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Dave Brookshaw posted:Developers tend to get paid much less than writers per word anyway, on the basis that they’ll get it for the book’s entire word count. My devcpw is way lower than my writecpw Yeah Pay on Publication is murder. I wrote some material when I lived in the US five years ago that's "technically" been published, insomuch as the text is in customers' hands, but haven't been paid for it. I guess maybe I'll get paid for it eventually? But I have no idea.
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Feb 24, 2019 09:40
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Especially with kickstarted books there’s no excuse for not paying on receipt of final draft. You have the money! The artist should be completely paid at the point they have no more work to do for you, and honestly they should be partially paid at milestones along the way.
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Feb 24, 2019 09:47
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Flavivirus posted:Especially with kickstarted books there’s no excuse for not paying on receipt of final draft. You have the money! The artist should be completely paid at the point they have no more work to do for you, and honestly they should be partially paid at milestones along the way. Absolutely, and I’ve seen some companies abandon pay on pub as being unfair over the last few years, which is heartening.
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Feb 24, 2019 09:59
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The guy who GM'd for my game group when I lived in Portland used to do layout work for RPGs (I recall he did some work on Witch Hunter: the Invisible War among others) and he had a few pay-on-pub deals that had similarly yet to come through. It was a frustrating situation all around because he occasionally seemed stuck in this loop of "well I sometimes get paid a little bit of what I'm owed but if I raise too much of a fuss I probably won't get ANY of what I'm owed so better just keep my head down."
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Feb 24, 2019 10:18
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Especially with Kickstarted books, there's also absolutely zero reason to not pay at least a fair wage because the people putting the book together are the people determining the budget for the book. Whoever is running the campaign should be held responsible for setting a budget (and accompanying base campaign goal) that allows for writers on the project to be paid fair compensation for their work. And it really sucks that $0.07 per word (a rate which this document recognises as being higher than the industry baseline in order to reward the greater amount of work that LGBT and PoC writers have to put in) is perceived as an ambitious ask by some people when it's lower than what the baseline should actually be and significantly lower than what these writers should be asking for for the work they do. 
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Feb 24, 2019 11:20
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this is tangential to the thread, but a ways back among a pile of recommendations was Shadow of the Demon Lord. I just wanted to thank whoever suggested it, because i'm very happy with it. And I guess this is relevant to the current topic of conversation: it was $20USD and it's easily worth that, probably as much as $30... and I'm already buying supplements because I want to read more of the setting and game concepts.
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Feb 24, 2019 11:25
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If the industry starts paying more wouldn't it just lead to shorter, tighter books with little to no change in writing budgets? Getting a few pennies more per word more is fantastic, but how helpful is it really if you have your word count slashed by a third?
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Feb 24, 2019 12:25
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Lord_Hambrose posted:If the industry starts paying more wouldn't it just lead to shorter, tighter books with little to no change in writing budgets? Getting a few pennies more per word more is fantastic, but how helpful is it really if you have your word count slashed by a third? Getting paid £100 to write 1000 words instead of getting paid that to write 2000 at least costs you less of your time. But also, if you value writing more, you can budget more for it. Believe me: writing costs are not a significant chunk of RPG publishing, especially compared to art and book printing. A £5 increase in hardback price could likely cover this and then some.
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Feb 24, 2019 12:37
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Lord_Hambrose posted:If the industry starts paying more wouldn't it just lead to shorter, tighter books with little to no change in writing budgets? Getting a few pennies more per word more is fantastic, but how helpful is it really if you have your word count slashed by a third? A few things: 1). A lot of RPGs, historically, have had a lot of extraneous padding, and shorter, tighter books wouldn't necessarily be the worst thing in the world. 2). Even if publishers decide to go this route, 10 cents a word is still 10 cents a word. If it means projects are smaller then okay, projects are smaller, it's still better to actually be paid what you're worth on a smaller project than to have to bust your rear end on a bigger project for the same amount of money in the end. 3). If the RPG industry (such as it is) can't afford to pay the people creating content for it a fair wage, then maybe the RPG industry doesn't deserve to exist and frankly I'm not sure I'd view that outcome as a huge loss. Given the opportunity, these days I'd rather simply pay creators directly what they feel to be a fair value for their work than pay somebody whose business model is taking advantage of others in order to continue selling RPGs at the same prices from 20 years ago. I understand that self-publishing takes a non-zero amount of effort to get off the ground, but if the response from publishers at being told they need to stop paying their writers dogshit wages is hand-wringing about how they'll have to slash wordcount or raise prices and that's simply a non-starter then I'm not sure that's any sort of step up from the tribulations of going self-published.
