TheRPGSite

Two interesting posts were made recently which I thought were probably of interest to folks here:

Owen KC Stephens' Tabletop RPG Truths (https://www.enworld.org/threads/owen-kc-stephens-tabletop-rpg-truths.672585/)

and

Owen KC Stephens' Tabletop RPG Truths #2 (https://www.enworld.org/threads/owen-kc-stephens-tabletop-rpg-truths-2.672685/)

I'm sorry you have to click-through because I didn't think it would be polite to just copy and past his thoughts here without asking him. But if people are grumpy about having to click I can ask Owen if he's OK with me re-posting it elsewhere. I suspect he'd be OK with it. I strongly suspect he wouldn't care if people just quoted short tidbits of things they found interesting to discuss (and I do so as an example below).  

The short of it is the observations and brutal though sometimes depressing truths of working as a freelancer in the RPG industry for many many years.

Some may be labeled as truth but are not in the opinions of others. Some I think are truthful. Some of the observations will outrage some people who are anti-SJW. I am guessing that stuff will be of interest to people here, in terms of disagreeing with it.

Some of the observations will resonate with those who have found it's just a crapload of work for a mostly thankless crowd and mostly thankless employers. Some may get "Oh, that's why so-and-so left the industry after so many years...because it sucked!" from it.

Some may recognize their own industry in the comments, and I suspect the "It sucks that not everyone gets work based on merit" will ring true for a lot of industries out there.  For example, this comment struck me as truthful, "TTRPG careers are advanced the most during after-hours bar gatherings at big cons. Nothing else is as effective. By not going to drinks early in my career, I set it back 5-8 years. Club soda would have been fine, though the industry does drives folks to drink." His comments about people giving work to friends and that implies you need to make friends in the industry to get consistent work (and be treated better for that work) also rings true for me. That's true of the three different industries I've worked for in my adult life. It's not a truth that makes me happy though.

Point 3 first article, shows he's talking out of his ass.

Quote from: GeekyBugle;1134268Point 3 first article, shows he's talking out of his ass.

"Tabletop RPG books are not overpriced. They are specialty technical creative writing social interaction manuals. At double the current prices, they would not be overpriced. This is why most TTRPG creators leave the industry. Along with constant fan harassment."

Why do you disagree with that?

Quote from: Mistwell;1134244Owen KC Stephens' Tabletop RPG Truths (https://www.enworld.org/threads/owen-kc-stephens-tabletop-rpg-truths.672585/)

Is this guy a writer? Because there's some terrible writing on this list. I don't even know what he's talking about half the time.

I do agree with this one: "The majority of TTRPG professionals--staffers, freelancers, owners, et al., are substantially underpaid for their skills. Saying "they shouldn't be in this industry if they want to be paid more" is saying "I don't want any professional RPG content to be made."  

Yes, I do not want any professional RPG content to be made. This isn't an industry. It's a hobby business and should stay that way.

Quote from: Mistwell;1134271"Tabletop RPG books are not overpriced. They are specialty technical creative writing social interaction manuals. At double the current prices, they would not be overpriced. This is why most TTRPG creators leave the industry. Along with constant fan harassment."

Why do you disagree with that?

  Because at double, you are talking 120 bucks for alot of books.  For the more mainline prices you are talking 80 bucks. An average of around 100 for D&D.  That is over priced.  I can go with not overpriced as is, but to say at double they would not be overpriced?  Well I suggest all the stuff he writes he just charges double what he does now, and tells the publisher to retail them for double.  I think he will very quickly over priced does not mean what he thinks it does.

Quote from: hedgehobbit;1134273Is this guy a writer? Because there's some terrible writing on this list. I don't even know what he's talking about half the time.

Yes, he's written a metric crapton of RPG books (https://index.rpg.net/display-search.phtml?key=contributor&value=Owen+K.C.+Stephens). I don't think he's concerned with editing his comments. They're mostly just off the top of his head sort of observations. Pretty sure that is not paid work on behalf of anyone.

Quote from: Mistwell;1134277Yes, he's written a metric crapton of RPG books (https://index.rpg.net/display-search.phtml?key=contributor&value=Owen+K.C.+Stephens). I don't think he's concerned with editing his comments. They're mostly just off the top of his head sort of observations. Pretty sure that is not paid work on behalf of anyone.

  Well, he did say editors are the real heros of writing.  I guess he wanted to prove it.

Quote from: oggsmash;1134274Because at double, you are talking 120 bucks for alot of books.  For the more mainline prices you are talking 80 bucks. An average of around 100 for D&D.  That is over priced.  I can go with not overpriced as is, but to say at double they would not be overpriced?  Well I suggest all the stuff he writes he just charges double what he does now, and tells the publisher to retail them for double.  I think he will very quickly over priced does not mean what he thinks it does.

We must be shopping at different places. The retail cover price for the D&D Player's Handbook is $49.95 and it typically sells for $33.74 (and sometimes as low as $20 on Amazon). It's currently $28.33 with a coupon at Amazon (so double would be $56.66). What books are $60 right now for what they typically sell for?

Quote from: Mistwell;1134281We must be shopping at different places. The retail cover price for the D&D Player's Handbook is $49.95 and it typically sells for $33.74 (and sometimes as low as $20 on Amazon). It's currently $28.33 with a coupon at Amazon (so double would be $56.66). What books are $60 right now for what they typically sell for?

 Modiphius Conan, Mutant chronicles. Wrath and glory.  I just buy things you do not.
  I do my best to not buy anything from Amazon.  And at double prices Amazon will go ahead and execute your FLGS.

Quote from: Mistwell;1134271"Tabletop RPG books are not overpriced. They are specialty technical creative writing social interaction manuals. At double the current prices, they would not be overpriced. This is why most TTRPG creators leave the industry. Along with constant fan harassment."

Why do you disagree with that?

Welp, I fail at counting, I meant point 4, but I do disagree with that too, yes they are overpriced, because they inflate the page count and the fluff and I don't need all that art.

As for point 4, Yes, Quality and Fan fervor do change things.

Quote from: Mistwell;1134244Owen KC Stephens' Tabletop RPG Truths (https://www.enworld.org/threads/owen-kc-stephens-tabletop-rpg-truths.672585/)

Most TTRPG game company's art archives are not well indexed... Or indexed.

Yes, the RPG book could have had ONE more editing pass. There would still be errors, you'd still complain, it would cost more and take longer, and not sell any better. And people would download it for free illegally because "it's too expensive."

Tabletop RPG books are not overpriced. They are specialty technical creative writing social interaction manuals. At double the current prices, they would not be overpriced. This is why most TTRPG creators leave the industry. Along with constant fan harassment.

Quality, effort, marketing, and fan fervor cannot change this. Ever. That's not to knock, or praise, D&D. It's just a fact.

Impostor syndrome is hugely common in the TTRPG industry for two reasons. One: Studying and modifying RPGs often appeals to socially awkward shut ins who become broken professionals. Two: There's a sense that if you were a REAL professional you could afford a house, and insurance, and a retirement account, but that's not true for 99.9% of TTRPG professionals.

People who are passionate about making games for other people, people who are good at making games, and people who are good at the business of game sales and marketing don't overlap much in a Venn diagram. Most game company failures can be attributed to this.

A TTRPG professional with enough experience and credibility to criticize the industry as a whole is normally tied to one company so closely that the criticism is seen as biased, or unwilling to do it for free, or too fucking tired to care anymore. Many are all 3.

If you are a TTRPG creative, you aren't paid enough. Thus, if you find people listening to you and apparently valuing your words you owe it to yourself to make sure they know there is an option to pay you for them. Also, I have a Patreon. https://patreon.com/OwenKCStephens

There are beloved, award-winning, renowned, well-known TTRPG books with total print runs of 2000 or fewer copies. That did not sell out.

Most RPG creators cannot afford the upper-tier of RPG accessories. Colossal dragons, scale sailing ships, and custom-built gaming tables are not for those of us who create the hobby. We are too poor to enjoy even a fraction of the things our creativity sparks.

The ability to master a game's rules has no correlation to the ability to write clear or interesting rules or adventures. Neither has any correlation to being able to produce 22,000 words of focused, usable content about a specific topic on a set deadline.

There are 65 people in the Origins Hall of Fame. Most fans can't name 5 of them. Most creators can't name 10. They are overwhelmingly (though not quite entirely) white men.

TTRPG companies generally have no interest in your ideas for products. They went to all the trouble of starting, or staying at, an RPG company to publish their ideas, even if they need you to write them. They certainly didn't stay for the money or respect.

Asking RPG freelancers to publicly call out a publisher is asking them to reduce their tiny chance of making enough money in RPGs to survive. Sometimes it's a moral imperative. But it's always painful and dangerous. It's more dangerous for women and minorities.

Occasionally, male game designers who do streams or vlogs or podcasts find themselves disconcerted receiving unsolicited commentary about their appearance. It happened to me. Or, in other words, they get a tiny taste of what women in every field face every day.

Freelancers aren't paid enough by game company employees and managers, who themselves aren't paid enough by their companies, which don't make enough from distributors and stores, that don't make enough from customers. This never improves. It can get worse.

Fantasy and scifi art has sexualized women for decades, so many pro artists assume that's what you want. Explaining otherwise takes more words that describing the art piece. I had to go with "No skin should be exposed except on the face." It was 75% effective.

Most RPG work is "work-for-hire," This includes most work I commission from freelancers myself. This means that, legally, the writer isn't the author. They have no rights to it. No royalties. No say in how (or if) it is used. It never reverts to them.

I have received 3 death threats in my 21+ RPG career. One for not listing the fans preferred length for the Executor SSD. One of having a male succubus (not an incubus, with that game system) drawn in a seductive pose. And one for being fat and on video streams.

Once, at Gen Con, a fan interrupted [Amanda Hamon] at the Paizo booth to ask her to point me out. She kindly did so. They came and asked me if I was the Starfinder boss. I pointed them back to Amanda, and noted she was my Managing Developer, and direct superior. I followed that by pointing out Lisa Stevens was an owner of Paizo but that I also worked for Nicole Lindroos and Miranda Russell at other companies, and that Lj Stephens was my project manager for my own company who kept me on schedule, The fan seemed upset.

