TG Design/Production/Publishing: Shameless self-promotion is good, actually

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Traditional Games > TG Design/Production/Publishing: Shameless self-promotion is good, actually

JMBosch: May 28, 2006; You're dead.
That's your greatest weapon.

Just released my first actual RPG product!

A tense and eerie descent into body horror, cosmic weirdness, and ego murder focusing on the theme of communion, The Pried Eye: A Trophy Dark Incursion is a one-shot adventure for the horror RPG Trophy Dark, but it contains all of the rules you need to play, including all-new character creation options. It's 28-pages, and I tried to fill it with evocative artwork.

Check it out here: https://atypicalfaux.itch.io/the-pried-eye. Free community copies are available, but each purchase adds another community copy for someone else to get. If you want to promote it, you can retweet this.

# ¿ Apr 9, 2021 18:51

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# ¿ May 17, 2024 15:03

JMBosch: May 28, 2006; You're dead.
That's your greatest weapon.

ape!!! posted:

I picked this up and ran it with my D&D group. None of us had played the Trophy Dark system and we had a blast. Last night will go down as one of my top RPG experiences, especially as a GM. The players picked up on the themes of the incursion and went with it. Some really good evocative (and pretty gross) imagery, this was awesome and inspiring.

Awesome! Thanks for the kind words, and I'm glad your group had such a good time. I'm working on a second sci-fi incursion, called Penumbra, set on an asteroid, but it probably won't be ready for a little while. I'm struggling a bit to make that environment as unsettling and threatening as the forest in this one.

I love the narrative arc the Trophy Dark system forces onto one-shot adventures and the cohesion the themes give them. Makes me think they'd be great fodder for churning out horror film scripts for the right well-motivated scriptwriter.

# ¿ Apr 17, 2021 01:10

JMBosch: May 28, 2006; You're dead.
That's your greatest weapon.

Released my second RPG product!

A contemplative trek across a barren asteroid to add a few final grains of sand to a colonial planet's proverbial hourglass, Penumbra is a sci-fi horror incursion (or one-shot adventure) for Trophy Dark focusing on the theme of recurrence, but it contains all of the rules you need to play, including all-new character creation options.

TL;DR: Armageddon meets Annihilation, or something like that.

Check it out here: https://atypicalfaux.itch.io/penumbra. Some free community copies are still available, but each purchase adds another community copy for someone else to get. If you want to promote it, you can retweet this.

(If you joined my mailing list already, look for your free art-less copy in your inbox! If you haven't, you should because you'll get free products and exclusive discounts and eventually be entered into free boardgame giveaway contests.)

JMBosch fucked around with this message at 23:02 on Jul 2, 2021

# ¿ Jun 19, 2021 19:18

JMBosch: May 28, 2006; You're dead.
That's your greatest weapon.

Just dropped my first entry in a game jam and first supplement for someone else's work:

⁍⁍⁍⁍⁍TXN SOULS⁌⁌⁌⁌⁌ is a supplement for Rathayibacter's post-apocalyptic anti-western game [BXLLET> that provides 10 NPCs to be plugged into your game with a roll table to help you randomly select one. It was made as part of Legendary Vermin's [BXLLET> JXM.

Since there aren't many mechanics, the NPCs are generic enough that they could be added to any western game that has some advanced tech sprinkled in.

# ¿ Jul 2, 2021 23:16

JMBosch: May 28, 2006; You're dead.
That's your greatest weapon.

I've released my first solo game and my first journaling game:

Serious Reading is a comedy journaling RPG that lets you generate excerpts from fictitious opinion columns that reveal more about how bizarre and out-of-touch your columnist character is than the article's topic. Just like real life!

You'll take on the role of a grossly overpaid opinion columnist who probably should have quit years ago, as most of them should have if we could only be so lucky, and use two tables of prompts to write headlines for fictional opinion pieces, ostensibly about very serious topics, and excerpts from those articles that reveal nothing about their supposed topic but everything about the bizarre, broken life of your columnist character.