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Feb 24, 2019 12:43
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RPGs are already too long and I for one would welcome it if every RPG wasn't 200+ pages.
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Feb 24, 2019 13:07
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Yeah I have to admit that shorter, less convoluted books and writers being paid more per word sounds like the best of both worlds to me.
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Feb 24, 2019 13:10
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Cassa posted:RPGs are already too long and I for one would welcome it if every RPG wasn't 200+ pages. I mean I think it's fine if people want their RPGs to be long, shorter games aren't necessarily better, but if publishers want big-rear end 500+ page tomes of grandiose lore and worldbuilding then they should pay a fair wage for that instead of paying some freelancers three cents a word to do it under short and stressful deadlines (and even then maybe withholding pay until whatever qualifies as publication). Publishers can't afford to do that? Then gently caress'em.
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Feb 24, 2019 13:12
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Kai Tave posted:I remember being approached ages ago by someone on RPGnet who liked my posts (fuckin why?) and wanted to know if I'd be interested in contributing to some publication they were putting together. I'm not sure I really wanted to be a part of any project that could have me as a contributor but I asked what they were offering out of curiosity and it was a penny a word. One cent. And I get that compared to the Greg Stolzes of the world I'm a virtual nobody but gently caress off with that nonsense. If I ever had a game I could see myself hiring you, OKS and a couple others of the Morgrave crew to write in-character flavor text or something of that nature because you guys are good at it. (I'd pay more than that, though.)
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Feb 24, 2019 14:05
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Dawgstar posted:If I ever had a game I could see myself hiring you, OKS and a couple others of the Morgrave crew to write in-character flavor text or something of that nature because you guys are good at it. (I'd pay more than that, though.) I think I'll never stop being weirded out by the idea that we have an actual audience there.
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Feb 24, 2019 14:44
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Another question I have what is the length of a standard RPG book? Obviously this varies tremendously, but something like a modern traditional style RPG corebook like something from Onyx Path or Paizo.
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Feb 24, 2019 15:16
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Sage Genesis posted:I think I'll never stop being weirded out by the idea that we have an actual audience there. If you didn't want it, you shouldn't have made Best Drow. 
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Feb 24, 2019 15:16
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Lord_Hambrose posted:Another question I have what is the length of a standard RPG book? Obviously this varies tremendously, but something like a modern traditional style RPG corebook like something from Onyx Path or Paizo. The 5e PHB is 320 pages, the new Alternity is 240, fate core is 300ish, and the Pathfinder core book is 576. I'd suggest a standard of 250-300 for a crunchy RPG.
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Feb 24, 2019 15:37
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Lord_Hambrose posted:Another question I have what is the length of a standard RPG book? Obviously this varies tremendously, but something like a modern traditional style RPG corebook like something from Onyx Path or Paizo. To put it another way, Legacy 2nd Edition was 60k words at 300 pages (blades in the dark sized). I’d imagine an Onyx Path corebook is more like 100-150k.
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Feb 24, 2019 16:03
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Flavivirus posted:To put it another way, Legacy 2nd Edition was 60k words at 300 pages (blades in the dark sized). I’d imagine an Onyx Path corebook is more like 100-150k. 200k, actually--or at least that's the target. Several have gone over that, sometimes significantly. Geist 2e was about 193k before accounting for the Tilts appendix.
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Feb 24, 2019 16:16
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GimpInBlack posted:200k, actually--or at least that's the target. Several have gone over that, sometimes significantly. Geist 2e was about 193k before accounting for the Tilts appendix. Fair enough. So at the rate these folks are asking for, that’d be a minimum of $14000 spent on writing.
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Feb 24, 2019 16:26
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Flavivirus posted:Fair enough. So at the rate these folks are asking for, that’d be a minimum of $14000 spent on writing. That seems incredibly reasonable.