I have been extraordinary lucky and well-treated in my RPG career. I love most of the companies and people I have worked with. It's just a harsh industry. This hashtag isn't intended as complaints. They're facts and alerts I wish I had gotten 20 years ago.

Quote from: Mistwell;1134244Owen KC Stephens' Tabletop RPG Truths #2 (https://www.enworld.org/threads/owen-kc-stephens-tabletop-rpg-truths-2.672685/)

While there are absolutely exceptions, there are two common paths to becoming a manager in the TTRPG world.
One is to be a game creator who does that so well, that you are promoted to the entirely-unrelated field of managing people, with no management training.

I have been extraordinary lucky and well-treated in my RPG career. I love most of the companies and people I have worked with. It's just a harsh industry. This hashtag isn't intended as complaints. They're facts and alerts I wish I had gotten 20 years ago.

Someone having tons of RPG writing credits is no guarantee they'll do a good job on the project you hire them for. They might have had amazing editors. Their day job may go into crisis during your deadline. They might burn out. Especially that last one.

A freelancer absolutely mustn't cease communicating with their developer/producer or conceal how far behind they are on a project. When things go south as a freelancer, there is a huge urge to cease communication and conceal how far behind you are on a project.

It is clearly unreasonable, and potentially inappropriate, to suggest freelancers make friends in the game industry to get more work and be treated better. People in the game industry tend to give their friends more work, and often treat them better.

On some projects, the writing is easy but the research is hard. On some the reverse is true. For the other 80%, it's all hard. Some need new rules systems. Some need playtesting. Some need map sketches. Others don't. None of this normally impacts your pay rate.

It is extremely common for gamers to offer to give professionals an idea, and offer to "let" the pro "finish" the work and the "split the profits." They rarely like being told coming up with an idea or starting a project is not the hard part of writing.

There is a crucial difference between collaborating with someone on a project, and being their assistant. Either can be reasonable, legit work, but not everyone in the industry understands the difference (and how to say which of those a project is going to be).

Editors are the most unsung heroes of the industry. The better they do their job, the less people notice. but without them, I'd be posting under @RealGameInustrya and $RealGameIndustry as often as #RealGameIndustry

It's impossible for backers to tell from funds raised by a crowdfunding campaign raises how much profit it earns. Huge numbers can mean a minor miscalculation or change on the ground becomes a huge loss. Companies don't even always know until its all fulfilled.

The majority of TTRPG professionals--staffers, freelancers, owners, et al., are substantially underpaid for their skills. Saying "they shouldn't be in this industry if they want to be paid more" is saying "I don't want any professional RPG content to be made."

The reason you don't know how you are supposed to get your first gig, climb the ladder of TTRPG freelance, get the attention of developers and producers without annoying them, or improve your craft, is that game companies mostly don't know those things either.

Many TTRPG fans are lovely to interact with. Some are so awful that many companies who brought me to cons told me their secret signs to indicate when you needed another staffer to pull you away from a horrible interaction. It is, of course, worse for women.

TTRPG careers are advanced the most during after-hours bar gatherings at big cons. Nothing else is as effective. By not going to drinks early in my career, I set it back 5-8 years. Club soda would have been fine, though the industry does drives folks to drink.

Though it is far from universal, many TTRPG creators have all the fun of playing games removed by deadlines, toxic fans, and an endless grind of monetizing their creativity. "Do what you love for work, and you can no longer escape work with the thing you love"

Many RPG companies depend on "Institutional Knowledge," which means there are things done by people who know, but none of it is written down anywhere. Largely because budgets are so tight staff is always overworked, leaving no time for things like documentation.

It is common for TTRPG professionals to think various other people in the industry are asshats. It is rare to say so outside of tightly-controlled comments to groups of trusted friends. This reticence can unintentionally spill over to not calling out bad actors.

While there are absolutely exceptions, there are two common paths to becoming a manager in the TTRPG world. One is to be a an experienced manager from another field that is hired to be a TTRPG manager, with no prior experience in the TTRPG publishing industry.

There are great managers in the TTRPG industry... and awful ones. Many TTRPG employees have such little experience working under a manager, they often can't tell the difference between the good ones and bad ones. Occasionally, company owners can't either.

An example of how small, but important, things can be overlooked in the #RealGameIndustry.

Quote from: Mistwell;1134244I'm sorry you have to click-through because I didn't think it would be polite to just copy and past his thoughts here without asking him.

 I copy and pasted them here for people to see what you were babbling about.

I'm impolite. And I don't like adding clicks to ENWorld.

Quote from: oggsmash;1134282Modiphius Conan, Mutant chronicles. Wrath and glory.  I just buy things you do not.
  I do my best to not buy anything from Amazon.  And at double prices Amazon will go ahead and execute your FLGS.

As my last remaining decent FLGS just shut down due to the death of the owner combined with the quarantine shut-down, that already happened. Though Spinachcat gives me hope that "No, there is another."

Modiphius Conan is $33.90 on Amazon. Mutant chronicles it depends on which book you mean but the range seems to be from $22 to $44 on Amazon. Wrath and Glory is $59.99, but damn dude that's Warhammer. Another word for Crack. Warhammer is already "double what others pay for their RPGs" :)

Quote from: jeff37923;1134289I copy and pasted them here for people to see what you were babbling about.

I'm impolite. And I don't like adding clicks to ENWorld.

Do you feel I stretched the truth in anything I said with this?

Quote from: Mistwell;1134290As my last remaining decent FLGS just shut down due to the death of the owner combined with the quarantine shut-down, that already happened. Though Spinachcat gives me hope that "No, there is another."

Modiphius Conan is $33.90 on Amazon. Mutant chronicles it depends on which book you mean but the range seems to be from $22 to $44 on Amazon. Wrath and Glory is $59.99, but damn dude that's Warhammer. Another word for Crack. Warhammer is already "double what others pay for their RPGs" :)

  Amazon is not retail, and Amazon uses leverage on volume to destroy brick and mortar, so their price is not relevant to what I buy.  I have several good FLGS close to where I live, and if they do not have the book I order it from them, or if it is an impulse buy I buy it from the company publishing it.   The thing you can say now is, Oh you are right, some RPGs do retail for 60 bucks.

Quote from: oggsmash;1134294Amazon is not retail, and Amazon uses leverage on volume to destroy brick and mortar, so their price is not relevant to what I buy.  I have several good FLGS close to where I live, and if they do not have the book I order it from them, or if it is an impulse buy I buy it from the company publishing it.   The thing you can say now is, Oh you are right, some RPGs do retail for 60 bucks.

Oh you are right, some RPGs do retail for 60 bucks.

Writing is a hobby for most "professional" authors. The money in RPGs isn't worse than in fiction. I've known a dozen authors (some with bestsellers) who never quit their day job.  

"Doing what you love" only works for a fraction of the people who try it. For the majority, turning their Fun into Work, ruins their Fun. Only a minority seem to master the concepts of "Show" and "Business" and manage to keep their enjoyment of their fun turned work.

As for the "toxic fans", there are PLENTY of "toxic designers" out there.

RPG books are actually way OVERPRICED...unless you play the game. As the majority of game books are never used as games, but just toilet reading, the authors should be thankful there is an audience willing to pay $60 to read 300 pages instead of $10 paperback or $25 hardback.

RPGs (and other games) only become cheap over time of actual play. That's when the real ROI is achieved.

Quote from: oggsmash;1134280Well, he did say editors are the real heros of writing.  I guess he wanted to prove it.

LOL. That's painfully funny.

I agree that RPG books are largely under-priced, at least compared to other forms of entertainment. The use and enjoyment I get out of the ones I actually end up playing is worth far more than what I spend on them.
I'm also more than happy to pay for sweet artwork in "padded-out RPG manuals". I usually don't want a spartanly-designed book of text. Art helps bring the game to life in my imagination in a way that I find very satisfying indeed. That being said, bad art, or art that I dislike, detracts from my enjoyment, so perhaps it is safer to just leave it out as games like Burning Wheel largely do.

Every day some Paizo or WOTC "RPG Professional" opens their mouth; I find myself less interested in their over priced books and more concerned with the price of minis, terrain, or one of those fancy game tables only "rich players" get to afford.

I have enough rules for a lifetime at this point. And I can write my own rules without bitching about the person playing them.

Quote from: MonsterSlayer;1134331Every day some Paizo or WOTC "RPG Professional" opens their mouth; I find myself less interested in their over priced books and more concerned with the price of minis, terrain, or one of those fancy game tables only "rich players" get to afford.

I have enough rules for a lifetime at this point. And I can write my own rules without bitching about the person playing them.

I could probably use an editor though. Luckily, I married an English teacher.

First off, Owen is one of my favourite designers.

That being said, creative workers are inherently poorly paid for their work no matter what area of their creativity, and many of his observations can be explained by the Pareto distribution which roughly translates to 20% of producers getting 80% of the money.

Quote from: Shasarak;1134334First off, Owen is one of my favourite designers.

That being said, creative workers are inherently poorly paid for their work no matter what area of their creativity, and many of his observations can be explained by the Pareto distribution which roughly translates to 20% of producers getting 80% of the money.

Greetings!

Very good observation, Shasarak! I agree about Owen as well as a game designer and writer. He has created a lot of very good stuff through the years.

Semper Fidelis,

SHARK

Quote from: jeff37923;1134289I copy and pasted them here for people to see what you were babbling about.

I'm impolite. And I don't like adding clicks to ENWorld.

Thanks for the chance to read what this virtue signaling drivel was about without having to jump off this site to give clicks to ENWorld.

Quote from: oggsmash;1134294Amazon is not retail, and Amazon uses leverage on volume to destroy brick and mortar, so their price is not relevant to what I buy.  I have several good FLGS close to where I live, and if they do not have the book I order it from them, or if it is an impulse buy I buy it from the company publishing it.   The thing you can say now is, Oh you are right, some RPGs do retail for 60 bucks.

