John Berry, of Bedroom Wall Press (producer of Hulks and Horrors) has recently announced his retirement from RPG writing (http://www.bedroomwallpress.com/2014/12/yes-im-retired.html)(also, he's in Finland. What is it with non-finnish-sounding RPG writing guys living in Finland??).
Among the reasons he cited for Quitting Forever was that "the OSR community had become increasingly hostile to self- and public-funded works like mine".
Do you think that's true? Is the success of the OSR and the rise in fancy more professional OSR products actually meaning that the very small-press guy just isn't wanted anymore?
I think gamers in general have always been a bit hostile to self publishers and as such, the growth in the OSR's popularity has brought much of that anti-homebrew bias with it.
I think there can be some hostility, but no more than anywhere else. You just have to be prepared that the game you designed might not be exactly in the same style as someone's favorite way of playing, and be ready for them to "OMG I'm gonna let you know you suck!" react to it.
Those types of reactions are true for OSR, modern, or whatever. The only difference is that the OSR has people with 30 years of playing one way, so their opinions on the "one true way" is more ingrained, I guess.
For me, the biggest challenge is conveying what "old school" is, and means. I actually feel like I have to put a forward in that explains what it means to me and my group as we played, and how that impacts how the game is designed. I know our style (we started in '81) might not be exactly like someone else's, but that doesn't make it any less "old school".
That's J Arcane isn't it?
Wondered why i hadn't seen him around for a while.
Shame. Take it easy mate.
Honestly I wouldn't know who is self-publishing and who is a wholly owned subsidiary of Acme. Can't be bothered to check as I only care if I like the product. For instance, there's a really cool WWI fighter pilot game by a guy I see on this forum now and then, Clash something-or-other, that is a heap of fun. It looks a little amateurish but that's part of the charm as you can tell the producer loves the product. I assume it's small press or self-published. On the other hand, I see a lot of slick-looking but useless (to me) crap from "major" companies like Wizard of the Coast clogging the shelves when I venture into a games shop. So what difference should it make who published it? Is that really a thing?
Sorry to see him go and best wishes on his new course.
Quote from: RPGPundit;806107(also, he's in Finland. What is it with non-finnish-sounding RPG writing guys living in Finland??).
That must be a recent development. I've actually met him when he was living in Portland. As with most people, he's a decent guy in person who is more hostile and defensive online (like me lol).
But really, no one should expect to make a living as an indie small time game designer. Lord knows I easily spend twice as much in costs (freelancers, etc) than I do in sales. Hell, I sold almost 1,500 copies of Compact Heroes, which is a huge success by indie standards (physical non-pdf product), and after costs that was still only a couple thousand net profit for the year.
No, indie publishers do it for the love of the game. Or they should.
I don't really follow the game publishing industry, but I would have said the opposite. Half the OSR things I own are from individual's Lulu pages or small press companies that are one or two employees past 'self publishing'.
Unfortunately, there seems to be a thing with fans in this hobby that just live to eat their own, shit out what's left, wallow in it because they have nothing better to do then whine because they are covered in shit. I don't get it.
There's Kent. There's the 1 or 3 guys behind Your Dungeon Is Suck, althoough I probably wouldn't count them as OSR. There's a couple non-OSR people who freelance for the big publishers who also regularly lash out at self-publishers. Other than that, I can't think of any hostility towards self-publishers.
There is, however, a growing hostility towards Kickstarters and the like, because so many of these failed to deliver as promised.
It's a shame that a bunch of doifuses at one or more fora may have deleted J's official promotional efforts.
But I don't think it's so much "the OSR" (as a whole) being "hostile to self-publishers", as it is garden-variety Internet tribalism bullshit.
In any case, J, if you're following this — best of luck.
I don't doubt it's out there if you look for it but I haven't noticed any 'hostility'... heck, most of what I buy these days are from the little guys putting stuff out of their garage... 'zines and blog collections and such. Odd things I spot on RPGNow. Stuff that's likely ephemeral and I might not be able to get a few years from now.
