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.

 

[mach1.9pants]

The ‘manager’, ‘making friends/social networking to get ahead’, and ‘thinking those outside your group are asshats’ coments apply to every job in the world!

 

[dchart]

This is why I really don't believe that people writing TTRPGs (or doing anything else) must love what they're doing logically follows from the fact that they could easily get another higher-paying job.

I think we're actually a lot closer together than we initially appeared, but this may be the point of difference. It's not just about the money. Very, very few of the things that keep people in other jobs despite not liking the job apply to writing TTRPGs. Pay? No. Stability? No. Medical insurance? No. Inertia? No. Social prestige? No. Expectations of friends and family? No. Social interaction with your workmates? No. (Almost everyone is freelance, working alone.) More of them apply to the small minority who have jobs at TTRPG companies, but that's very few of the people working in the industry. This is why it matters that you have never worked in the TTRPG industry. Your experience elsewhere is, I think, leading you to make silent assumptions that don't apply here. I absolutely believe your grad school example, because I've been in grad school. It's totally different from writing TTRPG material.

Is it literally true that everybody loves it? No, that was rhetorical oversimplification. However, for the majority of people working in this industry, the only aspect that can be positive is the creation of the material itself. Most of the other explanations for why someone might stay in the business are not available, because of the way the business works. I wouldn't say this about any of the other fields I've worked in (mostly academia/teaching related); it really does depend on distinctive features of the TTRPG business.

 

[talien]

Yes. Anyone can do it. That's one reason it doesn't pay well. Not everyone does it equally well, but almost anyone can put together some kind of game book (or re-edit an old one), put it out there on DTRPG, and call themselves a game writer/game designer/expert. That makes it a lot more difficult to "rise above" and put yourself in a position to be paid better or achieve that fan level mentioned above. Other fields typically require some level of training, experience, or talent to get in and get going, typically vetted by a third party, and that does make a difference. The open freedom of the RPG field is one of the things that holds it back in this way. Not saying I would change it - It's just something I see and it's been that way for quite a while.

This now applies to all knowledge on the Internet. Medical sites, legal advice, etc. has been "flattened" in that access no longer means relevance or accuracy. It's absolutely affecting RPGs, and book publishing too. The folks who are doing really well in this space are marketers first and foremost and I believe that's no coincidence.

 

[TheSword]

This now applies to all knowledge on the Internet. Medical sites, legal advice, etc. has been "flattened" in that access no longer means relevance or accuracy. It's absolutely affecting RPGs, and book publishing too. The folks who are doing really well in this space are marketers first and foremost and I believe that's no coincidence.

Is that fair to say they are marketeers first and foremost? I mean they have a product that presumably took no little effort to produce. So while we can acknowledge that successful marketing is important your comment kinda suggests they’re style before substance which is ungenerous.

 

[MNblockhead]

"Frat Boy Culture"? No.

Networking over drinks predates college fraternities by centuries, millennia even. Goes back to the invention of alcohol, which goes back pretty much to the invention of civilization.

If you want to get ahead in life, learn to be a social drinker. Or, like Owen suggested, order a club soda (or diet coke) and fake it till you make it.

Two of the most successful sales guys I know don't drink. They still go out to eat or the bar, etc. They just don't drink alcohol. In the USA at least, nobody really questions that. Besides, depending on what you are drinking, they probably wouldn't know.

But more importantly, it isn't just drinks. Meeting for breakfast before work or an event is often just as effective as can be meeting someone for coffee.

Depending on the culture of the organization or industry, not drinking alcohol may be an issue, but more often the issue is not being comfortable or interested in socializing. If you are generous with your time, but respectful of others time, and an enjoyable person to be around, and have something to offer--that's more important than the venue. As for the "something to offer", I don't just mean connections or potential business. One thing younger people need to know is that a lot of older, successful professionals like to help people. It feels good, even if just stroking the ego, to give advice, make an introduction, or give a job lead.

While I'm not shy or particularly socially awkward, I'm also not particularly gregarious. I tend to like to hang out with people I know and like. It can be hard to "be on" when an opportunity to presents itself to get to know someone who is important to you professionally. Like many things in life, you need to practice. Like bargaining and interviewing, you need to practice when it doesn't matter to you, so you get comfortable. One thing that really helped me was in college I got the idea to invite people I found interesting to lunch. For example, one guy was an ex-NASA engineer that was working with a non-profit focused on space colonization, another was a professor who was an expert on the Kashmir dispute. It surprised me how many people would say yes to lunch to someone who was interested in what they did. If the person turned out to be a jerk or if I found it difficult to keep up a conversation and things got awkward, well, no big deal. There was no job or potential business on the line.

