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moths posted:A more fair model would be to pay the author a percentage of gross. So word count becomes irrelevant if what's being said is good. That's actually what I get for Cakewalk, an adventure I did for Fabled Environments. Each sale on DriveThru gets me a percentage.
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Nov 6, 2017 20:46
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The 1000-word monster is a nice reversal of the 1-page dungeon.
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Nov 6, 2017 20:51
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Comrade Koba posted:197 words. Seriously? Let's take this to the next level. Dear god. You're giving this editor an aneurysm (mostly because I've seen this poo poo before).
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Nov 6, 2017 20:55
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brb, putting the finishing touches on my new Kickstarter RPG, Thousand-Word Monster Land.
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Nov 6, 2017 21:00
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Peas and Rice posted:You can add two sidebars, one with fiction detailing the life of an orc, one with verbose tables describing 30 kinds of orc encounters. Welcome to 1000-word-monster-land. The worst part is there are people who will tell you this is actually good and that having easily-parseable stat blocks for monsters is bad.
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Nov 6, 2017 21:19
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JackMann posted:Each sale on DriveThru gets me a percentage. I am very happy to be shown wrong. 
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Nov 6, 2017 21:24
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homullus posted:brb, putting the finishing touches on my new Kickstarter RPG, Thousand-Word Monster Land. There is a market for this, if you advertise correctly. Admittedly most of them are grogs, but as long as you don't turn terrible their money spends just as well.
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Nov 6, 2017 21:27
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I actually really missed the monster manual having asides about monster ecology and culture in every entry.
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Nov 6, 2017 21:48
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Tuxedo Catfish posted:I actually really missed the monster manual having asides about monster ecology and culture in every entry. yeah me too. that's the most fun stuff to write/read
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Nov 6, 2017 21:50
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To be fair it doesn't need to be in the same book as the actual statlines, but like, hell yeah give me more Draconomicons.
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Nov 6, 2017 21:51
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Comrade Koba posted:197 words. Seriously? Let's take this to the next level. Finally, I understand how D&D5 and Exalted 3 happened.
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Nov 6, 2017 21:51
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homullus posted:brb, putting the finishing touches on my new Kickstarter RPG, Thousand-Word Monster Land. Sorry, Paizo beat you to it.  I'm going through Starfinger Alien Archive and they have a thing where every monster has to be two pages with art. Which makes some sense, you can open up the book to a page and bam, no flipping pages back and forth to get information. The problem is that not every monster needs two pages of information, so sometimes you get a good deal of tail-chasing word circles. Or, alternately, you get nothing but statblock for some creatures. And their trick to fill space is also to add equipment or PC race writeups and the like to try and make up the difference for some monsters to try and make it a player-facing book as well as a gamemaster-facing book, to sell it to players... nevermind the organization then becomes a mess for players as a reference. Granted, usually having two pages to fill up works fine, but when it doesn't, it really shows. And it really limits the number of creatures they can pack in compared to most of the Monster Manuals. It's the kind of layout that I'm sure sounded clever in theory... and in case you're wondering, the writeups are about 800-1200 words, usually around 1100 (and that's with me counting out the equipment that might be tacked on at the end of the description). And just because there are that many words doesn't meant the writeups are super-informative. There's one particular writeup where I wanted to just pull the writer aside and say stop telling me how spooky it is and tell me what the creature loving does in actual play.
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Nov 6, 2017 21:53
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Tuxedo Catfish posted:To be fair it doesn't need to be in the same book as the actual statlines, but like, hell yeah give me more Draconomicons. It was also a way to justify keeping more writers on speed dial and obviously worked to cement a brand identity. The big issue is when companies do a poor job separating mechanics from fluff, but it's hardly an unsolvable problem.
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Nov 6, 2017 21:58
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Alien Rope Burn posted:Granted, usually having two pages to fill up works fine, but when it doesn't, it really shows. And it really limits the number of creatures they can pack in compared to most of the Monster Manuals. It's the kind of layout that I'm sure sounded clever in theory... and in case you're wondering, the writeups are about 800-1200 words, usually around 1100 (and that's with me counting out the equipment that might be tacked on at the end of the description). FMguru fucked around with this message at 22:01 on Nov 6, 2017 |
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Nov 6, 2017 21:58
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moths posted:I am very happy to be shown wrong. To be fair, it was a bit of an unusual situation, in that the artist and I had made the adventure for someone else who could no longer use it (she took a job with Pinnacle, so it would've been a conflict of interest). So, the publisher wasn't paying us to write the adventure, he was paying us to finish it up to a professional standard so it could be sold. He did a bunch of promotional stuff for it and completed the pdf layout, so it's ended up working pretty well for everyone. Current project I'm doing for them is at $.03 a word.
