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Adventures in RPG Publishing Report: I've had a good first weekend up on DriveThruRPG; 30 copies of the game sold and 40 downloads of the character sheets, putting me well into the black (so long as I don't budget in time spent working on the project  ). Yesterday I tried out changing the price from $5 to pay-what-you-want with $5 recommended, and although there was a disheartening flood of emails from DTRPG full of $0 sales, my average price per sale actually rose over the period the game's been on PWYW! Obviously I'll keep an eye on how the average price changes, and switch back if it drops too low, but given that this isn't the final product I'm just happy to have made a profit and got my game out there into people's (electronic) hands. Flavivirus fucked around with this message at 15:04 on Nov 11, 2013 |
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Nov 11, 2013 10:09
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Another piece of advice, especially for those that have a hard time sticking to a single project. Set Deadlines Seriously, give yourself a deadline for a milestone and stick to it. Say you are going to have a chapter done by the end of the month, or a rough draft done in 90 days and then do it. Don't worry about if it's good or not just get to the milestone and meet the deadline. Then you can go back later and clean it up. Deadlines will motivate you to finish projects, and to not be distracted by other projects. I just finished the second milestone (playable rough draft) on my game project, and at times it was tough to motivate myself to write, but I was committed to getting it done on time so I dug deep and got it done. My rough draft isn't perfect by any means but it's playable.
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Nov 11, 2013 10:09
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Bucnasti posted:Another piece of advice, especially for those that have a hard time sticking to a single project. Totally agree with this, even better if it's a hard deadline that other people are depending on. My Ant goals for this week are: Finish the map Do the stats
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Nov 11, 2013 11:09
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I'm throwing my hat into the ring, now that I got started on writing the rules of my game. I want the basic version finished by Christmas, so I need to get started. The game is an encounter-based tactical RPG-light boardgame for kids who has the help of an adult. It is based on the miniatures I got from the first Reaper Bones Kickstarter, and aimed for my 5 year old niece who is just getting started playing dungeon crawls. So it is supposed to be pretty simple (no complicated enemy movements, no more maths than D6+a low value, cooperative play), but still fun to replay (especially for the adult!) by including a lot of different heroes and villains, randomness as to how the encounters are set up and what your gear ends up being. I'm making the game together with my brother-in-law who is also an avid gamer. The basic game is inspired by LEGO's Heroica (which my niece loves, but is frankly a bit simplistic in the long run for an adult) and Warhammer Quest/Descent/HeroQuest, with the difficulty being somewhere in between those two kinds of games. The idea is to have a set number of encounters, where each encounter is a single board (say, "The Sewers", "The Hidden Catacomb" etc.). Wounds etc. are reset after the encounter, so it will be a lot more forgiving than normal dungeon crawls, where attrition is usually the main threat. A full game might have 3-5 such random encounters, with the last one often being set by the main quest for the game. The plan is to have several different quests in the game to choose between or draw randomly. The idea is that you draw an encounter, and each encounter has two or more different set-ups. So, a low roll on The Sewers might be an encounter with the mediocre Rat King and his minions, while a higher roll might be a dreaded Sewer Troll and his Goblin horde. As your quest progresses you are more and more likely to get the harder encounters. Each encounter comes with a set amount of Random Events (which could be additional roaming monsters attacking, magical effects etc.) and Treasure Chests (with loot and the occational trap). This part is very old school dungeon crawl for me, and the big effort will be to make all these random cards and the different heroes and their abilities. The part that is simplified and more like Heroica, is that the monsters are not very active. They simply move their Movement value towards the heroes (in Heroica they simply stand still, passively, always). As my niece grows older we might make an advanced version of the rules where you either have a more aggressive AI control or simply a DM, and that version might be more interesting for older players as well. So, my to-do list for now: -finish writing the rules. I would say that I'm around 50% there, as the rules are very simple. -write attributes, skills etc. for the various heroes. My brother-in-law has done a lot of this already, but we haven't balanced anything yet. -design the encounters. This is a big part of the game, but I think that we only need 3-5 set pieces for the basic game, with 2 different encounters for each one. Of course, balancing will be a big part as well. These should be designed and made on hard cardboard first, and then maybe eventually in 3D, as it would be really cool. -paint up the different heroes and villains. I've painted some 40 minis already, and need maybe 20-30 more if we want more diversity in the encounters. -design the random cards (treasures, random encounters) I have my deadline and my set of objectives to get there, now I just have to get this project off the runway.
