Owen KC Stephens' Tabletop RPG Truths

Multi-award winning game designer Owen Stephens (Starfinder, Pathfinder, Star Wars) has been posting a series he calls #RealGameIndustry on social media.

• Most TTRPG game company's art archives are not well indexed... Or indexed.
• Yes, the RPG book could have had ONE more editing pass. There would still be errors, you'd still complain, it would cost more and take longer, and not sell any better. And people would download it for free illegally because "it's too expensive."
• Tabletop RPG books are not overpriced. They are specialty technical creative writing social interaction manuals. At double the current prices, they would not be overpriced. This is why most TTRPG creators leave the industry. Along with constant fan harassment.
• Quality, effort, marketing, and fan fervor cannot change this. Ever. That's not to knock, or praise, D&D. It's just a fact.
• Impostor syndrome is hugely common in the TTRPG industry for two reasons. One: Studying and modifying RPGs often appeals to socially awkward shut ins who become broken professionals. Two: There's a sense that if you were a REAL professional you could afford a house, and insurance, and a retirement account, but that's not true for 99.9% of TTRPG professionals.
• People who are passionate about making games for other people, people who are good at making games, and people who are good at the business of game sales and marketing don't overlap much in a Venn diagram. Most game company failures can be attributed to this.
• A TTRPG professional with enough experience and credibility to criticize the industry as a whole is normally tied to one company so closely that the criticism is seen as biased, or unwilling to do it for free, or too naughty word tired to care anymore. Many are all 3.
• If you are a TTRPG creative, you aren't paid enough. Thus, if you find people listening to you and apparently valuing your words you owe it to yourself to make sure they know there is an option to pay you for them. Also, I have a Patreon. https://patreon.com/OwenKCStephens
• There are beloved, award-winning, renowned, well-known TTRPG books with total print runs of 2000 or fewer copies. That did not sell out.
• Most RPG creators cannot afford the upper-tier of RPG accessories. Colossal dragons, scale sailing ships, and custom-built gaming tables are not for those of us who create the hobby. We are too poor to enjoy even a fraction of the things our creativity sparks.
• The ability to master a game's rules has no correlation to the ability to write clear or interesting rules or adventures. Neither has any correlation to being able to produce 22,000 words of focused, usable content about a specific topic on a set deadline.
• There are 65 people in the Origins Hall of Fame. Most fans can't name 5 of them. Most creators can't name 10. They are overwhelmingly (though not quite entirely) white men.
• TTRPG companies generally have no interest in your ideas for products. They went to all the trouble of starting, or staying at, an RPG company to publish their ideas, even if they need you to write them. They certainly didn't stay for the money or respect.
• Asking RPG freelancers to publicly call out a publisher is asking them to reduce their tiny chance of making enough money in RPGs to survive. Sometimes it's a moral imperative. But it's always painful and dangerous. It's more dangerous for women and minorities.
• Occasionally, male game designers who do streams or vlogs or podcasts find themselves disconcerted receiving unsolicited commentary about their appearance. It happened to me. Or, in other words, they get a tiny taste of what women in every field face every day.
• Freelancers aren't paid enough by game company employees and managers, who themselves aren't paid enough by their companies, which don't make enough from distributors and stores, that don't make enough from customers. This never improves. It can get worse.
• Fantasy and scifi art has sexualized women for decades, so many pro artists assume that's what you want. Explaining otherwise takes more words that describing the art piece. I had to go with "No skin should be exposed except on the face." It was 75% effective.
• Most RPG work is "work-for-hire," This includes most work I commission from freelancers myself. This means that, legally, the writer isn't the author. They have no rights to it. No royalties. No say in how (or if) it is used. It never reverts to them.
• I have received 3 death threats in my 21+ RPG career. One for not listing the fans preferred length for the Executor SSD. One of having a male succubus (not an incubus, with that game system) drawn in a seductive pose. And one for being fat and on video streams.
• Once, at Gen Con, a fan interrupted [Amanda Hamon] at the Paizo booth to ask her to point me out. She kindly did so. They came and asked me if I was the Starfinder boss. I pointed them back to Amanda, and noted she was my Managing Developer, and direct superior. I followed that by pointing out Lisa Stevens was an owner of Paizo but that I also worked for Nicole Lindroos and Miranda Russell at other companies, and that Lj Stephens was my project manager for my own company who kept me on schedule, The fan seemed upset.
• I have been extraordinary lucky and well-treated in my RPG career. I love most of the companies and people I have worked with. It's just a harsh industry. This hashtag isn't intended as complaints. They're facts and alerts I wish I had gotten 20 years ago.

