Giving creators their due credit: better practices for publishers, awards, and media

Most people can tell you what company published their favourite TTRPG. A lot fewer can tell you who wrote it, who illustrated it, and who did the layout, editing, graphic design, and all the other jobs involved in making a book.

In other types of books, the author is prominent. We don't think about HarperCollins' book The Hobbit--we think about JRR Tolkien. Same with movies--while we may often know the studio making a film, we also often know the names of the actors in it. When we think of Jurassic Park, we don't first think Universal Pictures, we think Spielberg and Crichton. Articles like the one you're reading have a byline, making it clear who wrote it.

Back when I was involved with the ENnies--the industry's premiere TTRPG awards program--I pushed for author and artist credits on the awards. When we started those awards in 2001, we just named the product name and the publisher when something won. I felt strongly that the award wasn't for the publisher whose reward was monetary and had probably already been made, it was for the people who worked on that book, who got to take home the statuette and tell people they were an award-winning writer or artist or editor. Indeed, I felt that when publishers didn't submit products because they didn't see the monetary return on it, they were depriving their creators of the one thing they get--recognition for their work. The award was for the writer, or the cover artist, or the interior artists, or whoever else actually did the thing the product was getting an award for. Just like the Oscars give out awards to the actors, directors, and costume designers.

I haven't been involved with the awards for many years now, so I don't know how much this has been adopted, but looking at this year's list of winners I do see a lot of names. People often ask "Do the ENnies increase sales?" and my response was usually "Who cares?" The ENnies aren't there to increase sales, they're there to acknowledge the work of creators. And giving your creators the opportunity to be an award-winning creator feels like a decent thing to do for them, even if it doesn't benefit your company's bottom line much. Of course, I don't speak for the awards these days, but I hope the current stewards feel the same way.

Chaosium, publishers of Call of Cthulhu--amongst other things--recently released a book called Innsmouth. One of the notable features of this books was a 'Clear Credit' section at the start of the book. This has been noticed by their customers, and Isa Bilal shared the photo below on social media, praising the transparency of the section--"The new Innsmouth book is great but I love seeing this Clear Credit bit at the beginning of Call of Cthulhu material. Apart from enlightening me to the history behind a particular publication, I admire the transparency and intent to shine a light on its origins, upon the shoulders of which later products stand. It’s a small but very decent thing."

The Tabletop Game Designers Association also has strong feelings on this matter. The TTGDA is a US non-profit which supports tabletop game designers--they provide resources, advocate for best practices, and work to set standards in the industry. They made a press release last month calling on "awards curators, content creators, and publishers to attribute game authorship fully and accurately". I've posted the full thing below so you can read it for yourself, but it talks about clear credits in products, promoting creators in awards, best practices for journalism and influencers, and more.

TTGDA CALLS ON AWARDS CURATORS, CONTENT CREATORS, AND PUBLISHERS TO ATTRIBUTE GAME AUTHORSHIP FULLY AND ACCURATELY

Several recent announcements in the tabletop games industry have failed to identify creators ofthe games being discussed or described those games as being “by” their publishers without naming the individual designers. The TTGDA finds this practice unacceptable and calls on awards organizations, content creators, publishers, and sales platforms to accurately identify designers when discussing games. “You would never recommend The Widow as the latest book by Doubleday. It’s by John Grisham,” said TTGDA Treasurer Elizabeth Hargrave. “The same should go for tabletop games.”

Common Ways Designers Are Not Properly Credited

• Designers not receiving clear and specific credit in published products.
• Publishers failing to name designers in solicitations and marketing text.
• Sales platforms not including designers in their listings for products.
• Awards not promoting creators as prominently as publishers in ceremonies and PR.
• Influencers and games journalists covering a work’s publisher but not also its creators.
• Publishers identifying themselves as “creators” in marketing text or as “authors” or“designers” in sales platform listings.
• Derivative products not identifying individual source designers and works.

Specific examples of these issues exist across our market. TTGDA has been actively working with both GAMA on the Origins Awards and Mensa on their Select winners to correct problems with their promotions, which have failed to include designers across multiple years. TTGDA has also had success working with Barnes & Noble to add designer names to their listings. Amazon,on the other hand, has resisted calls to properly make game designers part of their listings even though they have the ability to identify musicians and book authors in ways that make them searchable and connect them to their creations.