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Nov 11, 2013 12:03
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Neon Abyss v2.0 is up! If anybody wants to give some feedback feel free. I'm going to write up some more stuff delining the general frame of the setting when I wake up, but the current mechanics side is complete.
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Nov 11, 2013 14:51
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I have decided to sit down and actually go through with making a small adventure module for Castles and Crusades, and I plan on tracking my progress through this thread to help keep me motivated! The past few days I have been thinking of a good theme for the module itself, and have determined that doing something based around The Code of Hammurabi would be a good start. Right now my idea is a short tomb delve where the party has been recruited by a local person of power (up to the DM, as part of the plan is to allow the module to be fit into any campaign) to retrieve a mythical set of stone tablets that are said to contain some of the first known written rules of law. Unlike their IRL counterparts, the main attraction to these tablets are the fact that they are rumored to be covered in runes that worked with a staff of some sort, causing those who were within the lands of the staff holder to be compelled to follow the laws upon first sight. It would explain why most of the punishments for breaking the laws were primarily death, since individuals who broke these laws were resisting the powers of the tablets. My first major obstacle is determining how long this should be. My heart wants me to go all out and make this huge, sprawling tomb with enough encounters to last two - three sessions but my more modest self wants me to keep it simple, and use this first module as a test bed to see how I can handle writing for something like this. Use what I learn here for my next work and then continue, generating bigger and bigger modules as I improve. Hopefully by tomorrow I can have an introduction I feel comfortable with typed up and ready to go. I do have a question about DrivethruRPG, how does it handle taxes? What percentage do they take?
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Nov 11, 2013 15:31
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I am writing stuff, currently working on ver3.something of my rules lite system to go along with my november contest entry. while doing that I had a nifty idea for a playing card based resolution mechanic that'll probably be my next project after I either finish or get bored of the current one. And you shall know us by the trail of unfinished poo poo... 
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Nov 11, 2013 16:58
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Man, we need to get some reviewers up in here. It feels like the ratio of content being written to feedback is pretty low. That being said, I'm looking at Neon Abyss.
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Nov 11, 2013 17:07
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I'm a lot more likely to look into something if people ask specific questions. There's a lot of work for me to do and sometimes the idea of looking at RPG stuff on my off time is terrifying, but if you give me some structure I can provide some help.Dr. Doji Suave posted:I do have a question about DrivethruRPG, how does it handle taxes? What percentage do they take? DrivethruRPG takes a 35% cut if you don't promise pdf exclusivity on their site, and 30% cut if you do. (You're still free to sell physical copies anywhere, exclusive or not.)
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Nov 11, 2013 17:25
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Mikan posted:I'm a lot more likely to look into something if people ask specific questions.  Right now I'm looking for feedback on the Compendium Classes, particularly the Champion of Air (which I feel is the weakest overall in terms of both concept and mechanics) and Steel (who I'm worried may be too powerful). The rest of the classes are pretty much where I want them baring one last move for Water and Earth. quote:There's a lot of work for me to do and sometimes the idea of looking at RPG stuff on my off time is terrifying, but if you give me some structure I can provide some help.
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Nov 11, 2013 18:07
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I've been continuing to work hard on my fan Marvel Heroic project. Right now I'm firmly in the middle of the desert (I really was when I first posted on it, but I don't feel like I'll be out until the first two chapter are). I was hoping to have the rough sourcebook done this weekend, but I realized I forgot some things and had some whole new sections to do. Then there's actually editing it so it's presentable... If I can get this done, it'll be a great set of proof as to how big a game project I can tackle. I don't expect my personal games to be this long, but I find working with an existing ruleset and setting is at least keeping me from getting hit with writer's block. Whenever I get stuck, I just go back to the research bin, and then come back with the answers I couldn't manage off the stop of my head. I've been wanting to look over folks other stuff more and offer some thoughts, hopefully I'll be come up for air long enough to do that soon.