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Nov 6, 2017 22:02
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Alien Rope Burn posted:and in case you're wondering, the writeups are about 800-1200 words, usually around 1100 (and that's with me counting out the equipment that might be tacked on at the end of the description). So, basically thirty to fifty bucks paid per monster. Before self-employment taxes and social security and any other taxes and expenses. You get, as they say, what you pay for.
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Nov 6, 2017 22:02
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Peas and Rice posted:You can add two sidebars, one with fiction detailing the life of an orc, one with verbose tables describing 30 kinds of orc encounters. Welcome to 1000-word-monster-land. Oh, that was just the stat block. The actual monster description is a 96-page booklet without art, all in 8pt typeface. And if you think that’s bad, just wait until I’ve written the entry for Dragon. 
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Nov 6, 2017 22:37
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Comrade Koba posted:Oh, that was just the stat block. It's just the animated gif of the dragon loving a car embedded in the PDF. A picture's worth a thousand words, right? how many words do you get per frame?
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Nov 6, 2017 22:42
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Kurieg posted:A picture's worth a thousand words, right? how many words do you get per frame? I wonder what White Wolf was paying for art 20 years ago. If it was 35 bucks a piece, then a picture would literally be worth a thousand words.
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Nov 6, 2017 22:47
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Why is it so hard to have a policy that states 1. These are behaviors that are not acceptable. 2. If you do any of these behaviors you may be expelled without refund. This may include a permanent ban on future events. 3. If you witness or experience these behaviors here is how you report or escalate them. I mean isn't this basic CYA stuff for public events?
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Nov 6, 2017 23:13
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Rhandhali posted:Why is it so hard to have a policy that states
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Nov 6, 2017 23:17
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A lot of smaller cons in my experience are driven by a couple motivated local enthusiasts like some members of a college game club or the local game scene who want the "prestige" of hosting a con, and more or less figure it out as they go. Sometimes one or more of the FLGS in the area drive it or otherwise assist, but of course how much "professionalism" that brings to the table varies wildly. If it survives for a couple years it may get better as they learn from (some of) their mistakes, but just as often once the big driving personalities for the event graduate/move/lose interest, it backslides or falls apart entirely. Not that that excuses Texas Dipshit or other cons that don't bother to figure out a code of conduct, especially in the internet age. But a lot of these cons are fumbling in the dark well before they get to the "hey, maybe we should set up some basic social rules" stage of even planning.
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Nov 6, 2017 23:32
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FMguru posted:This was a problem with the old AD&D 2E Monstrous Compendium binder entries - every monster got its own double-sided single page for itself, which led to some simple monster entries having tons of whitespace and some complicated monsters visibly squishing the text together to fit in the allotted space. I wish. Some pages had two monsters on opposite sides. And then they released expansions with monsters that sorted alphabetically between two on the same piece of paper. Yes I was super bitter about this in 1990.
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Nov 6, 2017 23:40
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Liquid Communism posted:I'm not sure how anyone paying attention would have any confidence in the DoD regarding sexual harassment and assault. It's endemic to the armed forces and historically under-reported due to complaints having drastic career consequences for the person complaining. I was making a joke based on his humblebrags of being a DoD IT guy that didn't know the current US Vice President or the state of sexual harassment in gaming industries, but who would definitely know inappropriate behavior when he saw it. Also I'm not filled with confidence that this man manages technology for the DoD.
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Nov 7, 2017 00:24
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xiw posted:I wish. Some pages had two monsters on opposite sides. And then they released expansions with monsters that sorted alphabetically between two on the same piece of paper. I'm not alone! Join me, my bitter sibling!
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Nov 7, 2017 01:37
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Tuxedo Catfish posted:To be fair it doesn't need to be in the same book as the actual statlines, but like, hell yeah give me more Draconomicons. I loved the 3E draconomicon. I really appreciated how much though they put into the culture and biology of their magic flying lizards. It all worked pretty well too, dragons only worked because of magic of course but they literally had an organ that produced elemental magical mojo constantly. Also, the art was gorgeous.