TTGDA would also like to emphasize that while we see many instances where designers are not properly or accurately credited, there is also widespread support for designers in the industry. Some recent examples include the designer-focused Spiel des Jahres awards and the BoardGameGeek convention coverage, such as the currently active Gen Con and SPIEL Essen lists.

Games Are Created by Designers

While games can follow many paths before reaching the public, the most common one is for a designer to have an idea that they work on for months or years before pitching it to a publisher or deciding to self-publish. The polishing and product design work a publisher does—while definitely important—does not override the designer’s authorship of the game. Even for works that are created by an employee of a publisher, the designer is not the publisher itself but the individual doing the actual creative labor. They deserve to be credited by name.

“Accurate and prominent name credit should be a given in all aspects of game publishing and promotion,” notes TTGDA board member James Lowder, an author and RPG designer with more than 35 years’ experience. “Those credits have clear commercial and personal value for every creator. The industry must do a better job acknowledging the people who imagine the works and worlds that underpin everything we do.”

Designers’ Names Are Readily Available

In 1988, a group of board game designers organized by Reinhold Wittig banded together and signed a proclamation stating, “None of us gives a game to a company if our name is not written on the box cover!” That proclamation has led to great improvements for creator visibility. Even for people outside a publisher’s inner circles, game designers’ names are now readily available not only on the covers of some games themselves but in comprehensive online resources such as BoardGameGeek.com. “The games industry has largely agreed that designers’ names belong on their games for over 30 years. Now we are calling on the industry to carry that over into how we talk about games,” said TTGDA President Geoff Engelstein.

Best Practices

TTGDA recommends these best practices for talking about tabletop games and creators:

• If you mention the publisher, also mention the designers. This doesn’t mean every person working on a multi-designer project needs to be listed every time, but at least mention the leads. When notable elements such as innovative mechanisms are promoted, credit their creators. If art is used in the PR, credit the artist.
• Words matter: A game is “by” its designer or designers, and “published by” or “presented by” the publisher. The “creator” of a game is the designer, not the publisher.
• If you don’t want to take the time in a review video or awards ceremony to read a list of names, consider a text overlay. This gives the opportunity to also highlight key facts in your presentation such as play time and player count.
• Consent matters: Publishers, awards, and events should coordinate with designers on the use and presentation of their names. If a designer doesn’t wish to be connected to something, they should be able to remove their name. As a best practice, this encourages designers to participate more actively in promotions where their name appears by consent.
• Integrate clear, creator-friendly terms for designer credits and consent for name use into all game publishing and industry-related contracts. The Tabletop Game Designers Association is committed to working with any publisher, influencer, news platform, awards organization, and sales platform to encourage these best practices and continue to stress that fair treatment of creators is both the right thing to do and good for long-term business.

Writer James Lowder shared an example with me--he co-wrote a D&D novel, Tantras, but wasn't credited or paid. But the idea here isn't to point fingers, or to list poor examples, it's to highlight the reasons why this is important.

Sure, sometimes it's really not practical. A hundred people might work on the latest D&D book, in various capacities. Obviously we can't list them all every time the book is mentioned. But if we're talking about, say, the awesome cover art, we can at least say who did that cover art (WotC is very good on that front).

Why does this matter? Well, it's better for customers, as they can more easily find work they like by creators they like; and it's better for creators, as it makes them more visible, and more hireable. And in an age of AI-generated content, highlighting the very real people behind good work feels more and more important every day. I've had a few people reach out to me and ask me to help boost the signal on this issue, and I'm more than happy to do my part.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

I was struck by how many people were credited for Daggerheart at the Ennies. I was taken aback a moment, but then realized that probably most of these products have many more fingerprints on them than we are typically aware of.

(And that's true for media generally -- the general public has no idea who edited most newspaper articles or who produced a given television or radio segment.)

I don't think most RPG publishers are villains for not doing it this way -- I suspect it's mostly inertia and "we've always done it this way." But better, more equitable credits should be applauded, celebrated and highlighted until it stops being "how it's always been."

 

[Morrus]

I was struck by how many people were credited for Daggerheart at the Ennies. I was taken aback a moment, but then realized that probably most of these products have many more fingerprints on them than we are typically aware of.

Sure, and we can't reproduce the entire credits page every time we mention a book. But we can bring a little common sense into it and use names where relevant.

 

[Staffan]

I was struck by how many people were credited for Daggerheart at the Ennies. I was taken aback a moment, but then realized that probably most of these products have many more fingerprints on them than we are typically aware of.

