What creators can learn from pirates

Luke Stratton, also known as Limithron on Patreon, makes beautiful maps and digital resources for role playing games, with a special expertise in pirate adventures. A lifelong artist, musician, and coder, Luke runs an independent creative business and tours with major musical groups, like the Smashing Pumpkins, serving as lighting director for their arena shows.

Tune in to Backstage with Patreon to hear how Luke turned his passion for pirates into a new creative business. He shares his approach to using a newsletter, paid digital sales, and a physical book on Kickstarter as funnels into and extensions out of his membership business. Plus, Luke reveals a set of three lessons creators can learn from pirates.

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Episode transcript

Brian Keller:
Hello creators. You are Backstage with Patreon, where we open the curtain on how to build a thriving business on Patreon. I'm Brian Keller from the Creator Success Team, and today we have a Patreon creator, Luke Stratton, also known as Limithron, who makes beautiful maps and digital resources for role playing games with a special expertise in pirate adventures. Luke is a lifelong artist, musician and coder who, in addition to his creative business he runs online, tours with major musical groups like the Smashing Pumpkins, designing and running the stage lighting for arenas and other concert venues. Luke has a lot of insights to share about how to build the business around his passions and incorporating different revenue streams and promotional channels.

So let's get started with Luke Stratton on Backstage with Patreon, and I'm sure people want to hear a little bit of that tour music experience before we jump into the role playing game kind of side. So tell us a little bit about what do you love about getting to do lighting on shows, and maybe what's something people don't realize is actually a little bit more challenging being on the road?

Luke Stratton:
Oh man, where to start? Well, my favorite thing about being a lighting director, if you will, and that's someone who's actually running the show, is it's basically as close as you can get to professional Guitar Hero or professional Rock Band. You spend a lot of time programming the show and working to design it. But then when it comes to actually running it, it's more or less scripted, but you need to really nail it on time. When you do, people go nuts. It's a very exciting thing. There are a lot of challenges though. I travel. For example, right now, I've been out since August 31st. It's about the middle of November.

So I haven't been home, I haven't seen my family. It's kind of one of the struggles. The other day we had a VIP tour come through and I was doing laundry in this dingy water-filled backstage area that was not pleasant. So there's ups and downs to it for sure, but it's really fun to have a creative job and get to light a band I've been a fan of for years.

Brian Keller:
Very cool. Well, I think the other thing that caught people's attention is Pirates. You've got such a passion and special interest here. Tell us a little bit about how you realized that was a lifelong interest kind of for you, and then how it led to this independent business on Patreon that you picked up a few years ago.

Luke Stratton:
Yeah, well, I have a little short bio on my website, which is limithron.com. I don't know what about it, what it is about pirates. I think I rode the Pirates of the Caribbean ride at Disney World when I was really young. There's photos of me and I'm like five on that ride or coming out of that ride with a little hat and the hook. Then I got the Lego ship when I was older. Then I think when I was in my late teens, early twenties, after high school, this game came out called Pirates of the Spanish Maine. It was a little PunchOut game, but the lore was really rich. Something about that undead, kind of spooky, grim, dark vibe mixed with piracy. I don't know, it captures all the fantasy elements that I love and that sense of adventure. I also like tropical drinks and beaches and stuff. So I've been on the road for about 10 years.

I went to college for guitar and, when the pandemic hit, I lost all my work. We had a little bit of PPP money, but it was dire times for basically my entire industry. I was running a D and D campaign online, a pirate themed one. I had been photoshopping, these maps together to have all these different kinds of pirate ships. I was like, you know what? I think I could maybe do this and start a Patreon. I had subscribed to other creators that had patrons, and I was like, I think I could do this. One of them, Cze and Peku, specifically encouraged me to, "Yeah, you should maybe try doing your own Patreon." So I started one and, by the end of COVID, it was like 500 subscribers. It was basically covering my expenses, and now it's grown to, I have a full-time employee and a part-time employee, and we're doing all these conventions and I just got a publishing deal. So it's been very, very exciting.

Brian Keller:
That's such a resonant story of needing to find a new income stream, needing to find something to do when other things dry up there. It's interesting you mentioned talking to another creator kind of about that. We hear that as well. Did you know you wanted to check in on that? How did you decide to get that validation to talk to another creator who already had a Patreon page set up?

