Some more "tough love" ....
Runesong42 said:
I have a d20 modern campaign that I "invented" and played through a while back. I really like the concept, and I believe it was something that others may be interested in.
In general, people aren't interested in campaign settings. They are interested in sourcebooks. So, for example, if your big neat idea is a spellcasting system then you might want to detach that from the rest of your game and work with that part instead.
The issue I'm having, though, is that a number of adventures I used were direct ports from Dungeon magazine and the WOTC website.
You can't use any of these. Period.
If this is your first time publishing or submitting a proposal to a publisher, then assume you can only use material that is in the SRD and the SRD alone.
If I were to publish this in any sort of media (comic book, cartoon, video game, module etc), what would be the best way to do it, or should I just forget about it entirely and just be happy with the memories?
If you can draw, a comic would be great.
I'll toss out some numbers for you. I have what is probably best described as a book that has been an underground success. The people who have read it have liked it, but those people number in the dozens. I have lost about $1,000 - $1,500 depending on how you count it. Unless you are an artist with a knack for layout and design, you aren't going to get rich on this. You probably won't even make money. You'll be lucky to break even and you'll probably lose money.
Here's another example, the one publisher I know that had a breakout success product from nothing (jgbrowning) and he had a sourcebook that one of my friends described as "finally somebody wrote the book I have waited twenty years for". It's a pretty rare thing to be able to do something like that.
Now that I have you down in the dumps, let's build your spirit back up.
If your setting design is solid and all you care about is ideas and not mechanics, then you could look at Green Ronin's setting search for their True 20 system. You'll need a publisher to back you, but if you have the 20,000 words written up by September 1, I'm sure someone will sponser you.
If you want to publish, take my advice and write a generic d20 PDF module for fantasy or modern, whichever suits you. Make it about 16 pages long or about 10,000 words tops. Once you do the whole deal of working with artists, layout, publishing, and whatnot, you can submit your module to RPG.now. It's $40 to get set up (I THINK!!!) Once you do that, you'll have a good handle on how to publish and you won't have spent your time on your big dream project, so the emotional investment will be low when you inevitably find that only ten guys bought your product.
I'd really consider pitching to another company. You won't get 100% of your ideas out there like you'd want, but you'll get most of them out and you won't have to deal with the hassle of publishing.
Good luck, man!
-BG
PS Joe, the Oathbound guys made their prestige races OGC in Dragon. You
knew you were going to hear it from
someone didn't you?