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Nov 11, 2013 19:24
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Alien Rope Burn posted:I've been continuing to work hard on my fan Marvel Heroic project. Right now I'm firmly in the middle of the desert (I really was when I first posted on it, but I don't feel like I'll be out until the first two chapter are). I was hoping to have the rough sourcebook done this weekend, but I realized I forgot some things and had some whole new sections to do. Then there's actually editing it so it's presentable... I'm no expert, butt if you need another set of eyes or someone to bounce ideas off of, I have a combination of understanding the MHRPG mechanics, and not too much comics knowledge, allowing me to maybe look at it fresh.
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Nov 11, 2013 19:31
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Flavivirus posted:So, I took this thread's advice, downloaded Scribus and paid for a bunch of usable artwork, and got my game Legacy into a publishable state. I'm happy to announce it's now published and online at DriveThruRPG. Do you mind if I ask where/how you went about getting art for your projects and the ballpark of how much it cost (this is part of the process that I have zero clue about)? Actually, that is a a good general question for all of the pros (Mikan et al.) in this thread -- aside from all the resources for 'open source' art -- do you have any guidelines/advice for commissioning art? I ask because I have an old project of mine, a weird collaborative story-game about film noir, where it is pretty difficult to fine generic art that would work.
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Nov 11, 2013 19:41
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DirkGently posted:Do you mind if I ask where/how you went about getting art for your projects and the ballpark of how much it cost (this is part of the process that I have zero clue about)? Art is hard. The rule of thumb I have heard is $25 per quarter page (so $100 for a full page illustration), double for color. You probably want about one piece every 4-6 pages. Don't feel bad or at all apprehensive about getting a contract. Having a great thing ready to go and waiting for art feels just terrible and soul draining. Dagon fucked around with this message at 19:57 on Nov 11, 2013 |
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Nov 11, 2013 19:55
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Evil you should point me at something I haven't been paying enough attention to this thread.
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Nov 11, 2013 20:03
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DirkGently posted:Do you mind if I ask where/how you went about getting art for your projects and the ballpark of how much it cost (this is part of the process that I have zero clue about)? As I had basically no budget for art barring my SA contest winnings, I had to get creative. First I went through my image folder looking for pictures that did what I wanted to do. I then used Tineye and Reverse Google Images to find the artist and ask if they were ok with me using the image. It was a long shot, but some were happy with me using it for free which was a real blessing. For those where the artist couldn't give me the rights or wanted more money than I had, I looked for Creative Commons-licensed art for pieces that did something similar on Flickr, CGHub and DeviantArt. With the results of that search, I put together a non-commercial PDF with art I had the rights to or was all CC-Attribution or CC-Attribution-NonCommercial (Creative Commons licenses are spelled out here). I used that for playtesting, but though I could keep the art for the free playbooks I needed commercial rights for the rulebook. First I took to the same places as before but now searching for art I could use commercially. That wasn't particularly fruitful, so I finally went to Shutterstock.com and bought a bunch of images for pretty low price. By the end this ended up meaning I needed to cut the number of art pieces used from 24 to 8, but it was all usable. I'm planning on using the profits from the sale of the playtest rules to buy better art that fits the tone I'm going for a bit more, probably checking out some goon artists first.
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Nov 11, 2013 20:26
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Don't forget our own Creative Convention and SA-Mart forums. There are some good goon artists out there, and some of them work cheaper than they really should.
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Nov 11, 2013 22:10
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Tollymain posted:Evil you should point me at something I haven't been paying enough attention to this thread. Read my compendium classes! I left comments enabled if you want to leave them there instead of here. I looked at you stuff; I didn't have time to dig too deep but I think I need to see a rough description of what you're going for so I can get what you're...uh...going for. Like, what are your base stats? What do I pick during character creation?
