Menu
News
All News
Dungeons & Dragons
Level Up: Advanced 5th Edition
Pathfinder
Starfinder
Warhammer
2d20 System
Year Zero Engine
Industry News
Reviews
Dragon Reflections
Columns
Weekly Digests
Weekly News Digest
Freebies, Sales & Bundles
RPG Print News
RPG Crowdfunding News
Game Content
ENterplanetary DimENsions
Mythological Figures
Opinion
Worlds of Design
Peregrine's Next
RPG Evolution
Other Columns
From the Freelancing Frontline
Monster ENcyclopedia
WotC/TSR Alumni Look Back
4 Hours w/RSD (Ryan Dancey)
The Road to 3E (Jonathan Tweet)
Greenwood's Realms (Ed Greenwood)
Drawmij's TSR (Jim Ward)
Community
Forums & Topics
Forum List
Latest Posts
Forum list
*Dungeons & Dragons
Level Up: Advanced 5th Edition
D&D Older Editions
*TTRPGs General
*Pathfinder & Starfinder
EN Publishing
*Geek Talk & Media
Search forums
Chat/Discord
Resources
Wiki
Pages
Latest activity
Media
New media
New comments
Search media
Downloads
Latest reviews
Search resources
EN Publishing
Store
EN5ider
Adventures in ZEITGEIST
Awfully Cheerful Engine
What's OLD is NEW
Judge Dredd & The Worlds Of 2000AD
War of the Burning Sky
Level Up: Advanced 5E
Events & Releases
Upcoming Events
Private Events
Featured Events
Socials!
Twitch
YouTube
Facebook (EN Publishing)
Facebook (EN World)
Twitter
Instagram
TikTok
Podcast
Features
Top 5 RPGs Compiled Charts 2004-Present
Adventure Game Industry Market Research Summary (RPGs) V1.0
Ryan Dancey: Acquiring TSR
Q&A With Gary Gygax
D&D Rules FAQs
TSR, WotC, & Paizo: A Comparative History
D&D Pronunciation Guide
Million Dollar TTRPG Kickstarters
Tabletop RPG Podcast Hall of Fame
Eric Noah's Unofficial D&D 3rd Edition News
D&D in the Mainstream
D&D & RPG History
About Morrus
Log in
Register
What's new
Search
Search
Search titles only
By:
Forums & Topics
Forum List
Latest Posts
Forum list
*Dungeons & Dragons
Level Up: Advanced 5th Edition
D&D Older Editions
*TTRPGs General
*Pathfinder & Starfinder
EN Publishing
*Geek Talk & Media
Search forums
Chat/Discord
Menu
Log in
Register
Install the app
Install
The
VOIDRUNNER'S CODEX
is coming! Explore new worlds, fight oppressive empires, fend off fearsome aliens, and wield deadly psionics with this comprehensive boxed set expansion for 5E and A5E!
Community
General Tabletop Discussion
*TTRPGs General
What's a Freelance RPG Writer Worth?
JavaScript is disabled. For a better experience, please enable JavaScript in your browser before proceeding.
You are using an out of date browser. It may not display this or other websites correctly.
You should upgrade or use an
alternative browser
.