I am NOT a fan of Kickstarter projects though, and generally wait till they finish to purchase the product if I'm interested.
Most of what I read regarding RPGs is on this forum or various blogs... so maybe I'm hanging out in the wrong places.
There's always been a crowd that favored fancy looking books... 'professional' products... more for looking than playing. When I do occasionally visit TBP I often notice them fawning over how 'beautiful' some new book is... but that's never been the sort of thing to attract my interest.
J will be back. It's in his blood.
It's funny that the hottest and most vicious competition in the industry takes place in the part where there is the least to be gained from it.
Quote from: The Butcher;806124But I don't think it's so much "the OSR" (as a whole) being "hostile to self-publishers", as it is garden-variety Internet tribalism bullshit.
Yeah. The internet in general has been getting steadily nastier for a few years now.
I liked the sound of Hulks and Horrors, I even backed the original IDGG campaign that failed, but I just lost interest in it after that.
Translation: "It's less of a hit to my ego to claim 'My Stuff Isn't Selling Because They're Out To Get Us Indie Publishers!!!' than 'My Stuff Isn't Selling Because Not Enough People Like It.'"
There's always been a place for indie publishers in this hobby, since Day One, their business has always been marginal, and there are always a handful of people who hate the stuff they write. The difference between then and now is that instead of several hundred people reading about How Much Your Stuff Sucks And This Other Indie Game Is So Much Better in Alarums & Excursions, several thousand are reading about How Much Your Stuff Sucks And This Other Indie Game Is So Much Better on obscure Interweb boards.
Never mind, of course, that the great majority of indie games, to the degree they're noticed at all, have ephemeral acclaim at best. Ten years ago, the indie crowd on RPGnet were having wet dreams about Feng Shui, Tri-Stat and Dogs In The Vineyard, and to hear them talk, you couldn't be much of a gamer if you weren't into them.
How many people are playing them now? (Hell, the author of DITV doesn't merely live in my town, he's a parishioner at my church. And I just found this out when I looked up the publisher for DITV, an hour ago. The local FLGS doesn't carry his game.)
Meanwhile, there are hundreds of thousands of gamers who don't know, don't care, and never noticed in the first place.
All my stuff is self-published, has amatuerish layout and uses public domain art, is available for free in pdf, and not-really-promoted anywhere, and yet it still sells in quantities that astonish me.
YMMV
Quote from: Matt;806114For instance, there's a really cool WWI fighter pilot game by a guy I see on this forum now and then, Clash something-or-other, that is a heap of fun. It looks a little amateurish but that's part of the charm as you can tell the producer loves the product. I assume it's small press or self-published.
I would be that clash-something-or-other, and thanks! Very glad you enjoyed it! It is Small Press - the difference between Small Press and Self-Published being in my mind putting out multiple games over a period of time. :D
My games are not OSR, though they are entirely traditional in design. My games at best sell in the low thousands, more usually in the hundreds of copies. I have been doing this since 2002, and have a lot of games out there, but I do not make any money at all off them, at all. The money gets plowed back into research materials and a bit of advertising, programs for making them, and paying people who write for me. I do it because I love designing games, that's all.
-clash
I think there is an element that won't give time of day for the lower budget stuff, be it because there is no or crap art, or it's small, self contained and that's your lot. That is the main thing I think about self published stuff - there's mountains of it, and beyond the core rules there's usually very little follow up.
Give the core rules (or a lite version) away for free but have a series of adventures come out, sourcebooks, maps etc, and people might be more inclined to take a look.
Quote from: APN;806161I think there is an element that won't give time of day for the lower budget stuff, be it because there is no or crap art, or it's small, self contained and that's your lot. That is the main thing I think about self published stuff - there's mountains of it, and beyond the core rules there's usually very little follow up.
