Becoming a RPG Writer

[Pramas]

I do have a question that wasn't asked. What is the standard going rate for a newbie freelancer in the market?

Believe it or not, it has actually gotten worse for freelancers since the d20 era began. In the early to mid-90s, when I was breaking in via freelancing, I routinely received 4 cents a word and had paying gigs at up to 11 cents a word. From the stories I hear from freelancers looking for work from me these days, it's quite common for d20 companies to pay 2 cents a word, or even less. It's pretty sad really.

As for general advice, I wrote this up in another forum, but it seems applicable here:

I've been making a full time living as a game designer since 1998. It is possible, it's just that the odds are not in your favor. Talent is certainly a factor, but luck and knowing the right people honestly have as much to do with it. That's one of the reasons I always tell people interested in getting into the industry to go to GenCon and meet people. You never know when the fellow freelancer you met in the Velvet Room will end up as the line developer for your favorite game. Or you might meet a publisher at the very moment when he desperately needs a replacment for some other guy who flaked out. I got my first paying gig in the industry in 1993, working on Mayfair's Underground RPG, because they needed someone in a hurry to fill in for a dropout. They even paid me 6 cents a word because it was a rush job (little did I know I would not see 6 cents a word for years after that).

You will find though that a lot of people who dreamed for years of breaking into the industry end up leaving for greener pastures. After the bloom comes off the rose, you realize that you can make a better living doing almost anything, unless you end up involved in one of those rare ventures that pays off. A lot of the people I met on the way up left the industry long ago, to write novels or work on computer games or practice law or whatever.

My advice: do good work and be a stubborn sonofabitch.

 

[Christina]

I do have a question that wasn't asked. What is the standard going rate for a newbie freelancer in the market?

Right now, I would say it's at 2-3 cents a word, and 2 may be the more accurate figure, as a lot of companies saw a major cut in purchases in 2003. In 2002, I know I would have strongly said 3 cents for beginning freelancers.

Christina

 

[DeadlyAccurate]

I've been writing professionally (as in getting paid money for it) for four or five years now. I haven't made enough money to live off of it. In fact, I would've made more money working drive-through part time at a McDonald's, which means I'm still stuck being a computer programmer.

Don't limit yourself to only d20 writing, at least initially. If you like computer or console games, try to write there; if you're into sports, find something in that field. 98% of my writing money comes from computer game reviews, but when I started, I wrote for free (in exchange for a free copy of the game). Game reviewing actually pays very well on a per-word basis (I made $0.33 per word on my last review), as long as you don't count in the time you spend actually playing the game, but you have to love games enough to play those games that no one in their right minds would touch with a ten-foot pole.

I've sold exactly three pieces of RPG writing, two of which were for a site that's gone under. (The first, oddly enough, was for Dragon magazine). I check the Open Calls forum daily looking for RPG work, find d20 publishers' names in the ENWorld daily headlines and check their submission guidelines, and constantly work on my writing (in my case, I'm finishing my third novel). I've queried every publisher I can find who has submission guidelines and doesn't require a completed 75,000-word project just to look at your work. I check the big name d20 publishers frequently to make sure they haven't changed their submission guidelines if they aren't currently taking submissions (apologies, Pramas, for driving up your bandwidth costs. ) In other words, I get out there and sell myself like a ten dollar coke salesman.

And when work starts to roll in, BE PROFESSIONAL. Never miss a deadline, follow the editorial rules exactly as requested, and don't whine about editorial changes (polite disagreement is one thing, but being a prima donna is something else).

 

[tensen]

What kind of “training” have you gone through in order to give yourself the title of writer/publisher/artist and how comfortable do you feel in that role?

Training?
Hmm, grab 3 of your closest friends... ask them to give you a subject to write on, that they know you don't know anything about. And have them pick a certain number of words and give you a really short deadline. And see what you can come up with.

If you can meet the deadline. Try it again... with a shorter deadline. If you can't.. just keep trying different ways until you can. You'll either find that you really don't want to write that way... or you can't.

In this manner, you will:
1) Increase your ability to write the materials quickly.
2) Learn if you can actually meet a deadline when a publisher proposes it, instead of promising the world and finding yourself in a bad position when you can't complete the work.
3) Learn if you want to do work that way, before you make life hard for a developer.

