Lighting Cigars with Dollar Bills
If there is a guidebook to being an RPG freelancer, no one gave me a copy. Here are a few things I’ve managed to pick up along the way.
Contracts. There are two major contract types used by RPG companies these days. The first, and the most common, is work-for-hire. The publisher hires you to write X words by Y date. If you achieve both, you receive compensation and likely complementary copies for what you wrote. This is a flat-fee deal. So if you overwrite, the words are a gift. Once you turn over, the publisher owes you nothing further (unless you secure a deal that also pays additional compensations, such as royalties with or without a minimum sales threshold). As part of this process, most publishers expect you to forfeit your rights to your text.
Work for hire is your safest bet. Most gaming books don’t sell in huge numbers. Some don’t even sell in small numbers. So even if you’ve written the greatest, bestest, hugest gaming book, you’re going to want to have some assurance of cash on the front end or the only thing you’ll have to show for your work is the book itself (if you get even that).
The other option is the royalty gig. Two companies snookered me early in my career. They promised lucrative royalties for my work. One even went as high as 25%. I was a schmuck and didn’t read the fine print where it said the money flowed after everyone else gets paid. For the RPG writer, royalties are both a hassle since you have to wait for reports on units moved and a poor investment since you will probably never recoup the time you invested. I know this because I have 300,000 words in print for which I have never been paid. Not a cent. One sent me comp copies. The other I had to walk up to their booth at a show and say, “Hey, I wrote that,” before I got one copy. If you’re a big name or you like working for free, royalties may be good for you. Off-hand, I can think of about three working game designers who can pull off the royalty gig and make money. They are the exception.
Rights. I hinted at this above, but it bears mentioning again. When you write something in this business and sell it to the publisher, most times your rights to those words are part of the sale. This means once you hand the manuscript over, it’s no longer yours. The publisher owns them and that’s okay, because you have or will receive a paycheck. This is the way it is. It seems to me that the best jobs involve IPs I don’t own. Even if I could keep the words, I’m not sure how I could use them after stripping out anything related to the IP.
Payment. Game design just isn’t that valuable. There are more competent designers every year and fewer projects demanding them. While I did escape the trenches, it wasn’t that long ago when I was writing for 2 cents a word. I know some folks out there are still doing it and may even work for less. Think about how long it takes to write 40,000 words. Your payment? Eight hundred bucks. And that assumes the publisher doesn’t go bankrupt, disappear, or just fail to pay. Yes, it’s a crummy deal, but when you’re trying to string together twelve months of work, you take what you can get. The good money out there is hard to get since competition is so fierce. If you want to do this for a living, you’re going to have to suck it up and work for little or nothing to establish yourself as a competent and reliable designer.
Ego. This is the most important bit of wisdom I’ve picked up. Check your ego at the door. The internet never fails to let you know when you’ve screwed up. A bad review, a thread about a problematic mechanic with your name on it, and the general dickishness found on certain message boards can all suck the fun out of working in the business. I know better, but I still read anything that relates to my projects and I feel every nasty comment and every cutting critique. I try to use these responses to improve my work, but there’s nothing like getting a performance review from the entire world each and every time you do publish a word.
Another key is to just let your baby go. You might feel your words are gold. You may have produced the greatest mechanics or the best story the world has ever read, but your publisher is under no obligation to use them as written. Even in the small companies other eyes fall on your material. And with them come new ideas and necessary changes. The developer examines your work with a critical eye and will and does change things as needed. You might not agree with the changes, but suck it up. You sold the words and what happens to them after the fact isn’t up to you anymore. Most times, the developer is right and helps you dodge a bullet from bad mechanics. The feat might not work. The spell might be too complicated. The class simply doesn’t fit with the product for which you wrote it. I’ve never really had a problem when a developer does his or her job. I was one once upon a time. It’s a tough and often thankless job where credit stays with the writer even if the developer had to rewrite every mechanical nugget in the book.
The developer isn’t the only one involved. You have an editor who’s job it is to massage your text for clarity and pick out all the typos. If you’re lucky, you’ll also get a style editor who will catch the bad sentences that creep inand clean it up for you. Layout may remove entire sections to fit the text onto the page, while other writers might come in at the end to reduce or eliminate white space. By the time you see the finished product, it might not resemble anything you wrote.
Accept this. I’ve said it before, but I’ll repeat it. You sold your words. The developer, editor, lead designer, layout person, producer, and all the other folks who handle your manuscript are never under any obligation to consult you before making changes. This is how it is. If you don’t like, self-publish. Realize, there aren’t riches there either and you’re probably going to be worse off in the end.