I think that is likely one of the reasons why creators aren't commonly credited in RPGs, or at least not credited in a way that's heavily featured: RPG books often have many writers, with different writers working on different parts of the book and often having sections rewritten after playtesting or editing or whatever.

Another reason is that dependencies in books are usually company- (or more likely, product-line-) based. In other words, it is not super important to me as a customer that the Silver Marches book is from Wizards of the Coast or written by Sean Reynolds, but it is important to me that it's a Forgotten Realms book. And even if I like Sean Reynolds' work on Silver Marches, that doesn't necessarily mean I will like what he's doing on a Cypher system book, because I have no interest in the Cypher system.

 

[bergec]

I'm still salty that DriveThruRPG doesn't list me among the authors of Dark Eras Companion because they have a limit on how many authors can be listed and so Onyx Path arbitrarily decided I don't get to be on the list.

 

[CandyLaser]

I'm very much in favor of more expansive credits. Normalizing the practice of crediting as many people as possible is important, not only for moral reasons but for economic ones. Appearing on a credits page lets you build a public portfolio and provide concrete evidence of your contributions, which can enable more work down the line.

 

[Tigris]

I think the main problems are 3 things:

1. We treat RPGs as books instead of like games.
2. The hobby is not far developed enough to have a central general used hub like other hobbies have
3. RPGs are just in general not really done "truly professional" because there is a lack of money involved.

Lets compare it with boardgames:

• Boardgames are clearly games. So the most important part is correct the game. So there is 1 central figure: The game designer. They make the game they are the central figures. And the publisher helps with the things around as a company, not as individuals.
  • There are great people working in the publishing companies, but they do know that they are not the stars. So if 10 people did some proof reading and testing as part of their (full time) job in the publisher company, its 100% clear that they dont want to be listed as writers together with the main person behind the work.
  • Also because its clear that the most important thing is the game, its clear that the game designer is not required to do the actual writing, and thus other people who are better at this can do this on their own.
• Because people are in the hobby for a long time and the hobby is big enough, and people are not so stubborn (and are fine with the hobby evolving), we have a generally used central hub page with all information needed namely boardgame geek and you can easily find the credits: https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/174430/gloomhaven/credits there is also a similar website for RPGs, but people are in general not really using it much.
• And because there is enough money in boardgames publishers can actually pay actual specialized professionals to do the different parts..
  • A boardgame often has a single artist. Even if its hundres of images. This is really expensive, especially if you want a good well known designer and it takes more time because they need to do the art in sequence. Its normally cheaper to get several people to do single work. Even Lancer which became famous because "famous artist tom bloom made the art" has half of the art in the book done by other cheaper artists. (And thus has a really inconsistent artstyle overall).
  • They can also have professional rules writers. Yes people who just write rules. Even boardgames with 100s of pages of text like stuffed fables have rarely more than 2 or 3 writers.
  • Because there is enough money to have people hired full time, you need not to have 20+ freelancers work on a single product.
• To demonstrate the above, lets compare the credits of Gloomhaven with the credits of Daggerheart:
  • Gloomhaven has Twice as many classes as Daggerheart
  • Gloomhaven has more monsters and way more complex monsters than daggerheart
  • Gloomhaven has more items than daggerheart
  • Gloomhaven has a full campaign with 99 different combats and 100s of different possible events includet
  • Gloomhaven has a WAY better combat balance than daggerheart
  • And gloomhaven was done by way less people

We can even see this in what kind of people create RPGs vs boardgames. RPGs are mostly created by writers, or people who want to be writers. Boardgames are created by gamedesigners, often people with a math background allowing them to make well balanced gamedesign especially since they can focus on that.



I get it RPGs are often sold as books, but in the end it really makes no sense to treating it as one, because the main point is to play it not to read it in the end.


Also trying to give "everyone credit", just makes people care way less about the main people. This is also why I think the Ennies make absolutely no sense, trying to mimic the oscars, when the TTRPG scene is soooooooooo much smaller.


In boardgames there are prices like "Spiel des Jahres" which boost sales of a boardgame by up to a factor of 20! And companies are willing to pay to print on their games even just "Nominated for Spiel des Jahres" because the price actually means something. (I would be surprisedif an ennie even would boost sales by 2%)


The price is meaningfull because it does not have 20 categories, but just 3.

