D&D 5E Designers! Share best practices and advice center

[Sacrosanct]

In another thread it was brought up how pretty much everyone here is just a hobby designer with no real experience. So that got me thinking. DTRPG has been around for a long time. The DMs Guild has been around for a bit too, so we have plenty of outstanding tools to help people get their ideas and products out there. But I don’t see a lot of shared expertise and lessons learned from experienced designers for people wanting get into releasing their own stuff, which can be intimidating. I see a lot of armchair designers who think they can do it better, but nothing from them themselves, and being a helpful guy, I’d like to help them get started . So I’d like to use this thread as a place for people with design and publishing experience to share their lessons learned and experience.

I do not pretend to know all the answers, and I do not mean to position myself as an industry expert. There are others here more successful than myself. But I’d like for all of us who do have experience to create a pool of knowledge.

My background:
I am an indie designer and publisher, having designed and released my first official product about 18 years ago. The first game/RPG I wrote was in 1986, but that was only local. I have also created and released a product on a larger scale, using a distributor, large print runs, and in store presence. That game actually won DieHard Gamefan’s BEST NEW GAME OF THE YEAR for 2011, Compact Heroes. I’ve also created board games with full prototypes (not hand crafted pieces, but custom manufactured bits). And finally, I work in project management for a day job. It’s not game related, but project management skills are critical for designing games as well.

My advice:
Don’t publish games for money. Really, it has to be a labor of love. 99% of people will spend more money than you make. If you want to be the next Kobold Press, you’re gonna have to have a lot of experience, a lot of time to devote to it, and a great team to help you. As the saying goes, “The best way to have a million dollars selling RPGs is to start with two million.”

Be passionate. This will come through in your product. You have to be passionate about what you’re creating. Most important rule

Have a plan, and detail it. This is where being a project manager helps. Create your overview doc, your requirements doc, cost analysis, test strategy, and implementation plan.

Understand your scope. If you’re wanting to make money and/or get it to the most people, understand that demographic and what they want. Too many people have this idea of what they like personally, but most gamers couldn’t care less. Understand that if you are doing something unusual or a minority preference, you won’t sell thousands of copies most likely. For example, when I did my superdungeon campaign Felk Mor for 5e a few years ago, I intentionally designed it to emulate AD&D both in aesthetics and content, and I liberally peppered it with obscure 1980s pop culture references. I knew right off the bat I wasn’t going sell as many as if I made it a generic modern 5e campaign instead. But I knew that going in.

Have a design studio. I use Adobe CS suite, but there are plenty of open source programs out there as well. Get them. Learn them. Become competent with them.

Unless you’re a professional artist, do not do your own art. There is a plethora of cheap stock art out there to get. When starting out, I’d suggest stock art only. Commissioned art will be expensive. For reference, I probably spent $2000 on art for the aforementioned Felk Mor that was commissioned specifically for that product. DO NOT USE ART WITHOUT PERMISSION. Seriously. Don’t think you can get away with a nice piece of art you saw without permission from the artist.

Do not think you can edit your own writing. This can’t be understated. When I write something, I review it myself and correct a bunch of errors. Then let it sit for several days and do it again, again fixing newly discovered errors. Then I have a friend review it, and correct errors they find. Then I have an actual editor edit it and fix even more stuff. Then inevitably someone does a review and they see a couple errors that slipped by lol. Not everyone can afford an editor, but at the very least you should have a fresh set of eyes from someone who is proficient in grammar to review it.

Test it. A lot. With as many people you can find willing. When you write something, you know in your head how it’s supposed to work. It’s not until someone else gets it and they don’t have your assumptions before you know if your rules are clear, or if there are continuity problems.

Be prepared to have your favorite rule tossed. If the overall reaction isn’t positive, toss it and move on. Often we can make things way more over complicated in this desire to be realistic or whatever. We are our own worst enemies that way. I believe even Mearls had to leave out some of his favorite things from 5e. Be open to ideas and suggestions from your play testers, even if that means tossing your favorite cool new rule.

Have a plan on how you’re gonna advertise. Banner ads? Word of mouth? This can be a large chunk of money.

Decide on the merits of Kickstarter, if you’re going to go that way. Compact Heroes was initially a successful kickstarter, but never again. And I only had 300 or so products to fulfill. It was very stressful and took A TON of time. DO NOT be one of those people who do a kickstarter and find out you can’t deliver. That will kill your reputation and isn’t fair to backers. This is where project management comes in handy again. What you think it will cost? It will cost more. Next thing you know you blew through your KS money and still can’t fulfill pledges. What I did, was pay for all the costs up front, then used KS funds to pay myself back. That way I knew how much it cost, and I could ensure every backer got what they paid for. After that success, I did a redesign and did a large print run of 10,000 games from my own pocket, avoiding KS completely.

