Troll Lord Games looking foe a few good men

[Bedrockgames]

Absolutely. $360 isn't much money, but your first paid writing credit can be a thing of beauty.

I share piratecat's caution about having to write a whole manuscript and submit before receiving a contract, but I also will say from experience that their rate of .03/word is pretty good for the industry (unless you are writing for a big company like Paizo or WOTC). Wish troll lord luck with this offer, if I had anything completed I would certainly send it in.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

Professional writer here. Three cents a word isn't much less than you'd get in other venues as a newbie freelancer and this is a niche (C&C) inside of another niche (tabletop RPGs). So the rate seems fair.

And [MENTION=11437]Insight[/MENTION], if publishers no longer have "slush piles," that's news to me. Book publishers, magazine publishers and film and television studios still deal with them, even if they'd prefer agented works or to approve a query first.

And the Trolls are right that there are plenty of folks in the online RPG community who can turn out 10,000 words without much effort and many of whom, especially the DMs, have full adventures finished from their campaigns that could theoretically get turned into a module for C&C without a lot of extra work. If I wasn't insanely busy, I've got one or two adventures (for my players: the haunted abbey adventure in particular, although maybe the Prince of the Forest, too) I would turn in.

(Of course, my haunted abbey's BBEG is an undead blackguard/anti-paladin, so he'd either have to get turned into a unique monster since creating an anti-paladin class for C&C is beyond the scope of their adventure requests.)

 

[Treebore]

You don't lose copyright for your work under "Work for hire" until you are paid. Sure, they could still try to steal it, but you would have copyright law on your side. If your paid, who cares? That is what your signing up for anyways.

 

[Troll Lord]

Sorry if this idea is headed in the wrong direction. I really don't mean to offend anyone. We really are not going to steal anyone's ideas or modules or plots or stuff. I don't even know how to address that issue. We get submissions all of the time. Sadly, they are usually 50,000 words or more. I mean, I don't even have the time to read that much less steal it. Anyway, stealing stuff is not only a legal headache, its hard work! Way more work than I would want to put into it.

Also think of it from our perspective. X submits an adventure. It rocks. We want it. SO we have an option, steal it or pay the guy and ask him to write more. Which garners us more, as a publisher.

Think of the first Harry Potter submission! If whoever published that had stolen it, they would never have had the follow ons, the movies, the toys the etc.

It is not in our interest to 'steal' stuff.

As for a completed manuscript? Almost every single advice column on getting published starts with finish a manuscript. Then they go into query letters, agents, publishing houses etc.

Honestly, I am just trying to bypass that whole thing. We want a store of good adventure writers. I (davis here) am really wanting to tap intent the latent energy and genius I see on the various boards. I don't want the hoola ballooe or whatever, the hoop jumping issue as its time consuming and irritating. I just want to see a manuscript, read and say, I really like this, lets buy it - or not.

From my perspective, I've gained three very valuable things: a writer, a module and something to put in a release slot. The most valuable of those three is a writer. I would be a fool thrice over to screw that up by stealing something.

After we accept something, there is a high likelyhood we would come back for more and then work out details and ideas and such. However, I should say that my approach in the past with writers and artists has been to let them run with their ideas, as often as not, they know better. Other times there needs to be some guidance.

CnC is also one of the easiest games to write for. I mean really, a stat block take 1 minutes to write.

Anyway, any more questions or issues, just bring e up.

Davis

 

[Argyle King]

I might be interested. I know very little about C&C though. I need some time to gain knowledge about the system.

 

[Lwaxy]

I just don't do well with word limitations. Sounds interesting otherwise.

 

[Piratecat]

I might be interested. I know very little about C&C though. I need some time to gain knowledge about the system.

It's a very fun old school game. Consistent support, too.

 

[Hautamaki]

How many gaming sessions/hours would that run in C&C? I know nothing about the system but I have a few personally created adventures lying around that might be suitable with some light conversion.

 

[malcolypse]

[MENTION=1163]Troll Lord[/MENTION]

I have to parrot Johnny3D3D. I have the interest, but not the knowledge. A friend of mine knows and speaks well of several of the fine folks at Troll Lord Games, and is a big fan of the system, but I've never played or read any of the rule books.

How would a generic module with slots for you guys to drop in things like monster stats be recieved?

 

[Lwaxy]

And I wonder, what types of adventure you favor. Do urban adventures work?

How is loot supposed to be handled (much, little, something in between)?

Do the stat blocks (monsters or NPCs) count for total word count?