That's funny because I find my prejudice in the opposite direction... being turned off by huge phonebooks dense with full-color art and graphic flourishes and assuming there will be a dozen more just like it as the system bloats out for maximum cash intake. Too many pretty pages and I become suspicious that it's there to cover up empty words.
Instead I can take those dimes and buy a buttload of stuff by different authors with widely varying approaches and ideas I can pull from.
It's too bad he couldn't make the money he wanted off it, but I don't know of any "OSR forums". This place is the closest I can think of. There are some TSR D&D forums, that have always been pretty generous about putting out space for OSR advertising, but most OSR space is on blogs or G+. I don't ever recall any of his games being trashed on the TSR D&D sites.
If he was trying to advertise on ENworld or BP, maybe? I don't pay attention to those.
Wait, didn't he set all his products to "Pay What You Want" this summer? I'm not sure that's the best way to make money off your products.
I've published a short OSR module as PWYW on RPGNow. 124 downloads, 7 paid (with a suggested price of 50 cents), netting me a total of $2.20 after RPGNow's cut.
(As it was a trial run for a much longer module I've been working on, I'm not really disappointed, but I was hoping to be able to get enough to buy some stock art and thus make about $10.)
But I do think like everything else, having a well known brand or being a well known author probably helps more than anything.
Quote from: JeremyR;806175I've published a short OSR module as PWYW on RPGNow. 124 downloads, 7 paid (with a suggested price of 50 cents), netting me a total of $2.20 after RPGNow's cut.
I'm always a bit dismayed when putting in a couplefew bucks on a PWYW and being told my payment was 'above average'... like, I'm cheap but I'm not THAT cheap.
There's just a whole lot of negative people out there with nothing to do with their free time but "contribute" their negativity.
I don't think "the OSR" (whatever that means today) is hostile to self-publishers. I think hackles can rise when somebody seems to be spam-posting their stuff to a hundred overlapping communities, which may be the sort of reaction J encountered when marketing his games.
I read, reviewed, and enjoyed 'Hulks & Horrors'. I was looking forward to more in that line. Arcana Rising looks interesting, and Heaven's Shadow seems like something that the mini-six crowd would be all over. I don't know what the issue was - too many games instead of pushing a line for one? No idea.
It looks like J may have expected to make enough money in writing games to replace a real job. If that was the case, that was a bad choice. Even in Finland, apparently.
Is the online RPG environment a toxic hellhole? Yeah, sure. But that's a reason to disengage from the hellhole parts, not to give up a hobby you love.
I don't know why he was 'taking a loss' each month. That seems the wrong way to go about it. But I wish him the best and hope he gets things straight and rediscovers his love of rpg-writing.
Quote from: VectorSigma;806182It looks like J may have expected to make enough money in writing games to replace a real job. If that was the case, that was a bad choice.
This is the bare truth. If you're asking money for your self-published stuff, you might make beer money on it if your stuff is moderately popular.
Which is fine, I think. You just need to not have dolla-signs dancing in your head about the endeavor. Set your sights low enough and you'll be pleasantly surprised when the money lands in your Paypal account each month.
The phrase "core rules" shows how fooled the consumer has become. Let's sell a game but hold back a bunch of add-ons we can sell later rather than give you all you need in the box/book to play in perpetuity.
Remember when there was just "the rules," none of this "core book" nonsense?
If people pulled his advertisements from forums where other advertisements are allowed, that's just plain shitty.
Dunno about "hostile to self-publishers" or kickstarter people. Maybe "hostile to those who aren't proven and popular stars like Sine Nomine, maybe, but I don't travel much to OSR sites or circles, so couldn't say.
Yeah, the internet is becoming a wasteland of "kill the enemy and erase their existence from memory" on every single topic there is. Politically, J was always kinda on the "Slaying Orcs is Colonialism", "Dark Side of the Hobby" side of things, so he takes his isms with him wherever he goes, if you get my meaning.
Still, I thought his stuff was cool, sucks that he couldn't live on it, but hardly anyone can, really. Hopefully when he starts making fat stacks as a programmer he can afford to revisit his passion for game design.
