Why I don't write FRP articles any more

[Reynard]

I saw a D&D-themed edition of Clue the other day.

While stuff like this reinforces the brand I'm not sure that it turns people on to RPGs

But I think reinforcing the brand is something that needs to happen in order for the next gen to even bother. I mean, the kid that remembers the jolly good times he had playing the D&D Board Game and the fun of watching the Cartoon network D&D:The Animated Series is certainly going to be more likely to pick up a few polyhedrons than a kid whose only exposure is [the Simpsons'] Comic Book Guy in his "Kiss the Dungeon Master" T-shirt.

That said, brand recognition only goes so far and since we are here, dreading the decline of our favorite hobby, we have to do soemthing about it. Go out and spread the word!

(Or, you know, teach your brothers kids to play.)

 

[Reynard]

Oops. Double post.

 

[Eternalknight]

For those interested, a list of his articles is here:

http://www.aeolia.net/dragondex/articles-author.html#p

You'll have to scroll down a bit.

 

[Numion]

Yeah it's called Intellectual Property rights in the real world. You sign a waiver that basically says "if any idea I have is in the realm of relevant business space for the company I work for, and I create some work of intellectual nature while employed by said company, that company owns the rights to that intellectual property."

Excactly. Of course the irony is that those who actually have the skills to warrant such whining will get paid. But for a freelance writing for a fantasy game magazine, its just preposterious to expect to profit from past publishings, not to mention thinking they're getting screwed for such a deal.

3 options:

1)Don't cry over the hours you don't get paid for, like 95% of all the people.

2) Be actually so good that you do get paid for all the hours.

3) Work like rest of the d20 writers and pay your dues. You're not that good, apparently.

Sorry, but that's how the world works. It's just asinine to think that the norm should be that every writers stuff is so great that they could profit from for the rest of their lives. 90% of everything is crap. Do the math.

 

[BonesMcCoy]

Hate to break this to you, Bones, but the average writer working in the fantasy fiction market makes less than a full-time freelancer in the RPG industry.

Oh well. Shows what I know. Thanks for setting me straight.

 

[Glyfair]

Personally I'm old enough to remember 15 years ago, when magazine & comics publishers generally _did not_ try to force authors to hand over all rights to a work.

I suspect that a lot of the reason for this came from the Dragon Magazine archive. When the articles were created, this wasn't even something they considered would be a possibility, so contracts didn't cover it. When they put out the product, a number of authors complained that their content was reprinted without their permission. Doing it this way allows reprint collections to be done in the future.

Now, there are probably more elegant ways that would find a middle ground. For the most part, though, this is the most simple. Paizo obviously doesn't have any problems finding writers. Some might argue the quality, but I could see as many that would argue the opposite.

 

[S'mon]

The standard recommendation I've seen to academics is - if you transfer the copyright in the published work, remember you still have copyright in all the pre-publication versions! So you can republish essentially the same article 100% legally, should you wish to do so. Of course RPG publishers might not like this & you might not get any more work in the industry, but that would be equally true even if you just licensed the rights.

 

[S'mon]

NB: this doesn't apply to genuine "work for hire", only to work you create then sell. In the UK it's "work done in the course of employment", so freelancers always own the initial copyright, but judging by Playboy vs Frena the US "work for hire" doctrine is far broader and can potentially include freelancers, where the company hires the freelancer on a contract to create Book X. That seems reasonably fair to me.