Patreons are an important part of the monetization of RPGs. Not only for RPG news*, also many RPG publishers. Handiwork Games, a company of industry veterans who have worked for and with Cubicle 7, Free League Publishing, Onyx Path Publishing, and many more, has a Patreon generating one of the most sought after components of any tabletop RPG, opponents. Jacob Rodgers of Handiwork agreed to talk with me about the new Patreon, what it offers, and how it came to be.
EGG EMBRY (EGG): Thanks for talking to me about this Patreon. What is Handimonsters?
JACOB RODGERS (JACOB): Handimonsters is our fairly new Patreon, offering everyone a free 5e monster every month and our patrons a new 5e monster pretty much every week (nominally we do four a month, but I think we will always have some sort of bonus content for those months with five Mondays in them).
EGG: What kind of monsters are you creating? Will these monsters follow any specific CR, environment, or theme?
JACOB: That’s the great thing about them, we have complete freedom on the project. I’ve done a lot of highly thematic 5e rules (e.g. for Middle-earth, Ruins of Symbaroum, BEOWULF: Age of Heroes, etc.) and so the ability to say ‘this monster is completely out there’ on occasion has been a lot of fun. We do have some connections between various releases. For example, we have seen three monsters from the Dreamlands of Faerie already, and we will soon hear about the Heartwood, a demi-dimension that is only reachable in the centre of the oldest and darkest forests.
EGG: Those are cool connections. Will these entries include any bonuses such as related magic items or spells?
JACOB: We’re looking at various bonus material, especially for our off weeks. I expect we will see some of that as we keep growing out our various ideas and inspirations.
EGG: What inspired the idea to create four Dungeons & Dragons Fifth Edition monsters a month?
JACOB: The Scarred Lands Creature Collection made us realise that we had the capacity to do a project like this, allowed us to develop some internal tools for error-checking the monster math, and helped remind us that, in a lot of fantasy settings, there’s a wide range of monster types and origins, and, after that project, the Patreon gave us an outlet for those energies.
EGG: You’ll create a number of monsters over the lifetime of this project. Will those monsters be reprinted elsewhere at a later date?
JACOB: We’ve talked about possibly doing an annual, but right now we’re focused on growing our Patreon membership. We have two simple tiers: “Monsters Only” for $3 US a month, which gets you the three paid monster statblocks plus our free one every month, and “Everything” for $6 US a month, which gives you all of the above, plus digital art files to show your players, VTT tokens and printable paper minis, for however you’re playing these days.
EGG: You have a great resume as does everyone at Handiwork. Can you talk about who is working on this?
JACOB: In addition to myself, we have Jon Hodgson [I interviewed Jon at EN World about BEOWULF here] doing occasional design and illustration, and providing art direction for the project. Scott Purdy is our staff artist and sometimes monster creator (he’s painted up several monsters of his own inspiration and then I’ve gone and expanded on their story and features in text). Paul Bourne puts everything together and makes it look great.
EGG: This is not Handiwork’s first time creating 5e monsters and content. There’s BEOWULF and, for Onyx Path Publishing, you helped on the Scarred Lands Creature Collection, among others. How will the Handimonsters differ from those offerings?
JACOB: Handimonsters is more wide-ranging than either of those projects. We want to create a good variety of challenging monsters that you haven’t seen yet, but also make sure they fit into a nearly 50-year old tradition of having everything from naturalistic monsters to the weird and wacky.
EGG: Let’s switch to another project from Handiwork, a|state. Handiworks has put out a free adventure meant to be run with Forged in the Dark rules, a|state Nicely,Done. How is the wider project coming along?
JACOB: We’re finishing up final tweaking and layout on it right now. We’re making the City even more visually amazing and helping bring it to life. We’ll be talking a lot more about a|state in the months to come.
EGG: Beyond Handimonsters and a|state, what else are you working on?
JACOB: We are working on a set of monthly Digital Packs for BEOWULF which is a group of ancillary materials and PDF adventures that our backers earned on Kickstarter. We’re doing studio work for Ralph Horsley’s Art Adventure book and a 5e setting that I don’t think we can mention yet.
EGG: I’m sure all of those will rock and look amazing! Thanks for talking with me. For fans interested in more details, where can they follow you online?
JACOB: Visit [our website] or follow us @GamesHandiwork on Twitter.
*d20 Radio benefits from Patreon (check it out here and, if you enjoy our content, consider one of the pledge levels). In addition, I write for High Level Games (their Patreon is here) and EN World which creates content across a number of Patreons (EN5ider, EN World, Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk, and E.O.S.).
Handimonsters Patreon from Handiwork Games
“Each month there are free monsters, monsters for patrons, and even more monsters for the higher tiers. We have VTT tokens, top-down tokens, paper minis, and art cards!”
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