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Nov 11, 2013 22:34
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Error 404 posted:I'm no expert, butt if you need another set of eyes or someone to bounce ideas off of, I have a combination of understanding the MHRPG mechanics, and not too much comics knowledge, allowing me to maybe look at it fresh. I'll try and have something to look at as soon as I can manage to clean up the introduction and sourcebook sections for readability.
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Nov 11, 2013 22:41
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Bucnasti posted:Don't forget our own Creative Convention and SA-Mart forums. There are some good goon artists out there, and some of them work cheaper than they really should. Just remember that if you solicit for art on SA-Mart, you have to pick someone from the thread you post.
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Nov 11, 2013 23:13
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Tollymain posted:Neon Abyss v2.0 is up! If anybody wants to give some feedback feel free. I'll have a lot more to say when you've got your setting basics written up but here's my thoughts so far: • If you reduced the cost of everything for the Duke's Realm by 1 point - so 0, 1, 2 as opposed to 1, 2, 3 - and gave him 3 points to spend then the move would be exactly the same, just simpler. • If the Erased's moves just cause stuff to be lost forever, that's not very interesting. Don't just disappear stuff - hollow it out and fill it with the Abyss. Make things Sick and Wrong and Unhealthy - fulfilling relationships turn abusive and codependent, happy memories turn bitter and poisonous - you cease to grow, you can't move past what's happened, you're Cancelled. Maybe call the playbook the Hollow? The Cancelled? • What is the Abyss? Is it temptation? Selfishness? Play into the '80s aesthetic of rich, privileged fuckwits holding lavish corporate parties at the world's expense - drug abuse is rife, poverty is rife, disease is rife - remember the AIDS scare. What nature's left is dead, dying or diseased and the city, the night goes on forever. • Here's some music which sounds like it suits the setting: → Lancaster__ - Prism-95 → Lancaster__ - Synthetic Galoure → Saint Pepsi & Luxury Elite - Can't Afford → Saint Pepsi - 宇宙の風呂敷 → sunsetcorp - nobody here → Maybe some of this: マクロスMACROSS 82-99 -レイトナイトT.V [Falling For You] Look into vaporwave and hypnagogic pop. I hope this helps!
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Nov 12, 2013 00:52
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Evil Mastermind, I went and added in a quick primer as to what is going on. Stats are actually labeled now. The playbooks are linked really early on, and character generation is handled pretty much entirely inside them. Bigup DJ, the Abyss's true nature is left for the players of each game to discover for themselves. It could be what you describe, could be something else. Best to leave it open, I think. I like what you're suggesting for the Duke, kind of annoyed I didn't think of it myself. I prefer the Erased as somebody racing and compromising against their rapidly approaching end than what you're suggesting though. Tollymain fucked around with this message at 01:38 on Nov 12, 2013 |
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Nov 12, 2013 01:33
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Tollymain posted:Evil Mastermind, I went and added in a quick primer as to what is going on. Stats are actually labeled now. The playbooks are linked really early on, and character generation is handled pretty much entirely inside them. Okay, that's clearer, but I still don't get what the characters do in a general sense. Like, in Apocalypse World, the characters are trying to survive in a harsh, hostile land. In Dungeon World, the characters raid dungeons for fortune and glory. Monster of the Week is about monster stomping, and so on. What's the characters' overall motivating force? It seems like it's "avoid being consumed by the Abyss and becoming a true monster/one of the Mad", but unless I'm missing it, there's no mechanic for increasing your Abyss stat. The Bound seems to be "all the world's a stage, and I get to go backstage, pull pages out of the script, and mess with the props", but the the moves don't feel like they support that idea. The seem to be more about True Names. And is the Bound's "Waking Dream" move a retcon move? What happens when something someone else established turns out to be a hallucination? For the Erased, how do you lose a part of yourself to the Abyss?