Have a thick skin. You will get bad reviews. If your reaction is to jump on the first message board you see to lambast how much of a jerk and idiot this reviewer is for not liking your stuff, you won’t last long. And people won’t like you.

Don’t give up. Seriously. If you’re passionate about it, keep at it. If you think something is glaringly missing from the current game, I highly suggest you put out your own ideas. Who knows, it might be what a lot of other people are wanting.

If you plan on doing large print runs and get your stuff in actual stores, do research in that process. From experience, I’m telling you it will take a long time. Time to get s prototype made and sent to you. Time for you to appprove it. Time for the large manufacturing run to take place. Time to ship it and get it through customs. Time for the distributor to get it and send it to stores. And know your costs. When I did Compact heroes, I had an initial print run of 10,000 games. It cost just over $10 per game for all costs (creation, shipping, commissions, customs, etc). That doesn’t count my time. They retailed for $29. Stores only paid half, and the distributor got I think it was 6%, for a total discount off MSRP of 56%. So there was very little margin unless I sold them myself directly.

I think that’s about it for now. I hope this helps. And I hope other designers and publishers with experience will chime in with their own advice and experiences. Game design can be incredibly rewarding, but it’s much harder than most people realize. Especially when most playtesters think a rule you have doesn’t work well and you need to swallow your pride

 

[Slit518]

I like this thread. It's helpful, and informative from a perspective of somebody who has been there.

I am the above guy. I have no artist, no editor, no formatter, etc... It is just me. So I will stick around and check back on this every once-in-a-while.

 

[Ath'kethin]

I am a relative newcomer to publishing, though I have been writing and running RPG adventures for over 20 years. My first submission to an editor, just over a year ago, was a humbling experience. The entire tone and focus of my work was changed, and what I felt was the core idea behind the piece was removed.

And that editor was right. So my point here is, if you have access to a professional editor, learn from them. I'd go so far as to say that if you have no publishing experience, start by submitting stuff to an established presence. EN5ider magazine here at EN World is a great starting point. So is Adventureaweek.com. There are many others as well. What you will learn from having a pro look over your work is worth more than almost an else you'll come across, and the adrenaline boost you get having a piece accepted and published is like nothing else.

It doesn't matter how great your idea is. If its writing and presentation is sloppy and amateur, you will gain no respect from anybody. And if you publish something that has sloppy and amateur writing, it will make you look like a fool. At best.

Edit: cleaning up typos that prove my point better than any argument I could have made.

 

[Ath'kethin]

Here's the most important thing of all: if you want to write D&D stuff, you have to do it. Maybe you are a terrible writer. That's fine. You'll get better. Nobody is born knowing how to do all this. But in order to get better, you have to actually do it. Make something. Write something. Let people read it.

And here's the other thing. You probably aren't ever going to make a living writing D&D stuff, but that doesn't mean you can't make any money. I would love to have writing as my full time job, but I'll definitely settle for having my writing pay for my gas or groceries.

I have a piece up on the DMs Guild right now that is three pages long (well, two pages of content plus the cover). It's PWYW, and I made it in Microsoft Word using stock art and freeware fonts. It's been up for a few days now and I've made a whopping 8 cents from it. That doesn't sound like much, but if you have 10 of them up that would be 80 cents every couple of days, or maybe $100 a year. You aren't going to buy a house with that, but it's not nothing.

 

[Sacrosanct]

Here's the most important thing of all: if you want to write D&D stuff, you have to do it. Maybe you are a terrible writer. That's fine. You'll get better. Nobody is born knowing how to do all this. But in order to get better, you have to actually do it. Make something. Write something. Let people read it.

Yeah, this is really important. Like anything else, you will only get better with practice. It's really easy to say how awesome you can do something, but until you go through the process and actually do it, you won't really know just what it's like. It's akin to rock climbing. You might sit there and think, "I can climb better than that. I've got a lot of arm strength from all these push ups I do, how hard can it be?" But when you actually do it, you realize that arm strength has very little to do with the whole process. It's technique. And practice.

And here's the other thing. You probably aren't ever going to make a living writing D&D stuff, but that doesn't mean you can't make any money. I would love to have writing as my full time job, but I'll definitely settle for having my writing pay for my gas or groceries.