# ¿ Jul 10, 2021 20:58

JMBosch: May 28, 2006; You're dead.
That's your greatest weapon.

Released my first M�rk Borg content today!

Born of a Bloody Film is a supplement of four monsters inspired by horror movies with full, creepy art, stats, and some lore for each, just in time for your spooky OSR-style Halloween games. It was made as part of Michael Mars's Slasher Jam.

It's PWYW for at least the rest of the month, so grab it now before I need to squeeze precious cents out of it!

# ¿ Oct 15, 2021 18:38

JMBosch: May 28, 2006; You're dead.
That's your greatest weapon.

Jimbozig posted:

Ariadne and Bob Layout Test

I'm no layout expert, or even particularly good in that area, but if you're just wanting opinions:

I like the compact, page 5 version. I personally appreciate one-page references wherever they're possible without being too dense, and that page seems to be right in that zone. If you had any more information trying to be conveyed there, I would probably break it up more like the two tables on pages 8 and 9. I think the two-page spread works well in Fiasco because the design is so clean and sparse. There are no colors, no table borders. Just white with some lines of text. The background colors and table borders in your two-page spread on pages 6 and 7, in contrast, seem to emphasize how much empty space there is on each page, and I kind of get the feeling of "Why is this spread out so much? It's a waste of space." Fiasco is also a smaller book than yours, so the white space in those spreads isn't as big and feels more like a reprieve from that denser text and art of the rules page rather than a space where stuff could go but is instead empty.

I know even less about fonts, so I'll just say that a tad more whimsical font for headers might fit the theme as long as readability doesn't suffer. But I can't really give any recommendations.

I think all the colors are good, except that the BG colors for the title of each table are maybe just a tad too dark for having black text in front of them. Maybe consider bumping them up a bit lighter and, if necessary, similarly bumping up the other table BG colors a bit lighter to match, if they are then too close.

Hope that helps.

Side note: Has your book already been through copyediting? I've noticed a few issues on page 2. They're mostly minor, but there are a couple of missing words as well. I'm a freelance editor if you want another set of eyes. You can check my website in my profile and PM or email me if you're interested.

# ¿ Oct 18, 2021 16:19

JMBosch: May 28, 2006; You're dead.
That's your greatest weapon.

Just released my first OSR adventure!

Roseate Growth is a mildly anti-capitalist adventure that sees the PCs try to track down what happened to some striking miners, leading them to a gruesome sight on the doorstep of a small, mysterious monastery harboring a piece of a forgotten god. Here's the official pitch:

quote:

A labor dispute at a valuable mine reveals the horrors that preceded it. The fossils of a little-understood ancient plant, glowing the color of a dragon's fruit, are crushed to a fine powder and diluted into a rare, luxurious, and intoxicating spice with unknown consequences. A monastery of a small but influential religious order harbors a dark secret. A hapless group of adventurers will face the potentially far-reaching implications of these intersecting arcs and decide what will remain hidden and the shape of the conflict to come.

ROSEATE GROWTH is a fantasy roleplaying adventure for three-to-five lower-level players, written in a system-neutral style. It should last roughly two or three sessions with some ripple effects that could be tied into your broader campaign or ignored. It was made (very belatedly!) as part of Yochai Gal and Chris Mennell's Dyson Logos Jam.

It's 35 pages with a map frankenstein'd together from three Dyson Logos maps, and I tried to make it a bit different by codifying adventure outcomes/repercussions that can impact the larger game world if you wish. If that interests you, check it out here: https://atypicalfaux.itch.io/roseate-growth-an-osr-adventure

JMBosch fucked around with this message at 03:32 on Dec 17, 2021

# ¿ Dec 17, 2021 03:26

JMBosch: May 28, 2006; You're dead.
That's your greatest weapon.

Melusine posted:

Hey everyone, I have a bit of a broad question, if anyone would be able to help me: What are the current average rates people charge when writing for role-playing games?

I suspect the answers are a bit all over the place, and too low in general, but if anyone had any first-hand experience, links, or anecdotal evidence about what indie projects or companies like Evil Hat tend to pay their writers I'd love to hear them.

