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Message: <blockquote data-quote="GMSkarka" data-source="post: 107904" data-attributes="member: 763">Mearls does rock.  On toast, even..... but actually, there are several full-time freelancers in the industry: Matt Forbeck, myself, a few others.The trick is to not limit yourself to JUST d20 work.  Yes, it does represent the lion's share of freelance work right now, simply in volume....but there are non-D20 games out there that are *desperate* for good, experienced freelancers.By juggling 2-3 projects at a time, and writing full-time (averaging 6-8 hours a day, 5 days a week), I'm able to pull down a living wage.  However, budgeting becomes an issue, because as a freelancer, you're most likely getting your money in payments that arrive 2 months or so between checks.If you've gotten some name recognition, and you're dealing with a professional company, you can often negotiate an advance on your contract (10-20%, tops), but most often you're looking at payment upon delivery of the final draft (which I prefer), or upon publication (or up to 30 days after, in most cases).  I try to negotiate a contract that spreads the payment out through all of those:  for example, a 15% advance (which can double as a kill fee if the project is cancelled), 35% upon delivery, and 50% after publication.  It allows me to see payment more quickly, and also avoids the 'lump-sum-three-months-down-the-road' problem, which helps with budgeting....and it can also be attractive to the publisher, because it allows them to space out payment into smaller amounts.So, given all of this, I'm sure you can see how we react when people tell us how great it must be to "play games for a living."  <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f621.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":mad:" title="Mad    :mad:"  data-smilie="4"data-shortname=":mad:" /></blockquote>

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