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Aryxbez · Post by **Aryxbez** » Mon May 05, 2014 5:34 am

Its that time again for another rendition of why we haven't ruled the world helped the RPG industry for the better. Most of it seems to come down to issues of money/time, as I'm sure 5 denners could seriously agree to a certain vision of a game, and work together for the better of RPG-kind. I'm also aware it's due to not being a company, lacking the large funds needed for proper marketing (TV & online), and shipping of books. So putting aside the needs of a company, compromising to not as wide as audience, and going with PDF copies to keep in mind with my following suggestion.

I've not economical sense, but the consideration of a forum "donation" effort, and/or "Kickstarter" doesn't seem to have been fully discussed (though I've mentioned it before). Though I know the sounds of that is probably stupid, but how practical would it be, how much do you think we'd each need to put down to make it practical? I'd personally be willing to put down 50-100 or so, if it meant making it actually happen.

Even ignoring that, I wish to ask, what if I were to pay one of you denners to write me a RPG product for a game, how much would it cost?, how far would $20, $50, or even $100 go? (My apologies if these examples are found insulting, mostly help for context, and affirm scope)

If I were to frame this question toward some posters here, I'd go with: Ancient History, Frank, Kaelik Koumei, at the very least, but by no means limited it to them.

Avoraciopoctules · Post by **Avoraciopoctules** » Mon May 05, 2014 6:05 am

After a certain point, RPG design becomes work. And getting a job doing something else probably pays better and more reliably. You'd have to do more crowdfunding than TGD is capable of to really make it worthwhile economically.

Personally, Pillars of Eternity is a computer RPG project that sounds more interesting than anything I'd write, so I dropped most of my old projects until I get a chance to play it.

I'm not sure I'd back a TGD kickstarter unless I was fairly certain it would actually deliver something. Individual people on TGD have produced products I bought, though.

Meikle641 · Post by **Meikle641** » Mon May 05, 2014 6:12 am

I plan to do a Kickstarter this summer. Hopefully by then my "writer" will have finally written some of my setting.

Josh_Kablack · Post by **Josh_Kablack** » Mon May 05, 2014 6:22 am

Well my crappy day job pays 16.22 per hour, and my fastest crank crap out that's minimally coherent is 500 words per hour. So I'd start negotiations asking for $1600 to write a 50,000 word micro RPG -- and that would just be for the writing portion, not art, design, development, marketing, physical production, shipping, and such.

And that's just a ballpark for a tiny piece of shovelware from a Denner who's nobody's first choice. Something in the 200k+ word range of most major RPG books, plus the time to do it right, plus a Denner you'd actually want would mean a higher price tag.

Realistically you're looking at a minimum of about a $5000 minimum funding level for a KS campaign for a small, but possibly quality indie RPG. And the team will end up doing a lot of that more for fun or exposure than for anything approaching wages.

Kaelik · Post by **Kaelik** » Mon May 05, 2014 8:17 am

Aryxbez wrote:what if I were to pay one of you denners to write me a RPG product for a game, how much would it cost?, how far would $20, $50, or even $100 go? (My apologies if these examples are found insulting, mostly help for context, and affirm scope)

If I were to frame this question toward some posters here, I'd go with: Ancient History, Frank, Kaelik Koumei, at the very least, but by no means limited it to them.

I make $140 an hour. I could plausibly discount my rate based on enjoying the concept, provided you want less than 10 hours of work a week.

I'm pretty sure you can't afford me, and if you can, you shouldn't, because you can get near or better quality for way less.

OgreBattle · Post by **OgreBattle** » Mon May 05, 2014 10:20 am

They already answer questions and discuss concepts here for free though, why spend money on it? And if you're expecting to make a profit from a tRPG, you're better off using that time to do anything else.

fectin · Post by **fectin** » Mon May 05, 2014 12:23 pm

You might be better off in a barter system.

spongeknight · Post by **spongeknight** » Mon May 05, 2014 5:07 pm

You're much better off just using the mechanics that have already been posted here (with permission from the creators) instead of trying to get someone to write the RPG for you. If you absolutely wanted to publish an indie PDF of a game, the thing to raise funds for would be the art. You can write like shit and have a shitty layout and no one will really give a fuck about that if your art is good, but that certainly does not work the other way around.