• Game of the year (for "normal" people and families)
• Children game of the year
• "Expert" game of the year (for people playing a lot and having good game knowledge).

The jury actually test EVERY SINGLE game and guarantee a certain quality.

The price goes to the gamedesigner (the star) and the publisher (the people doing most of the work).

And artists may not get these prices, but they are way more well recognized, because they are THE artist who did game X. And not "1 of 10+ freelancers adding art to game X"

 

[TheAlkaizer]

but they do know that they are not the stars. So if 10 people did some proof reading and testing as part of their (full time) job in the publisher company, its 100% clear that they dont want to be listed as writers together with the main person behind the work.

They're not listed as writers. They're listed as what they're actual work is: proof readers, testers. It has nothing to do with being the star of the show. It's appropriate crediting. If your tester wrote a chapter of your rulebook, he better be credited in the list of writers.

Also because its clear that the most important thing is the game, its clear that the game designer is not required to do the actual writing, and thus other people who are better at this can do this on their own.

I don't know if you think that every single board game hire "professional rules writers" (whatever that means) to write their rules, but it's not the case. There's definitely business and individuals that have very specific skill. But you'll often have many people iterating over rules, testing them, tweaking them so they're easier to understand. We haven't talked about layout and graphic design, but both are forms of design and integral to the rules being easier to understand and for the game to flow.

And because there is enough money in boardgames publishers can actually pay actual specialized professionals to do the different parts..

Some publishers, sure. But it happens in TTRPGs too, and I know several board game designers that did every by themselves, especially with the rise of Kickstarter and self-funding.

RPGs are mostly created by writers, or people who want to be writers. Boardgames are created by gamedesigners,

Respectfully, that's a ridiculous claim that's unsupported by any evidence.

I get it RPGs are often sold as books, but in the end it really makes no sense to treating it as one, because the main point is to play it not to read it in the end.

If I had to bet money, I more TTRPG books end up being only read as opposed to being played. What you buy is a book, the book has rules that describe how to play a game. The book is not the game. Just like the plastic components in the box of a board game is not the game. They're components, you can swap components.

Also trying to give "everyone credit", just makes people care way less about the main people.

But everyone deserve credit. I don't know who's the judge to draw a line and say "these people deserve credit, but not those".

In boardgames there are prices like "Spiel des Jahres" which boost sales of a boardgame by up to a factor of 20! And companies are willing to pay to print on their games even just "Nominated for Spiel des Jahres" because the price actually means something. (I would be surprisedif an ennie even would boost sales by 2%)

I have heard or read many TTRPG designers describe their sales exploding after their product were nominated (or won) Ennies. I don't like the awards, but they absolutely lead to sales.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

I'm still salty that DriveThruRPG doesn't list me among the authors of Dark Eras Companion because they have a limit on how many authors can be listed and so Onyx Path arbitrarily decided I don't get to be on the list.

They can give you royalties, though. I theoretically get 1/17th of the royalties for a book I participated in, as I can see on my DTRPG royalties dashboard. (I don't think that book ever generated any, ironically.)

 

[JLowder]

1. We treat RPGs as books instead of like games.
2. The hobby is not far developed enough to have a central general used hub like other hobbies have
3. RPGs are just in general not really done "truly professional" because there is a lack of money involved.

1. "Book" is a format, not a designation of content. TTRPGs are an art form, a type of game, that is released most often in book format.

2. TTRPGs are over a half-century old, and there are possible locations for credits to reside, not the least of which are the products themselves and the publisher's website, along with places like RPG Geek. The lack of full credits at the latter is indicative, I think, of the limited passion for fans to fill in the data and the sometimes limited availability of the data.

On the limited passion, that's what 50+ years of limiting credits for designers and foregrounding brands and publishers will get you, to the publishers' benefit. That's part of the reason the TTGDA released the position statement.

3. The market data says otherwise on the money involved at some levels, and money, like the release format, is irrelevant to the question of credits. It's a matter of market practice. Even amateur stage shows can reveal full credits. It's simply the right thing to do. Credit people for the work they do.

Also, your assumption that the publisher does "most of the work" on games is incorrect, especially in TTRPGs, where many or even most of the most time-intensive tasks are done by non-staff.

Publishers facilitate the publication and release of products. They are not creators. That is the work of individuals, often working on temp contract for the company. The individuals should be credited for their contributions in the work itself and elsewhere, such as promotions.