 

[Steverooo]

Well, that's ONE way to write, Tensen... but it certainly isn't the ONLY way!

I usually have an article DONE before I submit it. If not, it is written, at least, and in the "polishing" stages. As such, I have never had to give a moment's pause to considering deadlines...

Since the original poster wanted to do his OWN stuff, deadlines probably won't apply to him, anyway, although what you've said is important to anyone who is planning on writing "On Call" for anyone else!

Anyway, the point: Deadlines won't even slow you down, if you have a finished piece BEFORE you write the query letter! If one mag isn't interested, shop it around. It may be just what the next guy needs!

 

[tensen]

Well, that's ONE way to write, Tensen... but it certainly isn't the ONLY way!

Never said it was... if there was only one way.. there would likely only be one type of writer. There isn't.. and I'm quite glad about that!!!

 

[BrooklynKnight]

My advice: do good work and be a stubborn sonofabitch.

Chris, you always have the most valuable advice.
But watchout for grandma ^_^

 

[Bloodstone Press]

What kind of “training” have you gone through in order to give yourself the title of writer/publisher/artist and how comfortable do you feel in that role?

Well, almost 20 of years gaming, Lots of good grades in English and literature classes, lots of amateur success in the short story field (mainly contests and assignments), and lots, and lots, and lots, of words on the page.

In high school, all I did was fill notebooks with stories and ideas, no matter what class I was in, biology, history, geometry, it didn’t matter. I wasn’t taking notes on the class, I was writing space adventures and Conan sequels. Throughout high school and college my teachers and professors always encouraged me to get published.

In the late 90s I ran a business selling T-shirts on the net where I basically blogged to add interesting content to the site. That gave me daily practice of writing for people—inadvertently writing for pay, since content is what drives people back to your site.

Today I try to write 2,000-5,000 words a day, 7 days a week. Some say it’s a boring life, sitting here 12 hours a day or more, but hey, its what I’ve always done. It only seems natural to spend 12+ hours a day writing stories and games. The only difference now (with the internet and d20) is that I’m able to get paid for what I love to do.

Like you, I’ve been to business school. As I mentioned, I ran a T-shirt business online before d20 was born. I’ve since closed that business down so I could focus on game designing full time. I’ve been publishing games since 2001, but took a hiatus for about 9 months during 2002 while I went to work full time to build up my savings and restructure my publishing company.

I won’t really be comfortable with calling myself a game designer until I get one of my titles published in Print rather than PDF.

how long do you think it would take to write a large book (player’s handbook, arcane unearthed sized) all by yourself

I wrote the Primal Codex in roughly 6 months. It is 120 pages long (roughly 80,000 words). But like I said, I write about 3,500 words a day, 7 days a week. Being my first d20 book, it actually took longer than it would have otherwise. Hell on Earth, my WWII supplement, was written in 4 months and I was working a full time job for 2 of those months. It is roughly 60,000 words.

Of curse, I don’t have anything to divide my time with either. No kids, no full time job (quite that I October), no meddling family members, no classes to take. There is nothing but me, a word processor, a web page editor, and a top-notch group of gamers, editors and artists to back me up.

Like others have said, playtesting can take longer than the actual writing of the book. I can write 60+ new spells in a week, but it will take me several weeks to get it all play-tested. That’s one of the reasons I’m expanding as quickly as I can beyond game designing. In fact, I am starting to think that game designing is actually harder that writing short stories. I used to think it was the other way around.

 

[Jim Butler]

I guess my first question is to all those writers/publishers/artists. What kind of “training” have you gone through in order to give yourself the title of writer/publisher/artist and how comfortable do you feel in that role?

In the early 80s (back when I was in High school--Go Camels!), I decided I wanted to go to work for TSR and write D&D books. I contacted TSR and got their Writers' Guidelines, wrote my heart out on my trilogy of adventures, and played snail-mail tag with Jon Pickens (who was Acquisitions Director for TSR at the time). He gave me some invaluable advice:

Get a degree (preferably in English, Creative Writing, or something similar)--but get a degree.

It wasn't that my writing sucked (though looking back on it, it's nowhere near as polished as my later published work), it's just that getting constructive criticism is vital to the development of your writing. And getting a degree means you're going to be exposed to other things--knowledge across a variety of fields--that you can then use in your writing. Chemistry might seem a tad boring when you'd rather be writing about dark elves fighting for their lives, but that knowledge becomes invaluable when it's time to talk about what that alchemist is doing.