Luke Stratton:
So Cze and Peku, they're kind of like the leaders in our industry or a little niche, if you will, and they make really colorful, vibrant, fun maps. But they had done this pirate tavern and it didn't really fit what I needed from my specific game. So I had photoshopped it and then I was like, oh, this is kind of fun. Then I photoshopped another set of their assets to make this fort that you might find in Assassin Creed or something.

I sent it to Cze just to be like, "Hey dude, check out what I did. This is fun." He's like, "You should share this." I was like, "Wait a second. Didn't, I'm just stealing your stuff. I wasn't trying to share this with people. I just wanted you to see what I made." He was so into it and thought it was so unique. He didn't see his art. He saw my art, so he encouraged me to share it. And from there it just kind of ... I guess that put the spark in my head. I was like, "Oh, well if I just had drawn those bricks myself, it would be all my own art."So one thing led to another, and now we have a Discord server that Cze runs with maybe 20 or 30 or maybe even more tabletop creators that are all people who are ... there aren't too many beginners there now. The most people you have to get to a threshold to get the invite. We all just workshop. It's like our water cooler hangout.

Brian Keller:
It's so cool to hear about all these sub communities with creators, with Patreon folks there.

Luke Stratton:
Yeah, sure.

Brian Keller:
You mentioned you have grown enough to hire someone on your team, and I know a lot of creators are maybe at that stage or thinking about it. How did you make the decision that, Hey, I'm ready to do that. I want to bring someone else on. And how did you find someone you could trust to do that?

Luke Stratton:
Yeah. Well, so I have two people who work for me in regular capacities. Alan covers a lot of my social media. The Patreon is obviously the main source of what I do, but we also have a couple different web stores. For example, Roll 20. We have a web store, and it's a lot of work to create the assets and then put them into all these different web funnels. So Alan helps accomplish that. It just got to the point where I was like ... I remember talking to my wife. We were walking on my dogs and I was like, dude, can I afford to hire somebody? That just seems like we're throwing money away. But it got to the point really quickly where it was like, well, my time is more valuable creating new stuff for people and engaging with those people than it is filtering out to all these little things.

So we just pulled the trigger and tried it, and those little things that he does cover the cost of having him. So it's been great. It's been actually a growth source for the company.

Brian Keller:
Yeah, those are a great message. It's about figuring out, valuing your own time about it, and also how do you think about that ROI, right? The work that someone else can do, if that's essentially self-funding, that's a great step to do.

Luke Stratton:
It's a little bit of a risk and you can't take a risk when it starts if you're just barely covering your expenses. But you figure out really quickly. Just sidebar, we had this really cool thing at GenCon this year where a bunch of us from that tabletop got together. I'm 39, and this group of people, I felt a little old, but basically everyone there was CEOs running small independent role playing game companies. Many of them are a grossing over a million a year all from Patreon. So it's like we have all had to learn how to not just be artists, but be entrepreneurs that can grow and manage small teams so that we can focus on the thing that is really what we want to be doing.

Brian Keller:
Do you like that moniker, thinking of yourself as a CEO of a small company? Some creators like that, some want to stay away from that kind of framing.

Luke Stratton:
I've always been an, I don't want to say an entrepreneur because that kind of sounds like I've always been trying to start the next Facebook or make a bunch of money. But my first business was I was a drum and bass rave DJ, and I would use my equipment to help other DJs record their mixtapes. It was called Triple R Studios. Then after high school, I started a company writing software for hardware stores. So for me, it's a natural progression of I've owned a bunch of different little businesses because I hate working for other people. I just always think I can do things better than the people I'm working for, so that's why I work for myself. So for me, it's not really an option, but I have found that I'm so hands on that I don't think I could ever be a medium sized business CEO. I want to put my hands on everything.

Brian Keller:
You mentioned some different revenue streams, Role 20, so a role playing game specific site there. Tell us a little bit about how you figured out. How do you combine Patreon, which already gives you monthly membership revenue with other sources, and how do you balance where to spend your time?

Luke Stratton:
Well, our business model is built around Patreon. I'm a per creation creator, not a per month. So it's not just an automatic assumption. We kind of treat each paid release on the Patreon like a full pack. So for example, at the end of the month, I just released a whale graveyard, Hangman's Beach, beach pack, and it comes with 20 different variations at the beach and then the assets to add your own whale bones and add rocks and whatnot. So the ideal platform is Patreon, and we want everyone to go to the Patreon. It's kind of like, well, yeah, you could throw us five bucks for one map, or you could come join for whatever pledge you have per release and get access to everything.

