How much does producing a high-quality RPG cost?

Orion · Post by **Orion** » Tue Jul 15, 2014 2:50 am

Suppose you wanted to make an RPG on a scale similar to After Sundown. 10 classes, ~100 special abilities, a dozen monsters. Perhaps twice as much setting information. If you wanted to commission a good amount of art and possibly pay a layout guy, how much would it cost to produce a slick PDF? How much would it cost to print a nice softcover?
Come January, when I'm finally done with school, I'm thinking of posting a Patreon.

Meikle641 · Post by **Meikle641** » Tue Jul 15, 2014 4:23 am

At least 15k, probably closer to 25.

My estimates for Biwa have been (at minimum) $16,000 US. If I paid myself and my co-author, that'd be around 20k at least. I could see it getting more than that, depending on later stuff.

From my rough MVP notes, for what else I need to pay for:

CLASSES:
Class = appr. 4500 words each. $315, at 7 cents a word.
8 classes = 2250
cLASSES TOTAL: $2250

MONSTERS:
Monsters are about 350 words each. $24.5 each, at 7 cents per word
Approx 80 monsters
MONSTER TOTAL: $1960

GEAR:
Up to 45 words per package at 5 cents. About $33.75 for 15 packages.
Appr. 5000 words for magical gear = $350 at 7 cents per word.
GEAR TOTAL: $383.75

MAGIC:
Say, another 20 spells at around 100 words each at 7 cents. $140

EDITING/LAYOUT/ETC
No clue, but probably at least 1000.

DIGITAL ONLY:
$5733.75

PRINTING:
Softcovers up to 260 pages = 3.5 each, up to 1000 in total.
$3500 for 1000 copies.

PROJECT TOTAL:
$5733.75 (digital only)
$9233.75 (print and digital)

Getting art for the book could cost around $5575, by rough estimates. Getting great art would cost comparatively more.

Orion · Post by **Orion** » Tue Jul 15, 2014 5:06 am

How does that break down?

Meikle641 · Post by **Meikle641** » Tue Jul 15, 2014 8:12 am

For what part? For me and co-author? Going by 7 cents a word, like my freelancers.

I've written about 34,634 words myself, which works out to $2424.38 at my company's high end for pay.

My co-author has 6814 words for setting stuff, which works out to $476.98 at the same rate of pay.

So for us, us both, so far it comes to 2901.36 for our progress thus far. I figure there will be about 20k words or so for setting, maybe.

EDIT: Frank or someone else would be able to give you a better breakdown of how a WW, WotC, etc book's budget goes.

TheFlatline · Post by **TheFlatline** » Tue Jul 15, 2014 7:56 pm

http://wickednorthgames.com/getting-int ... ry-part-2/

I found this and it seemed interesting.

Proofreading can get bloody expensive (2-3 times what you pay authors at the high end) which explains why nobody in the industry does it any more.

A "Good amount of art" probably is going to run you in the thousands of dollars.

Covent · Post by **Covent** » Tue Jul 15, 2014 8:12 pm

*nod*

I have a 95% completed project.

Writing: Check
Editing: Check
Proofed: Check
Layout with "Concept Art": Check

Basically I need art and to include the OGL, and I expect to spend between 5,000$ to 7,000$ to finish this.

All prior work I did but I am in no way an artist and art is very expensive.

Please note that this is for a 26 page ~9,000 word document using only two textures and ten to twelve pieces of art.

Ancient History · Post by **Ancient History** » Tue Jul 15, 2014 8:20 pm

Publishing is expensive. It's just a shame that writers don't see much of it.

On the other paw, Meikle641's estimates don't follow standard industry practices. At my best writing for Shadowrun, I was only getting 3.5 cents per word, and productions like Dragon Magazine were offering 6 cents as a high rate. Proofreaders and playtesters are often paid off in comp copies (when they're paid at all), and print-on-demand ventures like drivethrurpg, createspace, and lulu can eliminate many of the costs of printing and shipping (although in that case, most of the money goes to the printer).

But it's not wrong to say that a lot of RPGs are made with love. Or, in WotC or WW's case, with committees and a tab always open to wikipedia.

Koumei · Post by **Koumei** » Wed Jul 16, 2014 1:57 am

Yeah, based on info from... you or Frank? Meikle deliberately went for a generous "above the standard" rate when paying people to write stuff, on the grounds that "people are more likely to give enough of a shit to do it" and/or "it's the right thing to do".

But people shouldn't assume that's what big companies pay people. Most of their money presumably goes to legal teams :/

Meikle641 · Post by **Meikle641** » Wed Jul 16, 2014 3:10 am

Yeah, most companies I've seen offered between 1-3 cents per word. People keep going on about slave wages, so I decided to pay a higher rate.

