find images is to dive into the world of Creative Commons. Put simply, Creative Commons is a type of license that a creator can apply to their work to declare that they are okay with other people making use of it. 

There are 7 different Creative Commons licenses, each of which has slightly different rules. Thankfully, each license name is built from a series of acronyms, meaning it’s easy to tell at a glance what you can and can’t do.

However, as a rule of thumb, the licenses you’ll likely be looking for as a TTRPG designer are:

• CCO – This allows you to distribute, remix, adapt, and build on the resource without any limitations 
• CC BY – This allows you to do whatever you wish with the resource, provided you credit the original creation.

You should beware of Creative Commons licenses that include NC or SA as part of their name as the former means that you could only use the resource in non-commercial projects and SA means the work you create must be distributed under the same terms as the original work, forcing you to use that CC license. 

Thankfully, the Creative Commons website has an excellent fact sheet that explains all of the different licenses, so don’t think you need to memorize this. 

There are a load of sites, both big and small, that offer art assets under Creative Commons. Some personal favorites include: 

• Game-Icons.net – which offers a lot of small icons that are great for character sheets and stuff like that
• NegativeSpace.co – Is full of CC0 licensed photography
• Libreshot – Also photographs, including some excellent street photography under CC0
• Morguefile – Has over 400,000 images, all offered under a very open Creative Commons license 

If you have some money to spend, many artists within the TTRPG space offer affordable image and resource packs packed with Creative Commons-licensed art, meaning it’s worth spending some time looking around on Itch.io or Gumroad. 

Public Domain

You can also make use of works in the Public Domain. Alas, this is one area where Canada and America differ quite dramatically. Currently, in America, all works released in 1929 and prior are in the Public Domain.

In Canada, copyright used to expire 50 years after the creator’s death, meaning that at the moment anything made by a creator who died in 1971 or before is in the Public Domain. 

However, in 2022, the law changed. Now copyright lasts for 70 years after the author’s death, meaning that many works that were scheduled to enter the Public Domain now won’t for 20 years, effectively freezing the public domain cut-off in early 1970.

Thankfully, there exist sites that do the hard work for you. The Public Domain Review is a fantastic site that collects, spotlights, and catalogs various Public Domain works and images, making it a great place to look for inspiration. 

Open Access

Another twist on the Creative Commons formula is Open Access. This is a program where museums create high-quality digital scans of their work and make them available to the public online.

These images are usually under Creative Commons licenses (or something that has a different name but functions similarly). However it varies from museum to museum, so it’s worth checking their Open Access page to find out their exact terms. 

Some museums that are part of this program, include:

• The Metropolitan Museum of Art
• The National Gallery of Art
• The Smithsonian
• The New York Public Library
• Museums of the City of Paris

Note: If you want even more free and cheap TTRPG resources, check out my TTRPG Creator Resources Masterpost, a constantly updated directory of TTRPG design resources.

Creating Your Own TTRPG Art

Also, remember you can make art yourself! 

You can draw stuff on your computer or with paper or pen. But another, often overlooked, way to get art for your game is to take photos of stuff with the camera on your phone. 

Obviously, you’ll have to make sure you avoid including brand logos or non-consenting people, but you can easily get loads of great images by arranging the objects you have lying around the house or by walking around your local area. Tweak the colors and add some filters and you can create some breathtaking artwork that will fit any game.

And don’t think you need to be an art school graduate or have gallery-quality art either. Less technically proficient art has a charm to it, and TTRPG history is full of beloved games with slightly wonky art. 

The image on the slide is the original design for Dungeon And Dragon’s now-beloved Owlbear, showing that art quality is not the be-all and end-all when it comes to a TTRPG’s success.

How You Use TTRPG Resources Is Often More Important Than What They Are

Plus, creative use of TTRPG resources can help make something that’s the sum of its parts. 

Let’s say you’re making a fantasy game and, to fill part of a page, you quickly doodle a goblin. While it’s cute on its own, you’re unsure of it because it isn’t the highest-quality goblin ever drawn.

