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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Celebrim" data-source="post: 6847618" data-attributes="member: 4937">Usually, nothing.The big problem with most tRPG products is that they are labors of love in a glutted market where most of the money that people would spend on RPG products they are already spending.  We're talking very small markets for a luxury product no one actually needs.  Add to that the fact that many of the consumers are also producers themselves and usually expect to have to adapt the writer's tastes to their own, and well it's just a crowded field to break into.It's similar to trying to paint landscapes for a living.  Go into a any small gallery in any mid-sized city and you'll see tons of hobbyists paintings and sculptures and other expressive art forms, and they'll be these $200 or $300 price tags on them which is more hope than anything else.  They'll be lucky to cover the cost of their materials, much less get any sort of wage out of the hours they spent making the painting.  In a way, it's a hold over from a culture now 200 years dead, where the painter was a respected and necessary professional with no end of work and no limit to how far they could rise if their work was good.  People don't need a portrait painter any more.  They don't need a landscape painter.  These days, most of what they have on the walls they have their because it has deeply personal meaning to them, and paying a stranger to create it is a rare extravagance most middle class homes will never engage in.  Even photographer is starting to go in that direction.  Ask photographers about how hard it is to get paid for their work these days.It's just too easy to publish now and too many are doing it.  There isn't a shortage out there.  If you are doing it, it's not for the money.  It's because you've got this bug inside you that you just got to get out by getting it on paper and nothing else will do.  There is no upward path out of that in my opinion.  Your stuff is likely to be obscure and nearly worthless even on the rare occasion its actually good.  Sorry to be cynical, but that's what I see.If anything, it's harder now than it was in '82 to find the good material.  I've been terribly disappointed by the quality and more importantly the utility of almost every pdf I've actually purchased.  My overwhelming sensation has been, "I'll never use any of this stuff."  At least back in the day I could open up a book in a game store and read through it.  Mostly I'd put it back down but sometimes you get that sensation, "I just have to have this."  Now I'm expected to buy a pdf with nothing more than a blurb and a 4 sentence review by a stranger.  I've learned over the past few years that its just easier to write all my own stuff.Lists of things I'll never use and which are almost invariably stupid:1) Books of spells.  In the defense of the amateurs, TSR/WotC were actually the worst at this, publishing scores if not hundreds of variations on 'blast someone in a bizarre horrific way for YdX damage'.  'Cause someone to bleed from the eyes.  They take 1d6 damage per level of the caster'.  'Dehydrate a living target.  They take 2d6 damage per level of the caster.'  Wasted ink.  Unfortunately its created a thousand imitators.2) Books of magic items.  The worst of these are aimed at players (rather than GMs) with a sort of Sears catalog mentality.  "New items for Bashers.  Now with improved brokenness and more perfectly tailored for your build.  Thrill your GM with your ability to evade all limitations."  Again, they are just following TSR/WotC's lead.3) Books of prestige classes or in general any class with a narrow archetype, no archetype, single personality or shtick, or which is simply mechanical variation for its own sake (ei, a fighter or wizard that uses slightly different mechanics).  Basically, if my players haven't asked to be this character and I've had to say, "No, you can't, because I don't have a mechanical way to handle that concept", then I don't need your class.  4) Books of monsters (99% of the time).  If your monster book contains a monster that is vaguely humanoid and has a claw, claw, bite routine, and a rend extraordinary ability, often with rage/frenzy as the cherry on top, you have no business publishing.  Period.  Get out and stop wasting people's time.5) Books containing minor variations on or new ideas of any minor mechanical feature of a game.  Books of feats for example.  Nothing so tempts a would be designer into producing a pdf quite like a book of feats because they seem so darn easy to design because they are so short and in fact they are one of the hardest things to design well in 3.5. 6) Books on necromancers.  There must be a thousand of them.  All insipid and obvious.There are tons of equally bad ideas, that's just off the top of my head.  If that's your idea for a pdf, just save yourself the trouble and don't.I'm on the fence about Fantasy Heartbreakers.  I think in theory a new rules engine could be a really cool thing, but the problem right now is that there are so many engines being published that there is no way to create a gaming community with your new set of rules.  And without a gaming community playing your game, its just going to wither.  Creating a whole new innovative rules engine is probably the hardest thing a designer can set out to do, and supporting it probably the most expensive and laborious.  It's probably less wasted ink than your average book of spells for D&D, but it's probably going to make even less money.  It's hard enough making a living as an RPG designer working for WotC (consider the tiny size of their staff now), Green Ronin, or Pazio.  Striking out on your own, I got to be honest, if you do it, you'll be one of the only people in the world who does it.</blockquote>

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