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True, I was taking "nobody makes any money in this industry" as correct based on personal knowledge. Obviously a few people make some money, largely by serving as one-stop shops who do everything themselves, but generally speaking the combination of "the general level of art, design, and technical writing people expect to find in RPG products" and "the amount of money people are prepared to pay for these products" results in "nobody makes enough money to support themselves on."
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Apr 16, 2017 18:47
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People don't make money in the industry because people are assholes. Writers and artists are criminally underpaid, nobody edits worth a drat, and consumers expect small time companies to put out Wizards/White Wolf level of physical print quality for the same price.
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Apr 16, 2017 18:50
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Kwyndig posted:Writers and artists are criminally underpaid, nobody edits worth a drat Incidentally, there's a connection here. There are a lot fewer people crying out for the chance to be published technical writing editors just to see their name in print, and for-serious editors are going to cost you multiple thousands of dollars, which in a lot of cases means an editor would stand to make more money off the book than the person who wrote it. Thus, most books either go unedited or have a low-level editor who's closer to a proofreader-slash-beta-reader.
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Apr 16, 2017 18:56
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Rand Brittain posted:True, I was taking "nobody makes any money in this industry" as correct based on personal knowledge. Oh, totally, there's not much money in it at all. People definitely have this weird idea that every new rulebook should cost the same amount it did 30 years ago.
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Apr 16, 2017 18:57
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Much more to the point, nobody makes any money because there is a glut of people willing to work for free or even spend money just to get their work published at a loss. If gamers had to pay more in order to get anything at all, the general expectation of what an RPG costs would rise, and it might become possible to make a comfortable living being a RPG maker. As it is, there are probably fewer than 50 full-time jobs as RPG makers in the entire world, and that is ridiculous. And most of those jobs pay crap compared to what a decent writer could make in another industry. I'm a technical writer. Granted my experience is in software and that's where the value is, but anyone graduating from my degree program would expect a starting salary in the $60k range these days. That's likely more than what most of those ~50ish senior level game writers make after a decade or more of experience and a well-respected portfolio. Leperflesh fucked around with this message at 19:02 on Apr 16, 2017 |
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Apr 16, 2017 18:57
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I wonder how people would react to a Kickstarter stretch goal that was for "hiring a professional technical editor"
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Apr 16, 2017 19:03
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I'd forward them my ex-housemate's resume.
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Apr 16, 2017 19:24
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jivjov posted:I wonder how people would react to a Kickstarter stretch goal that was for "hiring a professional technical editor" It's crossed my mind often.
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Apr 16, 2017 19:32
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It's the first thing I would do. Forget art and guest writers, give me somebody who can take my half mad ramblings and turn them into a proper technical document.
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Apr 16, 2017 20:41
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Plutonis posted:That's money I'd only pay on an incredibly fancy board game full of hand-crafted flair miniatures and stuff, not for something with the same page count and illustrations as a kindle ebook for one third of the price. How many Kindle ebooks are well over 1,000 pages?
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Apr 16, 2017 21:36
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I'm reading one now, but it's actually a reprint of two books jammed together.
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Apr 16, 2017 21:39
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Kwyndig posted:I'm reading one now, but it's actually a reprint of two books jammed together. It really bugs me that no ebook store appears to be able to sell bundles that aren't single files with all the collected books in one. How am I supposed to organize my library this way?
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Apr 16, 2017 21:41
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Rand Brittain posted:It really bugs me that no ebook store appears to be able to sell bundles that aren't single files with all the collected books in one. How am I supposed to organize my library this way? It's the publishers, not the storefronts. Although they no longer illegally collude on pricing, the big publishers still mandate things like that.
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Apr 16, 2017 21:47
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jivjov posted:I wonder how people would react to a Kickstarter stretch goal that was for "hiring a professional technical editor" If I ever run a game Kickstarter, the only stretch goals are going to be "hire more professionals, at appropriate pay rates, to make this book better" and "pay the already-hired professionals more."
