Owen KC Stephens' Tabletop RPG Truths

Multi-award winning game designer Owen Stephens (Starfinder, Pathfinder, Star Wars) has been posting a series he calls #RealGameIndustry on social media.

• Most TTRPG game company's art archives are not well indexed... Or indexed.
• Yes, the RPG book could have had ONE more editing pass. There would still be errors, you'd still complain, it would cost more and take longer, and not sell any better. And people would download it for free illegally because "it's too expensive."
• Tabletop RPG books are not overpriced. They are specialty technical creative writing social interaction manuals. At double the current prices, they would not be overpriced. This is why most TTRPG creators leave the industry. Along with constant fan harassment.
• Quality, effort, marketing, and fan fervor cannot change this. Ever. That's not to knock, or praise, D&D. It's just a fact.
• Impostor syndrome is hugely common in the TTRPG industry for two reasons. One: Studying and modifying RPGs often appeals to socially awkward shut ins who become broken professionals. Two: There's a sense that if you were a REAL professional you could afford a house, and insurance, and a retirement account, but that's not true for 99.9% of TTRPG professionals.
• People who are passionate about making games for other people, people who are good at making games, and people who are good at the business of game sales and marketing don't overlap much in a Venn diagram. Most game company failures can be attributed to this.
• A TTRPG professional with enough experience and credibility to criticize the industry as a whole is normally tied to one company so closely that the criticism is seen as biased, or unwilling to do it for free, or too naughty word tired to care anymore. Many are all 3.
• If you are a TTRPG creative, you aren't paid enough. Thus, if you find people listening to you and apparently valuing your words you owe it to yourself to make sure they know there is an option to pay you for them. Also, I have a Patreon. https://patreon.com/OwenKCStephens
• There are beloved, award-winning, renowned, well-known TTRPG books with total print runs of 2000 or fewer copies. That did not sell out.
• Most RPG creators cannot afford the upper-tier of RPG accessories. Colossal dragons, scale sailing ships, and custom-built gaming tables are not for those of us who create the hobby. We are too poor to enjoy even a fraction of the things our creativity sparks.
• The ability to master a game's rules has no correlation to the ability to write clear or interesting rules or adventures. Neither has any correlation to being able to produce 22,000 words of focused, usable content about a specific topic on a set deadline.
• There are 65 people in the Origins Hall of Fame. Most fans can't name 5 of them. Most creators can't name 10. They are overwhelmingly (though not quite entirely) white men.
• TTRPG companies generally have no interest in your ideas for products. They went to all the trouble of starting, or staying at, an RPG company to publish their ideas, even if they need you to write them. They certainly didn't stay for the money or respect.
• Asking RPG freelancers to publicly call out a publisher is asking them to reduce their tiny chance of making enough money in RPGs to survive. Sometimes it's a moral imperative. But it's always painful and dangerous. It's more dangerous for women and minorities.
• Occasionally, male game designers who do streams or vlogs or podcasts find themselves disconcerted receiving unsolicited commentary about their appearance. It happened to me. Or, in other words, they get a tiny taste of what women in every field face every day.
• Freelancers aren't paid enough by game company employees and managers, who themselves aren't paid enough by their companies, which don't make enough from distributors and stores, that don't make enough from customers. This never improves. It can get worse.
• Fantasy and scifi art has sexualized women for decades, so many pro artists assume that's what you want. Explaining otherwise takes more words that describing the art piece. I had to go with "No skin should be exposed except on the face." It was 75% effective.
• Most RPG work is "work-for-hire," This includes most work I commission from freelancers myself. This means that, legally, the writer isn't the author. They have no rights to it. No royalties. No say in how (or if) it is used. It never reverts to them.
• I have received 3 death threats in my 21+ RPG career. One for not listing the fans preferred length for the Executor SSD. One of having a male succubus (not an incubus, with that game system) drawn in a seductive pose. And one for being fat and on video streams.
• Once, at Gen Con, a fan interrupted [Amanda Hamon] at the Paizo booth to ask her to point me out. She kindly did so. They came and asked me if I was the Starfinder boss. I pointed them back to Amanda, and noted she was my Managing Developer, and direct superior. I followed that by pointing out Lisa Stevens was an owner of Paizo but that I also worked for Nicole Lindroos and Miranda Russell at other companies, and that Lj Stephens was my project manager for my own company who kept me on schedule, The fan seemed upset.
• 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.

