Owen KC Stephens' Tabletop RPG Truths #2

Last week I posted about Owen KC Stephens posting about the 'Real Game Industry' on Twitter. He didn't stop there though! Here are some more of his thoughts.

• While there are absolutely exceptions, there are two common paths to becoming a manager in the TTRPG world.
  One is to be a game creator who does that so well, that you are promoted to the entirely-unrelated field of managing people, with no management training.
• I have been extraordinary lucky and well-treated in my RPG career. I love most of the companies and people I have worked with. It's just a harsh industry. This hashtag isn't intended as complaints. They're facts and alerts I wish I had gotten 20 years ago.
• Someone having tons of RPG writing credits is no guarantee they'll do a good job on the project you hire them for. They might have had amazing editors. Their day job may go into crisis during your deadline. They might burn out. Especially that last one.
• A freelancer absolutely mustn't cease communicating with their developer/producer or conceal how far behind they are on a project. When things go south as a freelancer, there is a huge urge to cease communication and conceal how far behind you are on a project.
• It is clearly unreasonable, and potentially inappropriate, to suggest freelancers make friends in the game industry to get more work and be treated better. People in the game industry tend to give their friends more work, and often treat them better.
• On some projects, the writing is easy but the research is hard. On some the reverse is true. For the other 80%, it's all hard. Some need new rules systems. Some need playtesting. Some need map sketches. Others don't. None of this normally impacts your pay rate.
• It is extremely common for gamers to offer to give professionals an idea, and offer to "let" the pro "finish" the work and the "split the profits." They rarely like being told coming up with an idea or starting a project is not the hard part of writing.
• There is a crucial difference between collaborating with someone on a project, and being their assistant. Either can be reasonable, legit work, but not everyone in the industry understands the difference (and how to say which of those a project is going to be).
• Editors are the most unsung heroes of the industry. The better they do their job, the less people notice. but without them, I'd be posting under @RealGameInustrya and $RealGameIndustry as often as #RealGameIndustry
• It's impossible for backers to tell from funds raised by a crowdfunding campaign raises how much profit it earns. Huge numbers can mean a minor miscalculation or change on the ground becomes a huge loss. Companies don't even always know until its all fulfilled.
• The majority of TTRPG professionals--staffers, freelancers, owners, et al., are substantially underpaid for their skills. Saying "they shouldn't be in this industry if they want to be paid more" is saying "I don't want any professional RPG content to be made."
• The reason you don't know how you are supposed to get your first gig, climb the ladder of TTRPG freelance, get the attention of developers and producers without annoying them, or improve your craft, is that game companies mostly don't know those things either.
• Many TTRPG fans are lovely to interact with. Some are so awful that many companies who brought me to cons told me their secret signs to indicate when you needed another staffer to pull you away from a horrible interaction. It is, of course, worse for women.
• TTRPG careers are advanced the most during after-hours bar gatherings at big cons. Nothing else is as effective. By not going to drinks early in my career, I set it back 5-8 years. Club soda would have been fine, though the industry does drives folks to drink.
• Though it is far from universal, many TTRPG creators have all the fun of playing games removed by deadlines, toxic fans, and an endless grind of monetizing their creativity. "Do what you love for work, and you can no longer escape work with the thing you love"
• Many RPG companies depend on "Institutional Knowledge," which means there are things done by people who know, but none of it is written down anywhere. Largely because budgets are so tight staff is always overworked, leaving no time for things like documentation.
• It is common for TTRPG professionals to think various other people in the industry are asshats. It is rare to say so outside of tightly-controlled comments to groups of trusted friends. This reticence can unintentionally spill over to not calling out bad actors.
• While there are absolutely exceptions, there are two common paths to becoming a manager in the TTRPG world. One is to be a an experienced manager from another field that is hired to be a TTRPG manager, with no prior experience in the TTRPG publishing industry.
• There are great managers in the TTRPG industry... and awful ones. Many TTRPG employees have such little experience working under a manager, they often can't tell the difference between the good ones and bad ones. Occasionally, company owners can't either.
• An example of how small, but important, things can be overlooked in the #RealGameIndustry.

Follow the Twitter hashtag here.

 

[Tyler Pickering]

@Owen K.C. Stephens What can us as the consumers do to enact change in the industry in a positive manner????

I support some creators on Patreon that make maps that I like and I purchase not pirate any gaming apps I use.

Do you feel the problem lies just in the fact that RPGs in general do not take in enough money to have people fairly compensated? ( I'm assuming maybe mistakenly that if you were making 100K+ a year many of these issues wouldn't matter as much)

 

[Owen K.C. Stephens]

( I'm assuming maybe mistakenly that if you were making 100K+ a year many of these issues wouldn't matter as much)

It's even more than that.
IF I was making 100k a year, it would mean the Game Companies, large and small, had more money to throw at problems.
Archiving art assets takes time. Training people to be managers takes time and money. having staff that can handle more than the creation of products just-in-time to avoid bankruptcy takes money so you can HAVE time.
Having programs to seek diverse applicants rather than depend on whoever can make it to the bar at a con and buy you a drink takes time and money.
Playtesting takes time, and sometimes money.

