2024: The Bundle year in review

By Bundle of Holding founder and operator Allen Varney

“How long can you keep this going?” the DriveThruRPG guy asked at our Gen Con lunch. I said, “At one offer a week, I think I won’t run out of bundles for another year and a half.” The DriveThru guy greeted this with a yeah-right eyeroll. Yeah, buddy, sure: Since February 2013 I’d already launched nearly 60 Bundle of Holding offers, and here I was promising 75 more. Even to me the boast felt half nuts, there in August 2014.

In 2024 the Bundle of Holding presented Offers 794 through 906 to its usual modest success. After eight or nine year-in-review posts that all report the same, I’ve run out of new ways to say “Things continued unchanged.” (That’s meta!) Unit sales this year declined ~4% after a 7% drop in 2023, mirroring a steeper downturn across the adventure gaming biz. But expenses fell this year: In June my wife, Beth Fischi, and I escaped exorbitant New York state and returned to the house of my teen years in low-tax Reno, Nevada. Likewise, in September the website migrated from a pricey host, Linode, to the more affordable Hetzner. It’s all very sustainable.

Well, except the whole entire roleplaying field is rocketing up beyond my grasp.

Stop me before I schedule again

In the last two years I’ve tried, get this, planning ahead. I recap the uninspiring results at the end of this post. To the current point: In January 2023 I identified 80 or 90 offers I wanted to present that year, leaving 20-25 blank spots on the schedule. In early 2024 I pulled together 114 ideas that would fill the year, plus two dozen possibles. Now, as 2025 crouches ahead like a fated beast, I’ve pencilled a harebrained overfull slate of one hundred twenty-two bundles plus ninety-five more for 2026, ye gods where did they all come from, get back get back.

Part of the crazed excess comes of this year’s successful single-title offers, such as the Quick Deals for Pelgrane’s Swords of the Serpentine rulebook and Sine Nomine’s Cities Without Number. In the past these hit corebooks might have led larger anthology offers. No one has objected to single-book “bundles,” so it’s practical to break out these smaller deals. They do fill up the schedule, yes they do.

Never mind that. The real issue: The roleplaying field is straight-up growing beyond the Bundle site’s capacity. Through professional interest I follow several sources of new offer ideas:

• Geek Native‘s excellent weekly game news column “Routinely Itemised,” where Andrew Girdwood summarizes dozens of Kickstarter campaigns (Geek Native Patreon campaign)
• DriveThruRPG’s “new titles” feed
• The long-running RPG Pub forum thread “Tell us about something good you got recently” and, on RPG.net’s Tabletop Roleplaying Open, “What Gaming Stuff Did You Buy Today? (II)“

So many games! Those few sources alone can surface a new Bundle prospect every three or four days. I despair of tracking the itch.io “New and popular physical games” firehose. Or the labyrinth of OSR blogs. Or the dark depths of Discord, where fervid subcultures lurk unknown. (In June I heard for the first time the term “FKR,” Free Kriegsspiel Revolution, a roleplaying style of at least five years’ vintage.) And you probably know sources I didn’t mention.

“How long can you keep this going?” Yeah, buddy, sure. How do I hang on to this rocket?

A Golden Age

How weird that memories, retreating in time, loom larger. At Origins/Gen Con 1992 in Milwaukee, the release of the new Shadowrun 2E corebook caused a stampede fans still remember, yet the whole show drew just 18,000 attendees; today’s Indiana Convention Center could tuck them away in one exhibit hall. Each time we lost the glories of The Forge, and then Story Games, and then Google+, it seemed an era had ended. But just as everyone who bought the first Velvet Underground record started a band, today you can follow dozens of theorists Forging away on blogs and Bluesky.

Occasionally some grizzled veteran recalls with nostalgia the gaming magazines of his youth, beloved monthlies like Dragon magazine and Different Worlds and Space Gamer. Friend, as a former Dragon writer and Space Gamer editor, I tell you true: Today’s internet practically force-feeds you a Dragon issue of content every 18 hours, tops. As a gamer who started with white-box OD&D in 1976, I tell you truer: Everything in roleplaying today, everything, is better.