 

[TheSword]

I think your comments Owen have had the effect of shocking us customers about how poor the experience is for well loved and respected writers like yourself. I am gobsmacked, not just that the circumstances are so poor, but how lots of people just see that as status quo for the industry and just see it as par for the course. It’s really been an eye opener.

I can’t be so fatalistic about the problem though. Industries are just made of collections of people who make decisions as organizations and individuals. Those decisions may be just to keep things as they are but people are still at the heart of this problem.

Things change either because the law requires them to (maternity pay, minimum wage, safety regs) not likely in this case.

Or consumer outrage forces change due to reduced sales/boycotting - possible but difficult because of how small the market is.

Or the industry reorganizes itself - This can come about through the influence the first two things such as the impact Leverson had on the UK media.

I think customers would support change and I am absolutely convinced that there is a lot of money out their to be made. If a guy on Patreon can take $14,000 a month on map making (albeit less overheads) then there is money out there to be made. How many estimated players of d&d alone now? 17 million world wide? I think we have to acknowledge this is less of a niche hobby than it was.

It’s really good to hear paizo aren’t taking advantage (any more than anyone else) but I would have thought if any company would revise their practices to be fairer to writers it would be them. My gut feeling is that writers should be more honest with consumers about how companies trade with them. It can be anonymous but if a company gouges its writers on word per minute - excludes writers from royalties, and operates as an old boys club to women and minorities then as consumers we should be allowed to know that so we can make informed choices.

I get that people need to protect the relationships for work - hence anonymity and websites like glass door or these forums. Create a profile and let’s have some honesty about which companies have ethical treatment of their staff. I suspect that is what is needed to galvanize customer outrage that will then drive a business decision to improve working conditions.

Thank you Owen for speaking out. It can’t have been easy, and I’m sorry if it came across like I was on your back. I was just genuinely shocked. It would be a real shame if nothing came of it, and everyone goes back to business as usual.

 

[JLowder]

Oh, forgot to say this too - getting your foot in the door is impossible in the RPG industry. I ran a near 50K kickstarter and still can't get hired as a freelancer. Maybe when the book is 100% out things will change, but no one wants to give you a chance and it feels like working in the RPG industry is impossible if you aren't apart of the "Old Boys Club."

There are some ways in. Kickstarters are one. How much you raised with the campaign is not the primary metric here, though. Once you deliver the promised product, the Kickstarter becomes an audition set--especially if you delivered on time (hugely important) and the backers are happy with the project in its final form. Having more than one Kickstarter with a quality product, an on-time delivery record, and happy customers is a very attractive line on your creative resume.

So, too, with getting a popular product on the DMs Guild or, for Chaosium, the Miskatonic Repository. Many RPG companies are developing these programs. The Call of Cthulhu line editor has hired people because of their Repository publications. In a lot of ways, these community content programs have taken the place of magazines in the freelancer ecosystem. At one time, getting an interesting, well-written, well-received article in Dragon about a TSR game could help you get the company's attention. But magazines are no longer a thriving part of the market. This is the closest equivalent.

Publishers post guidelines for submissions on their websites and many do panels at cons about how to break in. The issue with the latter is that you often have to be at the show to take advantage, which means those seminars can inadvertently reinforce the "old boy's network." So look for podcasts or other public posts of "breaking in" presentations. If you go to conventions, many offer some kind of professional advice seminar or even a freelancer/creator track.

With the Internet, you would think that it should be easier to break into publishing with a specific company, because communication is much more open. But it's actually much harder, because the freelancer market is much more competitive. Anyone can publish on the community content sites. Anyone can create a Kickstarter (though delivering on what's promised is another matter). And the pool of freelancers is now consistently international, so you are competing against a lot more people at every turn.

The upside of this is that you still have options to get your work out there, even if don't break in with the company you want. The downside is that getting attention for your work, whether from a publisher or from the audience, is harder with all the competing voices.

Cheers,
Jim Lowder

 

[TheSword]

I think they have a greater responsibility to be truthful about the realities of their working conditions.

E

The reality for musicians, actors, and many other artists is that it's very difficult for them to make a living at their chosen vocation. Most musicians cannot make a decent living solely relying on gigs. Either they have another job unrelated to music or they give music lessons, sell instruments, or something like that. And actors? Holy cow, what a competitive field! Most of them will never make a decent living at it and those who manage it will likely have a somewhat short career.

And yet many do succeed, including good friends of mine. There are many many people who make a reasonable living acting in theatre and TV, love what they do and make ends meet, thought it may be difficult at times. Not everyone has to be a Hollywood actor to be successful. A proportion don’t make it, but enough do that it’s still worthwhile. Yes people can be honest that is hard, requires luck and a lot of knockbacks but it is worth it if you love it.