So it's really a win, win. You're saying, Hey, we're coming on board for the long run, but we're going to help you kind of make what you want to make. So really everything we make is based on the Patreon. I wouldn't make something with Gumroad in mind. It's just kind of like, well, some people don't use Patreon. I don't know why. Or they don't want to sign up. People are scared for a subscription based thing sometimes, until they realize, oh, that $5 I spent on this map. I could have got literally 300 maps.

Brian Keller:
Yeah. It really shows there's so many different models for using Patreon, whether it's monthly, whether it's per creation, how to really customize that.

Luke Stratton:
Yeah.

Brian Keller:
I'd love to hear about your Kickstarter experience.

Luke Stratton:
Sure.

Brian Keller:
Because you're talking about a major book and project, and how that got started and where you are now.

Luke Stratton:
Yeah, well, we were playing a lot of Dungeons and Dragons fifth Edition, and five E is a great system. It's a great ecosystem for running games, but for pirate settings, you don't really need a level 20 pirate. There's too much magic at the higher level. So we were always stripping down our game, level capping at level six of all these little details. I found about this game called Mork Borg, which is a kind of Swedish hack of old school versions of D&D where there's way less rules and it's much more gritty and your character can die at any moment. But there's rules for making new ones on the fly. The best part is they have a totally open license so you can make anything for the game or hack. It's a very community-based game.

So I'm like, I should just hack this and make a little zine so we can play pirates with this. So I did, and at first I was matching their art style, and then I wanted to match my map. So I did my own art style. Before I knew it, instead of a 16 page zine, it had grown into the final is 160 pages. We went to Kickstarter and I was hoping to cover my costs, maybe get lucky and make $20,000. Now, this is another thing. A lot of people go to Kickstarter and they're like, oh, hey man, if I could get 10K. Well, I can do a couple releases on Patreon and get that without asking anybody's opinion of what they think about I'm making. Kickstarter, they have to want it before they click the button. So really, I just used Patreon to seed fund the project, and I would release demos to them, to my patrons, and they get early access.

Well, the Kickstarter ended up doing ... I think we did 4,000 backers, and then it ended up doing a quarter of a million in crowdfunding by the time it was all done. You can bet that the first question in my little backer survey is, have you heard of the Patreon? Do you want to come check out the Patreon? Hey, you got this pirate book. If you're playing online, do you need pirate? It is in a way a business move, but really it's more like, Hey, come check out this thing that we're making, all these little pieces that fit together.

Brian Keller:
Yeah, it's so smart to think about how do you have that cross pollination of your audience. If they found you somewhere, you bring it somewhere else. I think you do other forms that too. You have a newsletter, you have some free content on your website. How do those pieces-

Luke Stratton:
Oh yeah. Well, one of the big things that we learn from Cze and Peku on Patreon is that every time I make a map, every time, the core version is free. It has a grid on it. So if you're playing D&D, sometimes you need a grid to move your character around, but some people don't like grids. All of our free ones have grids and they're half the resolution, so they're not quite as detailed, and they have a watermark. But they have free, and they go everywhere. This is the trick to running a D&D Patreon is you can basically promote your work in all these places and you're actually providing a service with a little business card at the bottom to say, Hey, if you like this, you want the nighttime version, or you want the version where you can move the ships around and they're not stuck in the map, come check out the Patreon.
I'm sorry, what was the other part of your question?

Brian Keller:
Yeah, I think that covers it. But how about a newsletter? What role does that play?

Luke Stratton:
So after you start the Patreon, it's really a funnel. It's almost like a litmus test. Is this business working? Is this idea something that people want? Well, in Limithron's case it is. Then it's like, well, there are people who don't know this platform, or there are people who are coming from other ... My crossover of patrons to Kickstarter backers was not that high. Now we're in the process of cross pollinating like, Hey, you are a backer. Why don't you come check out the Patreon? Or, Hey, we noticed that you didn't back, have you checked out this game? Maybe you play fifth edition. Check out pirate board. So with that, we have built a mailing list through MailChimp to kind of help, and through Facebook ads to kind of, Hey, does this interest you or is this something that you're into?