Hey, but why do that from the get-go when you can point out discounted prices from an e-commerce tech giant that likes to push their weight around to destroy their competition and pretend those discounted prices are the actual retail value?

Quote from: Mistwell;1134271"Tabletop RPG books are not overpriced. They are specialty technical creative writing social interaction manuals. At double the current prices, they would not be overpriced. This is why most TTRPG creators leave the industry. Along with constant fan harassment."

Why do you disagree with that?

I disagree with it as well and I worked in publishing.

But.

The problem is not that the books are overprice. They are overpriced usually for a reason. A BAD one.

That being the damn push for colour art and usually lots of it and the mania that this actually sells the book. Not the game. Kill this fad off and book prices would drop. But as long as publishers keep believing this lie then the books are going to cost alot more.

And none of this covers publishers just being greedy and jacking the price because they think they can.

The other problem as was noted earlier by someone is... padding. Books are being padded with oft useless text just to up the word count because designers want to be payed per word not for the work in whole. And the more they push for this and get it the more bloated these books will be. As noted in other threads. A recurring problem with WOTC books for 5e is that they spend alot of time saying very little.

Quote from: Omega;1134346I disagree with it as well and I worked in publishing.

But.

The problem is not that the books are overprice. They are overpriced usually for a reason. A BAD one.

That being the damn push for colour art and usually lots of it and the mania that this actually sells the book. Not the game. Kill this fad off and book prices would drop. But as long as publishers keep believing this lie then the books are going to cost alot more.

And none of this covers publishers just being greedy and jacking the price because they think they can.

The other problem as was noted earlier by someone is... padding. Books are being padded with oft useless text just to up the word count because designers want to be payed per word not for the work in whole. And the more they push for this and get it the more bloated these books will be. As noted in other threads. A recurring problem with WOTC books for 5e is that they spend alot of time saying very little.

No. Thank you. Color art and descriptions which go beyond the mechanics are there because people want it to be there. Because there is more to the game than just mechanics.The expansive color art and descriptions is what brings the setting alive for the reader.

WOTC did pretty extensive surveying on the topic and did find it was important to their customers.

Quote from: Mistwell;1134348WOTC did pretty extensive surveying on the topic and did find it was important to their customers.

Was that the same survey team that told WotC everybody would love the changes in D&D 4E?

For a lot of  people, visual images are necessary for them to visualize the setting.  It's easier if they've seen a movie or TV show with the characters.  Personally books have gotten too expensive and it makes it harder to sell them but there is a psychological state where if they won't pay $50 they won't pay $5.  That's why I suspect downloading isn't quite the sales issue people in the industry think it is.  They aren't really losing sales to people who wouldn't have bought the book anyhow.

I also suspect that one of the draws of full colour books for publishers is that they are harder to scan, make larger files, more expensive to print and so forth.  Even back in the day, photocopying books was pretty common.  Heck, at one of my early Warhammer 40000 games back in the Rogue Trader days I played a guy who had copied out the rules by hand to avoid buying the book.

People have this price point in their head that varies.  $100 for example, is a very serious break point in most consumer's thinking.  But for some people that break point is $20.  I personally have trouble paying more than $5 for a miniature.  I know that a figure that was $1.00 back when I was twelve is probably $4.00 now when adjusted for inflation but in my mind, plastic should be cheaper than metal.  It's just psychology, I'm getting to where I understand why old people are cranky about prices I guess.

Quote from: jeff37923;1134363Was that the same survey team that told WotC everybody would love the changes in D&D 4E?

Was that the same survey team that told WotC that there was no money in writing adventures?

RPG writing is (partly) a form of artistic expression. It's your imagination "made real" into a game. Thing is, the artist never, ever decides how much people will pay for their art. In the past, decent artists would be given commissions to paint a portrait or make a statue - these days we have commissions to make a splat-book or module. But the vast majority of freelancers can only be paid what the market will bear. There is no "right" to a decent wage if you're an artist. You can try unionising or going on strike, but I doubt you'll get very far!
   
So no, RPGs are not inherently under or overpriced. How much would a previously-unseen AD&D Gygax module retail for? Whatever the market would bear. That might be $5 or $50 or even $500 if they limited the print run. But there is no guaranteed market out there for anyone's RPG work, however good it might be.

The first truth: No one owes you a living.

Quote from: S'mon;1134369The first truth: No one owes you a living.

Nobody besides your employer, anyway. I mean, if your job isn't paying you a living wage, why work for them, right?

You know, this is all so very rich coming from the "Get Woke, Go Broke" crowd. We see so many threads on the topic of what SJW's bring to the hobby, and whether they spend money or not. If artists and the tabletop gaming market are pandering so hard to the woke crowd, then there must be more money in it than pandering to you tightwads. "What the market will bear." Fuck all you broke cunts.

I think these are realities every bright eyed kid who thinks they can make a living designing games should have to read.  Possibly everyone who gives companies the gears for the products they produce or not.

Quote from: David Johansen;1134387I think these are realities every bright eyed kid who thinks they can make a living designing games should have to read.  Possibly everyone who gives companies the gears for the products they produce or not.

   It would likely not stop more than a couple percent.  Professional MMA is FULL of people who are never, ever going to pay standard living expenses from fighting.  This does not stop them from giving it a shot, despite it incurring great mental, physical and financial costs.  I do not remember the old saying, but it was something like this, a stupid man does not learn from his own mistakes, a wise man does learn from his own mistakes, and a genius learns from the mistakes of others.   Wisdom is VERY underrated and fairly rare IME.

As a writer and publisher, I see a heck of a lot of good insight in Owen's truths. I'd say I have experience of about 85-90% of things he references. I don't agree with all of them, but much of what he says are salient lessons and warnings for anyone wanting to work in RPGs - either as a freelance writer, tenured writer, or as a publisher/producer.

Interestingly, Owen was part of my gaming group while he was still in high school and I had just started college. He was always a very creative player and gamemaster. From talking to him over the years, the vast majority of what he speaks on is from direct personal experience. Creative endeavors are always thankless for the most part and while I agree with most of his points, being entirely dedicated and creative is not (actually very rarely does) going to guarantee commercial success. Also notable is the idea of a living wage, if you insist on only doing what you love, you cannot guarantee your income, only what the market will bear. I worked in printing for 30 years, and I can tell you the margins are slim to nonexistent anymore, whether it be rpg's, comics, magazines or books. Paper costs alone went up 70% in a single year in the early 2010's. I left doing something I loved (graphic designer and photo retouching) because I just couldn't make the kind of money I wanted to live how I wanted. This is a reality in many fields. I finished my degree, got a job that is a horrid grind, but pays me over twice what I was making in print. The point being, Owen made a choice to do what he loved, and while none of what he says is wrong, what isn't mentioned is that he spends a very large portion of his time gaming... my job paying a living wage affords me little time to do that. So while his take on this is much of the downside, there is an upside that shouldn't be forgotten. All choices have consequences.

Quote from: Cave Bear;1134372Nobody besides your employer, anyway. I mean, if your job isn't paying you a living wage, why work for them, right?

Plenty of jobs don't pay a living wage - certainly in the RPG industry! People do it for fun, and either work another job or live with their parents/sponge off partner.

Quote from: Shasarak;1134366Was that the same survey team that told WotC that there was no money in writing adventures?

There wasn't. This huge-assed hardbound "adventure path" thing is a new trend that I'm still trying to figure out where da fauq it comes from, cuz adventures never used to sell this well. Adventure modules were always a loss leader, as far as I'm aware. I've never even ran one in my life and the only times I've bought one was when they included stuff that expanded on a setting.

It's only been these past few years during the 5e era that official looking hardbound monstrosities of adventures have become a thing people seem to like for some unfathomable reason. I think it's tied to a post 9/11 cultural shift where people now want to be told by some established higher authority what to do, rather than think for themselves or do their own thing. So they see a gigantic official tome of adventures direct from WotC telling them what to play and cream themselves.

I've also heard some speculate that these appeal to people who don't really play the game, and see RPGs as "storytelling games". So they like the idea of "adventures" that are basically like an extended story.

Quote from: Cave Bear;1134373You know, this is all so very rich coming from the "Get Woke, Go Broke" crowd. We see so many threads on the topic of what SJW's bring to the hobby, and whether they spend money or not. If artists and the tabletop gaming market are pandering so hard to the woke crowd, then there must be more money in it than pandering to you tightwads. "What the market will bear." Fuck all you broke cunts.

The pandering occurs because most of the people that enter the field are hard leftists and are ideologically driven to pander to their own viewpoints.

Quote from: S'mon;1134369The first truth: No one owes you a living.

Yeah, the pay in RPGs argument seems like it reduces to the minimum wage argument pretty quick. This is a low cost to entry, creative, high-noise space, so standing out in the market is always going to be hard. You can do your own thing but it seems like the only prudent way to break in is as a side-gig unless you're somehow independently wealthy. Companies in this space are only going to be able to pay what the market supports, and the market is fierce. I don't understand the rallying cry of "pay RPG creators" -- with what? I'm sure especially the big-but-smaller-than-WotC players would love to make enough to pay their people more. I was in a con game with someone who mentioned that thanks to active crowdfunding activity for small projects during the pandemic, the company was able to re-hire some people they originally had to let go.

There's some degree of choice in how a company is run, but at some point you have to deal with the market, and this market's not friendly.

Ironically, this is one of the things that made me most sympathetic to the UBI argument. I'm not sure what the right answer is overall, but I do think that life is enriched by having creative and artistic works to enjoy. Letting market realities completely squash creative professions seems like a net loss to humanity. In less democratic times, wealthy patrons filled in, but UBI seems like a potential democratic answer to the problem. There's no guarantee of a wealthy life, but at least pursuing a love of arts is basically viable, if you have the talent and the passion.

Quote from: jeff37923;1134289Most TTRPG game company's art archives are not well indexed... Or indexed....