The thing is, though, it's very hard to get even two Denners to agree on a given set of mechanics, let alone five. We're not working at a company where there's an actual guy in charge who hands out the paychecks and can force people to compromise and resolve issues instead of walking away or refusing to give, so that's really not going to work. You'd be much better off just compiling the rules yourself by pinging ideas off the people you respect until you have something playable, posting it on the Den for free feedback, and then hammering a real game out of that.

Dean · Post by **Dean** » Mon May 05, 2014 6:57 pm

Ok here's the thing. I don't think that we could do much fundraising or crowdsourcing but I do want to contend something. People keep saying that no one can get a group of denners to agree on anything so we could never work together and that's hogwash. That is less true here than almost anywhere. We disagree all the time but we disagree intellectually, not emotionally. We are not religious zealots or RPGsite grogs who "just know" they're right and can't be swayed. If I disagree with someone here I will write about why and then we will argue about it and in a group of 5 people sides would fall down based on who made the stronger argument and then you'd all operate with that decision. We're not children and just because we argue for fun on a board made for arguing for fun it doesn't mean we are incapable of coming to agreements. If I was on a 5 man project and I really wanted WoF to be a part of it and nobody agreed I wouldn't take my ball and go home I'd argue my positions merits and try to 12 Angry Men the group. If that didn't work I would shut the fuck up and do what the majority agreed on because that's how sane adults work.

I think that we should stop seeing repeated proposals for beginning to start thinking about, talking about, taking baby steps to getting a group here to design something. Even if I don't know if it would work I'm much more interested in trying it and failing spectacularly than continuing to armchair general about it endlessly.

So how about this. I am officially on board if a few people want to design something. We can crash and burn or maybe even succeed, the important thing would be that we'd done something instead of us talking about it eternally. Dean Ruel is a name now officially in the pot to be joined by others, left alone to rot, or kicked out by better choices.

Josh_Kablack · Post by **Josh_Kablack** » Mon May 05, 2014 6:58 pm

Yeah, Spongeknight has it.

If you have desire, discipline, and sticktoitiveness, It's fairly easy to spend a year or so arguing through the major decisions and end up having written your very own full-length playable RPG or RPG supplement (See After Sundown, Tomes material, Disageagame PDF, Dungeon Siege).
But going that route means that you will be doing 80%+ percent of the actual work. You will be taking the best ideas to come out of arguments and running with them, and you will be relying on inherent internet/denner hostility to provide decent crowdsourced criticism and editing for free -- everything else is on you.

What you need to pay people for is putting up with your bullshit accepting your creative vision over their own. And if you can't pay them something, then you can't really expect them to stay with the project after any major disagreement. (See Nifty Message Board's 3.N project, etc).

K · Post by K » Mon May 05, 2014 7:42 pm

Freelance nonfiction is $0.25 to $1.00 a word. Fiction is $0.10 to $0.25 a word, but sometimes goes as high as $1.00 a word or more.

To deliver a 150,000 word manuscript, I'd probably want $5,000 as an initial good-faith payment, final payment of probably another $50,000, and a share of profits forever on all supplements, video games, merch, and other IP based on the what I made.

The RPG industry consistently pays slave wages well below those terms, so I expect to never work for someone else in the RPG industry. Working for hire in the RPG industries usually pays only in Internet fame because the actual dollar amount is often barely enough to buy 4-5 pizzas for 10,000 words.

hyzmarca · Post by **hyzmarca** » Mon May 05, 2014 8:12 pm

It would seem to me that the economical thing would be to skip the dollar around alltogether and just pay in pizza. Also, perhaps, keep the writers physically chained to computers in your dungeon.

Aryxbez · Post by **Aryxbez** » Mon May 05, 2014 8:30 pm

OgreBattle wrote:They already answer questions and discuss concepts here for free though, why spend money on it? And if you're expecting to make a profit from a tRPG, you're better off using that time to do anything else.