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Feb 24, 2019 16:49
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Cool. Thanks for giving me an idea of the scope of writing for an RPG project. Even at 10 cents a word you would have to be doing a few projects of this size a year to be able to survive at all in this industry.
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Feb 24, 2019 16:53
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Nuns with Guns posted:Don't listen to the System Mastery review though because they miss all this and come away liking the idea and saying they'd play it. We were young and innocent once. slap me and kiss me posted:Which actual play podcast does pay for play? One Shot will, including doing it on a fairly popular stream if you have visual elements you need to get to. So will we, if I'm being honest. Scary medical stuff approaches. theironjef fucked around with this message at 17:35 on Feb 24, 2019 |
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Feb 24, 2019 17:21
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theironjef posted:One Shot will. So will we, if I'm being honest. Scary medical stuff approaches. I see that One Shot does advertisements and stuff. I meant more like "paying to get your product featured as the system used for an entire campaign," which to be honest, seems like it would be outside the budget of any small publisher. e: Also, speaking ethically, RPG payola probably isn't the greatest thing for the hobby. slap me and kiss me fucked around with this message at 17:32 on Feb 24, 2019 |
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Feb 24, 2019 17:30
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Flavivirus posted:Fair enough. So at the rate these folks are asking for, that’d be a minimum of $14000 spent on writing. If 200 people buy such a book book, which is not bad in the small press RPG industry, that's 70 USD/book to break even. For a book that is pure text, no layout, no art, and no marketing.
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Feb 24, 2019 17:35
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slap me and kiss me posted:I see that One Shot does advertisements and stuff. I meant more like "paying to get your product featured as the system used for an entire campaign," which to be honest, seems like it would be outside the budget of any small publisher. It's already happening, a lot. That Numenera stream that One Shot is doing is funded via Kickstarter AND Monte Cook. So that's bigger than a two-minute ad read. A lot of the bigger 5e D&D shows are getting support from WotC as well. They even hire podcasters to start 5e shows. But honestly yeah, hoping showrunners will run an entire campaign for cheap is not feasible. That's a lot of work and time. Getting a session or two recorded is probably reasonable, especially as part of a Kickstarter goal. What I've recently been thinking about in that regard is a more collaborative model. If you want to get podcasters involved (and keep in mind that I'm not talking about McElroys or Mercers, they're basically actual celebrities with agents and poo poo), why not build around what their show is doing? I'd like to believe Erika got a little boost when she bought and added our Blimpleggers nonsense as a goal on her Flying Circus Kickstarter, and that was a minor example. A lot of podcasters would love the perceived legitimacy of seeing their stuff show up as rules in print. theironjef fucked around with this message at 17:44 on Feb 24, 2019 |
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Feb 24, 2019 17:37
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Speaking of industry prices, art is depressingly cheap. A buddy of mine is getting paid to do about 10 pieces for a game coming out next year and she's getting about 3k for it, and considers that very generous. Layout you can do for a couple thousand depending on who you know. Way less if you're willing to really low-ball someone that might not know better (as the dude that did Broken Worlds' layout and formatting found out).
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Feb 24, 2019 17:41
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theironjef posted:It's already happening, a lot. That Numenera stream that One Shot is doing is funded via Kickstarter AND Monte Cook. So that's bigger than a two-minute ad read. A lot of the bigger 5e D&D shows are getting support from WotC as well. They even hire podcasters to start 5e shows. Others are catching on, too. Saving Throw Show is getting support from Pinnacle for their Savage Worlds game, first Deadlands and now East Texas. STS running an ETU mini-campaign was even a stretch goal of the Adventure Edition Kickstarter.
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Feb 24, 2019 18:00
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LatwPIAT posted:If 200 people buy such a book book, which is not bad in the small press RPG industry, that's 70 USD/book to break even. That's also discounting printing costs of the book. DTRPG will charge you $39.92 to produce a single 300-page premium colour book (not calculating quantity discounts here). They then take 30-35% cut of the profits. To pay for the writing alone, you need 716 $70-book sales. theironjef posted:It's already happening, a lot. That Numenera stream that One Shot is doing is funded via Kickstarter AND Monte Cook. So that's bigger than a two-minute ad read. A lot of the bigger 5e D&D shows are getting support from WotC as well. They even hire podcasters to start 5e shows. I mean I suppose my point with all the podcasting stuff is that .... even if you wanted to "do marketing" by getting a podcaster to run a show based on your game, there's no feasible way you can afford to do that on $9 a PDF.