If people were deleting his posts that's pretty fucked up. The idea that you can make a living nowadays as an RPG self-publisher. Not to be rude but, that is silly. I'm curious if perhaps this position he has come to (at least partially), has to do with the VAT tax non-sense the European Union has put into motion.
Quote from: misterguignol;806185This is the bare truth. If you're asking money for your self-published stuff, you might make beer money on it if your stuff is moderately popular.
Which is fine, I think. You just need to not have dolla-signs dancing in your head about the endeavor. Set your sights low enough and you'll be pleasantly surprised when the money lands in your Paypal account each month.
this is truth. I recall a spat he and I got into a while back over one of his KS projects that wasn't even written yet. His position was that he needed money to eat. My position was that creating a KS to raise funds to eat and not use those funds to create the project was asking for disaster
when I get my monthly deposit from DTRPG, I don't use any for my regular expenses. I use it as, "here's my freelancer funds I can spend this month" ;-)
Quote from: RPGPundit;806107John Berry, of Bedroom Wall Press (producer of Hulks and Horrors) has recently announced his retirement from RPG writing (http://www.bedroomwallpress.com/2014/12/yes-im-retired.html)(also, he's in Finland. What is it with non-finnish-sounding RPG writing guys living in Finland??).
Among the reasons he cited for Quitting Forever was that "the OSR community had become increasingly hostile to self- and public-funded works like mine".
Do you think that's true? Is the success of the OSR and the rise in fancy more professional OSR products actually meaning that the very small-press guy just isn't wanted anymore?
No I would not say in general the OSR is hostile to self publishers. I would say that you need to be careful about the promotion of kickstarters due to the several spectacular well known failures. And that if you want to make a living off it, you need to do what James Raggi and Dan Proctor do and put the legwork in as far as self promotion, and distribution. Dan and James have differing approaches it is useful to compare and contrast them to develop your own style.
But nothing is going to save you if what you are pushing is ultimately a niche or specialty interest.
I am amazed that John Berry was trying to make a living off of his games. While there is nothing wrong with his stuff, he himself rarely popped up on my radar which is not true of several other I know of trying to make a full time income.
While I am not particularly special in regards to what is popular. I do follow the general news sites and blogs and those who make a major push appear regularly in the news.
Quote from: Sacrosanct;806229My position was that creating a KS to raise funds to eat and not use those funds to create the project was asking for disaster
I can see how a number of creators can come to that (horribly unbusiness-like) conclusion he came to, and maybe it fits better with something like Patreon rather than Kickstarter.
Ill miss J Arcane. But I dont think anyone's owed a living off of this hobby. Its a hobby for a reason.
Are there even any large corporate OSR publishers to begin with? I don't think the OSR can be called hostile to self- and public-funded works when that's basically all the published side of the OSR is composed of. I know my last gaming purchases have been a kickstarter, a number of titles from lulu, and Red and Pleasant Land. LotFP is the largest house there only by virtue of publishing multiple authors, but they're still a one man operation when it comes to boxing and shipping, as I'm finding out from my wait for my hard-copy. :)
There are a few larger companies for OSR stuff apart of Raggi.
During the d20 heydays Goodman Games has constantly been in the Top 10 of the C&GR RPG sales with their DCC adventure series.
Not sure how DCC RPG itself does by comparison, but they are definitively a serious company that allows some to make a living of it.
Troll Lord Games has also been in the C&GR top 10 with Castles & Crusades during the 00s. Not sure what role C&C plays today with so many more alternatives for OSR play floating around the web, but it definitively deserves mention for its role and commercial success during the early OSR days.
Kenzer should probably also be mentioned due to Hackmaster as part of their portfolio.
Quote from: Matt;806188The phrase "core rules" shows how fooled the consumer has become. Let's sell a game but hold back a bunch of add-ons we can sell later rather than give you all you need in the box/book to play in perpetuity.
