A New Respect for Adventure Writters

[Cam Banks]

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

I don't think 3.5 stat blocks really do count as much toward the word count as the rest of the text, to be honest. Much of it is cut and paste, expecially since it's basically a template (I use the new WOTC stat block) that you fill in the details with. That said, it requires more than just typing, it requires a lot of math and looking up references and checking things, so it does balance out.

Cheers,
Cam

 

[thedungeondelver]

I don't think 3.5 stat blocks really do count as much toward the word count as the rest of the text, to be honest. Much of it is cut and paste, expecially since it's basically a template (I use the new WOTC stat block) that you fill in the details with. That said, it requires more than just typing, it requires a lot of math and looking up references and checking things, so it does balance out.

Cheers,
Cam

The one 3.5 thing I did, I used the character generator software for my stat-blocks. Just cut-and-paste, like you say. For me, the modules for XRP are going to be more fun in terms of writing up the encounters; I feel I can be a bit more freewheeling. If I want one of those bugbears to have a ring of protection +1 I don't feel compelled to dig through a paragraph of math and change numbers here and there, and that affects my writing because I feel I can keep my flow on.

 

[Quartz]

Never mind the writing: I'm one of the people that proofread / copyedit for Thomas Miller, author of The Adventurers. Not only checking syntax, spelling, and the like, but continuity, character, situation, and more. Sometimes it's 5 minutes work, other times, it's much, much more.

 

[Terath Ninir]

Modules are tough, all right. If you want to publish it, it needs to be original, but not too weird so that no one else will use it. Getting the stat blocks right is hard -- WotC doesn't get it right half the time.

Any writing is difficult, I will admit, but I think adventures have features that make it harder than normal.

 

[thedungeondelver]

Never mind the writing: I'm one of the people that proofread / copyedit for Thomas Miller, author of The Adventurers. Not only checking syntax, spelling, and the like, but continuity, character, situation, and more. Sometimes it's 5 minutes work, other times, it's much, much more.

You have my condolences but hey, at least with spellcheck you've got some of the gruntwork out of the way, eh?

 

[Drawmack]

I used PCGen to generate my stat blocks for me. The hardest part wasn't writting it but making sure the internal continuity was there. Also I plan to do an entire adventure path, then I might try to sell it. For 12 adventures I'd be looking at about 240,000 thousand words, roughly a years work (as I must keep my day job), and at most $12,000 but possibly as little as $2,400 when all is said and done.

I started the thread because I have seen quite a few complainy threads about modules recently and felt that if people had an idea about the amount of work that went into these things for the amount of expected pay to come from it they might be a little more acepting of things.

Module writting is a labor of love, because you certainly can't pay the bills with them unless you are very very lucky.

 

[Cam Banks]

Module writting is a labor of love, because you certainly can't pay the bills with them unless you are very very lucky.

I'm also lucky in that both my wife and my best friend are super-editor chicks and can fix a lot of my wonky grammar. I would highly encourage anybody planning on publishing an adventure to get somebody to check that as well as a separate person to check stat blocks and so forth.

Cheers,
Cam

 

[thedungeondelver]

Module writting is a labor of love, because you certainly can't pay the bills with them unless you are very very lucky.

QFT

I can name on one hand - and have fingers left over - the people who've gotten rich in the RPG business. I mean bona-fide leisurely cash stockpiles RICH. And they all did it due to upper echelon business issues, not through sales.

As Rob Kuntz so saliently put it : "You, too, can make hundreds of dollars a year in the exciting world of role-playing game authorship..."

I mean...when Gary started out, he was repairing shoes to keep G/K (Gygax/Kaye) afloat out of his house. I believe Don Kaye was selling insurance to hold up his end.

Close to seventy thousand words into my RPG career - oh, wait, I also wrote some for Space Gamer/Fantasy Gamer Online, and that paid* - and I've yet to see a paycheck... That's not a complaint: that's a reality, and it's one I'm keenly aware of. The paychecks are coming, it is just a matter of being patient.

*Someday I'll tell the story of how I got that gig, and just how much difference a tiny amount of money can make in one's life...

 

[Kafkonia]

You have my condolences but hey, at least with spellcheck you've got some of the gruntwork out of the way, eh?

Oh no. I used to proofread for a local paper, and spellcheck does almost nothing. After all, I could write the following:

"Ware dew ewe thing your gong?"

...and I won't get a single red flag on spellcheck, even though every single word is spelled wrong. Nevermind the fact that most spellcheckers don't come with illithid, aboleth, or Obox-ob preloaded into their dictionaries.

 

[Celebrim]

It warms my heart to see a thread like this.

It gets me irritated when someone starts a thread along the lines of 'such and such pubished writer is so stupid, inept, incompotent, etc.' because he did X, especially when X is not such a bad thing, the writer is widely admired by many people, and the module in question one of the most famous and beloved ever published.

If you don't like the module, fine, don't like it. But I don't want to hear how you think the writer is stupid, because writing modules is alot of work and if you haven't tried to produce a module of professional publishable quality you don't really have a clue just how hard it is. Not only do you have to produce a good adventure, but you have to produce a good adventure which someone else can easily understand and run and fit it into an incredible harsh limit on the number of words you can use.

To fit the adventure in a limited number of pages, and make it understandable to a wide audience which may or may not have alot of experience and which in fact probably on the whole doesn't (since alot of the point of a module is to help a new DM understand how to design an adventure and run through sessions), forces you to write things which you wouldn't write if you had more space. You have to write what looks like railroading, because you can't explain what happens in all the cases where you leave the path. You have to write what looks linear, because you can only really pay alot of attention to what happens if the simpliest path is followed. And so forth.

I have a great deal of respect for anyone that has done it, and alot of respect for anyone who has done it well.