 

[TheSword]

The intent came across to me more like your second comment, i.e. it is not aimed at discouraging new writers. Only forewarning them of some of the negatives so that they are more capable of navigating their profession, with some idea of the costs.

One could equally read many of his comments as critiques of capitalism in its relationship with culture.

I’m not a writer and i know one of the criticisms raised is people not in the industry offering their opinions. However certainly in my industry we take bringing new people into it very seriously. Maybe the positives are so obvious that they don’t need to be discussed but I would be more interested to know what is being done to support to new talent, rather than hearing all the things that aren’t being done. If the answer is nothing, then don’t people in positions of power to take some responsibility and do something about it? I would include design leads for major rpg brands to be among those people.

 

[Morrus]

I would include design leads for major rpg brands to be among those people.

That's basically two people. Maybe three or four if you're generous about the definition of a major brand.

 

[JLowder]

I’m not a writer and i know one of the criticisms raised is people not in the industry offering their opinions. However certainly in my industry we take bringing new people into it very seriously.

All posts by every game designer or [insert your profession here] do not have to be recruitment copy for their industry. That's how unrealistic opinions of an industry or profession are born and fostered. And making public statements that reveal the harsh truths can be a way of helping inspire change.

Cheers,
Jim Lowder

 

[TheSword]

All posts by every game designer or [insert your profession here] do not have to be recruitment copy for their industry. That's how unrealistic opinions of an industry or profession are born and fostered. And making public statements that reveal the harsh truths can be a way of helping inspire change.

Cheers,
Jim Lowder

Do those that have made it to the top of their profession have a responsibility to look out for support and encourage those starting out in it?

I applaud people raising poor working conditions, whether safety, unfair contracting (which is what this sounds like) or unsatisfactory is work environments. However this is a leading figure at the second biggest company in our industry telling us things that a lot of you don’t seem very surprised about at all judging by the twitter feeds. I genuinely hope there will be a response from Paizo as a business as regards these issues. I always saw them as a pretty wholesome company that did right by there staff and now we are led to believe that they aren’t, and neither are any of the others?

Starting out as a musician, or actor or artist is also pretty tough and challenging, with terrible pay and lousy conditions. However successful musicians, artists and actors provide real support to people in those industries. I’m not seeing a lot of legs up from those who have made it among you. Maybe it’s just too soon and this will all come out.

 

[JLowder]

Do those that have made it to the top of their profession have a responsibility to look out for support and encourage those starting out in it?

Sure. Not with every post they make, though. And not necessarily in the way you demand. Posting about the harsh truths of an industry can certainly be part of looking out for those who are starting out.

You're likely not seeing the "legs up" because you are not in the industry or not looking very hard. There's mutual support in the tabletop industry, just like others arts communities. I've spent a lot of time fighting for better contract terms and have used every project I have worked on in any capacity since I left TSR in the early 90s to improve things for others. I answer all kinds of questions on fiction publishing for game companies and offer advice on best practices, whether I am working for them or not. (It's the right thing to do, and that's why I do it, but any time I spend on that stuff also undermines my pay rate. Same for everyone else. So when you suggest industry people champion work conditions and the like, do keep in mind that you tend not to get paid for those efforts.) I am hardly alone in offering this kind of support. Gen Con runs a brilliant Writers Symposium track of panels and critiques parallel to the main convention. Those resources exist at a lot of cons, staffed by pros, geared toward those who want to get a start in publishing. There are resources online, too.

Having worked for Paizo as a freelancer, they are, in my experience, a very good company. They cannot, however, change the fact that freelancers are a decentralized workforce or that the entire publishing industry has been tethered to a broken economic model for decades. They cannot change the expectations of consumers about the price point of RPGs or the fact that US culture frequently equates salary with your value as a person. Those are the sorts of things that Owen is addressing, not the more localized issues of a publisher offering underhanded contracts or not paying bills. So trying to turn Owen's discussion on Paizo somehow is way off the mark.

