Would you pay to have adventures written for you?

[Lord Xtheth]

After a long and steady stream of trying and failing to start publishing my own material (Mostly cost related), I have yet to be able to break into the buisness that I think I would enjoy the most.

I consider myself a fairly decent amateur writer, and have been playing RPGs in some form or another since I was 8 years old.

I want to be able to write RPG material for a living, but I do not want anyone as a boss in this feild. What I was wondering is:

If I were to set out and write personalized adventures for others on their request, lets say with a maximum workload cap (Because I can't write a bazillion adventures at once), and lets say I charged somthing like $1 per 3 characters, per level (bringing characters through 1 full level of experience) Would this be a service anyone here would even consider?

My credentials: None, I am completely fresh into the buisness
Previous published material: None

By "Personalized adventures" I mean I would write somthing from scratch for you to your specifications. If you want it to be in any spacific gaming world, city, dimention, or what have you, I would write it to the best of my ability. If there are certain events, items, or anything you want in the adventure, I would make sure to include them.
Basically, I would be taking a basic outline and turning it into a full adventure for you.

This service would be open to a number of games that I have access to, and have had experience running (Which is no small number of game systems mind you).

I'm just wondering. I want to break into the buisness and need to start somewhere.

 

[S'mon]

I'd suggest you start by publishing free stuff online; build up a reputation as a good writer/designer, then start offering stuff for sale using eg rpgnow.com and lulu.com

 

[Rechan]

I'm certain someone here can tell you about Open Game Design - a project Wolfgang Baur does where people pay him to watch him design an adventure, with their input.

I'd also suggest writing things and submitting them to Kobold Quarterly and Level Up! Magazine.

 

[Wik]

Sorry to be blunt here, but it's a silly idea.

It seems great at first, but what you're saying is "give me an outline, and I'll give you an adventure". Well, that's great. Except, you don't know the characters involved, and you don't really know the specifics... unless the submitter gives you a novel of information (in which case, why are they paying you, anyway?). So, you're not really offering a product that, in the end, is any different from a current adventure module, except for the fact that they can dictate what it's about.

Second, odds are people would want pretty specific adventures if they use this service - I'm not going to pay you for a "kill the dragon" module. If I want something, I want something very specific to my campaign - I want you to stat out the minotaur clans of Kael Tessera, the ghost tribes in the heart of the city, and how the otterfolk of the nearby rivers deal with the demons that lurk in the woods. oh, and I also want the adventure to feature my Tiefling Empire with their hobgoblin soldiers. And throw in some of my customized fey, too. My party likes that.

The point? Good luck selling that to anyone but your original client. While that adventure would be pretty cool, it'd have limited utility in any other campaign. And if someone wants you to write an adventure for, say, Dark Sun, you can't even legally sell it!

So, you're putting in a lot of time and effort to make a product for a VERY limited customer base (maybe, at the most, a dozen or so sales). How much are you going to charge for this service? To even "break even", you'd have to charge a pretty big chunk of change... and who will pay that?

I'm not saying all this to be mean. Just want to stress the points on why it is a very, very bad idea.

The way is to do what's already been suggested. Submit proposals to the gaming magazines out there. Start a gaming blog. Submit stuff here, posted on boards. Release that stuff as free PDFs (look at Stalker0 - I'd buy a 4E PDF on skill challenges, if he released it... and that's cuz i've seen his work, and love it). And make small PDFs, perhaps only 10 pages or so, and sell them for dirt cheap - take a loss on the sales, in order to build up your name.

A 10 page 4E PDF on, say, variant trolls could be a huge sale. Or a 10 page mini adventure (three encounters and some plot, maybe?). Just make it small, and make it applicable to as many different groups as possible (so don't start converting obscure religions or anything). Or, find a niche that hasn't been covered yet in 4E, make sure it's got a decent size and that you know a lot about it, and again, release small and cheap products.