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Apr 16, 2017 23:42
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Antivehicular posted:If I ever run a game Kickstarter, the only stretch goals are going to be "hire more professionals, at appropriate pay rates, to make this book better" and "pay the already-hired professionals more." "pay the contributors more" is the best stretch goal. It's what Iron Circus Comics does, and it's been really successful for them.
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Apr 16, 2017 23:58
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Rand Brittain posted:Incidentally, there's a connection here. There are a lot fewer people crying out for the chance to be published technical writing editors just to see their name in print, and for-serious editors are going to cost you multiple thousands of dollars, which in a lot of cases means an editor would stand to make more money off the book than the person who wrote it. Because technical writers know something game designers and writers don't: They can get paid to use those skills elsewhere, and "gently caress YOU PAY ME" is not unreasonable.
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Apr 17, 2017 00:32
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Leperflesh posted:Much more to the point, nobody makes any money because there is a glut of people willing to work for free or even spend money just to get their work published at a loss. If gamers had to pay more in order to get anything at all, the general expectation of what an RPG costs would rise, and it might become possible to make a comfortable living being a RPG maker. As it is, there are probably fewer than 50 full-time jobs as RPG makers in the entire world, and that is ridiculous. And most of those jobs pay crap compared to what a decent writer could make in another industry. Among the reasons I loved 4E is because it's the only RPG book line in years that seemed to have even heard of the concept of technical writing as a discipline.
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Apr 18, 2017 18:31
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palecur posted:Among the reasons I loved 4E is because it's the only RPG book line in years that seemed to have even heard of the concept of technical writing as a discipline. Agreed 100%. I was initially turned off by 4E because it read much worse than any edition of the game. I still stand by that. The thing is, it plays way better than a least 3.x, and in lots of ways 2E. I have to think it's because the writing was done tightly and that's almost completely on the editors/tech writers.
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Apr 18, 2017 18:58
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Game rules need to be written technically. I don't understand why companies don't get this, but game rules need to be written in a technical style for clarity. You don't pull out Battleship and then have to figure out how to declare your target space for the turn because they're written in character by a Gunnery Sergeant, and there's nothing preventing you from writing your fluff and setting in whatever format you like, but the actual mechanics, the meat and bones of what makes your game actually work as a way to resolve player actions, absolutely must be written in a clear, concise, and easily understood fashion. It's one of the reasons why I hate 5e so much is they decided to walk back from the one thing that was moving the hobby forward.
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Apr 18, 2017 19:06
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Kwyndig posted:Game rules need to be written technically. I don't understand why companies don't get this, but game rules need to be written in a technical style for clarity. You don't pull out Battleship and then have to figure out how to declare your target space for the turn because they're written in character by a Gunnery Sergeant, and there's nothing preventing you from writing your fluff and setting in whatever format you like, but the actual mechanics, the meat and bones of what makes your game actually work as a way to resolve player actions, absolutely must be written in a clear, concise, and easily understood fashion. Agreed. Otherwise you end up with stuff like Exalted 3e's problem where it is simultaneity based around incredibly fiddly powers but also buries the rules for each power in fluff text and has issues with undefined technicalities even in those.
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Apr 18, 2017 19:15
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Kwyndig posted:Game rules need to be written technically. I don't understand why companies don't get this I mean a lot of game companies do get this, but mostly in the board and card game side of things. Magic: the Gathering is a good example of a game that's put a lot of effort into establishing a clear and unambiguous technical framework which persists across multiple "editions" and expansions.
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Apr 18, 2017 19:49
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I got 2 players who want to do a game of torchbearer. Will the game work with 2 players or is it balanced around a 3 - 5 player mix, like D&D?