I’ve encountered a few people who get their feathers ruffled when they discover something with their name on it bears little resemblance to what they turned over. There are a lot of reasons why this happens and some of them I’ve hit on above. But it may be the case that the work you did simply wasn’t right for the project or was so problematic that it had to be reworked from the ground up. Contact your lead designer or developer. Find out what you did wrong and open your mind. Don’t argue. Don’t debate. Listen, learn, and grow. Even if you disagree, you’ll at least understand what happened so you won’t do it again.
Sometimes text you worked on was cut from the book and languishes on a hard drive until another product comes down the pipe where it will fit. This is normal. Count yourself lucky when you get credit for the work you did that appears inside.
In the end, the writer is an important but not an all-important part of the process of bringing a book or article to print. The writer creates the baby, but he or she doesn’t carry it to term. That job falls to the editors and developers, the art directors and the layout folks, the brand people and the producers. When the child is born, just be grateful when the baby still has your eyes.
Final Thoughts. You might be asking by now why I bother. I’ve been burned by publishers, screwed by designers, and have hit every pothole in the road to success. The thing is I do it because I love games. I love writing. I love playing with my imagination. Incredibly talented people work in this field, people whose creativity and talent, understanding and innovation never fail to surprise me. I don’t do this for the money and I don’t do it for the fame. I do it because I can earn enough to live, work with friends and brilliant peers, and do my part to keep alive a hobby that has entertained me for twenty-five years.
Comments
Powered by Facebook Comments
I am just relieved to know industry giants, like you, are confirming what I thought to be true. If one is looking to become a billionaire off of table-top game design, they’re in for some suckage
Ha! I would hardly call myself an industry giant, but thanks for that.
I do freelance illustration, layout & graphic design for RPGs, and everything you wrote here applies to that as well. Every time my wife wonders why I’m up all night laying out an adventure, tweaking monster stat blocks, or creating a holy symbol for a god or crest for a noble house for little monetary compensation, I tell her exactly what you wrote in that last paragraph.
Rob, industry mogul?
@Rob: All true, all true. I loves me a bit of roleplay, and it’s nice to contribute as and when you can. Work for pocket-money, that’s how I view it. I let my wife earn all the real money.
@Matt: Did you just call Rob fat?
They say you’re not a “real” freelancer until you’ve had all these problems. I guess I’m real, but I wish it weren’t true. The truest part is the last paragraph, though. If you don’t love it, you’re going to hate it.
They say you aren’t a real freelancer until you’ve experienced all these things. That means I’m not entirely real, but real enough. Good times!
The truest part, though, is doing it for the love of it. If you don’t love it, you’re going to hate it.
Oh, and Rob, my ego wants a chat with your ego. Seriously, though, although one might “suck it up” after selling the words, it is true that developers and editors can overstep of make changes for poor reasons. It might be your job, then, to critique the changes if the environment allows for that.
A lot of times, usually due to time budgets, it doesn’t.
All I know is you’re still the man I’d turn to for the best horrific Fantasy RPG designs and demons. Well I mean yeah Erik Mona and James Jacobs are good too, and your former boss Chris Pramas is pretty alright. But seriously, when I think of the best modules in this 4th edition world, Robert J Schwalb is still a name that says golden to me.
Wow, thanks man!
Hey I just call it as I see it Rob. Still wish you’d do some Pathfinder RPG though.
This is a dispatch from the front, with bloody fingerprints and smudges of mud on it to prove its authenticity. To ignore this would be perilous.
I’d only suggest getting royalties PLUS an advance that would cover the first print run, but possibly I’m in a better position than most to ask for such things. Still, I believe writers and artists should always own even a small bit of what they create, if at all possible.
Nice article, Rob.
Well said.
Thanks for the words of explanation and support for the hardworking developers and editors out there, who are often the subject of either ignorance or frustration. I love my writers, but I love the editing and development crew too. Your advice is well-said and practical.
Thanks for the article – it helps a lot to hear from more established, experienced writers and designers. Just getting over having to let go of my most recent rpg ‘baby’, and it sucks.
Very nice, Rob. This type of shared information is really needed in the industry and its fan base. The vast majority of gamers don’t understand how a product is made, how an RPG company of any size functions, nor how gaming stores function. We need more articles like this, because they improve the industry. I place this blog alongside the dated but useful series on various gaming companies: http://www.rpg.net/columns/list-column.phtml?colname=briefhistory
Thanks for the insight.