On May 24 The Washington Post ran an article, “America’s best decade, according to data,” compiling answers to a YouGov survey of 2,000 adults about which decade had the best and worst music, movies, economy, and so forth. Across 20 measures, the one overwhelming factor in their choices was birth year: Your idea of the decade when everything was best is basically “when I was 15.” Also, you prefer songs released when you were 17 and a half. When you hear complaints about X Cards or inclusiveness or good-aligned orcs or Critical Role or ascending Armor Class or Nurgle-scented candles, remember that survey.

Sales are down worldwide, new tariffs will blight publishers across America, and the years ahead will try us in a hundred ways. Still it is true: This, here and now, is the Golden Age of Roleplaying.

But man, it is tough to keep up.

2024 highlights

The past year’s most successful new Bundle of Holding offers included Knock! Magazine (Feb), Ruins of Symbaroum (March), Mongoose JTAS Magazine (launched on May 1, Traveller Day), Rifts Coalition Wars (May), Shadowrun 5E Missions Mega (June), Dyson’s Delves (June, one of the biggest of the year), BattleTech Readouts (July), Mongoose 2300AD 2E (Aug), Goodman Games DCC Dying Earth (Aug), Level Up Adventures (Sept), The Dread Thingonomicon (Oct), Unknown Armies 3E (Oct), two Shadowrun 4E Megabundles (Nov-Dec), Mongoose Traveller 2024 Update and Traveller Sectors (Dec), and The One Ring 2E (Dec) – the last three still in progress as I write.

Interesting promotions and tie-ins included July’s Ultraviolet Grasslands, promoting Luka Rejec’s Our Golden Age sequel on Backerkit; the ten-week giveaway of Bully Pulpit’s Phones of Glory; and November’s Slugblaster Quick Deal, launched at short notice after the Quinns Quest YouTube channel’s rave review went viral.

Ars Magica Week in April revived all five previous Ars Magica 5E offers on five consecutive days, all to promote the Atlas Games Backerkit campaign for Ars Magica Fifth Edition Definitive. Expect similar “week” spotlights in 2025.

Of the 40 revivals in 2024, ten were returning for a second, third, or even fifth time. The January re-re-re-rerun of one of the site’s earliest offers, Pelgrane’s original Dying Earth RPG from January 2014 (not to be confused with Goodman’s DCC Dying Earth, new this year), outsold all four previous runs. The other “R2” and “R3” revivals earned uneven results. Expect another ~40 revivals in 2025, of which ten will be re-reruns.

533 publishers!

Across 12 years the Bundle of Holding has worked with hundreds of companies, often adding 50 or 60+ new names annually. Unfortunately in 2023 and 2024 that inrush slowed, because most new designers meticulously hide their contact information, leaving no way to reach them. (Try to track down any third-party Mothership publisher. I’ll wait.) It’s become impractical to assemble new installments in the site’s OSR, Treasure Trove, Worldbuilder’s Toolkit, and other long-running anthology series.

This year’s first-time contributors – publishers who post their email address – included Alligator Alley (Esper Genesis), Bodie H (Slowquest), Austin Ramsay Games (Beam Saber), Hansor Publishing (The Gaia Complex), The Merry Mushmen (Knock!), MonkeyBlood Design (Midderlands), Moon Toad (Cepheus Engine), Need Games (Fabula Ultima TTJRPG), New Comet Games (Corsairs of Cthulhu), Raging Swan Press (Thingonomicon), Scoundrel Game Labs (Grizelda’s Guides), Ian Stuart Sharpe (Vikingverse), Storybrewers (Good Society), comics writer Jim Zub’s Swords and Sassery (Skullkickers), TEETH, Tin Star Games (Relics), and Wilkie’s Candy Lab (Slugblaster), as well as individual contributors to Troika! 2024, Cornucopia 2024, and Forged in the Dark 2. Technically the second revival of the May 2019 World’s Largest Bundle also marked a publisher debut, as rights to The World’s Largest Dungeon and related d20-era titles passed from Alderac Entertainment to Studio 2 Publishing’s “World’s Largest Games.”