It's the intent to "grease the wheels" so to speak, to help things move much more progressively towards getting good design out there. It wouldn't be my expectation to profit from it (it'd be cool, but not the goal), but to better this declining industry at large, and finally produce RPG's relevant to people now, to this decade. Barring the possibility of Den being capable of crowdfunding something here, wanted to test the waters for how possible it'd be to pay some given denner(s) to make me an RPG product at least. So if a "new" game is off the table, how about a supplement to a pre-existing game? that sort of thing.

deanruel87 wrote:People keep saying that no one can get a group of denners to agree on anything so we could never work together and that's hogwash.That is less true here than almost anywhere. We disagree all the time but we disagree intellectually, not emotionally.

Well put, probably better than I could've said it. I seriously doubt the Den would squander the chance to change the Industry, if it meant the means were there.

fectin wrote:You might be better off in a barter system.

It seems like it from what I'm seeing so far, though I'm not sure what I could barter for such services.

radthemad4 · Post by **radthemad4** » Mon May 05, 2014 9:03 pm

Aryxbez wrote:
fectin wrote:You might be better off in a barter system.
It seems like it from what I'm seeing so far, though I'm not sure what I could barter for such services.

You could offer to run games for them catered to their tastes. Many of them might consider that a pretty good price. Koumei jokingly threatened to stop designing new material till someone ran a game for her a while back.

silva · Post by **silva** » Mon May 05, 2014 9:07 pm

Aryxbez wrote:but to better this declining industry at large, and finally produce RPG's relevant to people now, to this decade

Huh... you know 4E already tried the MMO approach and failed, right ?

angelfromanotherpin · Post by **angelfromanotherpin** » Mon May 05, 2014 9:55 pm

Aryxbez wrote:RPG's relevant to people now, to this decade.

I'm curious as to what you mean by this. 'Addressing the looming climate change crisis'? Or just 'not bogged down by antiquated legacy concepts'? Or something else?

MGuy · Post by **MGuy** » Mon May 05, 2014 10:24 pm

Though I believe deanrule is right on some level I've yet to see people pull together to actually make a new system. I've 'asked' for help before after we all pulled together to do a little 'joke' writeup but found no interest propping up to actually sit down and write something out completely. I suspect part of it IS that while we can all agree on a number of things people here still have their own vision about what the next Fantasy heartbreaker should look like and what they want in it. IRL what keeps me from working 'much' on mine is a combination of RL demands/responsibilities and the fact that the groups I usually game with don't really care about the 'next' fantasy heartbreaker and are content to play primarily PF and whatever one off little game some of the more radical members like to drag to the table. There are things I 'do' want to see in a game, no doubt, but any labor of love I'd want to go all in on would have to inspire me, personally, and if it didn't or if there were some 'thing' in it I didn't like then what motivation do I have to continue working on 'it' when I could go off and spend time doing my 'own' thing or 'other' things?

All that being said if you had something, any kind of writeup or clear vision of what you wanted done then maybe you could get some people on board. If you have something that people can 'see' so they know if they liked the direction or not would help immensely.

virgil · Post by **virgil** » Tue May 06, 2014 12:53 am

K wrote:Working for hire in the RPG industries usually pays only in Internet fame because the actual dollar amount is often barely enough to buy 4-5 pizzas for 10,000 words.

Part of it does seem to be a matter of scale. It's hard to tell exactly how well companies do, as the only company I know that's released something close to hard sales numbers has been Eclipse Phase.

IMO, Eclipse Phase is very likely one of the more successful indie games out there. Over the span of a year, with just the core books, they sold 5.3k physical books & 1.4k PDFs ($15 starting out). It's been mentioned that margins are slim, and I don't doubt it. I highly doubt enough were sold to actually pay professional writer wages and have to rely on passion to keep afloat.

Dean · Post by **Dean** » Tue May 06, 2014 5:41 am

MGuy wrote:Though I believe deanruel is right on some level I've yet to see people pull together to actually make a new system. I've 'asked' for help before after we all pulled together to do a little 'joke' writeup but found no interest propping up to actually sit down and write something out completely.

