I had this great series all planned out in my head, with some incredible interviews lined up. Funny thing- life is what happens when you're busy making plans. I hoped to have the parts of the series follow a specific order, but that doesn't look like it will happen. I'm still waiting on replies from a few people I really think you'll enjoy. What I do have is great, and I'll get to it in just a moment.
I hope you'll forgive me for last week, I was slowly dying of the plague that's going around. it was a sneaky plague in that it acted like it was going away only to come back with a vengeance this weekend.
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| Not very menacing, but they got me none the less. |
So game design and publishing games seems to be on everyone's minds right now. Maybe I've tapped into that great collective unconscious, but I ran into no less than three "mainstream" articles about the subject since I started the series.
Here's one from a personal finance blogger that I found pretty interesting.
But it's not just design- it's actual publication that I'm talking about in this series.
There's a lot of ways to try to do this, as I mentioned in my introductory post. One way that has worked for quite a few folks in the industry is to work through small vendors or third party publishers. I took some time to talk with a few pros who were willing to share:
Josh Gullion, of AdventureAWeek:
AdventureaWeek.com, or AaW as I refer to it for ease of typing, started as an idea between two friends, Jonathan G. Nelson and Todd Gamble. The idea being to create a resource for GM's to allow them to have fresh material every week, ready to go. Originally the business model was to offer a website filled with a catalog of adventures as the inventory grew, with each adventure formatted to run perfectly upon a tablet at the game table.
With consistently good reviews, and the praise of several of our peers (who still think we're crazy we manage to get a new adventure on the site every week. Each new adventure comes with cartography from the award winning, always amazing Todd Gamble, as well as art from a variety of artists we work with, including the simply awesome Tim Tyler.
Whereas a great deal of our written material has come from the mind of our very own Jonathan G. Nelson, my fellow beta alumn Stephen Yeardley has stepped up to that plate several times now. Will Meyers, another of the alumn from the beta test, has gotten his first author credit under the belt, and Nathan Land , yes another beta boy, is currently writing an introductory adventure for Roll20 that we are producing in a joint collaboration with the Roll20 crew. We also have featured adventures written by a handful of RPG Superstar alumn, as well as a slew of other guest authors. We welcome any and all submissions, as you never know where the next great adventure will come from.
In the end, it comes down to a basic truth, AaW are a group of guys who love gaming. We simply want to share that love of gaming with our fans, and help make sure that your gaming sessions are fun and memorable.
Do you at AaW have any official sanctioning or approval from Paizo?
None of the 3rd party publishers have "official" much of anything from Paizo, but we do get the nod from time to time, as conversations have left us with the impression that they like what we are doing, lol.
We have skirted the boundaries of the compatibility license in one particular instance, and had to make some changes to the theme of an adventure as well as the design of a primary monster as we has overstepped our bounds. But, Paizo was cool about it, they let us know where we had gone off the rails as far as what they would allow to have their compatibility logo on it, and what they wouldn't, and then let us make some quick changes without sacrificing story.
How do you get publicity?
The Power Duo (Jonathan and Todd) have done some advertising on various forums and sites, including the PFSRD. We run ads in Pathways each month, and do an ongoing feature for that magazine as well. All of the guys involved in the team do what we can to advertise on our personal walls and sites, as well as spread the word through friends. There are buttons floating around amongst the world now thanks to the efforts of Jonathan and Todd at this years GenCon to put our logo on as many fans as possible. We are seeing support from our fellow 3PPs beginning to pick up as they are helping us spread our name as well (Wolfgang Baur recently featured something of ours in his Kobold Press newsletter).
What's the toughest thing about being a 3rd party group for adventures? Best?
Worst - Proving yourself to the industry and client base in general. After the immense glut of "publishers" surfaced during the initial phase of the OGL, a lot of people are simply not willing to trust a 3PP these days. It is one of the reasons that we rotate through our catalog giving away free adventures randomly, wanting to give people a chance to check out what we are doing with no risk.
Best - The first time I saw something I helped create not only get compared to a classic TSR/WotC adventure, but have it stated as surpassing and establishing the new baseline for this style of adventure...that was a good day.
Second Best - The immense amount of people I have gotten to know and talk with, the world that has opened for me since starting this journey.
Ed Healey of Gamerati:
Either design a game or publish a game, but not both - at least not for your first go. If you know you want to publish your game, freelance for others for a while so you get some experience before you try to hang your own shingle. There's more to running a business (being a publisher) than designing a good game (and getting published). From project management to marketing, art direction to accounting... They really are two different animals, and very few people can do both well.
