For the purposes of this question, I'll count "sturdy and lasts a long time" as cheap as well. A Chessex wet erase battlemat and wet erase markers. It seems pricey at first but my 4'x 4' map has lasted me more than a decade with a minimum of staining so long as you occasionally rub it down with isopropyl alcohol.
I will also wholesale zero reservations vouch for Chessex battlemats. Mine has held up for 15 years, I've never had to use anything other than soap and water. The only remotely bad thing I got to say about it is if you store it rolled (as you practically have to for a 48x48 mat) it can take an hour or more for the "curve" to roll out. So you need to roll it with the side you want to use facing out, so unless you have a holder that can mean maps may not fully survive between sessions/if you pre-draw maps, you need to be careful.
Which, corollary to that list:
Nuts/Washed/Bits of metal and flat magnets, and StickyTac.
You can print off a dungeon template, cut it out, slide magnet under your battlemat, and then use a washer/nut to hold it in place. If you have the luxury of a metal table, you can put down magnets to try to keep things in place. You can also use StickyTac to hold dungeon tiles or paper in place if you don't feel like trying to move around magnets.
Poker chips and playing cards can make good standins for pieces and can also be used as alternate RNG methods, especially if you mark the poker chips on one or both sides.
Second the poker chips.
While you can use plastic ones, if you have the budget I will shill for upgrading to 14gram poker chips. The extra weight means they slide around less if used as markers and they feel much more substantial when handled.
Kinda yes, kinda no. A lot of them at least knew people already in more established firms, or actually worked on splats and got gassed out beforehand, which is often how they get the leg up in even getting their ideas started. They're also both incestuous and can be quite venomous in the process behind doors, no matter what side of this tiny little industry you're on claims it is.
Not kidding, for all of the making fun of Coyote and Crow's actual racism or RPGPundit's smug no true scotsman bullshit, just note that the others have these same quirks, just quieter. It takes a similar damaged brain and soul to want to make this stuff that animation and comics does. It's also such a low bar to enter even complete doofs can make splats, even if they don't sell well.
The most polished indie ones or the ones with the most success also often cut their teeth and suckle on the near-monopoly that is WotC, and whatever the fuck you wanna call the World of Darkness for their big bucks as well, since it guarantees sales. Heck, some licenses I can state include royalty division by sale and in exchange you get assets. It's changed a bit with using the open licenses to push your slop now, but still the thing.
Yeah, the sausage material's pretty gross. But I'll also state the process is interesting, and if you ever feel like making something, you probably can, get it sold on DrivethruRPG, and get like a CostCo hot dog or two off of it.
I think there's some confusion.
What I'm saying by everything just being Splats is that for a lot of these systems even the "official publisher" is basically performing at the leve of a mid-tier splat creator, and the only money these companies really can hope to make from their system is pushing splats exactly like the retards they hope to bring into their orbit.
In these cases, everyone is a Splat house even the official publisher.
OSE is towards the cleaner end of that turd in that they make no bones that when you buy the rulebooks from them you are paying for typsetting, art, and higher book quality. But yeah, even NG pumps out slats and retarded zines.
God I fucking hate zines in general but I especially hate them in the TTRPG space. From the retarded non-word to the presenation to very often the content.
I didnt think of that. I've seen that used as a DM trick, but didn't think of having players use it.
issue I've had with players is that most wet or dry erase markers lack the detail needed to write legibly in boxes. I've had moderate luck with custom formatting KAMB character sheets to be usable; But even B/X is pretty much a non-stater.
anything where players have to write its bad, but if you can just have them fill/empty checkbox area (i.e. Horrible Death Check tracker) that works alright.