You should edit in some quote blocks, and attribute them to Owen KC Stephens, so it's clear that's not your writing.

Quote from: insubordinate polyhedral;1134413Ironically, this is one of the things that made me most sympathetic to the UBI argument. I'm not sure what the right answer is overall, but I do think that life is enriched by having creative and artistic works to enjoy. Letting market realities completely squash creative professions seems like a net loss to humanity. In less democratic times, wealthy patrons filled in, but UBI seems like a potential democratic answer to the problem. There's no guarantee of a wealthy life, but at least pursuing a love of arts is basically viable, if you have the talent and the passion.

Pretty much agree with all of this. I know that dumping on the UBI is kinda fashionable and that it might not be feasible, but this is one of the reasons I'm attracted to the idea. Reducing everything to the Pareto Principle doesn't really tell me what to do with the 80% of potentially talented people who aren't lucky enough to earn most of the recognition (and pay) for contributing to their field. It just tells me most people aren't likely to ever be able to succeed no matter what they do.

And I do believe that this comes down largely to luck rather than just talent, cuz plenty of talented people still don't make it, as highlighted by the expression "criminally under subbed" which gets commonly applied to YouTubers with good content and production values (such as Grim Jim, formerly from Inappropriate Characters) that still somehow never seem to break a certain amount of subs or earn enough from Patreon to properly sustain their efforts. Meanwhile lets-players who spew random shit get millions of subs. I think that the same thing applies to pretty much almost any other industry, particularly creative endeavors.

My primary reaction: We should teach economics in grade school. The labor theory of value was thoroughly demolished by the marginal revolution, and there is no theory based on a sense of entitlement. Your pay isn't set by how much you think you're worth, how long you work, or even your skills or experience. It's based on how much other people are willing to fork over for the end result.

And when people are willing to pay you more to do one thing than to do another, you're not entitled to equal pay for the second just because it's what you prefer. That's the choice of the people giving you money, not yours. Which means that, no, you won't always get everything you want. That's a hazard of living in a world with limited resources, and why economics (economizing) is so important. But you can balance your workload, based on your prospects for remuneration and other less tangible rewards, however you want. Which is why a lot of people work part time in the RPG industry, or just treat their work as a hobby and do it for free or token amounts.

My secondary reaction: He's right about the economics of Kickstarters (big dollar amounts != high profits), and about skillsets (being passionate doesn't mean you're good, being good at writing doesn't make you good at business or self-promotion, and managers tend to exemplify the Peter Principle).

Quote from: VisionStorm;1134456Pretty much agree with all of this. I know that dumping on the UBI is kinda fashionable and that it might not be feasible, but this is one of the reasons I'm attracted to the idea. Reducing everything to the Pareto Principle doesn't really tell me what to do with the 80% of potentially talented people who aren't lucky enough to earn most of the recognition (and pay) for contributing to their field. It just tells me most people aren't likely to ever be able to succeed no matter what they do.

And I do believe that this comes down largely to luck rather than just talent, cuz plenty of talented people still don't make it, as highlighted by the expression "criminally under subbed" which gets commonly applied to YouTubers with good content and production values (such as Grim Jim, formerly from Inappropriate Characters) that still somehow never seem to break a certain amount of subs or earn enough from Patreon to properly sustain their efforts. Meanwhile lets-players who spew random shit get millions of subs. I think that the same thing applies to pretty much almost any other industry, particularly creative endeavors.

Yeah. I honestly don't know if UBI would work. I think it's worth thinking about but it's got real economic challenges. I do also like that it reduces reliance on advertisement, too. The heckler's veto gets defanged a bit if it loses some power to interfere with revenue, and artists can be more independent in their work. Another angle of the appeal to lowest common denominator that you touched on, I guess. Grim Jim is a great example, since he likes to explore controversial topics in a free thought sort of way that many advertisers won't be fond of.

Quote from: jeff37923;1134363Was that the same survey team that told WotC everybody would love the changes in D&D 4E?

No it was not. In fact they kinda publicly bashed that prior group. It's the new one that said 5e would be popular. And which got them to playtest everything publicly, and do constant surveys and previews.

Quote from: Shasarak;1134366Was that the same survey team that told WotC that there was no money in writing adventures?

That's the same former marketing team, yes.

And now we have mostly adventures :)

Quote from: Cave Bear;1134373You know, this is all so very rich coming from the "Get Woke, Go Broke" crowd. We see so many threads on the topic of what SJW's bring to the hobby, and whether they spend money or not. If artists and the tabletop gaming market are pandering so hard to the woke crowd, then there must be more money in it than pandering to you tightwads. "What the market will bear." Fuck all you broke cunts.

This made me laugh

Quote from: VisionStorm;1134408There wasn't. This huge-assed hardbound "adventure path" thing is a new trend that I'm still trying to figure out where da fauq it comes from, cuz adventures never used to sell this well. Adventure modules were always a loss leader, as far as I'm aware. I've never even ran one in my life and the only times I've bought one was when they included stuff that expanded on a setting.

It's only been these past few years during the 5e era that official looking hardbound monstrosities of adventures have become a thing people seem to like for some unfathomable reason. I think it's tied to a post 9/11 cultural shift where people now want to be told by some established higher authority what to do, rather than think for themselves or do their own thing. So they see a gigantic official tome of adventures direct from WotC telling them what to play and cream themselves.

I've also heard some speculate that these appeal to people who don't really play the game, and see RPGs as "storytelling games". So they like the idea of "adventures" that are basically like an extended story.

The trend started with Paizo, during PF1. 4e ignored the adventures, while Pathfinder focused on them, and Pathfinder won the war handily even with one hand tied behind their backs (for a variety of reasons). Still to this day, most of Pathfinder's revenue comes from adventures, mostly subscription adventures which are linked together for a huge number of levels, just like these big 5e adventure books.

Quote from: VisionStorm;1134408There wasn't.

Which I guess is the whole point about survey teams.

QuoteThis huge-assed hardbound "adventure path" thing is a new trend that I'm still trying to figure out where da fauq it comes from, cuz adventures never used to sell this well. Adventure modules were always a loss leader, as far as I'm aware. I've never even ran one in my life and the only times I've bought one was when they included stuff that expanded on a setting.

Maybe that was why it took a while to stumble on to the secret sauce.

Quote from: shuddemell;1134411The pandering occurs because most of the people that enter the field are hard leftists and are ideologically driven to pander to their own viewpoints.

Or...20-somethings and millennials tend to be leftists and also be the ones with the disposable cash to buy all this crap? Meanwhile based on this thread the old crowd are a bunch of cheap broke bastards who think $60 for a core RPG is overpriced and probably think a movie for a family of four is a crazy expense (it's $54 out here minimum for a new movie, plus easily another $25 for popcorn and drinks...four TWO HOURS of entertainment, not including any parking fee).

Quote from: Mistwell;1134481Or...20-somethings and millennials tend to be leftists and also be the ones with the disposable cash to buy all this crap? Meanwhile based on this thread the old crowd are a bunch of cheap broke bastards who think $60 for a core RPG is overpriced and probably think a movie for a family of four is a crazy expense (it's $54 out here minimum for a new movie, plus easily another $25 for popcorn and drinks...four TWO HOURS of entertainment, not including any parking fee).

   No, 60 is not overpriced that I saw anyone say, and certainly not me.  I said double that is over priced.  Given you buy everything from amazon, cheap bastard is insanely funny.  Do you just make stuff up?

Quote from: Pat;1134448You should edit in some quote blocks, and attribute them to Owen KC Stephens, so it's clear that's not your writing.

So far nobody has missed the context or understood that they are not my points, including you.

Quote from: Mistwell;1134481Or...20-somethings and millennials tend to be leftists and also be the ones with the disposable cash to buy all this crap? Meanwhile based on this thread the old crowd are a bunch of cheap broke bastards who think $60 for a core RPG is overpriced and probably think a movie for a family of four is a crazy expense (it's $54 out here minimum for a new movie, plus easily another $25 for popcorn and drinks...four TWO HOURS of entertainment, not including any parking fee).

Not true in my case at least. I spend far more on this hobby at my age than I could ever afford to when I started, and I got far more value out of what I spent when young than I do now. Then again I never complained about a $60 book, unless it turned out to be bad, and at that point I would complain about spending anything on it.. I am also dubious that 20 somethings are the ones with the bulk of the excess disposable income.

Yeah, $120 seems pretty expensive for a normal RPG book.  That is $186 in NZD and I am assuming does not include shipping which would push it over $200.

Quote from: oggsmash;1134482No, 60 is not overpriced that I saw anyone say, and certainly not me.  I said double that is over priced.  Given you buy everything from amazon, cheap bastard is insanely funny.  Do you just make stuff up?

If $60 is the current average (you agreed to that before, right?) and couple people in this thread said the current books are overpriced, was it really hard to connect the dots on that analysis? Did I really need to spell those two things out for you and then explain a connection? Or did you miss the people who said current books are overpriced in this thread (which is not you)?

Here, I will spoon-feed the conversation to you:

Quote from: GeekyBugle;1134287yes they are overpriced, because they inflate the page count and the fluff and I don't need all that art.

Quote from: Omega;1134346I disagree with it as well and I worked in publishing.

But.

The problem is not that the books are overprice. They are overpriced usually for a reason. A BAD one.

That being the damn push for colour art and usually lots of it and the mania that this actually sells the book. Not the game. Kill this fad off and book prices would drop. But as long as publishers keep believing this lie then the books are going to cost alot more.

And none of this covers publishers just being greedy and jacking the price because they think they can.

The other problem as was noted earlier by someone is... padding. Books are being padded with oft useless text just to up the word count because designers want to be payed per word not for the work in whole. And the more they push for this and get it the more bloated these books will be. As noted in other threads. A recurring problem with WOTC books for 5e is that they spend alot of time saying very little.

And also (though this one is a much more minor comment as he is saying they are both under and overpriced depending on the consumer type):

Quote from: Spinachcat;1134316RPG books are actually way OVERPRICED...unless you play the game. As the majority of game books are never used as games, but just toilet reading, the authors should be thankful there is an audience willing to pay $60 to read 300 pages instead of $10 paperback or $25 hardback.