Writers write. It's easy to be a writer these days, and even easier to get a lot of feedback on what you do. The RPG hobby is filled with writers--mainly DMs who have been writing for their campaign worlds for years. Some of these people have even gone on to produce a printed or PDF release d20 product.

Professional writers write to specifications and meet deadlines. They agree to an X-thousand word project that's due on a set date. If they miss that date (or stray off spec), their work suffers. Some Lawful Evil editor will strike passages from their work to bring it more in line with what was planned, dock their pay and assign someone else to clean up the manuscript, or one of 101 other Nasty Things that can happen.

I’d also like to know how much control you demand when actual production of your work is printed? I think (and almost know) that I’d need complete control over everything including even the advertisement of my work.

If it's professional writing, you're not going to have a lot of control over what you've written. You'll probably get galleys back that show how your work has been altered by developers and editors since you turned it over. That process is an important one for writers to accept, because virtually no one's prose is perfect when it flows from their mind to the paper.

The more you're funding the project, the more control you'll have. If you only want to use "name" artists, print in full color, and run a monthly full-page ad in all the RPG magazines, expect to write a $50,000 check (or more) to get your product done *exactly* as you envision it.

Most publishers are happy to listen to your ideas, but they need to be in charge of the day-to-day operations that get books through the development cycle and out to retailer shelves. The more you're involved the better--since you'll be the primary cheerleader for your product at conventions, online message boards, and other events. You just have to trust that other people are as professional with their jobs as you are with yours.

I have a feeling I’ll be creating a publishing company just to release my own work (probable been done by others so at least I’m not walking an untamed trail).

If you're just publishing a single book as a PDF, there's nothing really wrong with doing it on your own. If you're looking to print a book, get distributors to carry it, convince retailers to buy it, etc. you'd better either plan an entire line of books or find some consignment house (like Impressions or Osseum) who can do all that business work for you.

RPGNow has a book that gives some advice to startup publishers...

Also (like I haven’t asked enough questions) how long do you think it would take to write a large book (player’s handbook, arcane unearthed sized) all by yourself (that not including anything to increase computer compatibility in pdf form, such as bookmarks or interactives)?

Professional writers in the industry generally write around 28,000 words of useable text in a month; Ed Greenwood can write about 150,000. The Player's Handbook is around 250,000 words or so.

How comfortable do you feel about collaborating on a project with someone? I’ve read about various books and how parts where created by different people that didn’t even keep in constant contact. How can a product be well made if 3 different people write different chapters?

Make sure that one person is in charge. This is the person responsible for making sure everything comes together in a cohesive whole. Make sure that the other contributors to a project understand their roles and don't write over each other.

Having multiple designers working on a single project can be quite tricky. It takes a good lead designer (and plenty of work up-front to make sure assignments don't overlap too badly) to bring everything together.

 

[direheroics]

I always find it really interesting that most of the people who respond to these questions are people who have had success at finding freelance work in the RPG industry... And people who have no luck don't take the time to at least poke a nose where it doesn't belong...

I've been trying to get freelance work, any freelance work in the industry for about 10 years now (I'm a poor excuse for a 27-year old, eh?). I respond to every open call that I possibly can. I send in ideas, I send in articles. It's so bad that I get rejected by free websites....

Networking might work, but I am in a weekly gaming group with 4 full-time designers/artists for two good-sized d20 companies (who also produce other games too). And those guys, though some of the best people I have met in the last 10 years, haven't pulled me into the fold....

Anyhoo, the main point I am trying to make is that I think things come down to a couple of main factors:

1) Talent. I am a firm believer that writers are born moreso than made. Not only does it take a command of the language but a desire to write that just doesn't exist in folks who just think writing would be something cool to do. Everyone I know who writes does so because they love to do it; same reason I keep beating my head against the proverbial wall.

2) Take Rejection well. Even the best writers get rejected all the time. Why do you think there's so many d20 companies? (Hey, that might be a good idea....)

3) Opportunity. Take advantage of every opportunity you get. This business seems completely based on name recognition. The first sale is the hardest. If you prove you can produce what people need, they will come to you for it.


The World's Worst Game Designer
direheroics