These newcomers joined returning Bundle contributors including 0one Games, 9th Level Games, Acheron Games, Ardens Ludere, Atlas Games, Atomic Overmind Publishing, Black Scrolls Games, Brittannia Games, Bully Pulpit Games, Catalyst Game Labs, EN Publishing, Engine Publishing, Evil Hat Productions, Expeditious Retreat Publishing, Far Horizons Co-op, Free League Publishing, Genesis of Legend, Goodman Games, Hero Games, Hydra Cooperative, Just Crunch Games, Kenzer and Company, Magpie Games, Melsonian Arts Council, Modiphius Entertainment, Mongoose Publishing, Monkeyfun Studios, ndp design, Onyx Path Publishing, Palladium Books, Pelgrane Press, Rowan Rook & Decard, Runehammer Games, Shields Up! Publishing, Sine Nomine Publishing, SoulMuppet Publishing, Steve Jackson Games, Two Little Mice, WTF Studio, and Wyrd Games, among others. As always, I thank all these publishers for their continued support.

New and returning customers by year

Each year the Bundle of Holding sells to approximately 20,000 customers. Some of these gamers have been with the site since the beginning, and a hearty thank you to all longtime customers. This year I fielded multiple inquiries about purchases made in 2014, which, y’know, fine, but – really? I picture these customers thawing out from cryofreeze like the Winter Soldier and immediately asking, “Where’s my bundle?” But thanks to them too, and to all of you.

Right now the Bundle database shows 102,643 users, though some fraction of these have two or more accounts. (If you have multiple Bundle accounts, let me know and I’ll merge them.) This list shows the number of new Bundle customers by year (2024 figure not current):

• 2013: 11,005
• 2014: 9,610
• 2015: 7,679
• 2016: 6,364
• 2017: 8,859
• 2018: 7,991
• 2019: 5,671
• 2020: 7,504
• 2021: 7,772
• 2022: 12,169
• 2023: 11,646
• 2024: 6,373

Most don’t stick around. A single Bundle of Holding purchase may provide enough material to keep a gaming group busy for years, sometimes decades. (Don’t believe it? Try the Champions 4E Starter Pack.) This list shows returning customers grouped by the year of their last purchase – that is, “How many customers bought pre-$CURRENTYEAR and also bought in $CURRENTYEAR?” So, for instance, in 2017 there were 148 customers from previous years (2013-2016) who came back to buy an offer, but then never bought another offer in later years:

• 2017: 148
• 2018: 209
• 2019: 233
• 2020: 395
• 2021: 728
• 2022: 2,246
• 2023: 11,567

…And in 2024, 15,833 customers returned from previous years. (Maybe the 11,567 from 2023 aren’t yet lost to the ages, either.)

I’m not sure how to interpret these numbers. They may mean nothing much. But they do show many Bundle customers stay interested. I hope in 2025 the site can hold their interest still longer.

The year ahead

Back to that “planning ahead” idea. As 2024 began, I dreamed of 114 specific lineups, of which 61 happened out of 113 actual. This 53% batting average shows Bundle scheduling is tricky. So, regarding the daft draft 2025 schedule of 122 offers, let’s not hold our breath. Still, barring calamity, in 2025 the Bundle of Holding will present Offer #1,000 and, likely, someone will purchase bundle #700,000.

The Bundle Store, with ongoing, non-time-limited Starter Packs based on past offers, has lain fallow for several years. In December the Store launched new Starter Packs for Lex Arcana and The Perilous Wilds, and I hope to add more in 2025. In the free moments between 122 time-limited offers. Sure.

In the 2023 year-in-review post I said, “112 offers was a lot.” Never mind “offers” – this year, 2024, itself, was, for Beth and me, a lot. We had to delay plans to Kickstart our new 5E sourcebook, Manse Magnificent. But we kept at it, editing and polishing the completed manuscript and adding several guest sidebars. 2025 for sure!

If 2024 was a lot for you as well, my sympathies. As we all face more a-lot-ness in the year ahead, I hope the Bundle of Holding can continue to engage and please you. Thanks as always for your support.

(Other year-in-review posts: 2023, 2022, 2021, 2020, 2019, 2018, 2017, 2016, 2015, 2014)