I have a piece up on the DMs Guild right now that is three pages long (well, two pages of content plus the cover). It's PWYW, and I made it in Microsoft Word using stock art and freeware fonts. It's been up for a few days now and I've made a whopping 8 cents from it. That doesn't sound like much, but if you have 10 of them up that would be 80 cents every couple of days, or maybe $100 a year. You aren't going to buy a house with that, but it's not nothing.

With DM's Guild and DTRPG, it's very easy to make a little money. My comment above about don't do it for the money was more in the context of making it a day job. DM's Guild and DTRPG are digital and POD services, so there is very little up front costs, especially if you have your own writing software and use stock art. So it's quite easy to make at least something if you go that route. And more importantly, it's practice and gets you more prepared for bigger stuff later.

 

[Sacrosanct]

One other piece of advice. I have a lot of artist friends, and as I mentioned in my background, have been doing this for a long time. One thing I still see pretty often, and it is the quickest way to upset an artist, is to make a request for art in one of the below:

* tell them they should do it for free for exposure
* tell them they will get royalties

Chances are you aren't WoTC, so they won't get much in exposure or royalties. Many find requests like that pretty insulting. So best to keep everything professional. And make sure you are clear in your licensing agreement for commissioned work. For example, my default contract states that the artist may use the piece in any personal portfolio they want, but they are restricted from reselling the art either as a stand alone piece or part of a collection. And keep good records of these transactions.

Finding artists is fairly easy. Most message boards like here or RPG.net or elsewhere have sections where you can solicit artwork

Rates for artists may fall into these general ranges, if you're curious. But keep in mind it really depends on the artist, and how good and/or established they are. It's gonna cost more for a piece from Larry Elmore than it will from Joe down the street. And background detail makes a big difference too. Artists have to eat too

Black and white:
$25-$50 per 1/4 page, or $100-$200 for full page

Color:
anywhere between $300 and $700 per full page. This really depends on how much detail you want. If you want a full cover, you're probably spending around $500-$700.

 

[Slit518]

One other piece of advice. I have a lot of artist friends, and as I mentioned in my background, have been doing this for a long time. One thing I still see pretty often, and it is the quickest way to upset an artist, is to make a request for art in one of the below:

* tell them they should do it for free for exposure
* tell them they will get royalties

Chances are you aren't WoTC, so they won't get much in exposure or royalties. Many find requests like that pretty insulting. So best to keep everything professional. And make sure you are clear in your licensing agreement for commissioned work. For example, my default contract states that the artist may use the piece in any personal portfolio they want, but they are restricted from reselling the art either as a stand alone piece or part of a collection. And keep good records of these transactions.

Finding artists is fairly easy. Most message boards like here or RPG.net or elsewhere have sections where you can solicit artwork

Rates for artists may fall into these general ranges, if you're curious. But keep in mind it really depends on the artist, and how good and/or established they are. It's gonna cost more for a piece from Larry Elmore than it will from Joe down the street. And background detail makes a big difference too. Artists have to eat too

Black and white:
$25-$50 per 1/4 page, or $100-$200 for full page

Color:
anywhere between $300 and $700 per full page. This really depends on how much detail you want. If you want a full cover, you're probably spending around $500-$700.

2 things:

1 - I had a friend do a piece of art for me, we agreed on $50 up front, and if I make any money past the $50 I invested, I would give him 10%. He was fine with that, and of course I never made past $50 on the piece (I made around $20).

2 - I talked to a professional who told me book cover art will cost anywhere from $1,000 - $3,000. I did not pay, I found it a bit excessive. But then again, he is an executive artist for a well known company.

P.S.

There is this local artist I met who works a convention near where I live, he will do a full detail/colored cover for $500.

Here is his website,
http://christiannstpierre.com/

 

[Sacrosanct]

Yeah, if you're talking the big well named artists, then expect thousands for a full page color piece. Like anything else, the bigger names get paid more.

I'm not going to list the names of artists that I had bad experiences with, because I don't want to imply that my personal experiences are representative of their entire work and I don't want to slander them, but over the years there are a handful of artists I've used that I keep going back to because they always do an awesome job. For those interested:

Rich Longmore
Eric Lofgren
Grey Thornberry
Brian "Glad" Thomas
Colin Throm
Rob Robinson
Christof Grobelski

 

[Slit518]

Yeah, the artist did suggest the option of other artists to me as well. He probably knew his rates were high for an indie guy such as myself. He came forth and suggested it, I didn't even ask.

 

[Sacrosanct]

Gotta admit. I thought there would be more designers who would share their own advice lol.