Remember when there was just "the rules," none of this "core book" nonsense?
I don't think it's nonsense at all. It's pretty damn sensible, in fact, to have a split between "These are the minimum rules you need to play the game" and "These are a bunch MORE rules if that's the way you like to swing."
The problem isn't with the companies. The problem's with people who think they need Every Single Rule and Every Single Rulebook in order to have a fun game, many of whom subsequently whine about rules-heavy.
Quote from: Ravenswing;806317I don't think it's nonsense at all. It's pretty damn sensible, in fact, to have a split between "These are the minimum rules you need to play the game" and "These are a bunch MORE rules if that's the way you like to swing."
The problem isn't with the companies. The problem's with people who think they need Every Single Rule and Every Single Rulebook in order to have a fun game, many of whom subsequently whine about rules-heavy.
It's a bit of both, depending on the game. Crippleware is a pretty common tactic. To this day, I've yet to come across as comprehensive a single volume rpg as WHFRP 1e. Its a standard it doesn't seem like anyone's even trying to achieve. And WH 2nd edition shows the modern approach, where the core rulebook + 4/5 supplements didnt equal the info in the original book. Icons is kinda pathetic compared to its predecessor, even if its about the same size or larger. And D&D has been riding the multi-book train for decades.
Quote from: Ravenswing;806317I don't think it's nonsense at all. It's pretty damn sensible, in fact, to have a split between "These are the minimum rules you need to play the game" and "These are a bunch MORE rules if that's the way you like to swing."
I think it works well with something like GURPS... "Here's some basic rules that can be aimed at any situation... and here's some sourcebooks that will help you fine tune your choices." Despite the huge library of GURPS books I never felt like it had rules bloat or subscribed to the splatbook approach to publishing.
That vs. something like Pathfinder or Exalted which just seem like impenetrable forests of additional rules with no clear map.
QuoteThe problem isn't with the companies. The problem's with people who think they need Every Single Rule and Every Single Rulebook in order to have a fun game, many of whom subsequently whine about rules-heavy.
Something GURPS gets saddled with... and from what I've seen Pathfinder (more Paizo's fault though).
I really wish they'd trim the GURPS core rules back to what they were in third edition. Don't get me wrong, the basic set is a great reference work but it's not so great for learning the system.
Quote from: David Johansen;806352I really wish they'd trim the GURPS core rules back to what they were in third edition. Don't get me wrong, the basic set is a great reference work but it's not so great for learning the system.
GURPS Lite, or Ultra-Lite for learning/intro... then dip into the big book... or not.
Having used GURPS Lite with newbies a fair bit over the last three years I hate to say that it's an even worse point of entry than the basic set. It's phenomenally condensed and as such dense.
I really, really wish GURPS For Dummies had been a mass market GURPS Medium.
Quote from: Ronin;806202If people were deleting his posts that's pretty fucked up. The idea that you can make a living nowadays as an RPG self-publisher. Not to be rude but, that is silly.
As unnatural as the idea sounds, it's possible. My sales for this year were $32K net profit through DTRPG, another $9K or so from Bundles of Holding, and post-expense profit of about $29K from Kickstarters. Taxes are brutal, yes, but they'd be less brutal if I weren't also holding down a day job. If you can't live on $70K pre-tax, you're trying to write indie RPGs in Manhattan.
The trick is that last year came after three earlier years of incessant, bibliomanic production. None of my books sell in remarkable numbers, but I have enough of them that every time I snare a new reader I've got a bunch of other books they can buy if they like what they see. You can't sell a book you haven't written (Kickstarters notwithstanding), and this is one point where many indie publishers tend to fall down. They have a great idea, but then they
stop. Unless your one great idea happens to be Dungeon World, you will not go far unless you
maintain production.
If you can maintain a constant stream of good-quality books for years on end, keep a stranglehold on your production overhead, and watch the market carefully to identify what the buying public wants next, you really can make a living wage at this. It just requires an obscene amount of work and absolutely unrelenting production.