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Nov 12, 2013 03:29
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NA kind of occupies a position between AW and MotW I guess. Life as an Eaten is constant pressure from other Eaten, being told by whoever's on top of the heap to go smash crazy Eaten, getting involved (or trying to stay out of) Eaten "politics" (generally involves murder), and trying to deal with their own particular manifestations of the Abyss's influence on top of that. The Duke's playbook actually supports the second and third things up there pretty well. They have a move that gives them a great deal of power when negotiating with other PCs. I really should make a list of potential threats for the GM to pull ideas from.
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Nov 12, 2013 03:36
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After talking with the wife and various friends I have decided to put the idea of a bigger dungeon crawl on the back burner for now, and instead cut my teeth with instead a small PDF of several small areas which can be easily mixed into any campaign as a filler dungeon. This way I can practice my room descriptions and trap senses easier without ruining a possibly fun adventure hook. I am working on my first layout now, and will post an image later this week of it when I get time to finish it.
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Nov 12, 2013 19:53
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Wrote another icon. They're a little bit steampunk, aesthetically, but I have a good reason, I think.
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Nov 14, 2013 05:53
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I've posted a few more things about the Sepulcher on the Tumblr, namely campaign ideas and story things that should be up to the party. I'm not really sure in what direction to go next, though. I need to write up a bunch of different locations for the world, but beyond that, I'm not sure. Unique monsters, sure, maybe unique classes? I think I'll have to have a go through my Dark Sun books and such to see what they put in there.
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Nov 14, 2013 09:16
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Setting a deadline for next Friday to produce core setting and mechanics for Qabal.Tollymain posted:I prefer the Erased as somebody racing and compromising against their rapidly approaching end than what you're suggesting though. The way I see the Erased is they're basically magic heroin addicts. Corrupting and poisoning all the facets of your life is a race and a compromise and it points to an end. It's like robbing your parents so you can fund your habit - your relationship doesn't disappear, it sticks around and it's hurt - it's unhealthy, it's a poisonous fact. Abyssal corruption as opposed to erasure could still be irreversible - where another relationship could change and repair itself, this one's stuck festering and filled with Abyss-stuff. My problem with the straight up erasure of relationships is that you're taking an interesting facet of your character and just getting rid of it. Playing a guy with no relationships, no memories just doesn't seem very fun. Now every move which doesn't just erase bits of you character is great - Poltergeist, Abyssal Vector - these all point to a more interesting playbook. You're not just erasing stuff, you're freezing it up and filling it with death. You're making things neurotic and malformed. The Erased is the failure to thrive. The Erased should be insignificant, wrong, tenuous - they should be insidious. Everything falls into a sick morass while they're around. The Erased is quiet entropy. If you're going down the Junkie route, maybe change Sacrificial Lamb so whoever you've affected gets to use the Erased core move, and think about rewriting the Trust Move so its subject becomes pure and incorruptible, immune to any of the decay you're spreading. Maybe include a mechanic which encourages you to become disillusioned and discard them when they don't live up to your expectations.
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Nov 14, 2013 12:43
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I got mad at OSR again so I started writing a reverse retroclone a while back. The basic idea is to put all that stuff that was actually pretty cool in OD&D into a modern rules framework and to slap on a setting that's a bit different than the regular pseudo-medieval thing. So far, I've discovered a way to write monsters in a way that mostly allow them to be described and run in two sentences, I made a typing error which created the Jortsword, I went on a post-Tolkien trip (there's something like the whole War of the Ring/War of Wrath somewhere in the setting background but the world has moved towards modernity since then) and I'm nicking rules from someone else than Gygax. I hope to finish the thing in about two weeks or so.
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Nov 16, 2013 19:27
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Bigup DJ posted:If you're going down the Junkie route, maybe change Sacrificial Lamb so whoever you've affected gets to use the Erased core move, and think about rewriting the Trust Move so its subject becomes pure and incorruptible, immune to any of the decay you're spreading. Maybe include a mechanic which encourages you to become disillusioned and discard them when they don't live up to your expectations. A move that gives other people your core playbook ability is a terrible idea. A lot of the ideas you're touting would probably be better splintered off to another playbook. The Erased isn't a corruption/corrupter for the most part, it's a ghost, an angry ghost who doesn't want to disappear and be forgotten. It's somebody who is trying not to fade into nothing. Abyssal Vector is there to emphasize the violence of the playbook, but I'm probably going to rewrite it because I'm not aiming for the corruption angle and it looks like it suggests it.