 

[JLowder]

My gut feeling is that writers should be more honest with consumers about how companies trade with them. It can be anonymous but if a company gouges its writers on word per minute - excludes writers from royalties, and operates as an old boys club to women and minorities then as consumers we should be allowed to know that so we can make informed choices.

General word rates for the industry are fairly easy to find. They generally range, for bigger publishers, from a couple cents per word up to the SFWA and HWA professional rates of 8 cents/word. The latter is rare and based more on the fiction model for publishing, not the RPG model, which features books that are much more expensive to produce. Royalties are rare with RPGs.

Word does get around when publishers mistreat authors. You can still find posts popping up now and then about Mark MacKinnon and Guardians of Order/Dyskami, for example.

But it's not typically a matter of publishers refusing to share the wealth. Most publishers would be thrilled to sell enough copies to pay the freelancers better, because smart publishers know that they have nothing without creators doing their thing. Most RPGs simply do not sell enough copies to sustain better rates. And even on things such as royalties, which are a great idea in theory, there are other issues that may not make them feasible for the small publisher or worthwhile for the creators. If you put together a monster book with 100 contributors, tracking the royalties requires an infrastructure, which itself costs money, and may result in creator shares that are tiny. And have to be sent around the world (with accompanying fees). And require freelancers who worked for you ten years ago to keep you updated as to their contact information, which also requires infrastructure. And continuing royalty payments mean you may have to generate and issue tax documents to every creator in the US, every year. And... And.. And multiply that times every book you publish, for as long as the book stays in print. So even if you as a publisher want to offer more equity, putting that into action may be difficult or impossible.

By the by, much respect for restating your take. And for championing the idea of better conditions for creators and for publisher responsibility. Thanks.

Cheers,
Jim Lowder

 

[TheSword]

But it's not typically a matter of publishers refusing to share the wealth. Most publishers would be thrilled to sell enough copies to pay the freelancers better, because smart publishers know that they have nothing without creators doing their thing. Most RPGs simply do not sell enough copies to sustain better rates. And even on things such as royalties, which are a great idea in theory, there are other issues that may not make them feasible for the small publisher or worthwhile for the creators. If you put together a monster book with 100 contributors, tracking the royalties requires an infrastructure, which itself costs money, and may result in creator shares that are tiny. And have to be sent around the world (with accompanying fees). And require freelancers who worked for you ten years ago to keep you updated as to their contact information, which also requires infrastructure. And continuing royalty payments mean you may have to generate and issue tax documents to every creator in the US, every year. And... And.. And multiply that times every book you publish, for as long as the book stays in print. So even if you as a publisher want to offer more equity, putting that into action may be difficult or impossible.

That makes a lot of sense. I suspect in that case, something has to change.

Either there is less collaboration on individual products so that royalties can be calculated properly. Perhaps unpalatable.

And/Or rates are increased to a fair amount to pay a fair amount, with that cost passed on to the consumer - incidentally when competition is fair, pay is transparent and quality is there, customers do frequently choose ethical companies even if they cost more. What they won’t do is pay more without understanding why.

And/Or writers take more control over production, either by publishing themselves (very difficult I’m sure) or using DM Guild, DriveThruRpG etc. This would require training, mentoring and support in business, marketing, layout and editing etc. I do think big players in the industry have a part to play in this, if they take the problems Owen has raised seriously.

And/Or finally the model changes and subscription based systems that tap into a loyal fan base to deliver consistent quality content. My gut feeling is that this is the future to actually make a decent living though it has its disadvantages. I know talented artists that struggled for years just to get by that were literally freed from minimum wage jobs in retail by a Patreon that gave them a steady £1k a month which gave them a breather so their commission business could grow.

I also see how successful subscription systems are for Syrinscape, D&D beyond, Paizo’s APs and accessories etc. As I said earlier (poorly I think) there probably needs to be a shift in terms of what content writers are willing to share to achieve good results.

I’d pay for an AP from an author I like across Patreon where if you sign up you get that periods resources. If you deselect you keep that periods but miss out on future products with options to buy previous content in bundles or as rewards for higher tiers.

As I said, I’m not in the industry. But I am a businessman and I know that not adapting to change is kryptonite to any business. I’ve bought more 3pp in the last year than the 10 years before and I don’t believe I’m alone. I have to have faith that things can get better. I really hope they do, because writers of great products should be able to enjoy the fruits of their Labour.