Quote from: SineNomine;806596None of my books sell in remarkable numbers, but I have enough of them that every time I snare a new reader I've got a bunch of other books they can buy if they like what they see.
This is what got me. Bought the bundle, now I have every SWN book in PDF and backed your last kickstarter and I'm watching my funds to see when I can afford the print versions for all the SWN books. They're all interesting on their own merit and it doesn't hurt I could pull things from any of your books and they can work with the others. Red Tide in space, sure why not, let me gob somethings and we're off.
Quote from: RPGPundit;806107John Berry, of Bedroom Wall Press (producer of Hulks and Horrors) has recently announced his retirement from RPG writing (http://www.bedroomwallpress.com/2014/12/yes-im-retired.html).
Among the reasons he cited for Quitting Forever was that "the OSR community had become increasingly hostile to self- and public-funded works like mine".
Do you think that's true? Is the success of the OSR and the rise in fancy more professional OSR products actually meaning that the very small-press guy just isn't wanted anymore?
Any product posted on the Internet is subject to attacks from... well, the Internet.
Quote from: SineNomine;806596If you can maintain a constant stream of good-quality books for years on end, keep a stranglehold on your production overhead, and watch the market carefully to identify what the buying public wants next, you really can make a living wage at this. It just requires an obscene amount of work and absolutely unrelenting production.
SineNomine is spot on. If you want to make it as your living you need a catalog of moderate sellers. The only thing he didn't mention is that you need to continuously promoted what you do. You don't have act like a circus ringmaster but you have to do something for promotion.
And all of this amounts to work combined with a measure of luck that enough people like your stuff. If you fail at any one of aspect of this then likely sales will be disappointing.
As for myself I had 163 sales making $600 over on RPGNow. Plus 49 sales totaling $250 on Lulu. My biggest issues is the lack of production. I only have three products that I personally sell and I am likely at best produce one a year. But that OK because while I try to do what I do as professional as possible it is just about making my hobby pay for itself. The stuff that eats up my time are important like my job and family. And eventually I will get there with a larger product catalog.
And who knows I may hit a grand slam which will allow me to reconsider my current plans. But I am not counting on it and just try to focus on making interesting things for people to enjoy.
Quote from: Shawn Driscoll;806696Any product posted on the Internet is subject to attacks from... well, the Internet.
Indeed.
He's a nice chap who I'd probably enjoy a game with, but
incredibly sensitive (Like, for example, his complaints that BGG was racist because it's posters preferred Euro-style boardgames to American-style).
Really, probably the easiest way to make money is to make things Christian related. You can have garbage, but if it's for God, then there will be people who buy it. Especially if it's a Christian knock off of an already established product.
Like the Bible themed Cards Against Humanity set I just saw.
Quote from: Sacrosanct;806733Really, probably the easiest way to make money is to make things Christian related. You can have garbage, but if it's for God, then there will be people who buy it. Especially if it's a Christian knock off of an already established product.
Like the Bible themed Cards Against Humanity set I just saw.
Lol, I don't know if that helped Dragon Raid.
Quote from: RunningLaser;806734Lol, I don't know if that helped Dragon Raid.
Oh, I wasn't talking specifically about rpg products. That's sort of an uphill battle anyway. More like, if you're making a fantasy card game, or a board game, make it religious based and you'll probably sell a lot more.*
*more being anything more than the minute amount you'd normally sell, so not a high bar ;)
Quote from: Sacrosanct;806736Oh, I wasn't talking specifically about rpg products. That's sort of an uphill battle anyway. More like, if you're making a fantasy card game, or a board game, make it religious based and you'll probably sell a lot more.*
I wouldn't bet on that, myself. What that is is basically a subset of affinity marketing- people buy your product to express their ideas about who they are and the kind of things they value. That works for a lot of products because the default American buying audience has a lot of Christians in it. The buying audience for RPGs and other geek paraphernalia has a much less pronounced Christian component, so you've got fewer people eager to tell themselves that they're the kind of people who buy that sort of thing. If you wanted to use affinity marketing to move geek gear, you'd flatter Science!, social libertarianism, freethinking, and a carefully-selected basket of college liberal causes. Basically, whatever gets their smug going.