I ride the subway in New York every day. Every stop a homeless person will walk in and ask if anyone in the car can spare any change. Studies have shown that New Yorkers give less to homeless people than anywhere else in the US and the reason for that is because they're -everywhere-. If I gave a dollar to every hobo I saw by the end of the week I'd be one. The reason no one buckled down and helped you write your fantasy heartbreaker is because every fucker here has one. It's not that everyone is so selfish they will only work on what they like it's that, as a community, if we all put a lot of time into helping every asshole who wanted to make the next big thing we would need to work for more hours than are in the day. That is an unfeasible social arrangement.

But just because we don't all help every proposed project doesn't mean that some of us couldn't work together to create a project of our own. While the homeless people on the subway receive very little help from passerby's there are many organization that have come together specifically to help the homeless and they do a lot of good.

I'm extremely confident that a small group of denners would be completely capable of agreeing on a direction for a small project, working through that project and resolving conceptual disagreements, and producing some product (of what quality I don't know) at the end.

PhoneLobster · Post by **PhoneLobster** » Tue May 06, 2014 6:42 am

Yeah. This thread, "The gaming den are clearly RPG messiahs on the brink of bringing about an RPG age of enlightenment for want of an innovative payment model" basically seems to pop up a little more often than once a year.

I generally don't comment. But it's a slow day or something.

So. Why the hell do people have this crazy idea?

We are just an internet forum. Not a big one, and only even barely an unusual one. We produce just short of nothing of value and there is no particular reason to believe we can produce anything especially amazing.

I like the tomes the tomes are nice... but what the hell makes you think they will sell well or inflict some grand religious revelation on the RPG industry any more than any OTHER tiny groups incomplete set of house rules attempting to cludge some fixes onto 3.x edition? The tiny window of opportunity to be the pathfinder "some guy's house rules as next 3.x edition" boat has sailed and arguable with the magazine bullshit only someone with the pathfinder name ever had that chance.

Is it the rambling masses of home brew classes for heavily house ruled 3.x cludges that makes you think this place is special? Have you just not seen what every RPG fan on the internet ever has been churning out for years?

Is it incomplete poorly formatted highly eccentric heart breakers like my own? Is it Virgil's laughable cluster fuck of a "social initiative/social mechanic" that gives you some incomprehensible belief that we are just a sly fifty bucks in the pocket away from perfect post modern RPG system?

And what the hell makes you think the gaming den can work together? What makes you think that is even a good idea? The entire thing that makes the gaming den even remotely valuable IS the disagreement in diverse ideas. Individuals come here, yell at each other, and if they are lucky walk away as individuals with something productive, for their own individual solo projects largely.

And on top of all that if you REALLY want to make a project with input from the gaming den... why don't you just do that for free right now. Seriously start writing. Put bits of it up in My Own Invention, that sub forum ALWAYS needs something other than the endless parade of shame that is 3.x home brew class write ups in the year fucking 2014. Then, link those threads and post threads in Humble Opinion discussing your specific ideas or asking for specific questions? Don't worry about the spam, people would welcome it, it's better than Lago going on a hand wringing binge or Silva posting yet more apocalypse trolling.

After all while there is no evidence that the gaming den can really work together, produce something complete or of value there IS evidence that whatever the hell the gaming den DOES do it does it for free already and just about everyone here will happily just post opinions and other bullshit on your mechanics and not mind one bit if you use them or not. Well. Other than all the insults if you don't.

Koumei · Post by **Koumei** » Tue May 06, 2014 8:43 am

Kaelik wrote: I make $140 an hour.

I make fuck-all, being on the social*, but the thing is if I just take a few months off to make something, my payments will be cut, so I'm going to need 50K up front and I super-special promise not to just run off with that.

Realistically, the best you can manage is for me to occasionally do some crap in my spare time here and there, as I feel like it, assuming there is indeed that spare time. And that would involve selling me on the idea to begin with.

*So my volunteer work is... $12.25/hour, if we pretended the payments were an actual wage for that work.

