Bruce Nesmith Interview: 1 month, 1 32 page module

John Benbo · Jun 13, 2015

Jon Peterson wrote a great article about the production of a D&D module back in the early days. It's a great look into all the work that goes into getting a module out the door which is quite significant. I'm new so I can't post a link but there's a link in Jon Peterson's blog (may have even been posted here a few months back).

Hussar · Jun 13, 2015

John Benbo said:
Jon Peterson wrote a great article about the production of a D&D module back in the early days. It's a great look into all the work that goes into getting a module out the door which is quite significant. I'm new so I can't post a link but there's a link in Jon Peterson's blog (may have even been posted here a few months back).

Here's the article - Quagmire - The Making of a Module

Interesting read.

Greybird · Jun 13, 2015

32 pages is ~15,000 words. I used to get paid to write strategy guides for a certain gaming site. They word count was a bit higher, and I usually had two weeks. None of the content, however, needed playtesting, and it wasn't being made up from scratch.

I also used to write manuals for video games, mostly strategy and tactical titles. Those were usually of comparable size, involved lots of statistics and reference work, and were generally written without any formal guidance - here is a complex product, write it up. We usually did those in one to two months, and that was with a team - two or three people per product.

Write 32 pages in a month? No sweat, if you're just discussing a topic. Design 32 pages of balanced, fun, well paced and plotted gameplay in a month and present it in such a way that those qualities were clearly and efficiently conveyed? That isn't a contract I'd want.

Nellisir · Jun 13, 2015

Hussar said:
@Morlock - Imagine you had to write a 32 page essay, complete, front to back, in a month. That's insanely fast. Can it be done? Sure. But, the quality you get is going to suffer a whole pile.

Add in art, maps, a title page, and a few others. 24-28 pages. Could I write a page+ a day, given 8 hours a day to do it? Yes, absolutely.

John Stater, a freelance blogger/writer/publisher, regularly puts out his NOD ezine, plus other stuff (Blood & Treasure game, Bloody Basic variant starters for B&T, a Monster Tome for B&T, Pars Fortuna game). Offhand, I'd say most issues of NOD are 80-100 pages every two months. That's on top of his regular job.

It's totally doable. TSR did it.

Hussar · Jun 13, 2015

Nellisir said:
Add in art, maps, a title page, and a few others. 24-28 pages. Could I write a page+ a day, given 8 hours a day to do it? Yes, absolutely.

John Stater, a freelance blogger/writer/publisher, regularly puts out his NOD ezine, plus other stuff (Blood & Treasure game, Bloody Basic variant starters for B&T, a Monster Tome for B&T, Pars Fortuna game). Offhand, I'd say most issues of NOD are 80-100 pages every two months. That's on top of his regular job.

It's totally doable. TSR did it.

TSR did it with a staff of dozens, if not a couple of hundred, employees.

Greybird · Jun 13, 2015

TSR didn't do it. They attempted it, and now Wizards of the Coast has D&D.

Echohawk · Jun 13, 2015

Greybird said:
TSR didn't do it. They attempted it, and now Wizards of the Coast has D&D.

I think the opposite is probably true. TSR did do it. They were so successful at producing quantity that it eventually bankrupted them, and now Wizards of the Coast has D&D.

delericho · Jun 13, 2015

Sanglorian said:
Does anyone know what the average word count for a 32-page module was back then? Given art and maps and stat blocks and so on, it could be quite low. On the other hand, I know the text they used was quite small.

I don't have the figures for back then, but as I said on the other thread about this, Paizo estimate a 32-page adventure to be ~20k words, and consider ~2k of workable writing a day an 'average' output. So you're looking at 10 days for the writing, and then a further 2 weeks or so to turn that into a product. Which doesn't seem too bad.

Of course, being expected to do that month after month is a rather different proposition.

Edit: the post from James Jacobs with the numbers is here.

Nellisir · Jun 13, 2015

Hussar said:
TSR did it with a staff of dozens, if not a couple of hundred, employees.

And I just gave you an example of someone who does it with a staff of one. Delricho, a few posts down, says Paizo expects that much in 10 days. I don't know what "a staff of hundreds" is supposed to matter anyways, except for misdirection. Pretty sure Mike Mearls isn't changing the hallway lightbulbs or ordering coffee, and we're talking writing, not writing & editing & art order & map design & layout. Do you write faster if there are more people in the building with you? We're talking about one person, WHO IS PAID TO WRITE, writing ~28 pages of material in a working month. I've written 25-page papers in 2 days. Was there a lot of BS? Sure. But I've also got 18 more days to go back, revise it, and expand on it. It's not some kind of superhuman feat.

Jester David · Jun 13, 2015

delericho said:
I don't have the figures for back then, but as I said on the other thread about this, Paizo estimate a 32-page adventure to be ~20k words, and consider ~2k of workable writing a day an 'average' output. So you're looking at 10 days for the writing, and then a further 2 weeks or so to turn that into a product. Which doesn't seem too bad.

Of course, being expected to do that month after month is a rather different proposition.

Edit: the post from James Jacobs with the numbers is here.

~2k words a day is doable but a lot. Nanowrimo, where you write a 50,000 word novel in a month only expects 1,600.

Having the title set and cover done does seem awkward, but is good inspiration for a mandated product. It's not like people aren't working with set titles and stories these days. The lack of an outline is funky though.