--Jim Lowder

 

[lewpuls]

Spot on. I bailed out of the game industry in the early 80s because I had to make a living (in computers and teaching, ultimately). I especially remember having to stop writing for the RPG magazines because switched to buying all rights, which I refused to sell. But as a result I control the copyright of my work, not some company. And "work for hire" is a reason why I design games, not write RPG books.

Unfortunately, when we talk about RPGs, it's also the tail-end of the game industry in terms of dollars. And there are too many fanboys and fangirls willing to write at 2 cents a word in order to see themselves in print.

Contrast: in the heyday of the fiction pulps, writers were paid 1 to 2 cents a word, but in modern money that's something like 30 cents a word.

As soon as so many talked about websites as being "content", writers were doomed. Words became a commodity.

 

[prabe]

Contrast: in the heyday of the fiction pulps, writers were paid 1 to 2 cents a word, but in modern money that's something like 30 cents a word.

As soon as so many talked about websites as being "content", writers were doomed. Words became a commodity.

I'm not disagreeing with your larger point, but I think the economics have been screwed up since before the Internet; how long have SFWA and HWA considered "pro" rates to be $.05/word?

 

[Shardstone]

This has been an illuminating conversation to read.

Despite the typo in my name, I recently graduated with honors + awards from a Masters program in English. I have run a successful Kickstarter for my RPG product that earned 1000% of its required goal. I have fully committed to writing as my art form. And this thread has just further proven to me that I will never be paid the money that I think my art is worth because people just don't value writers.

That's the bottom line of it. People don't value writers, authors, designers, etc, because many people, even if they won't readily admit this, don't think writing skill is worth all that much. They think because they are native speakers and can write a 5 paragraph essay that their writing ability is above average and that they don't need to go the extra mile. You have to be someone of impossible talent and experience in order to convince people that your written words are worth more than the average (and the average is quite low).

And then people will tell you that art isn't worth money and that you should accept being poor if you are an artist. Because they don't value you. They say they will, they'll cite their books and their collections and this and that, but they don't really value you like they do visual artists (of who are literally always in demand) or their figurine armies or their tokens and so on and so forth.

Everything Owens has said I've either experienced or have expected (as I'm still quite new to the industry). But what amazes me is that I've experienced all of this in other fields that deal with the written word as well. Publishing, editing, so on and so forth, all of it leads to the same place, and that's undervalued work, rude clients, and a total lack of regard for the amount of training, skill, and ability it requires to make a clear, effective, concise, and good piece of writing.

If this comes off as elitist or snubby, I don't intend that. Much like Owen, I'm just stating a fact - writing is not valued in our culture(s).

 

[Shardstone]

Oh, forgot to say this too - getting your foot in the door is impossible in the RPG industry. I ran a near 50K kickstarter and still can't get hired as a freelancer. Maybe when the book is 100% out things will change, but no one wants to give you a chance and it feels like working in the RPG industry is impossible if you aren't apart of the "Old Boys Club."

 

[Flexor the Mighty!]

Well, here's the thing: it worked for him. Economically speaking, there are two separate issues at work, here: creators need to be adequately paid for the work they do, and consumers need to understand and expect that the quality and quantity of the entire industry depends on how much they're willing to pay for products they enjoy.

A lot of the problem here is that people are acting like this is only one issue. The retail sales business model for digital goods is becoming obsolete, and physical media as a means of distributing intellectual property is becoming a niche market.

There are customers in our industry who are willing to pay a lot more than the average to make products they want available-- even knowing that other people are "getting away" with paying less. There are customers who will happily pay more for a product if they know it enables other people to pay less. Crowdfunding business models actually encourage-- and capitalize on-- this behavior.



I just bought the Box and the Tome... and yeah, I'm thinking about buying a few more copies of the Tome (1-2 at a time) for my table.

My ability to convince my group to purchase games took a major hit after I talked them into 5e. They like it fine, but they're still a little raw about shelling out for the core rulebooks for a system I decided I wasn't going to run again-- even if I ran it for a year and a half before reaching that point.

Did you get the advanced books as well? I'm thinking of the box since the sections are split up and it makes usability by multiple players much easier. But I'm also chea...frugal so the less expensive single book version is appealing. Then again I love box sets...