So now you've seen some people say they're overpriced. Caught up?

Quote from: Shasarak;1134504Yeah, $120 seems pretty expensive for a normal RPG book.  That is $186 in NZD and I am assuming does not include shipping which would push it over $200.

Living in New Zealand must be hard on the pocketbook for RPGs. Both for the direct money, and the shipping charges.

Quote from: Mistwell;1134478The trend started with Paizo, during PF1. 4e ignored the adventures, while Pathfinder focused on them, and Pathfinder won the war handily even with one hand tied behind their backs (for a variety of reasons). Still to this day, most of Pathfinder's revenue comes from adventures, mostly subscription adventures which are linked together for a huge number of levels, just like these big 5e adventure books.

Quote from: Shasarak;1134479

Quote from: VisionStorm;1134408There wasn't. This huge-assed hardbound "adventure path" thing is a new trend that I'm still trying to figure out where da fauq it comes from, cuz adventures never used to sell this well. Adventure modules were always a loss leader, as far as I'm aware. I've never even ran one in my life and the only times I've bought one was when they included stuff that expanded on a setting.

Maybe that was why it took a while to stumble on to the secret sauce.

*reads up on Pathfinder Adventure Paths*

Ahh, that helps explain why they sell better. Though, I still find it weird that people would be lining up to buy snippets of game world content baked into sequential modules, rather than buy campaign supplements and expansions directly. And 4e/Pathfinder was also post-9/11, so there might still be something to my tinfoil theory.

But maybe a setting expansion/adventure matchup works better as a product, since setting expansions alone weren't that hot during TSR era D&D either.

Quote from: Shasarak;1134479Which I guess is the whole point about survey teams.

I guess it depends on what they're surveying. The old adventure modules really didn't sell that much and adventure paths follow a different, more in-depth approach that seems to have made "adventures" more marketable. They're essentially a different product even if they deal with the same type of topic. In a way old adventure modules were more like samplers, while adventure paths are a more refined and complete product. And who wants to throw their money at some sampler?

So by way of context, I reckon the AD&D players handbook, when it came out in 1978, cost the equivalent of $40 in 2020 dollars: a perfect-bound hardback with full colour boards and b&w interior, considered an extremely high end gaming product at the time. The Empire of the Petal Throne boxed game, also high production values for it's time (not so much today), cost the equivalent of $125 in 2020 dollars if purchased in 1978.

Quote from: VisionStorm;1134513*reads up on Pathfinder Adventure Paths*

Ahh, that helps explain why they sell better. Though, I still find it weird that people would be lining up to buy snippets of game world content baked into sequential modules, rather than buy campaign supplements and expansions directly. And 4e/Pathfinder was also post-9/11, so there might still be something to my tinfoil theory.

But maybe a setting expansion/adventure matchup works better as a product, since setting expansions alone weren't that hot during TSR era D&D either.

Paizo does not just do adventure paths, they also have plenty of setting expansion books, and extra class books, and extra race books and plushy goblins and flip mats and miniatures and pawns and bestiaries and other merch.

Quote from: jeff37923;1134485So far nobody has missed the context or understood that they are not my points, including you.

They're still misattributed, and they make your post harder to parse than necessary. But do what you will; it was just a recommendation.

Quote from: Zirunel;1134516So by way of context, I reckon the AD&D players handbook, when it came out in 1978, cost the equivalent of $40 in 2020 dollars: a perfect-bound hardback with full colour boards and b&w interior, considered an extremely high end gaming product at the time.

I think my copy was priced at $12, which puts it closer to $50 (I used 2019, to avoid any COVID-related weirdness). Which is probably a decent average for the 1e PH, MM, and DMG (stagflation added up quickly over the last years of the 1970s, despite the higher nominal price for the latter). And it's not perfect bound, which is a cheap form of binding. The early TSR books were smyth-sewn, which is a much more durable binding, and is why those books have a reputation for being indestructible. There also weren't any colored boards, just colored end papers in some of the early printings. But while they were black and white and mostly text (except the MM), those books were built to last.

I'm happy being a cheap bastard. It goes well with my big nose and love of latkes, bagels and knishes! :eek:

Everyone values their disposable income differently. Since I can create RPG settings easily, I don't value splatbooks. Why learn their setting when I could write my own and have fun doing it? I also don't value new things, so I'd rather pay half for used. Yes, I'm a terrible consumer.

And I'm all about getting a great deal so paying retail is painful. The only exception regarding hobby stuff is Kickstarter where I know I am helping a hobbyist get their dream produced. I should feel the same way about DriveThruRPG stuff, but I rarely do so I'm doubly cheap about PDFs.

Quote from: Shasarak;1134334First off, Owen is one of my favourite designers.

His name didn't ring a bell for me. Which of Owen's games have you played the most?

Quote from: SHARK;1134337He has created a lot of very good stuff through the years.

Same with you. Which of Owen's games have you played the most?

Quote from: Mistwell;1134348WOTC did pretty extensive surveying on the topic and did find it was important to their customers.

Was this survey published online?

Do we know the breakdown between actual players vs. non-playing customers?

Here's my problem with believing that art sells games. Why doesn't the lack of art affect sales of fiction novels? If people need pretty pictures and glossy full color pages to enjoy a setting, you would think graphic novels would dominate over paperback novels. YA lit in paperback are huge sellers and  they have nothing but a cover picture.

And the full color art demand doesn't fit either considering the sales of manga which is not just black and white, but mostly printed on rough pages of ground up bark. Zero gloss, zero color, high sales...to the same demographic as young gamers.

To me, it seems that many people are buying RPG art books with little pretense about actually ever playing the game.

Quote from: S'mon;1134369The first truth: No one owes you a living.

Damn S'mon! No wonder people think we're an alt-right extremist forum! :D

Quote from: Spinachcat;1134522Same with you. Which of Owen's games have you played the most?

The most recent one is a little space game that you may have heard of called Star Finder.

Others include work for Star Wars, Pathfinder, DnD and others which I would not admit to knowing anything about.

But I guess that is the Designers curse, there is always someone playing your game that has no idea who you are.

Quote from: Spinachcat;1134522I'm happy being a cheap bastard. It goes well with my big nose and love of latkes, bagels and knishes! :eek:

Everyone values their disposable income differently. Since I can create RPG settings easily, I don't value splatbooks. Why learn their setting when I could write my own and have fun doing it? I also don't value new things, so I'd rather pay half for used. Yes, I'm a terrible consumer.

And I'm all about getting a great deal so paying retail is painful. The only exception regarding hobby stuff is Kickstarter where I know I am helping a hobbyist get their dream produced. I should feel the same way about DriveThruRPG stuff, but I rarely do so I'm doubly cheap about PDFs.




His name didn't ring a bell for me. Which of Owen's games have you played the most?




Same with you. Which of Owen's games have you played the most?




Was this survey published online?

Do we know the breakdown between actual players vs. non-playing customers?

Here's my problem with believing that art sells games. Why doesn't the lack of art affect sales of fiction novels? If people need pretty pictures and glossy full color pages to enjoy a setting, you would think graphic novels would dominate over paperback novels. YA lit in paperback are huge sellers and  they have nothing but a cover picture.

And the full color art demand doesn't fit either considering the sales of manga which is not just black and white, but mostly printed on rough pages of ground up bark. Zero gloss, zero color, high sales...to the same demographic as young gamers.

To me, it seems that many people are buying RPG art books with little pretense about actually ever playing the game.





Damn S'mon! No wonder people think we're an alt-right extremist forum! :D

Greetings!

Hey there my friend! Well, as for game products and writings from Owen, I have read *many* of his articles that appeared in Dragon Magazine. As for game books, I recall him doing several excellent books during the 3x era that I purchased and used extensively. I don't recall the names of those books now, as it's been quite some time since I used them playing a 3E game.

As for his thoughts on the RPG industry, well, he seems like a smart fellow. His commentary about how broke and poor everyone who does RPG's though, well...*shrugs* *laughing* That's just about what everyone has always said about the RPG industry...that doesn't stop himself, Mearls, James Jacobs, Reynolds, and all the others carve out nice little careers for themselves through the decades.

Semper Fidelis,

SHARK

Quote from: Pat;1134521I think my copy was priced at $12, which puts it closer to $50 (I used 2019, to avoid any COVID-related weirdness). Which is probably a decent average for the 1e PH, MM, and DMG (stagflation added up quickly over the last years of the 1970s, despite the higher nominal price for the latter). And it's not perfect bound, which is a cheap form of binding. The early TSR books were smyth-sewn, which is a much more durable binding, and is why those books have a reputation for being indestructible. There also weren't any colored boards, just colored end papers in some of the early printings. But while they were black and white and mostly text (except the MM), those books were built to last.

So I don't know if the 5e books have the same CON (I don't own any), but basically the price hasn't really increased from a 1e phb  40+ years ago to a 5e phb today, despite the addition of interior colour art.....

Quote from: shuddemell;1134406Owen made a choice to do what he loved, and while none of what he says is wrong, what isn't mentioned is that he spends a very large portion of his time gaming... my job paying a living wage affords me little time to do that. So while his take on this is much of the downside, there is an upside that shouldn't be forgotten. All choices have consequences.

THIS is an excellent point. All choices have a balance. Sometimes, the upside is overshadowed by the downside and the choice is no longer valuable. Also, where you are in life affects the value of those upsides and downsides. I could earn double, maybe triple, if I wore a suit and slaved for venture capital firm. But instead, I sleep easily, wear Iron Maiden t-shirts, make my own schedule, and take my own risks. I've traded a lot of money for living on my own terms, aka my concept of happiness. And when money gets tight - and it has - I have to accept the downside because I choose the upside.

Quote from: VisionStorm;1134456Reducing everything to the Pareto Principle doesn't really tell me what to do with the 80% of potentially talented people who aren't lucky enough to earn most of the recognition (and pay) for contributing to their field. It just tells me most people aren't likely to ever be able to succeed no matter what they do.

