A New Respect for Adventure Writters

[Drawmack]

In the following I atempt to explain why we should stop complaining abuot adventures and show those writters some love.

I just completed my first 20,000 word, read standard length full, adventure. Putting these things together is an awful lot of work. I spend hours checking back and forth between the POIs, NPCs, and Adventure blocks for internal consistency. More hours were spent inventing the POIs and NPCs. More hours stating out the NPCs and monsters, this is a human centric adventure so more time on NPC stats then monster stats. Since it is investigative in nature I had to double and tripple check information flow. All in all I probably have about 200 hours into this one adventure, and that is before the playtest (which starts next week). Now figure that standard pay seems to be anywhere from $0.01 to $0.05 per word this is between $200 and $1,000 that a written (who is not on staff) gets paid for one of these. So you're looking at making between $1 and $5 per hour to write adventures.

If you make more then this at your current job then you need to show these guys some love and be glad they publish these things since it truely is a labor of love and not one of profit.

 

[thedungeondelver]

In the following I atempt to explain why we should stop complaining abuot adventures and show those writters some love.

I just completed my first 20,000 word, read standard length full, adventure. Putting these things together is an awful lot of work. I spend hours checking back and forth between the POIs, NPCs, and Adventure blocks for internal consistency. More hours were spent inventing the POIs and NPCs. More hours stating out the NPCs and monsters, this is a human centric adventure so more time on NPC stats then monster stats. Since it is investigative in nature I had to double and tripple check information flow. All in all I probably have about 200 hours into this one adventure, and that is before the playtest (which starts next week). Now figure that standard pay seems to be anywhere from $0.01 to $0.05 per word this is between $200 and $1,000 that a written (who is not on staff) gets paid for one of these. So you're looking at making between $1 and $5 per hour to write adventures.

If you make more then this at your current job then you need to show these guys some love and be glad they publish these things since it truely is a labor of love and not one of profit.

I've written three: one near fifteen thousand words for Necromancer Games, and two more for Trigee Enterprises (Gary's "publishing company" that's doing the troll lord Yggsburgh modules) that were roughly double that and yeah...it is not easy.

 

[Li Shenron]

I don't think that adventures get disrespected any often... usually that is for supplement books

 

[Huw]

I agree. I've tried writing adventures for submission to Dungeon, and never got past the draught stage. An encounter that comes across really well when it's just a few notes and a hand drawn map being mostly ad-libbed by me falls flat when I try and detail it fully.

I've a lot of respect for adventure writers, and a lot of tolerance for errors in adventures. I can fix them - I can't come up with decent plots or NPCs.

 

[Wulf Ratbane]

You can pretty much extend that to anybody working in the RPG industry, period.

 

[Cam Banks]

Price of Courage is about 360 pages and about the size of a college textbook. It took me months and months to write it, and then we had all of the stat blocks to do...

Cheers,
Cam

 

[Darklone]

You can pretty much extend that to anybody working in the RPG industry, period.

... or to anyone writing stuff. It always sounds so easy if you read it, but as soon as you start to write something yourself... it's work. A lot of work.

 

[Nonlethal Force]

In the following I atempt to explain why we should stop complaining abuot adventures and show those writters some love.

I just completed my first 20,000 word, read standard length full, adventure. Putting these things together is an awful lot of work.

I'd also like to extend this to novelists. I just finished a 180,000 word Story Hour (available for read for free - see my sig). Overall it took me about 135 hours of writing plus another 35 or so hours of proofreading once it was done. [And that's not counting the countless hours of brainstorming, creating a homebrew world, etc] It's not perfect and could certainly use the advice of a good editor who knows the business. But I did it because I like to write and I know there are people out there who like to read.

Authors (Story Hour or novelists) and adventure writers are often in the same boat until their name gets noticed. Kudos to all!

 

[Vrecknidj]

Just thought I'd chime in and offer my nod of agreement. I do a lot of freelance editing, and a little bit of writing. And, though most of my stuff is volunteer, I get paid roughly the same for my non-volunteer work.

Don't quit your day job.

Dave

 

[thedungeondelver]

It took me months and months to write it, and then we had all of the stat blocks to do...

Heh, this is one thing I envy you: I'm working on a trio of modules right now for Expeditious Retreat Press and each one will clock in at about seventeen thousand words. However, I'm using "line item" stats like those used in G123 AGAINST THE GIANTS, so in other words you'll see a descriptive text that goes

"There are three bugbears (HP 11, 17, 19) waiting here to attack the party. They have no treasure."

If that was your standard 3.5 statblock I could get a couple hundred words out of it !