Sign up. This email list will give you free stuff. It's not just marketing. We are real people. We're three real gamers. You're going to get an email, it's going to have free stuff in it, and it's going to tell you about other stuff that might be free or that you can pay for. So it all kind of breeds together. Tying into that, we also started a podcast recently called Ship of the Dead. Basically, it's just my excuse to talk about all the nerdy stuff we're doing and then talk to some of my favorite people in the industry. So that's been a fun way to network and get the word out of other people's products and of our projects.

Brian Keller:
Yeah, I was listening to one of the episodes of Ship and the Dead actually to get ready for us chatting, and I was actually surprised. I went into it kind of expecting, oh, this is going to be another live role playing game where you're on camera.

Luke Stratton:
Oh, yeah, yeah.

Brian Keller:
Kind of doing it there. It's interesting, you chose, you want to talk to other creators in the space about how they're doing it.

Luke Stratton:
Yeah.

Brian Keller:
How did you decide on that as the model, and how's it been going with your audience?

Luke Stratton:
Well, in the concert world, my company's called the Light Side, and that name came out of my podcast, the Light Side, where I would basically sit down with other concert lighting designers, and we'd talk about their thought process and how they lay out their console. These are really deep dives. I sat down with the guys that do Phish at Madison Square Garden. We talked for three hours about all the technology and how they lay out their buttons, stuff that the concertgoers would probably not care about past the origin stories. I really enjoyed that process. Honestly, through that podcasting experience, I made new friends and I made new colleagues, and I ultimately ended up getting the Smashing Pumpkins gig because of the contacts I'd made through the podcast.

I had to have good work, but it was just a really great tool to crack that shell. For example, if you're a solo Patreon creator, you're not doing a lot of talking and networking with people because you're doing your own thing. Well, if you have a podcast, all of a sudden you're trying to network and talk to people. so that's kind of one of the origins of the podcast.

Brian Keller:
Yeah, that's a great idea, and use that for your own networking and connections and all that.

Luke Stratton:
Yeah, sure.

Brian Keller:
What's been the response from your patrons, your audience? Are a lot of them interested?

Luke Stratton:
It's interesting that you asked that. To be honest, I just ran a poll of like, Hey, what do you guys want me to work on? Do you want to see city maps? Do you want to see battle maps? Do you want to see adventures, tokens? That kind of thing. The podcast was on there and it was the lowest rated thing, but we kind of talked about it internally, and people who came to my Patreon didn't come for a podcast. They're not creators. They're game masters. A lot of them, I have a very niche view of the RPG world, so we kind of look at it more as an outlet and a way to keep people updated and as a way to attract new people by having guests on that don't know who Limithron is. So while there are a lot of great podcasts that use Patreon to help fund their podcast, or I think our case is a little bit different. It's almost more like a company retreat, business card flyer for people. It's not there to be salesy, but it is there to be an outreach. So it's okay that our patrons don't really care about it.

Brian Keller:
You talked about MailChimp, and we hear a lot of creators using that, or other tools for kind of newsletters. I'm actually curious, are you using that in the integration with Patreon? It can pull in some of your member information or really just as a standalone tool that you are pulling the information back and forth?

Luke Stratton:
Right now it's just a standalone because actually I didn't know there was integration, so I might have to check that out. Also, I think you find, as you become more and more successful, I guess entrepreneur, that your time is more and more valuable as time goes on. So time that I had early on to think about how I was going to use all these tools has really vanished. Now it's like, oh yeah, we're paying $80 a month.
My mailing list now is, I think it's getting close to 50,000 or something like that. It's so big because of the Kickstarter and because of the free league publishing deal that we got, and because of Patreon, that it's a lot to pay for it, but I don't even have the time to think about it. I used to spend all this time thinking about how we're going to market things, and now it's just like, when I'm on tour and I got maps to make, it's kind of a whirlwind.

Brian Keller:
Is there something that comes to mind as the best purchase that has totally paid for itself, is saving you a ton of time?

Luke Stratton:
When you say best purchase, what do you mean?

Brian Keller:
Something you added to your workflow to automate it or bring in a tool that helps you run it better?

Luke Stratton:
Well, I guess one of my early goals, because I used to do everything just with my mouse, one of my early ... You can set goals on Patreon. One of them was a Wacom drawing tablet, and I didn't wait to hit it. I just bought it. I couldn't really afford it at the time, but I just bought it. That thing has changed my life. Now I have an iPad too, so I draw a lot. I think half of Pirate board was drawn on the plane flying to and from gigs. Oh, actually, I think the iPad, I definitely ... I bought a iPad Pro, and I feel like everybody who's at all artistic or in the audio world should own an iPad. Such a good way to work in a coffee shop, especially if you travel.