To be transparent, I'm coming at this from the perspective of a writer myself. I'm trying to get a sense for what is considered 'reasonable' when I'm asked what my rate is, and what to evaluate as a good deal when pitched by someone else (in relation to industry 'standards', for what that's worth in a disparate field like tabletop rpgs).

I'm a freelance TTRPG editor, and from the writers I've talked to, there's a very strong push to institute a $0.10/word minimum in the industry, and a surprising number of indie/small publishers are open to that. But, having watched three separate efforts to build a TTRPG freelancers union collapse, I know there are lots of hobbyist writers absolutely willing to undercut that, even if it means people trying to make a living with this work lose out on jobs due to it. (Careful with Onyx Path, for example. In addition to paying as low as $0.03�$0.05/word, they foster a culture where writers are really against collective bargaining, and anyone criticizing their rates will get mobbed and have long Twitter threads written about them by those same underpaid writers about how saying they should pay more is actually, if you really think about it, trying to take work away from marginalized writers, etc.)

A not insignificant number of indie publishers will abide by the $0.10/word minimum, but certainly not all, and some will occasionally pay better. But most of the big publishers will ignore you for asking even for that low of a rate, though a few are occasionally better. (I've heard Modiphius paying anywhere from $0.03 to $0.13 a word.) Smaller publishers definitely tend to pay better on average.

If you're an established writer of some other kind, trying to break into TTRPG writing, I'd go hard for $0.10/word to start. If you don't really have much/any writing experience or struggle to get any work after several months of trying, maybe consider $0.06-$0.09/word just to get your foot in the door, then leverage what you get to work on to bump up to $0.10/word as soon as you can. I wouldn't support any nonsense paying you $0.05/word or less.

# ¿ Oct 7, 2022 15:31

JMBosch: May 28, 2006; You're dead.
That's your greatest weapon.

Glad to see the pressure is shifting toward $0.15/word, despite all the naysayers who screamed endlessly that freelancers trying to unify around even $0.10/word would somehow be the death knell of the industry.

# ¿ Oct 7, 2022 22:33

JMBosch: May 28, 2006; You're dead.
That's your greatest weapon.

In the spirit of the thread title, I'll mention that I'm testing the waters with my first RPG playtest rules!

VERSE is an adventuring and exploration game where players are bizarre characters from across the multiverse that get merged together into peculiar combinations. They form a motley crew that levels up by blending the identities of new creatures from differing realities into theirs, gaining new classes instead of new levels. I used games like Cairn, Knave, and Trophy as the starting point for crafting the rules systems.

It's a first shot, so it's definitely rough in places. But I�m always open to feedback if you take a look.

# ¿ Nov 26, 2022 16:52

JMBosch: May 28, 2006; You're dead.
That's your greatest weapon.

Solid feedback, thanks!

The rules are split up into the Player Sheet and GM Sheet, so theoretically each side only needs to look at one reference sheet each to run the game (besides NPCs, spell/loot tables, etc.). But trying to lay out the sheets was a bit of a nightmare, as you can probably tell from how dense they are, and the final arrangement mostly fell down to where stuff could fit. So I can definitely understand them being confusing to learn the game from.

Like the Tomb of the Serpent Kings adaptation, it was also a bit of an experiment as to how complex I could make the system without needing to add more pages. When I lay it out in more of a zine format for readability/teaching, I'll see if I can retool the reference sheets too. It will also help that I'll then be able to move the full explanation of procedures to the booklet, letting me cut down the word count on the reference sheets so they can just be, ya know, references.

# ¿ Nov 27, 2022 05:08

JMBosch: May 28, 2006; You're dead.
That's your greatest weapon.

potatocubed posted:

I have looked!
...
That said, I struggle to read the rules.

Just updated the playtest docs for VERSE to include an actual rules booklet now. It's still bland to look at and missing some referee guidance, but it should be far, far more clear and comprehensive in teaching you the basics of the game, play procedures, etc.! This also comes with an update that adds over 30 new traits and powers for the 10 sample classes and a new character sheet.

