Revolutions are Always Verbose: Effecting Change in the TTRPG Industry

[Blue Orange]

I'd much rather see a Scandianavian-style expanded welfare state (so people have time and energy to spend on hobbies that aren't amazingly profitable...you know, work to live rather than the reverse) than actual government ownership of industry (technically in socialism the "workers control the means of production", so you could have syndicalism as well). Can you imagine government-produced D&D? They'd come out with a new edition each time the White House changed hands. Which...OK, wouldn't be that different from what goes on now, but the massive shifts in rules...OK, never mind.

That said a lot of ideas here about self-production are good and already happening. That said you have a lot more room to do something if you can do it full-time...

 

[MichaelSomething]

So has anyone who read this thread become inspired to support the TTRPG industry?

 

[MGibster]

So has anyone who read this thread become inspired to support the TTRPG industry?

I'm supporting them every single time I purchase a game product. I've been supporting the game industry since 1987.

 

[aramis erak]

I think the fact that you were willing to put in thee year's of unpaid labor into television is indicative of why artists are often paid very little. Many of you are willing to do the work for peanuts because you love doing it. I suspect many game designers either do it as a side job or they move into other more lucrative industries once they get tired of scraping together the rent money month after month.

The second job of most successful RPG designers seems to be Fiction Author... Margaret Weiss, Tracey Hickman, Miller, Ed Greenwood, Jefferson Swycaffer, Ken St. Andre, Conrad Hilmer, Charles E "Chuck" Gannon, to name a few. Martin J. Daugherty is a non-fiction author as his day job. (I wish he'd gotten the go for Avenger Traveller...)

(Jeff Swycaffer may not be successful as a game designer. But his novels are said to be very much Traveller, and he's published an article or two for it.)

 

[aramis erak]

Considering the pushback against organizing, I am pretty much convinced it is the right way to go. I mean there are arguments against, but are they good arguments against? I don't think so. I'll note that I really haven't drawn politics into it, other people have been talking communism, and where I am not a communist, nor am I anti-communist, it is that living in the US and talking communism is rather eh. A union or guild for RPG writers and creators is not actually a political stance, imo.

Given the way unions in the US work, and the organization of HasBro, an attempt to unionize WotC would likely see WotC simply disbanded before final vote. D&D would probably wind up at one of the other games companies that HasBro owns, in a whole different staff, and with a new, more politically correct, edition...
A thin but legal justification of consolidating creatives to a single workplace could be used to evade the federal anti-retaliation laws, provided the pink slips hit before the vote. (My cousin, a retired DoL attorney, has complained about how that's been done too often...)

 

[TheSword]

Given the way unions in the US work, and the organization of HasBro, an attempt to unionize WotC would likely see WotC simply disbanded before final vote. D&D would probably wind up at one of the other games companies that HasBro owns, in a whole different staff, and with a new, more politically correct, edition...
A thin but legal justification of consolidating creatives to a single workplace could be used to evade the federal anti-retaliation laws, provided the pink slips hit before the vote. (My cousin, a retired DoL attorney, has complained about how that's been done too often...)

The problem is that there is a great amount of supply in what is still a niche industry.

Negotiating power in this industry is based on individual cachet not through collective bargaining power.

Any writers guild would have little to no leverage over the big players and the small players would probably just never get started if the cost became too high.

 

[Blue Orange]

The problem is that there is a great amount of supply in what is still a niche industry.

Negotiating power in this industry is based on individual cachet not through collective bargaining power.

Any writers guild would have little to no leverage over the big players and the small players would probably just never get started if the cost became too high.

That's exactly the problem (IMHO). There just isn't enough of a market for TTRPGs--it's a niche entertainment product (thus elasticity of demand is high) and the supply of people willing to do the job of writing RPG content is too high. People will post their own homebrew monsters, classes, items, and the like on the web for free!

Dumb question, though--say you had a frugal lifestyle and more than the usual amount of disposable income, but not nearly enough to do something truly transformative like buying back the rights to D&D. What could you do for the industry long-term if you were willing to, say, throw a few thousand around?

 

[TheSword]

That's exactly the problem (IMHO). There just isn't enough of a market for TTRPGs--it's a niche entertainment product (thus elasticity of demand is high) and the supply of people willing to do the job of writing RPG content is too high. People will post their own homebrew monsters, classes, items, and the like on the web for free!

Dumb question, though--say you had a frugal lifestyle and more than the usual amount of disposable income, but not nearly enough to do something truly transformative like buying back the rights to D&D. What could you do for the industry long-term if you were willing to, say, throw a few thousand around?

I would suggest campaigning.

Movements now are carried by social media, Twitter, Change.org, Vloggers and named individuals with large followings.

Get enough of them together, and enough PR you may be able to persuade the more established companies to improve standards due to the PR issue.

Once a petition is getting 10,000 names it starts to be mainstream news worthy.

 

[smcc360]

I'm gonna steal this one.

"...to each according to his need."

 

[Mongoose_Matt]

I don't have particular suggestions or exhortations. But I do think it's important to keep in mind that a lot of people- some of whom produced the art, the text ... the games that you love, well, they aren't getting rich off of this. We live in the world that we create. If you don't shop at the FLGS because you want to save money by going to Amazon, don't be surprised when it's no longer in business. If you aren't willing to pay more for your product, don't be surprised when you find out the creators aren't doing that well.

This dovetails into something I have been considering.

How much would someone, as a purchaser of RPGs, think a writer or artist who works on those same RPGs should earn?

The simple answer is 'I want to support the people who help create my hobby and if they do well, good for them.'

But are there limits? If you were to discover that the person who, say, laid out your latest RPG book earned more than you, would you be okay with that? Suppose you discover they drive an Aston Martin? That they outright own a 5 bedroom house out in the sticks with a swimming pool? That their other hobby is flying helicopters and that they are seriously thinking about their first purchase in that field?

More to the point, at what level would you, the purchaser of RPGs, start thinking... 'If the producers of this book were not being paid so much, it would be a hell of a lot cheaper'?

Again, the simple answer is 'if the book is worth that much to me, I will happily pay it.' But are there limits here?

The reason I ask is that the majority costs for Mongoose are rooted firmly in content - writers, artists, and those who support them - with other costs (such as printing) way, way behind. This is a position I very much support (indeed, engineered), and I like the idea of being able to tell customers that the majority of their purchases go directly to the creators. The flipside is that if I go into specifics, there may be some thought in the back of some minds that says maybe the latest Traveller book could do with being $10 cheaper...

So, I would very much like to hear peoples' thoughts on this. In the great social strata, where should/could RPG creators sit?