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Feb 24, 2019 18:04
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slap me and kiss me posted:That's also discounting printing costs of the book. DTRPG will charge you $39.92 to produce a single 300-page premium colour book (not calculating quantity discounts here). They then take 30-35% cut of the profits. To pay for the writing alone, you need 716 $70-book sales. Yeah, at $9 a pdf you couldn't even afford the gear and actors to make your own podcast. Like, James' overhead is insane. He rents a studio and has to keep it populated with equipment that duplicates the stuff he has at home (tables, chairs, computers etc that represent a significant one time cost). Pro streaming for groups takes a paid crew member to run the boards, social media presence, and flip between the cameras, which are expensive anyway. Then he's paying performers. It's just such an expensive thing to keep rolling (I know, I'm actively looking for a small office space to move production to right now. Turns out getting show guests is harder when you record in your bedroom). theironjef fucked around with this message at 18:14 on Feb 24, 2019 |
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Feb 24, 2019 18:09
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gradenko_2000 posted:running RPG companies more "intelligently" would result in higher prices regardless, because the intelligent take is that they're underpriced and the workers are underpaid
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Feb 24, 2019 18:16
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Difficult to know really, because it depends whether 'intelligently' here means 'paying your workers what they deserve' or whether it means 'actually selling anything'.
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Feb 24, 2019 18:21
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LatwPIAT posted:If 200 people buy such a book book, which is not bad in the small press RPG industry, that's 70 USD/book to break even. Well, frankly, if you’re predicting you’ll sell 200 copies you shouldn’t write a 200,000 word brick of a book - or work on it in your free time if it’s your passion project, I guess. Part of being an indie creator is picking a scale for your projects that the market will support, and making small things to build you the capital to afford to make the big things.
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Feb 24, 2019 18:28
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The only RPG book I’ve ever wanted to write would be like a 400,000 word giant Pathfinder campaign supplement in the mold of Frog God’s books and lol at getting anyone to buy that. e: well okay that and my own edition of D&D, duh. Arivia fucked around with this message at 18:40 on Feb 24, 2019 |
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Feb 24, 2019 18:37
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Does anyone actually do market research? Mearls looked at some forums once, but we know how that ended. Once GW brought in big boy business people, 40k got good again and AoS finally seems like people like it. D&D and Vampire both got semi-pro makeovers, but there's still a core of "making the game that I personally want" instead of what will sell.
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Feb 24, 2019 18:46
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moths posted:Does anyone actually do market research? Mearls looked at some forums once, but we know how that ended. FFG, presumably.
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Feb 24, 2019 18:51
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theironjef posted:FFG, presumably. FFG are pretty good at it I think. Magic division of WotC similarly. D&D division are dreadful at it, they did a lot of surveys during the development of 5e, but next to none of it was actually meaningful research, it was all poorly-written fluff designed to make them look good.
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Feb 24, 2019 18:55
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moths posted:Does anyone actually do market research? Mearls looked at some forums once, but we know how that ended. Every company that releases a free playtest or an ashcan is doing market research, really. You put out small things to test the waters for a big thing, you talk about the game in public and use the response to gauge excitement, you kickstart the game and use the scale of response to that to gauge print runs. It’s not running focus groups or conducting polls, but it’s still useful research.
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Feb 24, 2019 18:59
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So a well run RPG company would probably want to do market segmentation, have a PDF product, a print, and then something high end that uses feelies and such to add value. You would want to have a strong personal brand associated with your product and decent art. Trying to compete with D&D in the fantasy space is probably foolish, or at least taken by Paizo. At the same time you wouldn't want to be too different, so something close but you're own niche. Finally you'd probably want to avoid any major scandals like associating with Zak S or overextending a KS. Is...is Monte Cooke the smartest business person in RPGs?
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Feb 24, 2019 19:18
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I mean he has his own company that has produced a lot of content without falling into oblivion (RIP John Wick Presents). I don't love his work, but yeah.. He is pretty successful.
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Feb 24, 2019 19:24
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