I'm not an expert in the gaming industry, but I'm sure that as much as drinking is a part of the culture, so is eating and coffee. If you get comfortable with meeting and talking with new people, I don't think it matters so much what you're drinking.

 

[dchart]

Yes, I would agree that they must love some aspect of it, but that's very different from loving it overall.

I've been thinking about this general point some more.

The point that I originally wanted to make was that most of the factors that keep people in jobs they do not like are not present in the TTRPG business. Thus, if someone is creating TTRPGs professionally, the probability that they enjoy it is much higher than the corresponding probabilities for other professions. In particular, someone who is pointing out problems with the business, but still creating, almost certainly enjoys creating.

On the other hand, those other factors are not completely absent from the TTRPG business, and people could certainly feel trapped in the short term. Older people (around my age…) who have been TTRPG-successful are, I suspect, particularly vulnerable to that. Still less vulnerable than in a lot of fields (no point sticking it out until you get the pension when there is no pension…), but you could get into a situation where you could make more per hour, and per week, writing RPGs than in a minimum-wage, unskilled job, and feel that, at your age, you would not be able to transition to any other field. We are only talking about the top people in the field, like Owen, because most people can't make that much money, but it could happen.

So, the oversimplification for rhetorical effect did have pernicious consequences, in that it assumes that a small group in a difficult situation does not exist, and you were right that I should have been a bit more careful in my phrasing.

 

[dchart]

Is that fair to say they are marketeers first and foremost? I mean they have a product that presumably took no little effort to produce. So while we can acknowledge that successful marketing is important your comment kinda suggests they’re style before substance which is ungenerous.

Marketing is a real skill. I know this because I don't have it. While I understand the instinct that says that someone who is 70/30 marketing/creation is "inferior" to someone who is 30/70, because the first person's creations are inferior, and that it therefore seems wrong that the first person makes much more money, I'm not at all sure that we should think that way.

(I'm taking it as given that someone who is 70/30 marketing/creation is a "marketeer first and foremost". If that's not what you meant, then this may be off point.)

 

[MGibster]

I never used to drink the alcohol and never bothered following the team to bars . Then noticed several times at the office that all colleagues were aware of a new business decision that I did not know about. When I asked them when was that decision made, since our last office meeting did not mention it, they would say, last Friday at so and so bar. :-(

I think it's useful to recognize that a game convention is a very different environment from a place of employment. For most of these writers, they're freelancers so there's no employee/employer relationship. It's more akin to going to a professional conference than it is going out with your coworkers. And people at professional conferences network. I agree with you that it's inappropriate for people to make business decisions at a bar. But it's not inappropriate to network at a conference.

 

[TheSword]

Marketing is a real skill. I know this because I don't have it. While I understand the instinct that says that someone who is 70/30 marketing/creation is "inferior" to someone who is 30/70, because the first person's creations are inferior, and that it therefore seems wrong that the first person makes much more money, I'm not at all sure that we should think that way.

(I'm taking it as given that someone who is 70/30 marketing/creation is a "marketeer first and foremost". If that's not what you meant, then this may be off point.)

I’m saying that it is ungenerous to say that a person who has gone to all the trouble of producing products are mainly marketeers. That said it may well be that “First and foremost” could just mean that they do their market research before designing a product rather than after it refers to when marketing takes place rather than how much time is spent on it overall. In which case I totally agree. I was just interested in clarification.

 

[TheSword]

I think it's useful to recognize that a game convention is a very different environment from a place of employment. For most of these writers, they're freelancers so there's no employee/employer relationship. It's more akin to going to a professional conference than it is going out with your coworkers. And people at professional conferences network. I agree with you that it's inappropriate for people to make business decisions at a bar. But it's not inappropriate to network at a conference.

There are lots of other ways of being social, in my workplace we do a lot of fitness based group activities, walks, group classes etc and since lockdown zoom quizzes and socially distanced picnics (in the last few weeks). There is still a notable difference between people who get involved and those that don’t. I don’t judge those that can’t make it, but I recognize that they are missing a chance to forge stronger links.