Why D&D is slowly cutting its own throat.

[Jim Hague]

NOTE: The following numbers ARE MADE UP. They're based on past experience but they're completely MADE UP!!!


Okay, if we assume 1,500 have sold that's $60,000 for AEG (rough numbers here, assuming typical distributor terms). If we assume an average of 700 words/page at 800 pages we get 560,000 words. Paying $0.04/word would cost $22,400 just for the writing. Probably $8-$10/book for printing (just a guess based on previous experience) is another $12,000 if we go with the lower number. $1,000 for a cover. I have no idea how much interior art is in there but if we assume 1 full page/10 pages we get 80 full pages. $100/image (low) is $8,000.

Aha, I can answer this! Ok, interior art on WLD is extremely sparse - no full-page art, and aside from small maps at the beginning delineating Regions or the occasional helpful diagram, there's nothing. Mind, this is offset by the frankly beautiful full-color maps that come with the book. Wordcount is somewhere over 1 million - that's some small text on those 840 or so pages.

So now we're at $42,400 and we haven't even discussed editing costs, cartography costs, shipping, marketing, or any other expenses that we're likely involved (such as overhead).

Hopefully AEG can sell about 2x and hit 3,000.

I would expect the biggest impact would have been on cash flow -- unless everyone was paid 30-90 days after publication AND enough copies were sold on release to cover expenses.

I can't speak exact numbers here due to contract, but the 30-90 days after publication is spot on, and we were paid less that $.04/word. It seems like a gyp, but myself and a lot of the other writers were new to the business or first-timers.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

Jim, does your contract include a royalties clause of any kind?

If so, you can probably approximate the sales of anything to which you've contributed.

 

[Jim Hague]

Jim, does your contract include a royalties clause of any kind?

If so, you can probably approximate the sales of anything to which you've contributed.

Boy, I wish. But no - freelancers got paid a flat per word fee, minus any penalties as specified in the contract. It wasn't big money by any stretch, and it was work for hire - AEG owns the stuff I wrote, as well as what other freelancers wrote, lock stock and barrel, save for OGC, which is a fairly hefty chunk of the WLD. Work for hire (as Phil, Erik or any of a number of full-time pros can tell you) is the most common way to work freelance in the industry.

I'll say this, as an aside, and off-topic - anyone who says that writers, editors and game companies are greedy and out to screw the customer...well, they're full of it. The pool's too small too be greedy, and the vast majority of game companies aren't run like businesses; they're labors of (sometimes misguided) love, hobbies. I, being a freelancer and more importantly a gamer, find myself wishing that more companies were run like businesses - that way the customer gets a better product, the writers, editors, artists and other folks that work on books could get paid a livng wage (and while I can't discuss what I got paid for WLD, I can say it wasn't even enough to buy a good home theatre system or a beat up car, for 80,000+ words). Then I think we'd see some real movement and a Renaissance in gaming.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

That's what I figured. That's a lot like the rates you'd see getting something published for the first time in a fiction digest.

 

[S'mon]

Boy, I wish. But no - freelancers got paid a flat per word fee, minus any penalties as specified in the contract. It wasn't big money by any stretch, and it was work for hire - AEG owns the stuff I wrote, as well as what other freelancers wrote, lock stock and barrel

Copyright query - I think I'm right that US "work for hire" doctrine is that the employer is default first owner of copyright in work by employees. But you're not an employee, you're a freelancer. I think what you're saying is that you signed a contract which transferred your copyright in the work to the publisher? Practically it may have the same result in USA, but it's an important distinction in other jurisdictions - eg if you transferred copyright you could still sue for infringement of the moral rights in your work in certain other jurisdictions; say if Gez publishes a derogatory treatment of your work in France.
Most importantly it also means you likely retain copyright in your pre-publication preliminary drafts of your work (much as the publisher might wish otherwise!) whereas under true work-for-hire all preliminary work is also owned by the employer.

