Quote from: ningauble;633199You make some good points. What I'm suggesting is - why not remove the economics from amateur RPG publishing entirely? If you're only going to make $200 in profit off of your RPG work in 2013, then why not just cut it out with the business plan and publish for free or for beer money? That's basically what you're making anyway. Do it for the good of the hobby. If your reputation goes through the roof because you're that talented, maybe then it's time to bust out the business suit.

Because that $200 allows me, the publisher, to do things that I otherwise couldn't do or would have to wait a lot longer if I was to fund it out of my pocket. For example, there are times I would like to pay for a piece for a piece of art that better suited for my project than some stock piece or public domain piece.

It not a binary situation, it is a continuum from free on up. The trick to figure out what you are comfortable with and go with that and not overreach. Rather than get yourself into a situation that makes you unhappy or damages your reputation.

Quote from: J Arcane;633081Seriously, I cannot think of another medium, genre, field, industry, whatever the hell you want to call it, that still has quite such a strong attitude that the creators should not expect to be paid for their work.  Even art and music are developing in recent years a far more entrepreneurial spirit and a greater expectation that being good at them should make you a living.  But RPGs? It seems like things are getting worse.

I can think of many creative fields if you take piracy into account.

I play a lot of Traveller.

So any writing/publishing I do in the gaming field must be based upon the Free Trader Campaign model.

Quote from: ningauble;633199You make some good points. What I'm suggesting is - why not remove the economics from amateur RPG publishing entirely? If you're only going to make $200 in profit off of your RPG work in 2013, then why not just cut it out with the business plan and publish for free or for beer money? That's basically what you're making anyway. Do it for the good of the hobby. If your reputation goes through the roof because you're that talented, maybe then it's time to bust out the business suit.

I love this. To take it up another notch, if you're serious about this as a business proposition, maybe it's time to be honest with yourself and acknowledge that those hours and resources are better spent opening an eBay store or just picking up a weekly shift at a filling station.

As far as I know, nobody's holding an economic gun at anyone in the game business forcing them to shovel words at the equivalent of a penny apiece. So if the motive is love, call it love. Otherwise, there are endless other ways to make a buck more or less easily and cleanly.

QuoteThe reason you wouldn't make any money at it is because it's not a business, it's a hobby. Why would you report a hobby on your taxes?

Well for one, because it's the law.

For another: no.

This is the same circular logic that kills the quality of talent in the industry.

"RPGs don't pay, so we shouldn't pay RPG writers."

And people wonder why the good writers bail as soon as they get a paying gig in the vidgame or movie or TV or novel industries.

Saying "it's a hobby" means absolutely nothing whatsoever about whether the people who make the products that hobbyists are buying should get paid a decent wage.

The problem is that the line between amateur and professional in the rpg field has become so hopelessly blurred - by the OGL, by cheap and easy pdf and POD publishing, and by (frankly) a long history of really shitty-quality "professional" product that people have nevertheless been willing to pay money for - that apparently just about every GM nowadays thinks of himself as an rpg professional, deserving money and respect for his "creative work" (i.e. creating house-rules and adventures just like every other GM). Seriously, the vast, overwhelming majority of the rpg stuff that's currently being published and sold deserves at best to be given away for free, and most of it should never have left the GM's table (or even made it to the table in the first place). People who play rec-league softball recognize that there's a difference between them and actual, professional big league ballplayers. Sadly, most rpg GMs creating house-rules and adventures for their buddies (or even, in some cases, for the buddies they wish they had) don't recognize that difference.

Quote from: econobus;633255I love this. To take it up another notch, if you're serious about this as a business proposition, maybe it's time to be honest with yourself and acknowledge that those hours and resources are better spent opening an eBay store or just picking up a weekly shift at a filling station.

As far as I know, nobody's holding an economic gun at anyone in the game business forcing them to shovel words at the equivalent of a penny apiece. So if the motive is love, call it love. Otherwise, there are endless other ways to make a buck more or less easily and cleanly.

Entrepreneurs almost always love what they are doing. They also are big on actually turning a profit sooner or later. Motivations are additive in effect, not substitutional.

If the hobby wants me to put up with the aggravating, unfun, unpleasant parts of producing a salable product, it's going to have to pay me. There are parts of the process I really love- it's wonderful to just be able to sit down and write any old thing and play around with words all day. It's a great way to spend the time... except then you need to edit. And proof. And do layout. And contract art. And do many other things that are not remotely fun if you want to give other people a nice RPG book and not a blogpost full of dashed-off ideas.