Success is relative. For some, scraping by doing what they love is success. For others, anything less than superstardom is failure.

Talent is a dime a dozen. I can't tell you how many AMAZING opening bands I've seen over the years...and never heard of them again. The formula for success really is 99% perspiration and 1% inspiration. It's not enough for a creative to master their creative craft. They have to master all the business around their craft. That's a tall, lonely mountain few want to climb, especially when the chance to become wildly successful is so very low.  

Quote from: Pat;1134457My primary reaction: We should teach economics in grade school.

Abso-freaking-lutely.

Quote from: insubordinate polyhedral;1134463Yeah. I honestly don't know if UBI would work.

Socialism works great!!!...until you run out of other people's money.

Quote from: Zirunel;1134525So I don't know if the 5e books have the same CON (I don't own any), but basically the price hasn't really increased from a 1e phb  40+ years ago to a 5e phb today, despite the addition of interior colour art.....

It's a safe bet they don't have the same Con. Smyth-sewn binding is archival quality.
http://www.bookfactory.com/Smyth-sewn-books.html

Quote from: Zirunel;1134516So by way of context, I reckon the AD&D players handbook, when it came out in 1978, cost the equivalent of $40 in 2020 dollars: a perfect-bound hardback with full colour boards and b&w interior, considered an extremely high end gaming product at the time. The Empire of the Petal Throne boxed game, also high production values for it's time (not so much today), cost the equivalent of $125 in 2020 dollars if purchased in 1978.

Nope it was 9.95 which would be 39.13 vs 5e PHB 45.00

All 3 books in 2020 money = 125.25

All 3 5e books = 149.85

Sauce (http://saveversusallwands.blogspot.com/2018/04/historical-analysis-d-prices-then-and.html)

Quote from: GeekyBugle;1134530Nope it was 9.95 which would be 39.13 vs 5e PHB 45.00
Sauce (http://saveversusallwands.blogspot.com/2018/04/historical-analysis-d-prices-then-and.html)

I didn't get my set of AD&D core books until a couple year later, but prices were $12 or $15, and that can be verified today because they're embedded in the product number. While it's certainly possible that early printings were $9.95 or $11.95, I'd like a better source than one guy's memory. A year or two or a dollar or two doesn't matter as much for later books, but it has a big impact on prices from the 1970s, because of stagflation.

Quote from: Pat;1134531I didn't get my set of AD&D core books until a couple year later, but prices were $12 or $15, and that can be verified today because they're embedded in the product number. While it's certainly possible that early printings were $9.95 or $11.95, I'd like a better source than one guy's memory. A year or two or a dollar or two doesn't matter as much for later books, but it has a big impact on prices from the 1970s, because of stagflation.

1981 Sears Christmas Book

https://christmas.musetechnical.com/ShowCatalogPage/1981-Sears-Christmas-Book/0664

Quote from: VisionStorm;1134513*reads up on Pathfinder Adventure Paths*

Ahh, that helps explain why they sell better. Though, I still find it weird that people would be lining up to buy snippets of game world content baked into sequential modules, rather than buy campaign supplements and expansions directly. And 4e/Pathfinder was also post-9/11, so there might still be something to my tinfoil theory.

But maybe a setting expansion/adventure matchup works better as a product, since setting expansions alone weren't that hot during TSR era D&D either.

I also think a lot of this has to do with people who started in the 70s and 80s now being in their 40s and 50s with spouses and kids and full time jobs and social lives separate from D&D, and they just don't have as much time to make their own adventure these days. And, they can afford to pay for someone else to do it, with one of these adventure paths.

Quote from: Zirunel;1134516So by way of context, I reckon the AD&D players handbook, when it came out in 1978, cost the equivalent of $40 in 2020 dollars: a perfect-bound hardback with full colour boards and b&w interior, considered an extremely high end gaming product at the time. The Empire of the Petal Throne boxed game, also high production values for it's time (not so much today), cost the equivalent of $125 in 2020 dollars if purchased in 1978.

$15 in 1978 is equivalent in purchasing power to about $58.99 to $62.07 in 2020.

The books have actually gotten cheaper over time, despite better art, better type setting and formatting, and full color. Though I'd say bindings have gotten worse over time.

Quote from: Mistwell;1134271"Tabletop RPG books are not overpriced. They are specialty technical creative writing social interaction manuals. At double the current prices, they would not be overpriced. This is why most TTRPG creators leave the industry. Along with constant fan harassment."

Why do you disagree with that?

Didn't read his post but there's significant harassment in this industry and I don't know why. I wrote from 2018 to 2020 and simply realized my skills can be better used elsewhere when you measure profits vs hassle. Best way to change things is to support legit indie authors like me. My first game got scrutinized for being too OSR by SJW standards. My second book is a success. Yet, people that enjoy it don't leave reviews very often. Bottom line, people love to spread negativism over positivity in the hobby, and that should change.

Quote from: FelixGamingX1;1134539Didn't read his post but there's significant harassment in this industry and I don't know why. I wrote from 2018 to 2020 and simply realized my skills can be better used elsewhere when you measure profits vs hassle. Best way to change things is to support legit indie authors like me. My first game got scrutinized for being too OSR by SJW standards. My second book is a success. Yet, people that enjoy it don't leave reviews very often. Bottom line, people love to spread negativism over positivity in the hobby, and that should change.

I think that's true in general for the Internet regardless of topic. As to how to change it, I do not know. Anonymity and trends that came with it have made the Internet an overall negative means of communication as a generalization.

I can't even count the number of negative reviews I've seen on Amazon about a product because there were shipping or delivery problems which had nothing to do with the product. And as a small business owner, we probably get 2 complaint reviews online about some shipping issue that was out of our hand, or a refusal to entirely re-make a custom item for free because the customer provided the wrong customization information, than we do positive reviews...despite getting tons of phone calls with positive reviews. It's just more appealing to review when you have a complaint than it is to review when you're satisfied. Which yes, sucks.

Quote from: Hakdov;11345331981 Sears Christmas Book

https://christmas.musetechnical.com/ShowCatalogPage/1981-Sears-Christmas-Book/0664

Thanks!

Interesting, those prices don't match either mine or the blog's, and it's 2–4 years after the books were initially available. Converted from 12/1981 (Christmas catalog) to 12/2019 dollars, using the Bureau of Labor's CPI calculator:

$7.99 (MM, PH, D&DG) becomes $21.84
$9.99 (DMG) becomes $27.31

Yeah, that's garbage. Fast rising inflation makes prices from just a few years ago very inaccurate, so the exact date matters. If we assume those were the prices at first printing, and use the Acaeum's 1st printing months:

$7.99 (MM, 12/1977) becomes $33.06
$7.99 (PH, 6/1978) becomes $31.49
$9.99 (DMG, 8/1979) becomes $34.79
$7.99 (D&DG, 6?/1980) becomes $24.83

Still need to confirm, and even then it'd be uncertain. Given how fast prices were rising, their pricing strategy would be important. The 1980s and later should be fine, but I have little confidence in CPI adjusted prices for RPG books released in the 1970s.

Also, if we used something like the chained CPI, the numbers would all change again.

Quote from: FelixGamingX1;1134539Best way to change things is to support legit indie authors like me. My first game got scrutinized for being too OSR by SJW standards. My second book is a success. Yet, people that enjoy it don't leave reviews very often. Bottom line, people love to spread negativism over positivity in the hobby, and that should change.

a) Pimp yer stuff! Links in your signature line!

b) Always ask for reviews. We install re-marketing tools for all our clients and one of the most successful tools has been an automated request for reviews. People need to be prompted to leave positive reviews. Don't tell them what to say, but express how important reviews are to small press folk and please share what you enjoy about our games.

c) The internet is so negative because the West is spoiled and ungrateful. It's not enough that I can get what I want instantly! My every whim must be fulfilled and nobody must disagree with me! It's an issue far beyond the hobby. Yelp and Amazon reviews are like mental illness on parade. Thus the need to request reviews from happy customers.

Quote from: Spinachcat;1134526Socialism works great!!!...until you run out of other people's money.

Yeah you're not wrong. Automation has already started to smack us in the face, though, and the market in this space is punishing and has razor-thin margins. There's a risk of messing with a system and setting it off balance. There's also a risk in doing nothing and losing access to viable creative endeavors. RPGs are definitely a luxury good, too.

I've written as a professional Freelancer, and I've also work in the Department of Corrections..

Guess what... Working in a prison is Harder. But it sure pays me a fuck ton more and gives me great benefits.

I wrote for RPG's when I was in Grad School. I'd really like to do it again, most likely I will on my own stuff... this day and age it's so easy to just write stuff you want and put it up.

If you want to make a decent living, then take a job doing something society values more. It's as simple as that. RPGs are a niche hobby for a niche audience. Kevin Crawford has stated numerous times he's never quit his day Job, and he's massively successful as a single operation guy. Clearly he does this though for the love, not because he wanted it to become his main source of income (though kudos to him for being so successful).

I just don't have a lot of sympathy for RPG writers who complain about not getting paid enough. Maybe because I've seen it from both sides now. Yeah you bet working in a Prison is part of the reason why I'm not churning out new writing projects, but that's my own fault. At the end of the day most human beings don't get to live off of the fruits of their art... it's a hobby for them which if they're very very lucky they can make some extra scratch from. But for most of us, we have to actually work for a living.

Quote from: FelixGamingX1;1134539Didn't read his post but there's significant harassment in this industry and I don't know why. I wrote from 2018 to 2020 and simply realized my skills can be better used elsewhere when you measure profits vs hassle. Best way to change things is to support legit indie authors like me. My first game got scrutinized for being too OSR by SJW standards. My second book is a success. Yet, people that enjoy it don't leave reviews very often. Bottom line, people love to spread negativism over positivity in the hobby, and that should change.