Quote from: David Johansen;806379Having used GURPS Lite with newbies a fair bit over the last three years I hate to say that it's an even worse point of entry than the basic set. It's phenomenally condensed and as such dense.
It
is dense, yep. It's also the rules-light version of a system that really isn't for unguided beginners. Honestly, someone who can't hack
GURPS Lite is likely someone who can't hack any other iteration of
GURPS either.
I'm okay with that. I can handle a system that takes a little more effort than a cursory 90-second glance, and I recruit like-minded players.
The huge marketing mistake SJG made, I've thought from BSIII forward, was to not make
GURPS Lite the first few chapters of the corebook, tagged in giant red letters:
"These are all the rules you need to play GURPS! If you'd like more meat on the bones, keep reading after page 65, but if you prefer to stick to the basics, more power to you!"Or some such.
I agree but I think it would be good to decompress it a bit, maybe doubling the page count with expanded examples and explanations and good old fashioned white space and illustrations. You don't know how many times I've had to direct people to write the name the weapon as the skill rather than "Melee Weapon."
The skill cost system also gives people more trouble than I can comprehend. Time and again it comes up as a problem and I couldn't begin to tell you what is difficult or complex about it.
And don't even think about showing anyone a template. They cause cerebral hemorages and strokes from what I can tell.
But yes, please make GURPS Lite the core of the system and make everything else if not optional then at least not in the core.
To be fair, I think J Arcane might have suffered a bit of a "Where you're sitting in a sandbox, all you see is sand" syndrome - as a regular here and not anywhere else (well, at least suggested by a certain amount of, hm, prohibitions), he designed for OSR, thinking it much bigger than it actually was. If he tried his hand at pushing out adventures for Wizard, Paizo, Savage Worlds or perhaps even Chaosium, he might've been much more successful.
Quote from: Ladybird;806725Indeed.
He's a nice chap who I'd probably enjoy a game with, but incredibly sensitive (Like, for example, his complaints that BGG was racist because it's posters preferred Euro-style boardgames to American-style).
This post just turned me into a teenage girl, because I don't even.
Quote from: Rincewind1;806901he designed for OSR, thinking it much bigger than it actually was. If he tried his hand at pushing out adventures
See, that's the thing. J likes writing games, not adventures. Had he cranked out a bigass derelict spaceship adventure or planetfall hexcrawl for Hulks & Horrors, people might've picked it up to use with SWN as well (or DCC for that matter).
Quote from: VectorSigma;806972See, that's the thing. J likes writing games, not adventures. Had he cranked out a bigass derelict spaceship adventure or planetfall hexcrawl for Hulks & Horrors, people might've picked it up to use with SWN as well (or DCC for that matter).
There's a certain truth to that, but here's the thing: I'm of that same inclination, and yet (in spite of never having published an adventure yet), I feel like I've made a very decent amount of money off of RPGs, even after splitting profits with my publishers.
Quote from: RPGPundit;807336There's a certain truth to that, but here's the thing: I'm of that same inclination, and yet (in spite of never having published an adventure yet), I feel like I've made a very decent amount of money off of RPGs, even after splitting profits with my publishers.
1) You charge more than he did, and,
2) there's a significant portion of people who routinely buy rule sets they never plan to run long-term campaigns in. So you're making money off of a lot of people who are using your rule set (essentially) as a supplement to other games, or as simple reading material for entertainment.
Quote from: EOTB;8073392) there's a significant portion of people who routinely buy rule sets they never plan to run long-term campaigns in. So you're making money off of a lot of people who are using your rule set (essentially) as a supplement to other games, or as simple reading material for entertainment.