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Apr 18, 2017 20:03
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Kai Tave posted:I mean a lot of game companies do get this, but mostly in the board and card game side of things. Magic: the Gathering is a good example of a game that's put a lot of effort into establishing a clear and unambiguous technical framework which persists across multiple "editions" and expansions. Richard Garfield had the technical acumen to write and successfully file a patent application. Perhaps he had a preparer, but even a preparer will demand extremely clear and unambiguous content from the inventor, because the patent office will reject a patent application that has any ambiguity. But the real issue here is that making a board game isn't generally seen as "storytelling" that a creative writer does, but I think the large majority of people writing RPGs are creative writers, for whom things like imagery, theme, character, setting, plot, etc. are the primary concerns. The other side of it is that good technical writing is hard. The larger and more complex the system you're documenting, the harder it gets. I have an actual degree in it, but I was still basically scrub-tier garbage after I graduated. I'm so much better after 15+ years of experience that it's painful to look at stuff I produced professionally back when I started. It's a profession and a skill. I don't think there's very many hobbyist technical writers. Whereas creative writing, while certainly an option as a career, is seen as something accessible to everyone that many people pursue as a hobby.
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Apr 18, 2017 20:33
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Leperflesh posted:I'm so much better after 15+ years of experience that it's painful to look at stuff I produced professionally back when I started. It's a profession and a skill.
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Apr 18, 2017 20:37
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I'm also not convinced that writing RPGs as strong technical documents would actually increase their popularity. I know that wasn't the initial claim, but I don't think it's hard to see why even "larger" (hahahahaha) RPG companies don't bother when they have cheap/free creative writing labor and hiring a technical writer or two isn't going to get more books into hands (or PDFs onto SSDs). e: of course this sucks for those of us already in the hobby but yeah
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Apr 18, 2017 20:37
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Countblanc posted:I'm also not convinced that writing RPGs as strong technical documents would actually increase their popularity. I know that wasn't the initial claim, but I don't think it's hard to see why even "larger" (hahahahaha) RPG companies don't bother when they have cheap/free creative writing labor and hiring a technical writer or two isn't going to get more books into hands (or PDFs onto SSDs). I think it would actually have the opposite effect. That is, if most RPGs went through the hands of a good technical editor, the editor would force the author to confront the myriad rules gaps and inconsistencies and their work would never even make it to publication. Meanwhile, in some cases writers would push through and get their thing done, and customers would be exposed more starkly to the mechanical failings of their game. Perhaps the game would sell a lot less if the fluff wasn't disguising the crappy rules design work. e. I'd see this as a good thing. A lot of RPG customers buy games that are basically unplayable, on the basis of some really interesting fluff or concept, and then those games never get played. That basically wastes the fluff, it might as well have been a novel or something. Leperflesh fucked around with this message at 20:42 on Apr 18, 2017 |
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Apr 18, 2017 20:39
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Right, plus the sheer number of people who buy books because they're fun to read on the poo-pot. I haven't done that lately but I sure as heck did in high school. PHBs and other "first gen" books not so much, but people definitely buy splatbooks they have no realistic chance of using at the table either just to read or collect, and those aren't as appealing if they're presented as solid rules rather than hand-wavey nonsense.
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Apr 18, 2017 20:42
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Leperflesh posted:But the real issue here is that making a board game isn't generally seen as "storytelling" that a creative writer does I kind of wanted to raise this point in my post but I couldn't think of a way to do it that didn't make it sound like I was sneering down my nose at a bunch of people while painting them with an overly-broad brush, but this is a pretty good way to sum it up. A lot of people in the roleplaying game hobby, both as fans and as creators, tend to view writing an RPG not as an exercise in "creating a game" but as some sort of weird mish-mash thing that's part game and part creative writing and part imagination stimulant and so they often aren't interested in an RPG that puts the game side of things at the forefront because, rightly or wrongly, emphasis on game elements is seen as a zero-sum thing where you can either have a robust, well-designed, technically unambiguous game or you can have bold visionary artistic flair but you can't have both. This is the foundation of the whole "naturalistic language" thing, where it's considered a virtue to say in 200 words what you could say in 50 for flavor reasons. It's also probably bound up in the entrenched idea that the GM's job also includes being the Rules Massager who'll fill in any gaps and patch any holes by making judgement calls and that this is a good and proper thing and not a huge pain in the rear end that nobody playing any other sort of game would put up with. tl;dr RPGs don't get good technical writing not only because the talent pool isn't usually there but because the demand also isn't there.
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Apr 18, 2017 20:47
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Also nobody can afford it.