MGuy · Post by **MGuy** » Tue May 06, 2014 2:19 pm

deanruel87 wrote:
MGuy wrote:Though I believe deanruel is right on some level I've yet to see people pull together to actually make a new system. I've 'asked' for help before after we all pulled together to do a little 'joke' writeup but found no interest propping up to actually sit down and write something out completely.
I ride the subway in New York every day. Every stop a homeless person will walk in and ask if anyone in the car can spare any change. Studies have shown that New Yorkers give less to homeless people than anywhere else in the US and the reason for that is because they're -everywhere-. If I gave a dollar to every hobo I saw by the end of the week I'd be one. The reason no one buckled down and helped you write your fantasy heartbreaker is because every fucker here has one. It's not that everyone is so selfish they will only work on what they like it's that, as a community, if we all put a lot of time into helping every asshole who wanted to make the next big thing we would need to work for more hours than are in the day. That is an unfeasible social arrangement.

But just because we don't all help every proposed project doesn't mean that some of us couldn't work together to create a project of our own. While the homeless people on the subway receive very little help from passerby's there are many organization that have come together specifically to help the homeless and they do a lot of good.

I'm extremely confident that a small group of denners would be completely capable of agreeing on a direction for a small project, working through that project and resolving conceptual disagreements, and producing some product (of what quality I don't know) at the end.

It's not that I believe that people here 'can't work together it's that I believe that they most likely 'won't'. In your analogy you don't give money to every hobo on the street and if we're all hobos wanting to push a project then you don't need to rely on people being 'unreasonably' selfish. You just need people having their own vision and wanting to see that done while believing you are just another hobo asking for their money (time) as has been done before. I don't believe Josh's thoughts are just conjecture either. I've seen project after project generated only to receive luke warm attention at all here and that's about it. The best I've seen is the creation of the wiki (an off site production) people's individual projects (like After Sundown) and the Tomes which was written up pretty much by Frank and K (based on an rpg that was already available and still incomplete). I DO believe that this place could produce something very workable but 'getting people behind it' will be tough. I think it would be much easier to do so if there is a clear direction and perhaps a bunch of written material. Also a clear leader.

zugschef · Post by **zugschef** » Tue May 06, 2014 2:46 pm

As soon as you start writing a fantasy heartbreaker you might as well stop if you intend to eventually get a financially successful product. I'd say you need some guidelines (like class-based or (not) level-based) first, which you need to set up by having a clear cut idea of what type of product you actually want. For example, if you intend to write D&D 6E, you know that people love levels and classes and you should stick to that. Besides, if GURPS has shown one thing, it's that there is no ultimate system. Thus, if you want to start from nothing, you need to first have an outline of what your whole game should be about, too, before you even decide what kind of dice your core mechanic uses (let alone which core mechanic or action resolution system you want to use).

Neurosis · Post by **Neurosis** » Tue May 06, 2014 4:42 pm

Re: OP.

I make RPGs, professionally as a freelancer for a few established third-party companies, and quasi-professionally publishing my own shit with my own company (we have four or five games out, some supplements, and more games coming). I don't really talk about my "industry"/ (ugh) "indiestry" work on the Den because reasons.

But I mean FWIW there are some Denners, such as myself, currently working in the Industry. I have no illusions about "fixing" RPGs. That ship has sailed. And I'm not even sure I agree with the Den hive-mind/consensus even half of the time. But nonetheless, there are some Denners who are already doing this whole making RPGs thing, for reals, and not just talking about it.

I won't talk about my "rates" for writing RPG stuff (or the costs my company has for publishing it) because clearly I am not the Denner you are looking for and I acknowledge that.

I make $140 an hour.

Mother of God. Doing WHAT? I hope it is, as a minimum, incredibly, joylessly soul-crushing or horrifically demeaning because DAMN, that is some fucking money.

deaddmwalking · Post by **deaddmwalking** » Tue May 06, 2014 5:41 pm

Schwarzkopf wrote:Mother of God. Doing WHAT? I hope it is, as a minimum, incredibly, joylessly soul-crushing or horrifically demeaning because DAMN, that is some fucking money.

Soul-Crushing for sure. If I'm not mistaken, he's a lawyer. 4x the average rate of depression and a tremendous burn-out rate.

http://www.wolfmotivation.com/articles/ ... yers-lives

But if he has time for this forum, it can't be that bad. I have two brothers who both went into law. One of them is a corporate lawyer and a partner in his law firm and I gotta say - not the life I want. The other ended up getting involved in opposition research and worked for the Obama campaign (as well as other campaigns previously). I think he finds his work more rewarding than a traditional law career.

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