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Nov 16, 2013 20:55
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Kemper Boyd posted:I got mad at OSR again so I started writing a reverse retroclone a while back. The Jortsword has to be the worst weapon ever. It just has to be.
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Nov 16, 2013 22:22
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Humbug Scoolbus posted:The Jortsword has to be the worst weapon ever. It just has to be. Or maybe it's the name for this badass superhero:  Man, every time I look at that image I notice something crazy and out of place. The most redneck ninja.
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Nov 17, 2013 05:26
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Pretty sure it's against terms of use to post other users' selfies without their permission, thanks.
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Nov 17, 2013 05:46
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Jimbozig posted:TGPosters.jpg drat it's like a magic eye puzzle without the squiggly lines.
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Nov 17, 2013 05:48
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I can't even get down on that dude. He just looks so happy.
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Nov 17, 2013 06:20
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Amen. He's figured out life.
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Nov 17, 2013 07:05
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The cigarette is what got me laughing.
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Nov 17, 2013 07:07
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Jimbozig posted:redneck ninja  Lemmy what are you doing? Stop that. You're ruining the mystique.
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Nov 17, 2013 12:21
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Lemmy is the best, indeed. He's a military memorabilia collector of all kinds, it's not like he's just in love of Nazi and Confederate stuff. Yesterday we did the first round of beta testing of our tactical RPG/boardgame, and we ironed out a lot of the rules. We settled on hexagon maps, as it worked very well. We did the basic stats and abilities for four classes (Cleric, Paladin, Rogue, Wizard), and wrote and tested four encounters with various enemies and bosses. These four encounters took around 2,5 hours, including the downtime of adjusting rules and coming up with stats for enemies, which is roughly as long playtime as we were aiming for. The game was surprisingly fun given how basic the rules for the enemies are. In three out of four games it was really down to the wire, with the last dice rolls deciding on if we won or not, yet we never lost. It worked with both two and four player characters, though we'll have to add more difficulty scaling for larger parties: probably we'll include a "monster deck", where you draw a card with additional random monsters for each party member above 2, and then base the standard difficulty on a two player party. We also started working on the treasure deck. Next things to do: Draw maps for the first encounters on some paper (we just used a blank hexagon map with random dice on it to block line of site). Make basic templates for the different decks, and add extra cards where necessary: Treasure cards (already have roughtly a dozen written) Ability cards (roughly 10 per hero class, abilities for Rogue, Wizard, Cleric and Paladin are basically working, Paladin might need some tweaking to make more interesting) Hero stat cards (again, Rogue, Wizard, Cleric and Paladin are playtested and ready) Monster cards (only 3-4 finished) Random event cards (none finished) Cards for the actual encounter themselves. We tried four different ones, and three of them worked well, and one was too easy. The encounter cards need so much information, that we're thinking of doing them on Tarot sized cards or A5 sized paper, since we only need a handful of them in the game. Paint up three more mummies and the Cleric. Currently we're just using bits of paper in M:tG sleeves, so it'll be fun to see how it looks once we have "proper" cards.
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Nov 17, 2013 12:22
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Having spent a few days being sick as the proverbial parrot, I don't have the Pathfinder stats up, but here are the retroclone ones: https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/12155227/Ants_Retroclone_stats.pdf And here's a map  Next up * Pathfinder stats * Clean up map, plus add a scale notifier - little shillouted party of adventures outside maybe * Cover art (probably draw myself) * Couple of bits of internal art (same) * Layout * Publish * Make kickstarter, inexplicably get 100s of thousands of dollars and run away with the money.[1] [1] A girl can hope, right?
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Nov 17, 2013 13:16
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