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Apr 18, 2017 20:59
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Countblanc posted:Right, plus the sheer number of people who buy books because they're fun to read on the poo-pot. I haven't done that lately but I sure as heck did in high school. PHBs and other "first gen" books not so much, but people definitely buy splatbooks they have no realistic chance of using at the table either just to read or collect, and those aren't as appealing if they're presented as solid rules rather than hand-wavey nonsense. I actually think a lot of campaign sourcebooks would be better and more interesting if they just didn't try to modify or add to the rules at all. Just tell me about the setting, the people there, the stories that are being told. There's already a game with a framework to handle things, right? A new area of your game world doesn't have to mean new equipment, character abilities, or game subsystems. Granted there are cases where it makes sense. You introduce an area of the world focused on seafaring and maritime adventures, so you add rules for ship to ship combat, makes sense. But you could also have rules for ship to ship combat be added in some "vehicular combat" supplement focused entirely on rules, and have your oceanic campaign area book just tell me all about the interesting people, places, and things there. Kai Tave posted:tl;dr RPGs don't get good technical writing not only because the talent pool isn't usually there but because the demand also isn't there. For sure. Especially given that, as we've already detailed, carefully written, tested, and well presented rules are expensive to produce: there doesn't seem to be a likely demand for relatively expensive technical documents about RPG rules.
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Apr 18, 2017 20:59
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I think it could be done if you really pressed the very expensive angle. Like you described it as a premium experience for only the most discerning of players. Go hog wild with the production values (gold leaf edged paper, hand-stitched binding, real leather) definitely spend money on advertising. Basically do the exact opposite of what the industry does currently and market exclusively to people who think that spending more money on their gaming makes them superior.
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Apr 18, 2017 21:05
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Leperflesh posted:I actually think a lot of campaign sourcebooks would be better and more interesting if they just didn't try to modify or add to the rules at all. Just tell me about the setting, the people there, the stories that are being told. Green Ronin's tried that with Freeport which is a "systemless RPG setting" though I don't know how well it sold, but by and large I think that people wouldn't be as interested in this sort of product. I'm willing to bet money that having even a lovely game to go along with your half-baked fictional setting about Aelfs and Dwurffs is still seen as an added value, that however in practical terms most RPGs on a collector's shelf are likely to go unplayed that people would view such systemless resources as "incomplete products." quote:For sure. Especially given that, as we've already detailed, carefully written, tested, and well presented rules are expensive to produce: there doesn't seem to be a likely demand for relatively expensive technical documents about RPG rules. I don't even think it's really a case of expense. Even enthusiastic amateurs aren't interested in making technically sound and clear RPGs while you can probably find comparatively more indie board and card game designers who highly prize technical accuracy and solid gameplay over reams of meandering fluff. Isaac Childress is a one-man game designer who recently released Gloomhaven, an enormous fuckin dungeon-crawler boardgame that's all about a crunchy tactical combat system that's tightly designed with very little in the way of randomness and, in his own words, owes a fair bit of inspiration to D&D 4E...it's full of stuff that would give the "dissociated mechanics" pundits fits, all in service of superior gameplay over "well it doesn't make any SENSE that the card that lets me backstab someone can also be used to let me run fast." He's just one guy (well, and an artist, but he's the sole designer), he's probably selling the game for less than he could be for the sheer amount of work he's put into it and the enormous amount of content it contains, and I don't think he does tech writing in his day-to-day life. The difference is that Gloomhaven is climbing the top 10 ranks at Boardgame Geek and his second printing Kickstarter is on track to hit three million dollars instead of people melting down about how unrealistic it is for Gloomhaven characters to still have effects on their attacks when they draw the 0 damage modifier card. Even in a non-professional context there isn't really a demand for tech writing in the RPG hobby. People aren't even interested in half-assing it the way you could argue that a lot of them half-rear end the fiction/fluff side as well because let's face it, a lot of RPG lore ain't that great either, so even if the money isn't there you could still expect to see some designers who may not have the chops to command big money doing for-real technical writing at least trying to do so on the cheap but technical clarity just isn't a desirable trait in RPGs to a lot of folks. Kai Tave fucked around with this message at 21:32 on Apr 18, 2017 |
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Apr 18, 2017 21:29
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How expensive is a technical writer as compared to, say, an artist or editor?