Brian Keller:
Cool. Well, I want to take us deeper into the pirate themes.

Luke Stratton:
Okay.

Brian Keller:
You're a member of Patreon's Creator Ambassador Program.

Luke Stratton:
Very proudly, yes.

Brian Keller:
Some of the folks there, they're all really passionate creators and sharing about what they're doing. I loved you had this set of pirate themes that kind of represent some of the things you've learned along the way. So why don't I tee you up with what the theme was, and you can explain what the real message behind it was. So first one was don't get flogged.

Luke Stratton:
Yeah, so I have this book called Be More Pirate, and it's kind of a little business entrepreneurial book about do stuff different, but it's basically a history book of how these pirates, specifically the Pirates of Nassau did things different. One of the things that they do is they work harder than everybody else. That's kind of one of my things is, if you slack off on a pirate ship, you're going to get flogged. Walking the plank isn't actually a historically accurate thing, but if you're down in the hole getting wasted on rum, you might get your throat slit.

So one of my early tenets was work harder than everybody else, and I think it drove my wife crazy. Still drives my wife crazy, but that's how I am. I just am always working. Today, I'm on a day off from tour and I've got my studio set up, and I'll be working all day. So work harder than everybody else. That's my biggest thing with that.

Brian Keller:
All right. That's a great one for creators. Your second one was pirates raiding your ship can be a good thing.

Luke Stratton:
Oh yes, yes. So this is my big pitch was, when pandemic hit, my whole ... My identity is my work in a lot of cases, and I lost it when I can't go on tour and I can't do concerts. People who are typically trying to hire you to learn how to do lighting, I do a lot of instructional educational stuff, that all went away. I look at that like getting raided by pirates. Back in the day, you might have been a pressed gang sailor, a boy taken from a town against your will into a military ship where you get no pay, you get bad rations, and then pirates show up and they're basically like, "Look, give us all your stuff. Maybe we're going to kill you. Maybe we're going to leave you here by yourself, or you can join."

That ends up being the best thing that ever happens to them, until they end up getting the noose. But the idea is that you have to embrace those things that seem like terrible things. At one point, a company I used to run was getting sued and I was getting evicted from my apartment because I was broke, and my girlfriend broke up with me. That led to where I am now, and I wouldn't trade any of that for this. So just got to fly the block, hop on the pirate ship sometimes.

Brian Keller:
Yep, yep. All right. Your last one was steal like a pirate.

Luke Stratton:
Yeah, I think I said this in that presentation. I unabashedly definitely steal, and I don't mean I take people's pictures and put them up, but I am an absolute sponge. My whole life, I've always been a sponge. Back when I was a drum and bass DJ in high school, I was like, well, how do I get better at this? I would just listen to other tracks and try to emulate their styles. My whole life, that's how I get better at things is study the current thing. Cze and Peku, I stole their assets to make my own until they were basically like, you're on the pirate ship now. Do your own thing. So I really just encourage ... Oh, a great example is when I first started making pirate ship maps. I would take model ship plans and put them top down and trace the outlines to get the general thing.
Now I don't have to do that anymore. I know how to draw on my own. Through that method of studying open source, if you will, images, I created a skillset. I think that you could do that with pretty much any industry, with any skillset, just study the people who are coming before you, steal it.

Brian Keller:
All right, well these are great lessons for our creators inspired by the pirates here. So that's a great place to wrap up. A reminder on those, don't get flogged, pirates raiding your ship can be a good thing, and steal like a pirate.

Luke Stratton:
Yes. So.

Brian Keller:
Luke, thanks so much for joining us here on the show.

Luke Stratton:
Brian, thanks for having me. Thank you for Patreon for saving my life.

Brian Keller:
To catch every episode of Backstage with Patreon, follow or subscribe in your podcast app. We also have transcripts available at patreon.com/backstage. You're growing as a creator by listening to the show, so why not share the insights from this episode with another creator on Patreon who is running a creative business. We'd love to have you as an active collaborator with Backstage with Patreon. Come join the discussion in the Patreon Creator Discord. Follow the link in the episode notes and you can get answers to your follow-up questions directly from the guests and weigh in on what topics we'll be covering next. Editing by Tyler Morissette. I'm Brian Keller. See you next time, Backstage.