Great stuff, as always!
Wow…thank you. I could have written this myself actually. I saw my life flashing before my eyes! I was a romantic who thought that profit sharing was actually betting on my writing ability and as a result I didn’t get a red cent. But as you said in your last paragraph I love games, love writing and love creating.
I worked 7 or 8 years as a miniature designers and it pretty much all applies. I’d say the vast majority, if not ALL the peoples I’ve met in the industry do what they do because they love it. Obviously, loving what you do means that the boss is going to take advantage of that and give you peanuts. To be fair, most gaming company do not make a whole lot of money, but still.
What other job allows you to make people dream though? Dream doctor? That doesn’t even exist
Great words, I wish I could have said it this well. Like a lot of is, I am on both sides of this door and believe me I know it hard to make a living at it and to let go of your “baby.” I am going to have to send more people this way. Thanks.
Thanks for writing this, Rob. It’s all so true. I get occasional emails from aspiring writers and designers wanting to know how to make it big in RPGs, and this is pretty much what I tell them. Now I can just send them to your article.
I wish you had written this ten years ago. There’s more than one starry-eyed amateur writer of my acquaintance who thinks he’s going to become the next Gary Gygax. Oh, what I’d give for a time machine so I could print this and go back and hand a copy to each and every one of ‘em. Alas, we’ve lost contact so I can’t even email them a link. :/
Good stuff Rob. I would only add more warnings on the “not getting paid at all” part. No matter how the payment was to be structured or what the rate of compensation, freelancers get burned. Worse, it’s the struggling ones, the ones who grab 2/word because it’s what’s available, that most often get nothing. Best approach is to get into projects to work with people you respect and admire and those who have been around the industry for a time. You make contacts and have the opportunity to prove your ability and reliability. That’s should be your bottom line, particularly if you are starting out. If a published product with your name in it results from the project, you’ve gotten a step up. If you get paid at some point, now you’ve gotten all you can ask for. Realize that the third step can’t be your primary motivation, however. If so, you are asking for a world of disappointment in the game industry.
Eventually a wonderful put up, a second one particular bites the dirt!! I totally absolutely adore your blog page.
I Give Up
I had thought I wanted to write stories. I have always liked telling tales and entertaining people, and contrary to my detractors, not all my stories are based on scatological and sexual escapades that have gone awry. After talking with you about publishing and writing over the past year, especially after seeing what you have gone through as you struggled to become a well known game designer, I now realize I do not have what it takes to be a true writer of any genre.
True, I have had short stories published in journals, but those are on the way out, and I doubt anybody has read them at all. I did win awards, but the hell does that actually mean? They are no different than the simple awards given in high schools to get students to perform, or as “attaboys” received in the work place.
I am currently working on a book, that accursed re-telling of Snow White, but I have no real idea why I persist in trying to complete it. Ultimately, I think I keep trying to finish the story because I put so much time and effort into the creation of it, and I simply cannot walk away. I will probably self publish and try to get Hastings to do a consignment deal with it and maybe unload the remainder on EBay.
I will then do my damndest to find a job that my worthless English degree might assist me in getting, hopefully not at a restaurant, teaching or back on a loading dock again, and try to have a savings account and a home before I go tits up.
I am done with the delusion of being an author. I listened to my professors, pretentious English majors and idiots at coffee houses, and now I have to face reality. Life sucks, I suck as a writer and the publishing industry is a monolithic entity that allows people like Stephanie Myers to get published, and genuinely talented writers are ignored, or slaved into contracts to grind out B list shit till they become hackneyed shells of their former selves. I know, run on sentence, but so what? “Well shit the bed” as Rook would say. At least if I can get a job with state government, I will have a decent retirement.
[...] Schwalb (@rjschwalb) on being an RPG freelancer: http://www.robertjschwalb.com/2010/08/lighting-cigars-with-dollar-bills/ [...]
I must point out my affection for your kindness for folks that should have guidance on this theme. Your very own dedication to passing the solution all over became astonishingly important and have really encouraged many people like me to realize their objectives. The insightful facts implies much to me and still more to my fellow workers. Thanks a ton; from each one of us.
I’m really enjoying the theme/design of your blog. Do you ever run into any web browser compatibility problems? A number of my blog readers have complained about my blog not operating correctly in Explorer but looks great in Firefox. Do you have any solutions to help fix this problem?