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<blockquote data-quote="mearls" data-source="post: 111275" data-attributes="member: 697">Well, I really only covered the *good* parts. =)The tricky stuff has nothing to do with the actual writing or design, or even the daily routine. That's the good stuff. The parts of RPG writing that I don't like (and that pretty much kill it as a career choice for me) are all things that occur outside of or tangentially to the writing:* There's only so much I want to write before it's time to move on. I have plenty of ideas for books, but there's going to come a time when I feel that I have nothing more of substance to contribute to the game. At that point, it'll be time to hang it up. I reached that point with a couple games I used to work on. This is pretty much the big issue for me. I don't want to design games because I have to; I want to do it because I want to. Since d20 is so new, there's plenty of space to explore with the system. But that won't last forever.* Politics are very, very important in freelance writing for long-term success. You need to have &quot;ins&quot; to get more work. I'm lucky in that there's 3 or 4 companies that turn to me a lot to do writing, but almost all of them are relatively new on the publishing scene. There's a lot of cliques and politics in the industry. I've received emails from people threatening to derail my &quot;career&quot;. You know the saying, &quot;campus politics are vicious because the stakes are so low&quot;? That applies to gaming.* Companies can be a bitch to handle. If you're small fry, they don't have any problems taking your proposals and having other people write them. Oh, and payment is *always* late, which makes it hard to have a stable financial situation. There's continuous pressure to fill the writing schedule in order to keep busy. I'm lucky in that I have a pretty hefty nest egg from my programming days.Ideally, I'd be in graduate school for computer science right now, doing RPGs as a hobby. Unfortunately, the entire &quot;Hey, the Internet is just a ball of profit-less hype!&quot; thing killed off my old job, so I'm sort of stuck doing this full-time. To be honest, the daily life is great and I love the work, but I don't see it as a viable long-term situation.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="mearls, post: 111275, member: 697"] Well, I really only covered the *good* parts. =) The tricky stuff has nothing to do with the actual writing or design, or even the daily routine. That's the good stuff. The parts of RPG writing that I don't like (and that pretty much kill it as a career choice for me) are all things that occur outside of or tangentially to the writing: * There's only so much I want to write before it's time to move on. I have plenty of ideas for books, but there's going to come a time when I feel that I have nothing more of substance to contribute to the game. At that point, it'll be time to hang it up. I reached that point with a couple games I used to work on. This is pretty much the big issue for me. I don't want to design games because I have to; I want to do it because I want to. Since d20 is so new, there's plenty of space to explore with the system. But that won't last forever. * Politics are very, very important in freelance writing for long-term success. You need to have "ins" to get more work. I'm lucky in that there's 3 or 4 companies that turn to me a lot to do writing, but almost all of them are relatively new on the publishing scene. There's a lot of cliques and politics in the industry. I've received emails from people threatening to derail my "career". You know the saying, "campus politics are vicious because the stakes are so low"? That applies to gaming. * Companies can be a bitch to handle. If you're small fry, they don't have any problems taking your proposals and having other people write them. Oh, and payment is *always* late, which makes it hard to have a stable financial situation. There's continuous pressure to fill the writing schedule in order to keep busy. I'm lucky in that I have a pretty hefty nest egg from my programming days. Ideally, I'd be in graduate school for computer science right now, doing RPGs as a hobby. Unfortunately, the entire "Hey, the Internet is just a ball of profit-less hype!" thing killed off my old job, so I'm sort of stuck doing this full-time. To be honest, the daily life is great and I love the work, but I don't see it as a viable long-term situation. [/QUOTE]

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