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Check this:
"The reason modern self-publishing tech hasn't led TTRPGs to a extreme resurgence of homebrew as the dominant form (outside D&D), and instead are hovering on indie productization is because we're all fucking broke and a lot of us are praying it'll make a good side hustle or real job."
Yesno?
@LeviKornelsen Not sure any author consider it a "good" hustle. TTRPG isn't moving that much money.
@LeviKornelsen
Yes? At the risk of extreme redundancy, people hoping to make cash off their game, by relying on copyright laws won't actually make cash, but will stop people working together.
But also, the missing piece is a culture of sharing. When people say 'this is open', they mean 'you can download a pdf', but they don't give out source files. No source files means no working together (or at least limits opportunities).
@LeviKornelsen
Basically this is the horror of being creative in our current world. Many will never have the opportunity to devote their time and energy to a major project, unless they can figure out how to make it pay *at least a little*.
It sucks turning games into a "side hustle", but I guess the question is...what conditions would we need to create that would let creativity exist and flourish without a profit motive?
@LeviKornelsen Would I love to be able to make a modest living just making TTRPGs? Yes, absolutely. Is that practical? No, not really. Can I figure out a balance where I split my time between this and more direct paid work? I sure hope so.
I do think that TTRPGs could expand the overall board game market more than they have though, so never say never.
Now I'm rambling.
@LeviKornelsen ok, having thought a bit about it: there's a bit of a selection bias here in that homebrews don't need to be published since they're intended for use at a home table. So the lack of published homebrews doesn't actually measure the number of homebrews being made.
@LeviKornelsen being a starving artist, and staying one, is no change for better or worse. Would not turn down a stack of cash, tho not under illusions that it would happen anyways.
@LeviKornelsen I don’t think I can agree - I think there is a large part of the community that wants mostly plug-and-play solutions to their problems (playing more games), not mostly tinkering homebrew stuff.
The hobby is too big to be homebrew dominant anymore, and likely has been for quite a long time.
@LeviKornelsen I'd say it has more to do with the fact that the current state of our broader culture, outside of TTRPGs, is one of:
1) Professional work being normalized and DIY in general shriveling compared to how things were, say, a century ago.
2) Fanwork in most areas being in a range from legal grey area to outright illegal.
3) Employers being more demanding of people's time (directly or via "gigs") and/or paying their actual employees little enough that they have to work two jobs.
1/2
@LeviKornelsen Thus, most people who even make it into the periphery of TTRPGs are conditioned to buy Official Product, and can't imagine that third-party stuff is even legal to sell, let alone could be of any worth. And *homebrewing?* They don't have a degree in game design, nor a license! Even if they did, they don't have the time.
Really, the idea that TTRPGs are primarily about personal creativity strikes me as gradually becoming more "insider" knowledge as the years go by... 
2/2
@LeviKornelsen I think the “we” in “we're all fucking broke” refers to game makers, but another reason for the lack of an “extreme resurgence” is that many potential buyers of your self-published thing are broke also.
@wordman Money's no barrier to indie RPGs - it's mostly free, or the price of a pint. Time's no barrier - we all have it.
Hear me now; the barrier is this and none other:
no editors = bad writing
(and obviously better art wouldn't hurt)
@LeviKornelsen
@LeviKornelsen Also, a lot of self publishing stuff is a lot of work if you're not doing it for that hope of squeezing some pennies out.
Been trying to think through how to write up and format some stuff for my blog, and honestly, formatting it is where "I give up" comes in.
@LeviKornelsen
Self-publishing tech is too expensive in required learning and infrastructure.
Technically the best way to share most RPG content would be plain HTML with some hyperlinks. Markdown mostly suffices even. But if you do that, people don't take you seriously. It's used as an add on, that is SRDs.
We are gatekeeping ourselves with skeuomorphisms.
@LeviKornelsen I don't think it is a money or tech problem. I think there is not a built-in ethos of hacking on and improving an incomplete thing as there is in a FOSS community. we have fetishized completeness and balance and similar concepts to the point where it's hard to get contributions and revisions to be a natural part of the hobby down to the tables, which is where the cohort of potential contributors is. relatedly, I think the difference between homebrew/open game and product game is so small to the consumer that the need to hack from scratch is minimal --- plenty of other games to try out just a (pirated or not) PDF download away; in that sense I think need for a robust homebrew ethos struggles in simple supply (lots) vs. demand (flexible) ways.
sorry if this FOSS-tinted reply is afield of what you mean, but I feel that most players want products in a way where organized homebrew is skipped over.