Quote from: Spinachcat;1134551a) Pimp yer stuff! Links in your signature line!

b) Always ask for reviews. We install re-marketing tools for all our clients and one of the most successful tools has been an automated request for reviews. People need to be prompted to leave positive reviews. Don't tell them what to say, but express how important reviews are to small press folk and please share what you enjoy about our games.

c) The internet is so negative because the West is spoiled and ungrateful. It's not enough that I can get what I want instantly! My every whim must be fulfilled and nobody must disagree with me! It's an issue far beyond the hobby. Yelp and Amazon reviews are like mental illness on parade. Thus the need to request reviews from happy customers.

What Spinachat said times 2

Quote from: Pat;1134546Thanks!

Interesting, those prices don't match either mine or the blog's, and it's 2–4 years after the books were initially available.

Mine weren't that cheap either, a few years earlier. I got mine, also mail order, but from gaming/wargaming stores. I suspect the price drop may have to do with a retailing shift:

either from high-overhead specialty stores in the 70s to high-volume retailers, or

from marketing to a gaming niche in the 70s to the beginnings of mass marketing to a wider public

or likely  a combination of the two.

I think I paid 15 or 18 in 1981 for the MM.

I was in the industry more than a decade ago, first as a writer, then as a publisher. A lot of this list would have been true then, too.

But there is one thing I wanted to respond to:

Quote from: Omega;1134346The problem is not that the books are overprice. They are overpriced usually for a reason. A BAD one.

That being the damn push for colour art and usually lots of it and the mania that this actually sells the book. Not the game. Kill this fad off and book prices would drop. But as long as publishers keep believing this lie then the books are going to cost alot more.

So, I had the opportunity to partner with a company that did two versions of their products, one with full color art, and one that was a plain text, well laid out version of the rules, but with no art. The page count on the latter was often up to 25% less. The quality of cover, paper, binding were the same - they came from the same printer. The cover of the black and white version was, if I recall, 2 color rather than 4 color.

Anyway, even though the artless version was significantly less expensive, the full color version sold tons better. I can only speak to convention sales, but our restocks for the full color version were about five times the restocks for the artless version.

And that 'fad' is why RPG books are full color - they sell better. A lot better. While you may not want them, in general, RPG purchasers do.

Quote from: ArtemisAlpha;1134654I was in the industry more than a decade ago, first as a writer, then as a publisher. A lot of this list would have been true then, too.

But there is one thing I wanted to respond to:



So, I had the opportunity to partner with a company that did two versions of their products, one with full color art, and one that was a plain text, well laid out version of the rules, but with no art. The page count on the latter was often up to 25% less. The quality of cover, paper, binding were the same - they came from the same printer. The cover of the black and white version was, if I recall, 2 color rather than 4 color.

Anyway, even though the artless version was significantly less expensive, the full color version sold tons better. I can only speak to convention sales, but our restocks for the full color version were about five times the restocks for the artless version.

And that 'fad' is why RPG books are full color - they sell better. A lot better. While you may not want them, in general, RPG purchasers do.

Hm, "color art" vs "no art" seems like it's about the presence of art more than it is about the presence of color. Do you have any experience with how well books stuffed with high-quality black-and-white art sell? Would high-quality black-and-white art cost significantly less than color art of the same quality?

Quote from: Zalman;1134655Hm, "color art" vs "no art" seems like it's about the presence of art more than it is about the presence of color. Do you have any experience with how well books stuffed with high-quality black-and-white art sell? Would high-quality black-and-white art cost significantly less than color art of the same quality?

  Being a DCC fan, I wonder about this as well.  No art is well....not to my liking.   I feel the color thing has been researched enough, they do it for good reason, at least the big dogs.   The BEST reason to do it if you are the big dog, is to set a new precedent for minimal expectations that your competitors can not match though.   I wonder if D&D switched to a presentation similar to DCC, with good art, but all Black and white and no slick paper if it would hurt their sales a lot, or hurt sales a little in increase bottom line significantly.  I think they are doing well enough not to bother trying to fix what is not broken.

Quote from: hedgehobbit;1134273"The majority of TTRPG professionals--staffers, freelancers, owners, et al., are substantially underpaid for their skills."  

Ah, I see why social justice has done so well with sticking TTRPGs comrade. Seize the means of production and redistribute them to the proletariate writers!
I feel RPGs most directly follow commercial patterns. TTRPGs don't have unions and its not a hobby that requires a license or much skill for changing stuff or getting in. Its probably one of the purest capitalist creative industries out there.

I see tabletop RPGs as an awesome hobby where you can occasionally get paid as a cherry on top (and I'm a freelance TTRPG writer). If you wanna get paid more owens make less garbage.

Quote from: Shrieking Banshee;1134663Ah, I see why social justice has done so well with sticking TTRPGs comrade. Seize the means of production and redistribute them to the proletariate writers!
I feel RPGs most directly follow commercial patterns. TTRPGs don't have unions and its not a hobby that requires a license or much skill for changing stuff or getting in. Its probably one of the purest capitalist creative industries out there.

I see tabletop RPGs as an awesome hobby where you can occasionally get paid as a cherry on top (and I'm a freelance TTRPG writer). If you wanna get paid more owens make less garbage.

Or publish your own stuff instead of writing for others, of course that has way more risks than being a paid drone but the fruits will be yours and yours alone.

Take a page out of Grim, Pundit and many others, look at what many are now doing with comics, selling one GN and making One Million Dollars!

As for UBI, I worry much more about the social effects moreso then if it's really possible (which I doubt). No Universal Basic Income system will ever be Universal or Basic or a type of Income.

I think a better catchphrase might be 'Conditional Beurocratic Welfare'. And Id say humanity being at the point of needing a CBW is more of a horrific outcome then a solution.

Quote from: ArtemisAlpha;1134654I was in the industry more than a decade ago, first as a writer, then as a publisher. A lot of this list would have been true then, too.

But there is one thing I wanted to respond to:



So, I had the opportunity to partner with a company that did two versions of their products, one with full color art, and one that was a plain text, well laid out version of the rules, but with no art. The page count on the latter was often up to 25% less. The quality of cover, paper, binding were the same - they came from the same printer. The cover of the black and white version was, if I recall, 2 color rather than 4 color.

Anyway, even though the artless version was significantly less expensive, the full color version sold tons better. I can only speak to convention sales, but our restocks for the full color version were about five times the restocks for the artless version.

And that 'fad' is why RPG books are full color - they sell better. A lot better. While you may not want them, in general, RPG purchasers do.

I like art. I like color, when appropriate. I like how Dungeon Crawl Classics is mostly black and white art reminiscent of the old D&D books. I like Pathfinder/Starfinder full color art on every other page.
I hate RPGs that have no art. My eyes need a break from the Wall Of Text once in a while.

QuoteWould high-quality black-and-white art cost significantly less than color art of the same quality?

Usually, yes. It depends on the artist, obviously; but usually colour art is about twice the price for the same piece of black and white art from the same artist.

Quote from: Ratman_tf;1134675I hate RPGs that have no art. My eyes need a break from the Wall Of Text once in a while.

Do you feel the same when reading novels?

Quote from: Pat;1134679Do you feel the same when reading novels?

  Rpg books do not read anything like novels.  They are more like text books.  Or Encyclopedias, or Books about Dinosaurs.

Quote from: Spinachcat;1134316Writing is a hobby for most "professional" authors. The money in RPGs isn't worse than in fiction. I've known a dozen authors (some with bestsellers) who never quit their day job.  

"Doing what you love" only works for a fraction of the people who try it. For the majority, turning their Fun into Work, ruins their Fun. Only a minority seem to master the concepts of "Show" and "Business" and manage to keep their enjoyment of their fun turned work.

C.J. Carella was fairly prominent in gaming and started writing novels, "in order to make a living." He seems to be doing OK. His newest novel was released this week.
He hasn't stopped gaming. In fact, he is running a game for us right now and will play in my campaign tomorrow.

What I am not seeing in Stephens article are the realities cause by the fact that digital technology has dramatically lower the barriers to creating, distributing, and selling content. There are more details but the basic result is that a large portion of people involved in publishing for RPGs, like myself, are in business for themselves. This also includes artists, editors, layout, and cartographers.

For example I have a contract rate for people wanting me to draw maps. So far every time I was asked for a quote, I gave my number and it was accepted. I make sure that the time I have to complete the work fits within the time I have for my hobbies because I have family and work priorities that come first. Some of what Stephens says is interesting and relevant to me, some are not.  However the fact remains I am able to do this because digital technology has allowed me to take advantage of opportunities that didn't exist in the 80s or 90s.

Quote from: oggsmash;1134681Rpg books do not read anything like novels.  They are more like text books.  Or Encyclopedias, or Books about Dinosaurs.

Yes, RPG bools are technical manuals. People are comparing apples and oranges and expecting them to be treated as the same thing. They are different products for different audiences, with different expectations and reading habits. Even if those audiences somewhat overlap (you'd be surprised how many people willing to play an RPG won't pick up a novel and rely entirely on film and visual media to get their fantasy fix) the purpose and usage is not the same.

Technical manuals are informative and often rely on charts and visual representations to get their message across. They're not an immersive and highly evocative piece of media where the audience is expected to disconnect from the real world and be taken for a ride in their imaginations. And people being introduced into the game don't have time (or often the inclination) to sit down and do "homework" stuff just get a feel for what this supposed "game" is about. But if you show them some cool pictures of the type of world this game is about and the creatures that inhabit it you can hook them without saying a word or them having to sit and read dozens if not hundreds of pages just to get the gist of it.

Quote from: WillInNewHaven;1134682C.J. Carella was fairly prominent in gaming and started writing novels, "in order to make a living." He seems to be doing OK. His newest novel was released this week.
He hasn't stopped gaming. In fact, he is running a game for us right now and will play in my campaign tomorrow.