Grady Elliot, Designer of Terracide:
The moral of the story: network with as many people in the gaming community as you can. If they ask about what you're working on, make sure you've got something awesome to show them. You never know who they'll mention it to.
How did your game go from something your friends thought was cool to "pitching to a publisher stage"?
I mentioned above that I had the good fortune (or sheer luck) to be gaming with a couple of previously published authors. They were heavily involved in the development of Terracide from the beginning: whenever I wrote a new adventure for our local convention, they were in the play-testing group, and afterwards they'd help pick it apart and put it back together. At some point Terracide started to look like a fully-realized setting in development, with a significant page-count: in other words, a book waiting to happen. In 2010 I made plans to attend GenCon with Mike Surbrook (author of the Kazei5 setting for Hero, among others) and he informed me we would be sharing a room with his publisher, Dave Mattingly from Blackwyrm Games. This, he said, was the time to pitch Terracide.
A couple of other lucky breaks contributed to the success of "the pitch" for Terracide. Around that time, Hero Games announced that the next edition of Star Hero would be released the following year, at GenCon 2011, and that Hero would not release any 6th edition settings. This put me in a very good position: I had an original Star Hero setting that was already half finished! The other lucky break was when I checked the program and found a seminar titled "How to Pitch Your Game to a Publisher" about three hours before I was meeting with Mr. Mattingly. So... I went to that seminar, which turned out to be very informative; I took tons of notes (for once) and then had a couple of hours to re-write the pitch for Terracide before our meeting.
Needless to say, it helped immensely. Blackwyrm Games decided to publish Terracide based on that meeting.
How did you pitch your project? What is that process like?
I still have the notes from the "How to Pitch Your Game" seminar, and the meeting with Dave Mattingly. It was actually rather informal; we both had an opening in our schedule (which is amazing for a Thursday at GenCon) so we sat in our hotel room and he asked me to tell him about the setting. What was interesting about it? What was different about it? When someone read the back cover, what would they see? (I had an awesome blurb for the back cover, but it never appeared in print! Maybe next time....) We ended up discussing a lot of things about SF RPGs in general over about 45 minutes.
I know you are working on developing Terracide as a setting for Savage Worlds. Who brought up that idea (you or Blackwyrm)?
I did some old-fashioned leg-work and went to game conventions and games stores, where I talked to the dealers about which systems people were buying and playing. This thing called Savage Worlds kept coming up, so I looked into it a bit more, and I liked what I saw. Aside from the excellent rules-set, the Savage Worlds product line wasn't saturated with science fiction offerings. And the SF settings they did have were of the "pulp" variety, completely different from Terracide. My project looked like an excellent fit for an opening in their product line. (Note to writers: Publishers *will* notice during your pitch whether you've done this type of market research. Or not.)
So it was my decision to do a Savage Worlds version of Terracide, but until earlier this year I didn't have a publisher for it. I pitched the idea to Pinnacle and a couple of their licensed publishers last year, without immediate success. It was when favorable reviews of Terracide began appearing online that the Pinnacle folks asked Blackwyrm to publish a Savage Worlds edition of Terracide. I was very glad things worked out this way; Blackwyrm Games is now licensed to produce Savage Worlds products, the new version of Terracide will be published by people I already have excellent working relationships with, and I don't have two editions of my book out there released by competing companies. Everybody wins.
Once the project is ready for print, how does that process work (if you know)?
Blackwyrm likes to have my manuscript in hand seven to eight months prior to the book's release date. As a writer, that's pretty much the end of my involvement; I do the manuscript, and they have others take over for layout, editing, artwork, and so on. I'm still relatively new in this business, and I'm planning to learn more about other aspects of it, particularly page layouts. After the manuscript is done, most of what I do prior to the release date is promotions work: running demos and previews at conventions, and getting people interested.
That's really the best part of my job. I love writing RPG's, but getting out there, GM-ing and playing a new RPG setting is what it's all about.
Joseph Wolf of MULTIPLE Projects:
I'm currently the point man freelancer on Reaper's Pathfinder campaign
setting. I'm wearing the design-developer hat working on converting
3.5 adventures and content over to Pathfinder. Not hard, just time
consuming.
How did you get involved in this project? How long have you been working
with Reaper?