Reply to thread
Message
<blockquote data-quote="CardinalXimenes" data-source="post: 7659609" data-attributes="member: 58259"><p>Undoubtedly so. I bought paper for R&PL, and I only buy a handful of paper RPG products in a year- the physical artifact was worth having.</p><p></p><p>This basically boils down to "make something noticeably better in all possible ways than the standard market output", and it's undeniably good advice. Eventually, every publisher wants to get there and stay there in a consistent way. But you and James Raggi have had years of intense effort to develop and focus your abilities, and this particular partnership involved the business and publishing nous of Raggi and your own writing and artistic skills. The average self-pub RPG creator has nowhere near that kind of skill reserve to call on.</p><p></p><p>They have none of those skills <em>yet</em>. Some of them can get those things, and some of them have those things just waiting in abeyance for the opportunity to show them, and some of them have things they've polished in other parts of their lives that they can repurpose with minimal fuss. But for the average apprentice RPG publisher, just getting out a respectable-looking print product with modestly useful content and a few good ideas between the covers is a real challenge.</p><p></p><p>Shooting for sublimity is what every self-respecting publisher wants to do, but my concern is for novices who try to buy excellence. They think they need to spend a lot of money patching over their own limited skills- buying a lot of art, a lot of writing, a lot of layout support, a lot of everything, really, because they've got a grand vision and they know that if they just make their product sufficiently awesome that it's bound to sell well. They're like kids playing in their father's workshop, hammering stuff together and waving around tools they don't exactly recognize. And like such kids, they've got a tendency to get hurt when their shambolic contraption doesn't quite come out the way they'd hoped. And then they get bitter, and write off self-pub as a horrible idea because they invested too much before they had sufficient skill to control their creation.</p><p></p><p>Good craftsmen start simple. You learn how to cut a board or how to hammer a nail or how to sand a corner. You learn how to lay out a simple two-column page of text, how to set to a grid, how to compose a unified spread. Maybe you dream of 300-page full-color artbook-games full of luminous prose, but you start with an orc with a pie. Maybe you don't even bother to publish your orc with a pie, but you need to make him, because you need to know how to compose and key a bog-standard dungeon in a way that's accessible and efficient in use. And most of all, you take each step in such a way that you can support your own creative process, that you're not relying on blithe hope to make things work.</p><p></p><p>Then, someday, after years of ferocious effort and study, you'll be ready to make that 300-page artbook. You'll know which artists to tap, which designers you need to help you, which parts of it you can do and which parts you can't. You'll know exactly how it should be put together and you'll know that even in the worst case you're going to come out in the black because you've built up a following that can be relied on for a minimal number of sales. You'll have <em>mastered your tools</em>, and that will make your money something rather more than an expensive way to not learn something. Then you can make something like R&PL, or Vornheim, or DCC, or any one of the other remarkable physical artifacts that've earned just praise.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="CardinalXimenes, post: 7659609, member: 58259"] Undoubtedly so. I bought paper for R&PL, and I only buy a handful of paper RPG products in a year- the physical artifact was worth having. This basically boils down to "make something noticeably better in all possible ways than the standard market output", and it's undeniably good advice. Eventually, every publisher wants to get there and stay there in a consistent way. But you and James Raggi have had years of intense effort to develop and focus your abilities, and this particular partnership involved the business and publishing nous of Raggi and your own writing and artistic skills. The average self-pub RPG creator has nowhere near that kind of skill reserve to call on. They have none of those skills [I]yet[/I]. Some of them can get those things, and some of them have those things just waiting in abeyance for the opportunity to show them, and some of them have things they've polished in other parts of their lives that they can repurpose with minimal fuss. But for the average apprentice RPG publisher, just getting out a respectable-looking print product with modestly useful content and a few good ideas between the covers is a real challenge. Shooting for sublimity is what every self-respecting publisher wants to do, but my concern is for novices who try to buy excellence. They think they need to spend a lot of money patching over their own limited skills- buying a lot of art, a lot of writing, a lot of layout support, a lot of everything, really, because they've got a grand vision and they know that if they just make their product sufficiently awesome that it's bound to sell well. They're like kids playing in their father's workshop, hammering stuff together and waving around tools they don't exactly recognize. And like such kids, they've got a tendency to get hurt when their shambolic contraption doesn't quite come out the way they'd hoped. And then they get bitter, and write off self-pub as a horrible idea because they invested too much before they had sufficient skill to control their creation. Good craftsmen start simple. You learn how to cut a board or how to hammer a nail or how to sand a corner. You learn how to lay out a simple two-column page of text, how to set to a grid, how to compose a unified spread. Maybe you dream of 300-page full-color artbook-games full of luminous prose, but you start with an orc with a pie. Maybe you don't even bother to publish your orc with a pie, but you need to make him, because you need to know how to compose and key a bog-standard dungeon in a way that's accessible and efficient in use. And most of all, you take each step in such a way that you can support your own creative process, that you're not relying on blithe hope to make things work. Then, someday, after years of ferocious effort and study, you'll be ready to make that 300-page artbook. You'll know which artists to tap, which designers you need to help you, which parts of it you can do and which parts you can't. You'll know exactly how it should be put together and you'll know that even in the worst case you're going to come out in the black because you've built up a following that can be relied on for a minimal number of sales. You'll have [I]mastered your tools[/I], and that will make your money something rather more than an expensive way to not learn something. Then you can make something like R&PL, or Vornheim, or DCC, or any one of the other remarkable physical artifacts that've earned just praise. [/QUOTE]
Insert quotes…
Verification
Post reply
Community
General Tabletop Discussion
*TTRPGs General
What's a Freelance RPG Writer Worth?
Top