If it turns out the hobby really doesn't want me to put up with it, it will communicate that fact to me in the form of red ink, and thus helpfully clarify my relationship with the market. Until and unless it does so, however, I really don't have any incentive to pay attention to any other metric- and neither does any other small publisher.

Quote from: T. Foster;633269The problem is that the line between amateur and professional in the rpg field has become so hopelessly blurred - by the OGL, by cheap and easy pdf and POD publishing, and by (frankly) a long history of really shitty-quality "professional" product that people have nevertheless been willing to pay money for - that apparently just about every GM nowadays thinks of himself as an rpg professional, deserving money and respect for his "creative work" (i.e. creating house-rules and adventures just like every other GM).

So maybe we untangle the two for awhile and see how we do? True professionals charge what they're worth, true amateurs throw out the business plan and do it for love?

If that doesn't work, maybe one side or the other needs to be fixed.

Quote from: SineNomine;633271Entrepreneurs almost always love what they are doing. They also are big on actually turning a profit sooner or later. Motivations are additive in effect, not substitutional.

If the hobby wants me to put up with the aggravating, unfun, unpleasant parts of producing a salable product, it's going to have to pay me. There are parts of the process I really love- it's wonderful to just be able to sit down and write any old thing and play around with words all day. It's a great way to spend the time... except then you need to edit. And proof. And do layout. And contract art. And do many other things that are not remotely fun if you want to give other people a nice RPG book and not a blogpost full of dashed-off ideas.

If it turns out the hobby really doesn't want me to put up with it, it will communicate that fact to me in the form of red ink, and thus helpfully clarify my relationship with the market. Until and unless it does so, however, I really don't have any incentive to pay attention to any other metric- and neither does any other small publisher.

Word.  I don't think people give proper consideration to how much ancillary work is involved in the difference between assembling a bit of RPG material, and assembling that bit to something anything like publishable.  

Even with a relatively simple layout template like I use for my BWP label stuff, it takes time and effort and headache and a lot of punching monitor type work to get everything working. Midway through the layout process of H&H I had to completely switch page formats and software and essentially layout out twice.  

I've once before taken a break from game design with Drums of War, because it was turning into a shitload of work for zero pay, which is why I started doing commercial works instead. If I'm going to put in these kinds of manhours, I want at least some motivation to actually do it.  

I don't even fix computers for free for my family anymore, why should I do far more work for a bunch of entitled internet forum trolls just because they're offended I might dare think my time valuable?

Quote from: SineNomine;633271Entrepreneurs almost always love what they are doing. They also are big on actually turning a profit sooner or later. Motivations are additive in effect, not substitutional.

Sure. I'm not fighting your personal venture. By all means, show me real numbers to show me wrong.

If I'm that person busting for the equivalent of 1 cent per word (for me this would be $2.50 an hour), maybe the love of the game makes it worth working three times as many hours a day just to crack minimum wage (much less 1/10 as many hours as something approaching decent). Let's acknowledge that and embrace it.

And if it's about the long profit, let's be clear about where and when that comes in.

Otherwise, the filling station can pay me a check and free up 2/3 of my time to think about games, right?

Quote from: J Arcane;633276Word.  I don't think people give proper consideration to how much ancillary work is involved in the difference between assembling a bit of RPG material, and assembling that bit to something anything like publishable.  

Even with a relatively simple layout template like I use for my BWP label stuff, it takes time and effort and headache and a lot of punching monitor type work to get everything working. Midway through the layout process of H&H I had to completely switch page formats and software and essentially layout out twice.  

I've once before taken a break from game design with Drums of War, because it was turning into a shitload of work for zero pay, which is why I started doing commercial works instead. If I'm going to put in these kinds of manhours, I want at least some motivation to actually do it.  

I don't even fix computers for free for my family anymore, why should I do far more work for a bunch of entitled internet forum trolls just because they're offended I might dare think my time valuable?

It doesn't really matter if you think your time is valuable. It matters if other people think your time is valuable enough to pay you for it. If they do, they will. If they don't, then the disconnect is probably on your end, not theirs.

Quote from: econobus;633272So maybe we untangle the two for awhile and see how we do? True professionals charge what they're worth, true amateurs throw out the business plan and do it for love?

If that doesn't work, maybe one side or the other needs to be fixed.

Or you could just do both.

