NOW LIVE! Today's the day you meet your new best friend. You don’t have to leave Wolfy behind... In 'Pets & Sidekicks' your companions level up with you!

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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Cergorach" data-source="post: 8012224" data-attributes="member: 725">This issue/situation has come up regularly on the forums here at ENworld over the last 20 years. But I'm curious, you never peeked at the rates TSR was willing to pay for your freelance work for Dungeon/Dragon? Translating that to a hourly wage and then realizing that TSR was the big kid on the block in RPG land? I'm six years <s>younger</s> less old then you, but that idea was killed quickly when I saw those rates and did some creative writing as a test. I really wanted to design planes, did a year of aerospace engineering school and the only aerospace company in the country went belly up, that brought on a harsh reality check, would I want to emigrate to the US (I'm European and my German and French sucks). That was a big NO! A long story short, I'm now in IT as a freelancer. I did really well in art at school, even did a year of multimedia design after the aerospace engineering bit, so it's not as if I don't have a creative bone in my body. ;-) I suspect I can do better working half a year as a IT freelancer and then writing half a year for free then working a full year for freelance writer fees in the RPG gaming industry and I'm not even a top IT dog that's paid a huge hourly rate...Some of the items on the 'list' didn't read like warnings for future RPG writers, but griping against (former) customers. I get venting a bit of frustration, that often helps, in the short run. But let me be blunt, are those 'realizations' not a bit late after 20-30 years in the industry at age 50? Let me be even more blunt, how many of the RPG writers would be able to cut it in a different industry? Would there be a place for them as a writer in another industry? Can they do anything else? Because people keep comparing what folks make between RPG writers and really good paying jobs (a few of us that got lucky), Not between RPG writers and really bad paying jobs like burger flipper, etc.Imho the RPG industry has been making their own next generation writers by design, making your own adventures, worlds, etc. Makes the next generation of writers, that resultsin a slew of young fools that are willing to work for virtually nothing. That was true in the age of Dragon/Dungeon magazine, but with time it became even easier. For every RPG writer that stops 10 others are willing to work for less, just for the chance to get published. Many even pay others to publish themselves (vanitypress). The issue isn't that the books are too cheap, it's that they don't sell enough because the market isn't big enough and far to fragmented. Writers/publisher are part of the problem, want to fix this? Stop writing/publishing and competing with others in the same space. But that doesn't work, for every writer/publisher that stops, 10 start... Products aren't valued at what they cost to make, but at what the market will bear, if the price it sells for is less then it costs to make, no sane company would produce it. But in the RPG industry they just pay less and still find tons of fools to work for peanuts... Pay peanuts, get monkeys!</blockquote>

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