Foxwarrior · Post by **Foxwarrior** » Wed Jul 16, 2014 4:22 am

How are you supposed to pay people more money to write fewer, better, words if you pay them by the word?

kzt · Post by **kzt** » Wed Jul 16, 2014 4:45 am

I know someone who runs a (tiny) game company has has gotten pretty decent art at very reasonable rates by trawling the various online art sites and looking for fairly unknown people who do stylistically appropriate art and want publishing credits. If you want dozens of detailed full page color art pieces then that is going to end up costing you many thousands of dollars for decent work, but little pieces can be had reasonably.

Username17 · Post by **Username17** » Wed Jul 16, 2014 6:29 am

Foxwarrior wrote:How are you supposed to pay people more money to write fewer, better, words if you pay them by the word?

You actually pay people for specific contracts for chapters or segments of defined length, and the per-word costs are there to calculate what each contract is worth. So when I got the contract to write the spirits chapter for street magic, the contract I signed called for me to submit a 12k word draft, with a pay of about four hundred bucks.

It would make more sense to give the author about eight hundred bucks, but you're still contracting for a 12k word draft. The author doesn't actually get more money if they exceed the designated length for their section.

-Username17

Neurosis · Post by **Neurosis** » Tue Jul 22, 2014 11:32 pm

YO!

So you're talking about PAYING OTHER PEOPLE to do the writing, right? Are you talking about just production (writing, art, layout) and publishing (i.e. printing, etcetera) costs? Or are we including things like MARKETING too?

If we assume a 100,000 word book (and you absolutely and totally can fit a reasonable roleplaying game in that)...well damnit, there are still a lot of unknowns, aren't there? For starters, are you talking about a color or B&W interior? Color printing and color art are both substantially pricier than the Black and White kind.

I can tell you that using a standard POD publisher to actually PRINT an RPG is going to cost you around $11 for color cover, black and white interior hardcover, and around $22 for full color soft cover, for your "bog standard average sized RPG Book" (8.5x11" size).

(As a freelancer with multiple pro credits, I'd fucking love to work for Meikle. He's apparently paying AFAIK the same as a WotC and Paizo and TWICE what Catalyst pays.)

Edit:

PRINTING:
Softcovers up to 260 pages = 3.5 each, up to 1000 in total.
$3500 for 1000 copies.

Meikle, are you planning on sending away to China or something? If not...this is almost certainly wrong.

Meikle641 · Post by **Meikle641** » Wed Jul 23, 2014 2:37 am

Schwarzkopf:
Yeah, paying for other other people to do stuff. I've written most of the book so far, but I've been reaching the limits of my ability on things, hence paying people for work. My co-author has been writing setting stuff, but he only gets to do that in his spare time. 8headeddragon has written about 9 or so monsters for me that I've been formatting for the game, for instance. Koumei did work on my magic mechanics.

I haven't found someone for layout, editing, and graphic design (working on this especially right now) yet. I do have an artist though, by the name of [html=http://pachycrocuta.deviantart.com/]Jonathan Ascher[/htlm] who does some good work.

To start with, I was aiming for b&w interior art unless my Kickstarter does particularly well.

And nah, I have no idea on marketing costs since... Frankly, I've basically never seen a marketing campaign for an RPG aside from Dungeon/Dragon, the 4e web videos, the WW trade-in for Exalted, and the TV spot for Shadowrun in the 90s. I would seriously like to know where and how to market this stuff, 'cause I'd prefer to be successful. The business course I've been in hasn't been much help on most things, due to their unfamiliarity with publishing and the RPG industry.

I talked to Jeremy Smith from Dreamscarred Press, and this is what he told me when I asked what it told them to print their softcover stuff:

Printing costs are probably one of the trickiest parts of publishing. We've done all our books in softcover until Ultimate. My recommendation would be to use CreateSpace - their setup charges are minimal, their printing costs on B&W softcover are very affordable, and there is no minimum order run - do 1, do 1000, it's the same price per unit.

A 260 page B&W book costs about $3.50 per book to get printed through CreateSpace.

If you want to use color, my recommendation would be to use DriveThruRPG's Print on Demand capability. Their color price is more affordable than CreateSpace's color price. We did an 80 page color book - at CreateSpace, it's about $6.50 at CreateSpace vs $3.50 at DriveThruRPG.

If you're going to sell to more than just your direct customers (i.e. gaming stores, distributors), you need to factor in the hefty discounts they get into the retail price you set. For example, we price Psionics Unleashed at $25 retail. Through distribution, we get about $7 per copy sold. Half of that goes to pay the printing and shipping costs, so we only earn about $3.5 per book sold through retail.