So if the concept interested you but the dense reference sheets hurt your eyes, you'd be rewarded by taking another look and downloading the new files.

# ¿ Dec 16, 2022 03:11

JMBosch: May 28, 2006; You're dead.
That's your greatest weapon.

Performing thread necromancy to post my new one-page game about antifa undead: Skeleton Justice Warriors

It's a hack of Lasers & Feelings. My one regret is being too restrained in channeling da share z0ne.

# ¿ Jul 22, 2023 22:29

JMBosch: May 28, 2006; You're dead.
That's your greatest weapon.

I will singlehandedly keep this thread alive if I have to!

I'll be doing my first RPG crowdfunding campaign through February to fund a print run of The Stone-Flesh Gift, a new living ship module for the sci-fi horror RPG Mothership. The campaign is part of both Zine Month 2024 and Crowdfundr's Tabletop Nonstop spotlight.

The players will wade through the innards of a living, alien ship called the Gift as they work to avoid its dangers, discover its secrets, and plug their brains directly into its organs to feel their thoughts. You can subscribe now (at the top of the page) to be notified when it goes live!

A silhouette blocks the starlight, darker than the space it drifts through. You would never have noticed it without a local density scan. When dappled in light from the closest sun, the remnants of indiscernible petroglyphs can be seen carved across its hull, hewn from a single black stone harder than steel. The ship has no comms, no transponder, just a pulsating thump reverberating within a membrane that runs through the stone like a vein of ore. A pinkish docking umbilical gently dances as it�s pulled behind the vessel, stretching toward anything that approaches, looking to touch, to connect.

The book is already done, save for a few tweaks to make after reviewing the printed proof copies, so the turnaround time to get your copy in your hands should be really quick!

The book contains:

25 organs, most of them with unique thoughts and feelings
12 creatures, hazards, and NPCs
10 diseases and a system to spread them
23 items and materials, along with recipes for most of them
a d100 "I Search the Body..." table
a custom ship manifest for the Gift
rules for running and repairing the ship's life support, flight controls, FTL capabilities, and digestion

Campaign details:

Campaign Pitch: https://crowdfundr.com/stonefleshgift?ref=cr_2DA8O0
Funding from February 1st to the 29th.
5.5" x 8.5" softcover book, staple-bound
40-page, full-color interior
$12 + shipping for the physical book reward, with a digital PDF included
$6 for the digital PDF reward only
Every reward tier also gets a new one-shot pamphlet: So You've Been Chump-Dumped

I'm also running two giveaways for extra proof copies. Details on how to enter can be found here: https://twitter.com/JayEmBosch/status/1741540430569693566

# ¿ Jan 2, 2024 17:57

JMBosch: May 28, 2006; You're dead.
That's your greatest weapon.

Seeing as it's officially Zine Month, The Stone-Flesh Gift's crowdfunding campaign is now live: https://crowdfundr.com/stonefleshgift?ref=cr_2D6T5a

# ¿ Feb 1, 2024 15:40

JMBosch: May 28, 2006; You're dead.
That's your greatest weapon.

You can now buy print and PDF copies of my new adventures for Mothership, the 40-page living ship module The Stone-Flesh Gift and the one-shot pamphlet So You've Been Chump-Dumped, on my itch.io page. They'll also be available in some RPG stores, like Exalted Funeral, in the near future.

# ¿ Mar 27, 2024 21:56

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# ¿ May 17, 2024 15:03

JMBosch: May 28, 2006; You're dead.
That's your greatest weapon.

bbcisdabomb posted:

So You've Been Chump-Dumped looks great and I regret reading it, or at least telling my Mothership GM that I read it.

Hah, thanks! Gotta work on that character knowledge�player knowledge divide. The randomized elements should still keep it interesting, but you could maybe ask your Warden to consider swapping the positions of some key items if they want.

# ¿ Mar 31, 2024 20:17

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Traditional Games > TG Design/Production/Publishing: Shameless self-promotion is good, actually