 

[Mercador]

Or any other sort of professional or skilled worker.

If there is no money in RPGs - plus fan abuse - then why persist with the job? At some point it needs to be accepted that a wiser choice of employment needs to be made. Enduring decades of low income and internet insults does not rational sense.

George Thorogood got it right: "Get a haircut, and get a real job."

(NB: This is not an attack on people in the RPG "industry". This is not saying that working in RPGs is not a real job. This is simply saying that there is no logical reason, if you have legitimate skills that can translate into higher pay and better conditions, that you don't leave this "industry" for something more rewarding. After all, freelancing is still possible even if you have a job with a real income.)

I think those are also real jobs, but it's more a vocation than a job imo. As a school teacher or a nurse. I said that I choose IT because I choose the "easy way of life", as I'll probably never fear to have no jobs at all (it depends on automation in fact) and/or I'll never fear not being able to pay my bills.

But, at the same time, the middle age crisis makes me wonder what it could have been like to do something that I would "love" to do. I had a website like this one for more than a decade and it was a lot of unpaid work but it was fun. It became too popular to stay as a sideline and working at the same time so I had to make a choice (again). At some point in the future, the UBI will allow all those crafters to do their art but right now, working in the TTRPG is really a leap of faith. It was the same in videogames industry in the '80, so who knows what the future will bring.

 

[DammitVictor]

Did you get the advanced books as well? I'm thinking of the box since the sections are split up and it makes usability by multiple players much easier. But I'm also chea...frugal so the less expensive single book version is appealing. Then again I love box sets...

Yeah, I did.I ordered one Boxed Set, one Rules Tome, and one each of the Advanced books to fit in my Boxed Set.

Planning on acquiring a handful more Rules Tomes for table use.

What is that mean though? We should be required to pay more by some coercive economic system?

Who's "we" in this hypothetical, consumers or publishers? Either way, I should hope not, but that's two very different conversations.

I mean... I've already staked out a position here on subscription/hostage models, and I don't want to develop tunnel vision and potentially miss out on other potential solutions, but the roleplaying industry-- outside of Wizards and Paizo, and maybe the top 1% of the rest of the 99%-- needs to start looking for and adopting business models where publishers can pay creators healthy rates and still make healthy profits independent of unit sales and per-unit profit margins.

Unfortunately, that has ugly goddamned repercussions for guys like me who don't have the established reputation and fanbase to really leverage those models... effectively bringing the barriers to entry back up after the PDF/POD markets and the OGL brought them down.

 

[lewpuls]

Most skills that happen mostly in the mind are undervalued these days, because people don't see it happen the way they can see an artist draw or paint, a sculptor sculpt, etc. - not that people with those skills have it easy. There's also the Dunning-Kruger effect, people think they could write just as well as the pros if they bothered to, because they are actually clueless about what's required. Check Wikipedia.

 

[JLowder]

As I said, I’m not in the industry. But I am a businessman and I know that not adapting to change is kryptonite to any business. I’ve bought more 3pp in the last year than the 10 years before and I don’t believe I’m alone. I have to have faith that things can get better. I really hope they do, because writers of great products should be able to enjoy the fruits of their Labour.

Most of the things you have suggested are already in play, in various forms, using the tools available. Many established companies and pros use Kickstarter and other crowdfunding operations as a preorder system, to muster existing fans and help fund projects, since "just in time" ordering and stocking means retailers such as Amazon do not order the same way stores ordered even twenty years ago. And while some consumers will back higher costs given the right reasons, trends don't show that to be a big enough market change to impact budgets on a large scale. Not everyone has the resources to shell out more to support creators and others will use the price hike to justify increased piracy.

All of this is tied into the overall global trends in economic inequality, well beyond tabletop game publishing.

I'm with you on hoping it will get better, and working to make that happen where I can. There are many people in the industry doing that. But the problems are complicated, with elements beyond the control of small publishers or even the two large publishers in the market, Hasbro/WotC and Asmodee.

Cheers,
Jim Lowder

 

[Scrivener of Doom]

Exactly, in the old soviet union, there was the saying that you couldn't be a great scientist, be a great artist, precisely because those two careers did the best. Here in the west, it is the rich and religious that dominated, too bad there wasn't a 3rd way somewhere in between.

For example here, a teacher's starting salary is 17k, so a career where you have to have a degree, in which you can't afford to send your child to college.

17K for a starting teacher?

Are you in the Third World?

If not, emigrate to Australia (or Singapore or Scandinavia).