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Apr 18, 2017 21:37
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Actual artists and editors or "we'll pay you in exposure" and "I can get my friend Bob to read over it for us" artists and editors?
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Apr 18, 2017 21:38
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Kai Tave posted:Green Ronin's tried that with Freeport which is a "systemless RPG setting" though I don't know how well it sold, but by and large I think that people wouldn't be as interested in this sort of product. I'm willing to bet money that having even a lovely game to go along with your half-baked fictional setting about Aelfs and Dwurffs is still seen as an added value, that however in practical terms most RPGs on a collector's shelf are likely to go unplayed that people would view such systemless resources as "incomplete products." Ah, no, I wasn't really thinking of totally system-agnostic fluff books. Rather, I was imagining an RPG that publishes its core rules, and then publishes setting books for that game which do not attempt to expand the rules significantly, or at least that isn't the goal of the setting books. So you'd have your Lord of the Rings RPG books that teach you how to play the game and give you reference material for the rules, and then you'd have the LotR RPG Campaign Setting: The Misty Mountains, which would just be chock full of interesting information about the Misty Mountains and everyone who lives there and the stuff that has happened and is currently going on and might happen in the future... but not adding a Misty Mountain Dwarves Character Prestige Class Template, or a new Misty Mountain Elven Bow to complement the Mirkwood Elven Bow in the equipment list.
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Apr 18, 2017 21:39
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Alien Rope Burn posted:How expensive is a technical writer as compared to, say, an artist or editor? You'll be unsurprised to hear the real answer is "it depends." Technical writers tend to specialize, and the area of specialization has a huge impact on salary. I work in software, which is second to none in terms of pay, but there are technical writers in biotech, government, marketing, manufacturing, finance, medicine, etc. It's been a while since I looked earnestly but 10+ years ago, I could have taken a job working for the CIA (I think - it might have been the NSA?) as a technical writer (preparing analyst reports) for approximately $30k a year in Virginia, which was something like half what a writer of similar experience would make working at any software company in California. Since there is no data on technical writers working in the trad game industry, I don't know that you could define what they'd cost.
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Apr 18, 2017 21:43
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That sounds kind of boring tbh. One of the most exciting parts of a new supplement, at least for me, is expansion of character options. Setting information is cool and all, but you want to give the cool new setting information some cool new crunch that ties into the new area of the setting you're exploring. You don't need to print new subsystems, but I do think you should probably have some mechanical representation of the differences between the your new setting and the old setting.
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Apr 18, 2017 21:46
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Leperflesh posted:
There's your crux. A general 'technical writing' freelance posting will offer around $40 an hour to start, but it really depends on what your specialty is, that's for like writing manuals for tractors or similar. I have a feeling the reason we don't have data is because any company that's tried to hire a freelancer has lowballed them and then been laughed out of the room.
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Apr 18, 2017 21:49
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Sampatrick posted:That sounds kind of boring tbh. One of the most exciting parts of a new supplement, at least for me, is expansion of character options. Setting information is cool and all, but you want to give the cool new setting information some cool new crunch that ties into the new area of the setting you're exploring. You don't need to print new subsystems, but I do think you should probably have some mechanical representation of the differences between the your new setting and the old setting. This sounds like D&D brain damage. Some people like games that are equipment or character feat/spell/ability heavy; others believe that this is what all games are supposed to be like.
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Apr 18, 2017 21:49
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homullus posted:This sounds like D&D brain damage. Some people like games that are equipment or character feat/spell/ability heavy; others believe that this is what all games are supposed to be like. Yeah, you don't need new crunch with each book. The problem is that a certain category of player has been conditioned to believe that there should be crunch in every book and they get upset if they buy a book about the Spellswords of Dumenshire and it doesn't include at least a prestige class, two spell-casting swords, and a monster.
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Apr 18, 2017 21:53
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