 

[Jim Hague]

Copyright query - I think I'm right that US "work for hire" doctrine is that the employer is default first owner of copyright in work by employees. But you're not an employee, you're a freelancer. I think what you're saying is that you signed a contract which transferred your copyright in the work to the publisher? Practically it may have the same result in USA, but it's an important distinction in other jurisdictions - eg if you transferred copyright you could still sue for infringement of the moral rights in your work in certain other jurisdictions; say if Gez publishes a derogatory treatment of your work in France.
Most importantly it also means you likely retain copyright in your pre-publication preliminary drafts of your work (much as the publisher might wish otherwise!) whereas under true work-for-hire all preliminary work is also owned by the employer.

Good question! The answer is that the contract states that the work done under contract for AEG is property of AEG, with the exception of OGC stuff, which is quite a bit. If you cruise over to the World's Largest Dungeon in Play thread, I've posted a 'cut' piece of material that's fully OGC. It's rough stuff, even for a first-time writer, but...

Given the success of the WLD - as much a result of a vocal and enthusiastic fanbase trying it out as the marketing or the product, which I think's fairly great, even ego aside - I think the argument that the original poster made is moot. I can point at this one book out of literally hundreds of quality products out there and say it's got enough content for 2+ years of play. It's a dungeon with story, an ecology that makes sense within that story, and on top of that it's modular. I don't get one thin dime from promoting it, but I do so because I think it's a good product. It might not be for everyone, and that pricetag can be a bit of a shock...but the number of adventures you get (assuming only 1 plotline per Region is followed), it comes out to something like 2.95 or so per adventure. And you get color maps, monsters, NPCs...you can't beat that with a stick. and that's just a single product.

Nobody's throat is getting cut, slowly or otherwise. And despite Joshua Dyal's assertations to the contrary, plenty of folks are still playing in the dungeon. Roleplaying in it, even...and if you don't believe me, Joshua, go pick up WLD and look at Region H - not one I wrote, but one that is almost exclusively story and plot and NPC interaction.

 

[S'mon]

Good question! The answer is that the contract states that the work done under contract for AEG is property of AEG

Interesting - in UK a court would probably interpret that term to mean that you sold your copyright in the _published_ (or paid-for) work to the publisher; but I think at least some US courts might treat a contract for commissioned work (ie the contract is signed before the work is written) as you being an employee of the publisher for this purpose (there was a case re Playboy on this AIR). It may be even fuzzier than that - I'm not a US lawyer but I teach IP law in the UK & I like to try to understand the current US approach/culture, which seems to have changed a lot since the '80s/early '90s, when publishers generally accepted that freelancers owned their copyright unless they sold it to the publisher.

 

[Hussar]

I find it somewhat ironic that, in a thread bemoaning the lack of published modules, there's an ad running at the top of the screen advertising Malavok's 5th anniversary free module - Looking Glass Deep.

Good grief. Not enough modules out there? How many do you need?

 

[jmucchiello]

I disagree. If writing good fluff was easy there would be a lot more good novels and stories on the market. Writing BAD fluff is easy, just like writing bad crunch is easy. And even then most people do not have the discipline to sit down and write.

For a fairly large percentage of the population talking about writing is about one million times easier than sitting down and writing. Most people, when push comes to shove, don't have the mental state necessary to write -- and they're definitely unprepared to write for extended periods of time.

I don't disagree with how hard it is to write in general but in the context of this thread, the question was which is EASIER fluff or crunch. My contention was that the fluff was easier than the crunch. Writing compelling fluff is more natural than writing rules that are compelling to read.

 

[jmucchiello]

And I try to hold the craft of adventure design/writing to the same sort of high standards, precisely because I care so much about the hobby. It bugs me that for all the technical advances we've made in the hobby and for all the higher standards of professionalism that the hobby evidences, that there aren't more good examples of the craft out there.

Ok, let's back up. You say there are no good adventures being written for 3E and yet you hold the writing of classic modules and something to strive toward? Have you read a classic module lately?

But I don't want to debate that. I want to ask you for some information so perhaps we can point you to a module for 3E that you would like. Please name a classic module that you think all new modules should aspire to be and explain WHY that module is so good. Since you put such a value on construction of writing you should have no trouble explaining what a module must have and what new modules lack. Do not use the words fluff or crunch in your response.