Many people smarter than myself have tried to fix these issues, but what i am hearing from other professionals is that it's a problem still, in every decade, for every game company, at every size, in every country.

Many of my problems can easily be solved by x2-x3 more people backing my Patreon. But that only helps the industry at large if most full-time ttRPG creator can get well-supported Patreons, or if my having spare time to do things like talk about the state of the industry is somehow enough to enact real change (which, as much as I would love that to be true, seems extremely unlikely).

It may be insoluble. It may require something like all major RPG companies doubling their prices, and if that means some companies (almost certainly small ones, such as my own) go out of business because they can't compete with the big companies, that both increases the money per product for those big companies and reduces the number of game designers vying for that pool of money.
But that is ALSO unlikely to happen--instead companies will likely continue to compete a great deal on price, because if only 1-2 double their prices, they will almost certainly lose sales to companies that don't. Plus there's no assurance that doubling prices would lead to more income even in a market with fewer competitors--it's possible, but there's no way to know that for certain.
It could just make piracy vastly more widespread

I launched #RealGameIndustry primarily so customers would know what creators go through, and so people thinking of getting into the industry could do so forewarned about potential hazards. I wish I'd known half of this when I got started in the 1990s.
I believe that awareness can only help find solutions--but I don't currently have solutions to offer to go with the raising of awareness.[/USER][/QUOTE]

 

[TheSword]

It seems to me that this is one of the few industries that you can actually do something socially that is a bone fide part of the job. Not many careers where that is the case and it’s probably more of a good thing than a bad thing.

 

[dchart]

I have never been in the TTRPG industry,

Yes, that's obvious.

That said, I was oversimplifying for rhetorical effect. Most people have bad days, and most, probably all, people have parts of the job that they don't like, or even hate. Indeed, there might even be people who, overall and on balance, do not like their jobs in the industry. But if someone is currently actively creating in the TTRPG industry, you can assume that they love writing TTRPGs. There is no other reason for getting into the industry, and…

Inertia is a thing.

It isn't. Inertia is not a thing in this industry.

The overwhelming majority of creators are freelancers. If, as a freelancer, you do not actively hustle for new jobs, inertia will take you out of the industry. It doesn't matter if you have won an Origins award, one of the ENnies, or both. The same is true if you are running your own business. As neither is bringing in a large amount of money, it is natural to fall back to something that pays better, like stacking shelves in supermarkets.

If you are in the tiny minority who have jobs at a TTRPG company, then inertia might keep you in work for a couple of years. But then you will be laid off, because that is what happens to people working at TTRPG companies. Thus, if you do not like the work, you will start looking for another job. Granted, in this case you will probably (probably) take a pay cut if you move into the shelf-stacking business, so you might stick it out for a bit longer, in which case you get laid off.

So, there might be one or two people (as in, literally one person or two people) who are working in the TTRPG industry without loving the basic work at any one time, but I would be really, really surprised if it was more than that. You can safely assume that anyone currently creating TTRPGs professionally loves creating TTRPGs.

David Chart

 

[Tyler Pickering]

Games workshop has increased there prices how many % and they have turned into a juggernaut with unreal profits. I get that they have a product which isn’t as easy to pirate though. I’d happily pay more for my RPG stuff from Paizo if the employees of that company would see more of that money directly go into their pockets and not just be an increased profit margin for the company.

 

[Dire Bare]

Games workshop has increased there prices how many % and they have turned into a juggernaut with unreal profits. I get that they have a product which isn’t as easy to pirate though. I’d happily pay more for my RPG stuff from Paizo if the employees of that company would see more of that money directly go into their pockets and not just be an increased profit margin for the company.

GW is dealing with piracy too. Their rulebooks and novels are as easily pirated as anybody's, their miniatures get pirated by recasters (taking the model, making a new mold of it, and then casting more), and digital piracy of miniatures and IP is increasing as 3D printing gets better and cheaper every year.

I can't say with experience, as I don't work for GW or in the industry at all, but I bet that the creators behind their games and miniatures are STILL underpaid, despite GW successfully raising prices on their model kits and rulebooks. And if you hang out in GW fan forums, the #1 complaint is pricing . . . how GW is only concerned about money and is ripping off fans . . . .

GW has seen amazing success with their Warhammer games compared historically, just like WotC is enjoying with D&D. But that doesn't insulate them from the industry forces Stephens is talking about here. I have no doubt their decision to raise prices is to counter the problems we're talking about here, at least in part, but I really doubt they have "solved" the issues.

EDIT: To add, this is why, in part, both companies are so eager to expand their franchises beyond the tabletop into movies, TV, and video games. The amount of money they can make by simply licensing their IP out to others likely dwarfs the profit made by the games themselves.

 

[Tyler Pickering]

GW is dealing with piracy too. Their rulebooks and novels are as easily pirated as anybody's, their miniatures get pirated by recasters (taking the model, making a new mold of it, and then casting more), and digital piracy of miniatures and IP is increasing as 3D printing gets better and cheaper every year.

