One-Page RPG Jam Survey Results

A look at the survey results from the 2024 One-Page RPG Jam ahead of this year's jam.

After last year’s One-Page RPG Jam, I put up a survey to give participants the opportunity to provide feedback and try to get some hard numbers. I’m going to go through some of those numbers in this post and see what we can take away for this year’s jam, for which there will be some details at the end.

2024’s jam was again the biggest to date, with 1,374 people signing up, and 660 total entries. Looking at some of the back-end data Itch provides, we can see that there were 538 unique participants, so roughly 40% of people who signed up submitted a game, a slight increase over the previous year.

As far as the survey goes, there were 232 responses, of which 200 (86%) submitted at least one game, and 32 (14%) did not submit one at all. So as we look at these numbers, it’s worth remembering that responses from people with a submitted game account for about 40% of total participants.

Sticking with those initial figures, 71% of people submitted a single game, while 15% submitted more than one - breaking down to roughly 10% submitting two games and 2.5% submitting both three and four-or-more. It’s really great to see that not only did the majority of people finish making a game, but some people really dove in and created more than one.

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Of the 14% of respondents who didn’t submit a game, roughly 20% said it was because they didn’t have an idea, and 50% said they ran out of time. The remaining responses were mostly some variation on not having the time to do it. It possible that extending the length of the jam - which is already pretty long by game jam standards - would give more people a chance to join in, however a later question shows 82% of people thought the jam should stay at five weeks long, with an almost even split of people thinking it should run for a shorter time and a longer time.

It wasn’t just the length of the jam most people were happy with. In 2024 the jam ran from July 22nd to August 25th and 88% of people wanted the jam to stick around these dates, with 9% wanting the jam earlier in the year. This jam in particular started slightly later than previous years due to sickness delaying me from getting stuff together, so a return to a slightly earlier start seems like it would be welcomed.

I’m pleased to see that the vast majority of respondents - 81% - are likely to join a future jam; although I expect anyone who would have been a hard ‘No’ answer isn’t sticking around the Discord server or taking part in any survey. It was also heartening to see that for half of the people surveyed, 2024’s jam was their first ever jam. I always wanted the jam to be accessible - this is the main reason that the jam is unranked and the theme is optional - and it’s great to see so many people felt they could join in.

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Time and time again I get the question of what constitutes one “page”. What size, can the back side be used, etc. I wanted to see what the general consensus would be on how lax the one page restriction should be. 71% of respondents said they would be happy to see smaller sizes, such as A5 be allowed, but that number dropped to 63% who would be happy to see even smaller sizes, such as business cards. Going the other way, only 19% of people wanted to see the restriction get increased to allow bigger sizes of paper.

Most people seemed to want the back side of the sheet - previously reserved for optional, GM-only content such as random tables - given more freedom to allow mandatory or player-facing content as well. Finally, there was a 55/45 percent split on allowing character sheets to have bespoke player-facing content.

For my money, I tend to agree with the majority here; I think allowing a smaller size is fine, as is freeing up the backpage. I do think everything should be contained on one single physical piece of paper though. Having much smaller sizes, or any size larger than A4, is probably better off having its own game jam; 72% of respondents said they would join a jam for similar, small-form games.

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The overwhelming majority of respondents said they would be interested in their game being included in a physical collection, but a bit less - about three-quarters - said they would be interested in buying one. The logistics of such a project are likely to be very complicated but I do think a physical book would be cool, so it’s something I’ll look into after this year’s jam.

The rest of the questions were mostly about social media, content creators, and generative AI. I won’t go into the former - it’s not that interesting and more about the best way for me to promote the jam. The latter - generative AI - is a thorny topic and is probably best served by having its own blog post.

After that, there was the option for people to share any comments about the jam, and one recurring theme was that it’s difficult to get your game noticed when so many are being published in a relatively short time frame. If you felt this, welcome to being an indie TTRPG designer! Getting your designs noticed in a sea of hobbyist games is a big challenge, whether it’s a one-page game you made for the jam or a bigger project you’ve spent years working on. That said, this isn’t a very satisfying answer and it’s something I’ll be thinking about for this year’s jam - how to get more eyes on more games. One thing that was mentioned, but I don’t think will help, is having the jam ranked. In all likelihood, allowing rankings would make it ever harder for people who don’t have a big social media presence or high-level graphic design skills to get noticed.

Finally, one topic I missed from the survey was the optional theme of transportation. It would have been interesting to know what people thought of it, and how many actually used it to spark their game ideas. If you have feedback on this topic, please leave a comment below or bring it up in the Discord server.

Going Forward

One thing that was flagged in the content creator questions, was knowing in advance when the jam would be. Previously I’ve not announced the date until fairly close to the jam start date, but realistically there’s no reason not to let people know sooner. To that end, I can tell you that this year’s jam will run from July 14th to August 17th. Strictly speaking, it’ll start at 23:00 on Sunday 13th instead of midnight. This is so I don’t have to stay up until midnight. Likewise, it’ll end at 23:00 on Sunday 17th August.

Additionally, this year the jam will relax the rules on page size and the back page. A4/Letter will still be the upper limit but smaller sizes will be allowed; down to A5, half-letter, and large index card. If you’re interested in working on an even smaller canvas, later in the year I will be running a bookmark jam!

As far as the back page goes, it’s no longer limited to GM-only material, although it should still avoid having rules that the players will need to read. However it can have extra stuff for players, maps, and more mandatory GM-facing text. The spirit of the jam hasn’t changed - the game should be on a single piece of paper, and players should be able to read a single side before jumping in - but hopefully this gives everyone a bit more latitude to express themselves in their designs.

More info to come, including the full rules for this year, as well as the jam page going live for sign-ups, but I wanted to get the date out there so people know. There will also be more assets for creators to use: the jam badges will be available once again (a lot of people didn’t know they existed) and some assets for content creators as well.