Well, that's my advice. Not that I know a whole helluva lot about PDF publishing. I've only had a few short stories pubbed, and that's a whole other beast.

 

[delericho]

If I were to set out and write personalized adventures for others on their request, lets say with a maximum workload cap (Because I can't write a bazillion adventures at once), and lets say I charged somthing like $1 per 3 characters, per level (bringing characters through 1 full level of experience) Would this be a service anyone here would even consider?

No. Wolfgang Baur can make this work because he has a well-established reputation for producing quality works. As a result of this, those putting in their money have a reasonable expectation of getting a quality product at the end. (And even then, he's taking a fairly big risk - one 'bad' product, ever, and his entire business model is likely to implode.)

Without that pre-existing reputation, I don't think you could get anywhere.

(Also, you would need to look at your pricing structure - can you really write an adventure to take a group of 5 characters from level 5 to 6 for $2?)

Edit to add: Actually, Wolfgang Baur isn't even doing what you suggest. In addition to the adventures themselves, his patrons get access to various essays and other works about adventure design. They get to see "the master at work". Given how much pre-gen adventure material is out there, I suspect very few people need more adventures, but the value-add provided by the other materials is a big selling point. (But, again, you need the reputation before you could leverage it like that.)

I'd suggest you start by publishing free stuff online; build up a reputation as a good writer/designer, then start offering stuff for sale using eg rpgnow.com and lulu.com

This. Or submit adventures to eDungeon, or look into the Paizo open calls, or...

 

[Jack99]

Sure, if the writer is Mearls, Baur, Cook or Mona.

 

[Lord Xtheth]

Sure, if the writer is Mearls, Baur, Cook or Mona.

Show me any adventure any of them wrote for $1 and I'll buy it too*!
*Dungeon-a-day does not count



Thenk you all for your input, keep it coming too! Any and all information on this is welcome!

 

[Kzach]

Not to be rude, but your business model is completely unsustainable and will burn you out way before you see any actual profit from it.

And again, not to be rude, but writers write, everyone else makes excuses. If you want to be a writer, then write. Submit your proposals everywhere that will pay. Then write some more. When your proposals get knocked back, and they will be knocked back, learn from the experience, rewrite the proposal, submit it again.

And then write some more.

And submit some more.

And keep writing.

And keep submitting.

Never enter competitions and never publish for free unless there's a tie-in for a product that will sell, ie. an introductory adventure module that leads into a whole series of modules that are for sale.

Writing for free and entering competitions is for amateurs and hacks. They detract from the mindset of the professional. Does a professional lawyer give his advice away for free (disregarding pro bono work which is an entirely different beast) or enter competitions to win court cases?

Get into the mindset that you are a professional writer and therefore you write as your profession. Devaluing yourself and your work by entering competitions and writing for free will only set you back on your path.

Learn. Write. Submit. Repeat.

 

[S'mon]

Usually not a good idea to listen to kzach, in my experience.

 

[delericho]

Show me any adventure any of them wrote for $1 and I'll buy it too*!

Three things:

1) If you're good enough to charge people for your work, you're good enough to charge people real money for your work. As I asked above, can you really construct an entire adventure to take 5 characters from 5th to 6th level for $2?

2) Show me anything you have written, ever, and I might consider it. If you can truly afford to write an adventure for $2, can you not afford to write up a couple of sample encounters for $0, so that people can see what they're getting?

(That said, Kzach's point about the mindset of a professional writer may well be a good one - it's something to bear in mind, at least.)

3) While it is considered poor form to criticise spelling and grammar on a message board, I think it's relevant here. "Buisness", "dimention" and "thenk you" don't give a good impression.

Finally, since I really don't want to just crush your dreams, a couple of links: I really think your best chance of breaking in to the industry is through an established route. Therefore, you could consider submitting material to Goodman Games or Dungeon Magazine (sorry, I can't find the submission guidelines for that one).