That wouldn't surprise me at all; I'm sure lots of people bought AoI and use it for their OSR games but to supplement their play with other rulesets.
I have zero problem with that, on the contrary, I wanted to it to be useful in that way.
Of course, I've used Hulks & Horrors in the exact same way. Never run a game of it, but its random scifi-dungeons are awesome for my DCC campaign.
Quote from: RPGPundit;807716That wouldn't surprise me at all; I'm sure lots of people bought AoI and use it for their OSR games but to supplement their play with other rulesets.
I have zero problem with that, on the contrary, I wanted to it to be useful in that way.
Of course, I've used Hulks & Horrors in the exact same way. Never run a game of it, but its random scifi-dungeons are awesome for my DCC campaign.
I don't have any problem with it either - it blows my mind that people will pay money for page count in OSR games that is material they've already bought 15 times before - but I'm glad people can spend their money as they wish.
Myself, I only buy modules or supplemental material that looks interesting. That's the economic advantage of finding a game you like, and sticking with it. I bought a copy of Joe Bloch's
A Curious Volume of Forbidden Lore off a Lulu sale for $7 shipped. I'm not going to spend $70 plus shipping to buy 3 core rulebooks for
Adventures Dark & Deep that are 60% thinly rewritten 1E.
So authors make their decisions. Some just want to skim the cream and make high dollar sales to fewer people, and some want to put out a greater variety of products that appeal to a larger percentage of the market and diversify their revenue stream.
But it doesn't look like the author in question did either. He put out rule sets that weren't supported with a full product line, but charged very little for the rule sets. Which is great, except if you want to earn a living doing that, I guess.
This is sad news. J Arcane is a solid author. Hulks & Horrors is great stuff and I highly recommend giving it a whirl.
If you are a WoW fan, check out his Drums of War RPG.
http://drumsofwar.wikia.com/wiki/Drums_of_War_Wiki
BTW, anyone know WTF is he doing in Finland???
I thought his wife was Finnish.
Quote from: EOTB;807720it blows my mind that people will pay money for page count in OSR games that is material they've already bought 15 times before
A thousand times, this. But apparently that's where we are.
Currently all our stuff is self-published, although we have had offers to publish some of our material. Like any industry, it is tough to be an independent - and in ours perhaps more than most, because there are so many of us. But I'm not sure I'd use the term "hostility", as such. Buying habits are simply a fact that has to be recognised.
Some people will only buy for one system/from one company, but there are plenty of folk who will consider buying other products, if they resonate with their interests and are of a sufficient quality. Otoh, if entrenched preferences mean there isn't a viable market, then that's how it is. We either have to keep producing quality goods and try to find a way in, create a new market, or give up. I'm not surprised some folk take the latter option - it's tough out there.
I personally think that marketing is one of the hardest things for small publishers - not only because the industry is so saturated and entrenched, but because (and I'm speaking for myself here) we can't all be good at everything, but if you are running a very small company, you kind of have to be.
Quote from: EOTB;8073392) there's a significant portion of people who routinely buy rule sets they never plan to run long-term campaigns in. So you're making money off of a lot of people who are using your rule set (essentially) as a supplement to other games, or as simple reading material for entertainment.
For what it's worth, I have run a lot of FtA! back in the day, and I'm still getting mileage out of the materials in FtA!GN! for other fantasy games. (Only recently I lifted the
wumpus dungeon hippo from it for a dungeon in another system.)
I haven't really looked at the other games, so I can't comment on them, but what I got had a lot of bang per buck for actual play, and it still continues to have actual play use for me even after it has been "written off" past the break-even point.
Quote from: Skyrock;807812For what it's worth, I have run a lot of FtA! back in the day, and I'm still getting mileage out of the materials in FtA!GN! for other fantasy games. (Only recently I lifted the wumpus dungeon hippo from it for a dungeon in another system.)
I'm very glad to hear that! FtA!GN! was a pretty good sourcebook for that kid of thing.