I can't say with experience, as I don't work for GW or in the industry at all, but I bet that the creators behind their games and miniatures are STILL underpaid, despite GW successfully raising prices on their model kits and rulebooks. And if you hang out in GW fan forums, the #1 complaint is pricing . . . how GW is only concerned about money and is ripping off fans . . . .

GW has seen amazing success with their Warhammer games compared historically, just like WotC is enjoying with D&D. But that doesn't insulate them from the industry forces Stephens is talking about here. I have no doubt their decision to raise prices is to counter the problems we're talking about here, at least in part, but I really doubt they have "solved" the issues.

EDIT: To add, this is why, in part, both companies are so eager to expand their franchises beyond the tabletop into movies, TV, and video games. The amount of money they can make by simply licensing their IP out to others likely dwarfs the profit made by the games themselves.

I agree and I hope when kingmaker hits consoles in August that Paizo gets some of the live from industry expansion. PC game was a hit but doesn’t have the same broad audience that console will touch.

 

[Von Ether]

GW is dealing with piracy too. Their rulebooks and novels are as easily pirated as anybody's, their miniatures get pirated by recasters (taking the model, making a new mold of it, and then casting more), and digital piracy of miniatures and IP is increasing as 3D printing gets better and cheaper every year.

I can't say with experience, as I don't work for GW or in the industry at all, but I bet that the creators behind their games and miniatures are STILL underpaid, despite GW successfully raising prices on their model kits and rulebooks. And if you hang out in GW fan forums, the #1 complaint is pricing . . . how GW is only concerned about money and is ripping off fans . . . .

GW has seen amazing success with their Warhammer games compared historically, just like WotC is enjoying with D&D. But that doesn't insulate them from the industry forces Stephens is talking about here. I have no doubt their decision to raise prices is to counter the problems we're talking about here, at least in part, but I really doubt they have "solved" the issues.

EDIT: To add, this is why, in part, both companies are so eager to expand their franchises beyond the tabletop into movies, TV, and video games. The amount of money they can make by simply licensing their IP out to others likely dwarfs the profit made by the games themselves.

Small digression. While GW is still not a cheap hobby, it was eventually facing some serious issues with their strategy being "just raise prices." Stores were closing, they were essentially down to three product lines and revamping one of them because it was bringing in only 15% of the profit.

For more than five years now, they've been under new management offering several types of mini games/ mini heavy board games and listening to their customers and their business had gone from ailing giant to turbo-charged giant.

 

[Tyler Do'Urden]

This is some brutal stuff, but not terribly surprising.

I was a professional writer and editor for seven years - I didn't work in game design, I worked in the much larger and more lucrative field of financial publishing - but a lot of this still applies, especially because I was working abroad. Pay was much lower than in other businesses for the same time commitment, which often bordered on investment banker hours to stay afloat. I remember sitting in a friend's apartment one night smoking some spliffs, and he, a photojournalist, looked at me and said "writing for a living... journalism... it's all a mug's game. You can do something better."

Several years later, after several more miserably paid gigs and discovering that teaching business English to executives one-on-one could pay ten times what I was making on an hour-per-hour basis, I decided to make a complete exit. I went to business school and never really looked back. Now I'm a wealth manager at a big insurance company - it took me another seven years to get to where I'm at, and a lot of misery and times that I wanted to throw myself off a skyscraper working for terrible managers at unethical banks - but I finally made it to work that I like that pays well.

But I still appreciate what writers do, and patronize them generously - too generously at times! When my wife discovered that I had sponsored over 120 RPG kickstarter projects from February to April of this year to a tune of over $3k... she completely flipped. I almost thought my marriage was about to come to an end... even though we could afford it without too much trouble.

At times I think "maybe I should start a project... I've got the design skills, the writing ability, the mechanical understanding, and the experience that comes from 30 years of play..." but really, why suffer the abuse and the stress? While I know what it's like to experience the thrill of seeing a product you created in your hands - the only thing that compares to holding a new book you created in your hands is cradling your firstborn! - I just can't get motivated. I can work at a job I like... and DM on the weekends, for people who appreciate what I do for them and always want to come back for more.

But it doesn't change the sad state of the business, and many other creative business as well - though this is all part of the "democratization of content production". The barriers to entry have been massively lowered, and we have access to the content creators themselves as never before. This is both good and bad. While I believe that the former outweighs the latter, it does mean we need to negotiate new relationships between audience and creator. We're... not quite there yet.

 

[Dungeonosophy]

Glad that club soda works too.

This is a bummer: "many TTRPG creators have all the fun of playing games removed by deadlines, toxic fans, and an endless grind of monetizing their creativity. "Do what you love for work, and you can no longer escape work with the thing you love"

I've sometimes imagined that someone ought to found a sort of "artists' colony of TTRPG professionals" or "monastic order of TTRPG pros" and buy a big house somewhere, and mutually covers the day-to-day living expenses, so that the focus can be on the creative love of the game.