If you want the simplest option, just use DriveThruRPG and streamline the whole thing.

animea90 · Post by **animea90** » Fri Jul 25, 2014 5:43 am

Meikle641 wrote: I would seriously like to know where and how to market this stuff, 'cause I'd prefer to be successful. The business course I've been in hasn't been much help on most things, due to their unfamiliarity with publishing and the RPG industry.

There are a few ways. if you are specifically trying to get your name out there, for a fairly reasonable cost you can get a lot of views by paying people for vote manipulation and viral marketing on major websites like Reddit.

Meikle641 · Post by **Meikle641** » Fri Jul 25, 2014 5:51 am

Putting some paid ads on 4chan was going to be one of my plans, since the price seems decent. One of my friends suggested pimping it on Reddit. Another friend claims to have some sort of gaming channel on youtube and claims he'll advertise my Kickstarter when it comes out.

What are the risks in what you suggest, and any idea on costs?

codeGlaze · Post by **codeGlaze** » Fri Jul 25, 2014 2:19 pm

Meikle641 wrote:Putting some paid ads on 4chan was going to be one of my plans, since the price seems decent. One of my friends suggested pimping it on Reddit. Another friend claims to have some sort of gaming channel on youtube and claims he'll advertise my Kickstarter when it comes out.

What are the risks in what you suggest, and any idea on costs?

Start your own subreddit?

Drop links around several rpg boards?
Google's ad program is actually really effective and cheap for niche markets.
Ask some webcomics what their ad space is priced at.
Get a couple of name-level bloggers to review it.

TheFlatline · Post by **TheFlatline** » Fri Jul 25, 2014 6:19 pm

codeGlaze wrote:
Meikle641 wrote:Putting some paid ads on 4chan was going to be one of my plans, since the price seems decent. One of my friends suggested pimping it on Reddit. Another friend claims to have some sort of gaming channel on youtube and claims he'll advertise my Kickstarter when it comes out.

What are the risks in what you suggest, and any idea on costs?
Start your own subreddit?

Drop links around several rpg boards?
Google's ad program is actually really effective and cheap for niche markets.
Ask some webcomics what their ad space is priced at.
Get a couple of name-level bloggers to review it.

If you include an insanely gimmicky token system stapled on and easily removed that encourages OCD people to obsess the fuck out of your game, like selling booster packs of cards or each monster manual has one unique creature in it and there are 47 different versions of the monster manual or some stupid shit like that, Gabe & Tycho over at Penny Arcade will spontaneously orgasm and pimp your game.

Of course, *I* will run away from the game as fast as possible because over the years I've learned that with few exceptions I have a diametrically opposed preference to games as PA.

animea90 · Post by **animea90** » Sat Jul 26, 2014 4:32 pm

Meikle641 wrote:At least 15k, probably closer to 25.

My estimates for Biwa have been (at minimum) $16,000 US. If I paid myself and my co-author, that'd be around 20k at least. I could see it getting more than that, depending on later stuff.

From my rough MVP notes, for what else I need to pay for:

CLASSES:
Class = appr. 4500 words each. $315, at 7 cents a word.
8 classes = 2250
cLASSES TOTAL: $2250

MONSTERS:
Monsters are about 350 words each. $24.5 each, at 7 cents per word
Approx 80 monsters
MONSTER TOTAL: $1960

GEAR:
Up to 45 words per package at 5 cents. About $33.75 for 15 packages.
Appr. 5000 words for magical gear = $350 at 7 cents per word.
GEAR TOTAL: $383.75

MAGIC:
Say, another 20 spells at around 100 words each at 7 cents. $140

EDITING/LAYOUT/ETC
No clue, but probably at least 1000.

DIGITAL ONLY:
$5733.75

PRINTING:
Softcovers up to 260 pages = 3.5 each, up to 1000 in total.
$3500 for 1000 copies.

PROJECT TOTAL:
$5733.75 (digital only)
$9233.75 (print and digital)

Getting art for the book could cost around $5575, by rough estimates. Getting great art would cost comparatively more.

This doesn't even include time spent actually designing game mechanics, playtesting them and redesigning based on player feedback.

Remember, he said high quality, which means you aren't just going to make up mechanics in a few hours and release them.

Meikle641 · Post by **Meikle641** » Sun Jul 27, 2014 1:26 am

Indeed, I've been the one making the system. No point in paying myself into I'm actually getting income from the business and product.

Otherwise, yeah, the system core would be another couple thousand dollars for a game.