I've been working with Reaper for 15 years now. I got my start while working for Riders Hobby Shop in Kalamazoo Michigan. I managed to get Ron Hawkins on the phone to tell him we were ramping up our interest in their minis and he sent me a copy of the main rules. We hit it off and since then I've written an occasional fluff piece appearing in Casketworks or the occasional sourcebook. I wrote a big chunk of the character and creature as well as faction stuff in the Savage North stuff in support of the Warlord line. Interestingly the Icingstead faction consisting of ice giants and similar polar beasties came out of a Casketworks article I wrote on the notorious white dragon Deathsleet. I've been given the chance to actually name a bunch of the Reaper dragons including Ebonwrath, Deathsleet, Cinder and a few
others escaping my mind. I've been converting a bunch of adventures and campaign material set in Reaper's Dark Heaven Legends world to Pathfinder for the past few months. It's kind of official but we premiered a lot of the stuff at ReaperCon 2012 using both Pathfinder and Savage Worlds and it was very well received. I ended up running games for 8 hours a day and one night session for the painters/sculptors. Folks were keen to see our stuff in print as am I but it's all speculative until we get a few things in place first. Regardless I'm working on my end of things so I'm hopeful.
I'm waiting on the publication of a pulp adventure I wrote for Dicey Tales via Jeff Mejia's Evil DM Productions. It's hit a layout snag so it's long overdue but should see print in a month or so.
I'm working on a Kyber Pass pulp adventure for Jeff now.
Again, I would love to know how you got involved in these projects!
Jeff knew me from the Barbarians of Lemuria and HEX forums. I contacted Simon of Beyond Belief Games who published BoL and asked if I could help out so he provided an introduction. Jeff brought me on and I quickly became his go-to guy when I produced a detailed scale map of an underground Nazi sub base. He was pleased with the adventure and map so he showed the goods to the artist who was doing the cover for Dicey Tales 2. The artist was inspired so the original cover was
scrapped and they went with my adventure instead. The Khyber Pass adventure is heavily based on the adventure pulp fiction of R. E. Howard's El Borak stories. I'm a fan of Howards Conan, Kull, and Solomon Kane but I must admit I hadn't read El Borak until I signed onto the project.
I'm working on a Savage Worlds Slipstream adventure for PEG now.
I am desperately curious to know how this one came about. Did you pitch it, or was there a call for publication? How long have you been working on this one? What stage in the process are you? (Sorry HOP readers, I'm showing my PEG/SLH love here...)
It's non-commission work meaning I'll finish it sometime after the playtest and I'll submit it to Shane for consideration. If he likes it they'll buy it if not rewrite and try again or scrap the project outright. No contract. I'm doing it to establish myself as a Savage Worlds author in the hopes of opening other freelancing opportunities as well as getting my own SW stuff into print. I'm in love with the rockets & rayguns genre and I'd love to work with Wiggy to reignite Slipstream with supplemental material like rocket construction rules and fluffing up the setting.
Prior to this I've written for Pinnacle Entertainment Group, Alderac Entertainment Group, Pulsar Games, Sovereign Stone Press, and TSR. I wrote the AD&D 2nd ed. Skullport sourcebook for The Forgotten Realms.
I'm currently ramping up my own tabletop company and most of the stuff
above will bear my logo and name in partnership (limited) with another
company.
Under my own label I've got another 4-6 campaign settings in the works
using borrowed open house systems.
Without sounding totally agape, HOW do you get all this done? And what kind of work does it take to make the right connections to get into this field?
Forums to share your knowledge and ideas coupled with emails to open the lines of communication. I attended a lot of conventions in the late 90's as a featured GM for RPGA events when they did more than promote the latest incarnation of D&D. I ran the oddball games like Cthulhu and Paranoia. Lord did I run a lot of Cthulhu at AndCon, Origins, Three Rivers Gamefest, Gen Con and Winter Fantasy. I actually got two Deadlands Weird West adventures approved and published in the
RPGA and I eventually got the rights back on both. I eventually published Trouble at Table Rock in PEG's Epitaph 1. Good times.
So a little personality and determination is the short answer.
You can see that going third party takes just as much work and determination as any other route to publication we'll discuss later in the series.
These guys really had a lot of knowledge on the third party avenue- and it seems to boil down to networking and relationships. This is something I'm pretty big on myself, and I know is critical to getting anywhere. If there's interest, I would be happy to discuss networking and the ins and outs for you very soon. Please let me know what you'd like to see next, and I'll see what I can do.
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