But rather than throw it away, you could put that goblin in the corner of the page and then, using a handwriting-like font, add a small note next to the image saying something like “never leave  rations unattended when these things are nearby, they’ll devour them before you can turn your back.” This little change turns that image you were unsure about into a cute and immersive bit of world-building, that draws the reader further into the game.

To give a personal example, two of my most-used pieces of art are a picture of my face pressed against the mirror and a splatter of tomato sauce from when I accidentally knocked over a pan on the stove. Despite using both numerous times, no one has ever noticed the reuse because, due to me combining them with other images, changing the hue, or putting filters on them, the final product looks different each time.

Publishing And Playtesting

The next thing you’re likely going to consider is Play Testing your game. This can seem like a daunting and expensive task as it requires finding and organizing a group of people, but there are ways to keep the cost down.

The cheapest (but most embarrassing way) to do Play Testing is to do it solo. Sit down with your game and play it like a group of players would. You can either play full games or set up little scenarios that focus in on certain rules or parts of the game you’re worried about. 

The second cheapest way is to ask friends if they’ll be willing to help you out. If they do agree, you can easily make a night out of it and pay them back by buying some drinks and snacks to tide them over as they play.

Finally, check local TTRPG-focused groups. Some bigger groups, especially those made up of designers, may offer structured play-testing events. But, even if your local group doesn’t, they’re a great way of meeting people who will be open to testing a new game. 

Another option is to release the game online and improve the game based on player feedback. Of course, this only works if you already have an audience, but it is one option if you can’t run full or in-person playtests. 

Publishing 

So, you’ve written your game, refined it, and laid it out.

Now comes the big question. What the hell do you do with it? 

For most Indie TTRPG designers, the answer is online self-publishing as you retain control of the work and don’t need connections in the publishing industry. 

There are two main sites used to do this. The first is DriveThruRPG. DriveThruRPG has a massive catalog of games, including many big-name publishers. On top of this, it also has a Print-On-Demand service that is useful for designers who want to release small runs of physical books.

However, the most popular site for Indie creators is Itch.io. There are many reasons for this, but one of the main ones is that Itch’s robust tagging system combined with its curious and open-minded userbase means that it has fantastic discoverability, making it a good way to get eyes on your work, even if you don’t have an established audience to market to.

On top of this, Itch has fantastic game jam support and allows multiple designers to band together to sell game bundles, meaning that the site has almost become a networking hub for many indie TTRPG designers.

Of course, you don’t need to use these sites. You can always opt to host games on your own website or post them on your favorite social media of choice.

While this does give you total control over your work, it does mean that you have to be very proactive with your marketing and you also need to figure out a way to handle payments if you want to charge for the game, which does mean wading through some legal red tape. 

Ashcan

One of the best things about Digital Distribution, especially for designers with low budgets, is that you can easily update your game later down the road, tweaking and adding to it as you acquire more design skills and build up your library of TTRPG resources.

In recent years, many Indie TTRPG designers have started to embrace the Ashcan. Ashcan is a term that originated in the comic book industry in the 1930s and 1940s. In this era, if you wanted to secure a trademark for a character or comic name, you had to send the US Patent & Trademark Office proof that you had published it. 

So, many studios would try and grab as many trademarks as possible by quickly knocking together the bare minimum and sending it to the office, with many Ashcans being nothing more than a new cover slapped on an old comic.

Today, the term has a slightly different meaning, especially as Ashcans are no longer used to trick the Patent Office. 

In the Indie TTRPG world, an Ashcan is a bare-bones version of a game. Often, it is just the core rules in plain text form, without any layout or artwork. The designer will release this to the public and use their feedback to help them refine and build on the game. 

Many designers, (especially those who post on Itch or other sites that allow Pay What You Want pricing), will also use the Ashcan as a form of crowdfunding, with the money from every purchase of the game being put towards layout or artwork. 

Even if you’re not using the Ashcan format, the inherent updatability of digital files is a good thing to keep in mind when stepping into the TTRPG world. 

Because it means that your game doesn’t need to be perfect right out of the gate.  It’s fine to make something imperfect and share it with the world. It’s one of the most beautifully human things you can possibly do. 

Because the best way to improve as a TTRPG designer is to keep making and experimenting with games.