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Nov 7, 2017 03:58
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Comrade Koba posted:There, 745 words. This is brilliant. Tuxedo Catfish posted:I actually really missed the monster manual having asides about monster ecology and culture in every entry. You could probably add a couple hundred more words spelling out statistical data and demographics the way they used to: AD&D 2nd Edition posted:
D&D 3rd Edition posted:Organization: Gang (2–4), squad (11–20 plus 2 3rd-level sergeants and 1 leader of 3rd–6th level), or band (30–100 plus 150% noncombatants plus 1 3rd-level sergeant per 10 adults, 5 5th-level lieutenants, and 3 7th-level captains)
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Nov 7, 2017 04:09
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I bought Drqconomicon and used it only once in a campaign but it's a legit good read out of gaming so it was worth it
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Nov 7, 2017 04:13
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I liked Draconomicon because it was a fluff book that actually had some decent crunch in it for both players and DMs.
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Nov 7, 2017 04:48
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Yea Draconomicon is easily one of the best D&D books. Great blend of weird super nerd detail fluff and useful crunch for everyone who wants to use dragons in their game and/or character backstory.
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Nov 7, 2017 05:22
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The Draconomicon was the best of the creature-type books WotC put out, but Lord of Madness and Libris Mortis were interesting, too. Sucks that they never got to finish the construct book that was in planning stages.
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Nov 7, 2017 05:35
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Was LoM the one where they added a variant kind of mind flayer, because they realized mind flayers are popular but too high-level? I know there are lots of weird illithid variants, but these guys were basically just illithid astronauts who went exploring and came back CR 6-8. Mind flayers are cool, but the details on aboleths and other aberrations was more interesting.
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Nov 7, 2017 05:43
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Hate to bring the tone of the discussion down but... https://twitter.com/hillarymonahan/status/927631606457733121 God drat it.
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Nov 7, 2017 05:43
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Kurieg posted:Hate to bring the tone of the discussion down but... I want proof (like witness/victim testimony) of the antisemitism thing because that has a long history of politicized false accusations. I'm not going to demand proof of the sexual harassment, because that's commonplace and false accusations are exceedingly rare. (One day the alt-right are going to gently caress it all up by realizing that they can tear apart communities and discredit basically anyone they dislike with a false sexual assault accusation, though thankfully that doesn't seem to have happened yet and so we can still take such accusations at face value. I rue the day this is no longer true.  )
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Nov 7, 2017 06:20
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I have bad news about how commonplace antisemitism is too
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Nov 7, 2017 06:30
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LatwPIAT posted:I want proof (like witness/victim testimony) of the antisemitism thing because that has a long history of politicized false accusations. I'm not going to demand proof of the sexual harassment, because that's commonplace and false accusations are exceedingly rare. (One day the alt-right are going to gently caress it all up by realizing that they can tear apart communities and discredit basically anyone they dislike with a false sexual assault accusation, though thankfully that doesn't seem to have happened yet and so we can still take such accusations at face value. I rue the day this is no longer true. The RPG.net thread got thoroughly derailed after/due to this accusation and eventually got locked. So I'm not even sure where to look for it now. Kurieg fucked around with this message at 06:34 on Nov 7, 2017 |
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Nov 7, 2017 06:30
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Behold! The future of TTRPGing!
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Nov 7, 2017 06:38
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sexpig by night posted:I have bad news about how commonplace antisemitism is too I know, but when someone says "sexual harassment" I can be reasonably sure that actual bona-fide sexual harassment occurred, whereas when someone says "anti-Semite" they either hate Jewish people or said something mean about the state of Israel once. (And then we have to get into whether they're using criticism of Israel as a cover for genuine anti-Semitism because aaaaaaaaaaah!)
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Nov 7, 2017 06:40
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sexpig by night posted:I have bad news about how commonplace antisemitism is too It's super common. But also if you criticize Israel some people reflexively call that antisemitism. For a few people, simply expressing sympathy for Palestinians constitutes antisemitism. So... yeah, there needs to be at least a little bit of explanation to go with the accusation. e: f;b
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Nov 7, 2017 06:41
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I don't have links or anything to show around, but this isn't the first time CAS has been accused of anti-Semitism and the "best" anyone brought to the table on that was some angry posts about Israel's apartheid/genocide bullshit. I'm skeptical of any such accusations. However, he's apparently got an acknowledged past of being a creep towards women, and when Nicole Lindroos came out swinging to defend him saying how it was all relatively minor stuff long ago, some women were like "lol the stuff we're talking about happened very recently."
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