Labyrinth Lord is available as a free PDF you can download. It is also available as a printed book with art in it you can pay for, or as a PDF with art in it you can pay for. Same for a lot of games (Mongoose Traveller, Pathfinder, OSRIC just to name a few).

If you want the Plain Jane version, it is free. If you want the Bells&Whistles version, you have to pay.

I do not think either side of your arguement needs to be "fixed". I think your binary arguement is Fucked In The Head.

Quote from: jeff37923;633282Or you could just do both.

Sure. That's why we had that "if" in there. "If" we were to consent to try splitting the love from the profit there for awhile and "if" it didn't work, we could think about solutions instead of leaping at excluded middles that weren't actually, you know, there.

Labyrinth Lord is great. I would call it a labor of love. As far as I know, the print version does not run on a for-profit basis. Or does it? Is anyone getting paid on it?

"If" so, then maybe it would work to separate the love from the paycheck for just one minute and see "if" they're both working perfectly. Maybe, maybe not. Hard to know unless you actually try it.

Quote from: jeff37923;633282I do not think either side of your arguement needs to be "fixed". I think your binary arguement is Fucked In The Head.

Cheers!

Quote from: T. Foster;633281It doesn't really matter if you think your time is valuable. It matters if other people think your time is valuable enough to pay you for it. If they do, they will. If they don't, then the disconnect is probably on your end, not theirs.

I'm well aware that nobody owes me a living.

What I object to is the attitude that I'm an arse for even wanting to get paid at all.  The hostility to the very idea that time is valuable, that people should just do all this work for free just out of the sweetness of their hearts for people like you.  

Love of the hobby and a quarter still won't buy a pack of gum.  Nobody owes me a living, but nobody owes you free RPG material either.

Quote from: jeff37923;633282Or you could just do both.

Labyrinth Lord is available as a free PDF you can download. It is also available as a printed book with art in it you can pay for, or as a PDF with art in it you can pay for. Same for a lot of games (Mongoose Traveller, Pathfinder, OSRIC just to name a few).

If you want the Plain Jane version, it is free. If you want the Bells&Whistles version, you have to pay.

I do not think either side of your arguement needs to be "fixed". I think your binary arguement is Fucked In The Head.

H&H is free in PDF at launch, because I want people to see it, to get a critical mass of interested parties with their mitts on the rules to hopefully produce a long tail.  Same reason I recently dropped the digital version of Heaven's Shadow to free for a limited time.

On the other hand though, the one thing I am uncomfortable about with all these free artless PDF versions that seem to be the de riguer is that it's just another example of the attitude I'm talking about.  It's saying that artists deserve to be paid, but authors and publishers don't.

I do think that artists should be paid. I'm all for that.  I'm not so much for the idea that authors shouldn't be.

Quote from: econobus;633277Sure. I'm not fighting your personal venture. By all means, show me real numbers to show me wrong.

...

Otherwise, the filling station can pay me a check and free up 2/3 of my time to think about games, right?

There are a lot of factors that go into the calculus. Almost every small publisher has a day job, and so you're assessing the opportunity cost for using what amount to potential leisure hours. Particularly given this economy, part-time jobs that neatly dovetail with their available leisure hours aren't thick on the ground, and a lot of people just don't have the requisite moxie and drive to do piecework freelance writing. So for these individuals, the options are not "fry cook or RPG publisher", they're "reading a book/playing Xbox/watching TV or RPG publisher". Their leisure hours just do not represent a significant monetary opportunity cost because those hours have little monetary value in the first place.

They do, however, represent the loss of whatever value they might place on their free time. But in that case, the marginal utility of a self-determined amount of free time versus publishing work is something only they can figure out. In consequence, for a lot of these publishers, doing their own RPG publishing is a rational maximization of utility for them, which isn't terribly surprising given that they are the experts on their own utility values. It just happens to be that the market value of their production is Very Very Low. This isn't an issue if the market value of their leisure hours is Functionally Zero.

The reason you can't simply bifurcate the supply into "All for Love" writers and "Not a Blockhead" writers is because the market doesn't care why you set the price the way you set it. The intrinsic motivation for the production is irrelevant to the market- it's going to pay what the product is worth to it, and for some people that's going to be a tidy sum and for others it's going to be a withering dismissal.

I work about 40 hours a week on my material and it would be just adorable if I could maintain that that work has some intrinsic value that a just market would duly reward at a particular rate. But that's not the case. My professional worth is what I can get away with charging, and you can bet your favorite teeth that I'm going to try to find that price as fast as I can.