  Ah, I remember him as basically being the beginning of crazy power creep in Rifts  (Mercenaries ( or south america cant remember) I think was the first I had where guns got BIG).  I have  his Armageddon game as well, as (formerly owned, who knows what my youngest brother did with them) a bunch of rifts books he wrote.    I will have to give his novels a look.  I am certain that is A LOT more profitable than writing rpgs.  I remember an episode of Joe Rogan, and he started talking about the lady who started the "big foot porn" digital mini novels and short stories on amazon.  It led me down a rabbit hole where there are some novelists out there putting stuff on amazon selling it digitally and making money that is....shocking. I think he had an estimation what big foot lady had made for that year.....and I was like W T F.

Quote from: oggsmash;1134681Rpg books do not read anything like novels.  They are more like text books.  Or Encyclopedias, or Books about Dinosaurs.

Do you expect tons of full-color pictures in your Encyclopedias?

Though textbooks are a fairer comparison. They might have some pictures here and there, but mostly it's diagrams, charts, or graphs -- which aren't pictures, and RPGs have plenty. That's why I don't understand why people feel the need for all these illustrations, especially full color ones. They're not picture books or coffee table books.

Quote from: Pat;1134692Though textbooks are a fairer comparison. They might have some pictures here and there, but mostly it's diagrams, charts, or graphs -- which aren't pictures, and RPGs have plenty. That's why I don't understand why people feel the need for all these illustrations, especially full color ones. They're not picture books or coffee table books.

Images are really inspiring and help set a tone. Color images or images are not a must for me but I would be lying if I didn't say I found them neat or intriguing.

Quote from: Pat;1134692Do you expect tons of full-color pictures in your Encyclopedias?

Though textbooks are a fairer comparison. They might have some pictures here and there, but mostly it's diagrams, charts, or graphs -- which aren't pictures, and RPGs have plenty. That's why I don't understand why people feel the need for all these illustrations, especially full color ones. They're not picture books or coffee table books.

  Have you seen me asking for full color pictures?  I am the DCC fan.  Some art yes.  Encylopedias (world book at least) were FULL of pictures.  Biology text books are FULL of pictures.

Quote from: oggsmash;1134681Rpg books do not read anything like novels.  They are more like text books.  Or Encyclopedias, or Books about Dinosaurs.

just so. A novel is aimed to entertain with it's text. Rules and tables are interesting but not necessarily entertaining.

PS a dinosaur book without pictures of dinosaurs is a very sad thing.

(https://boredkg.files.wordpress.com/2012/03/fuck-your-feathers.jpg)

Quote from: Pat;1134692Do you expect tons of full-color pictures in your Encyclopedias?

Though textbooks are a fairer comparison. They might have some pictures here and there, but mostly it's diagrams, charts, or graphs -- which aren't pictures, and RPGs have plenty. That's why I don't understand why people feel the need for all these illustrations, especially full color ones. They're not picture books or coffee table books.

I gotta agree about color illustrations, at least for the most part. I do think that at least some color art (beyond just the cover) is necessary, or at least ideal, to properly set the tone and give players a really firm idea what the world is about--specially if setting is a central feature of the game.

But it doesn't need to be splattered across every page. Not every page needs or should have a picture--or background images and frames--because it interrupts the flow of reading, which defeats the purpose of a technical manual or textbook, which is what an RPG game book actually is. An RPG book is not a toy--even if it's technically used to play a game--and trying to make it look like one won't make it a better book.

I HATE the busy design that some games use. A textbook page should be as clear as possible, focusing on readability, rather than trying "wow" audiences with all these background art splats in the middle of text or heavy frames that take too much attention from the text. Art should be used sparingly to help illustrate the game, and color art should usually not be thrown in the middle of text, unless you manage to minimize the impact somehow. And most illustrations could be black and white, and probably should. I prefer sleek and minimalistic design, that's attractive but not overpowering.

Quote from: Shrieking Banshee;1134693Images are really inspiring and help set a tone. Color images or images are not a must for me but I would be lying if I didn't say I found them neat or intriguing.

The best art is wild, weird, diverse, and evocative -- but that has little to do with the text, or the game. You're better off buying an art book, watching movies, or trolling archives on the web, if you need some inspiration for a game. The density is greater, as is your control. Art can make for a nice accent in an RPG book, but that's about it.

But most RPG art is much worse, because it tries to define the world, which I find uninspiring. No, that's the wrong word. "Un-" just means "not", which is neutral. I find it negatively inspiring. They're not just extraneous, they make it worse. Dis-inspiring? Anti-inspiring? Something like that. The problem is that RPG settings primarily exist in the mind, and words are far better at conveying necessary information while letting the reader's imagination fill in all the other details. The problem with art is it never provides necessary details,[1] it only gives tone, impressions, and style. Which is constraining, because your imagination can't just build on the necessary details presented in the text, it has to constrain them within a very narrow range of visualizations.

[1] Floorplans and the like are an exception, but they're more diagram than art.

Quote from: Pat;1134707The best art is wild, weird, diverse, and evocative -- but that has little to do with the text, or the game.

You're pretty much contradicting your later statement. You tell yourself that you find images too stifling is one thing, but saying they don't have an impact before that is just oxymoronic.
You're also just yapping more personal preferences and presenting them as objective truths. I can respect your preferences but don't demand everybody treat them as objective.

It reminds me of a blog thing I can't find any more about a guy doing a review of a D&D monster and how this neat and creepy image brought the idea to a new direction and made him want to run it. And then in a later release, the monster was more generic and not as inspiring. And when I saw what he was talking about yeah I agreed with it as well.

Quote from: Shrieking Banshee;1134710You're pretty much contradicting your later statement. You tell yourself that you find images too stifling is one thing, but saying they don't have an impact before that is just oxymoronic.
You're also just yapping more personal preferences and presenting them as objective truths. I can respect your preferences but don't demand everybody treat them as objective.

No, you're just being an asshole. I never said images didn't have an impact, and I never contradicted myself. The "I find..." and similar phrases in my post should clearly indicate I'm talking about personal preferences -- not to mention, it should be obvious in context. It's a ridiculous standard to burden casual speech on a forum by requiring "IMO" caveats in every damn sentence. There are a few parts where I talk about general principles, but if you object to any of that, then you should specifically object to them, because otherwise there's no way I can know what caused you to descend into this idiocy.

Quote from: Ratman_tf;1134700just so. A novel is aimed to entertain with it's text. Rules and tables are interesting but not necessarily entertaining.

PS a dinosaur book without pictures of dinosaurs is a very sad thing.

(https://boredkg.files.wordpress.com/2012/03/fuck-your-feathers.jpg)

What I find sad is that Pterosaurs and T-Rex didn't live at the same time and also -Rexs had feathers.

Quote from: Pat;1134707But most RPG art is much worse, because it tries to define the world, which I find uninspiring. No, that's the wrong word. "Un-" just means "not", which is neutral. I find it negatively inspiring. They're not just extraneous, they make it worse. Dis-inspiring? Anti-inspiring? Something like that. The problem is that RPG settings primarily exist in the mind, and words are far better at conveying necessary information while letting the reader's imagination fill in all the other details. The problem with art is it never provides necessary details,[1] it only gives tone, impressions, and style. Which is constraining, because your imagination can't just build on the necessary details presented in the text, it has to constrain them within a very narrow range of visualizations.

I disagree. While it is entirely possible that a game provides inadequate art that fails to properly convey a world or tries to narrowly define things that are better off left up to the GM--particularly in the case of generic, non-setting specific RPGs (like D&D to a certain extent is technically supposed to be)--properly made art can greatly enhance most players ability visualize the world, inspire them, and help hook them on a game.

Some people simply do not want to slug through long written descriptions in order to get the intricacies of the world, but an image can help them get a glimpse in an instant. And the more setting-specific the game, and more original the setting is, the more that good art can become essential to properly conveying that world.

A great example of this is Dark Sun, which basically rode in the coattails of Gerald Brom's art, which ultimately helped inspire some elements of the world while it was still in development, and brought it to life. As excellent as Dark Sun is in its own right (except for the later supplements), it would've never been the same without Brom.

I do think that not all art has to be in the book, though. Particularly color art. A lot of it could just be promotional material mostly found in the web, and you could dedicate an entire site to the game, with a lot of color illustrations in there and use only minimal art in the book, perhaps entirely black and white.

Quote from: Shrieking Banshee;1134674As for UBI, I worry much more about the social effects moreso then if it's really possible (which I doubt). No Universal Basic Income system will ever be Universal or Basic or a type of Income.

I think a better catchphrase might be 'Conditional Beurocratic Welfare'. And Id say humanity being at the point of needing a CBW is more of a horrific outcome then a solution.

If UBI replaced all Government benefit programs (except those you pay into, like Medicare and Social Security) I think it could work well. You'd eliminate dozens of existing programs and the bureaucracies built to support them (SNAP, Subsidized housing, energy assistance programs, welfare, supplemental security, Lifelime, temporary assistance for needy families, Earned Income Tax Credit, etc..). You fold all that money into one program, and it goes to every citizen so you don't need some big system which checks income and how you spend it and when you spend it and checks for renewals etc.. Nobody feels the shame of being on Government dole, nobody has to prove to the Government they need the money or spent the money wisely. You'd save money in Government employees and their benefits and pensions, and use that to help fund the program. It would be one big Government spending program which ironically shrinks the overall size of the Government itself.

And then people could use that cash to buy more RPG books! Which is only semi-joking. Extra money would in fact be used by some to supplement their hobby expenditures. And one theme of UBI is it frees some people to pursue more creative endeavors with their time, since they can afford to live with fewer work hours. Which is something that mechanization will force on us eventually anyway. Some of those creative hours would be on making RPG products.

Quote from: GeekyBugle;1134717What I find sad is that Pterosaurs and T-Rex didn't live at the same time and also -Rexs had feathers.

Pterosaurs and tyrannosaurs did live at the same time, in fact both around for the end-K extinction. In fact, it was the time of the largest pterosaurs, like Quetzalcoatlus and Hatzegopteryx. You may be thinking of a specific genus that was extinct by the latest Cretaceous, like Pteranodon or Pterodactylus.

Quote from: VisionStorm;1134727I disagree. While it is entirely possible that a game provides inadequate art that fails to properly convey a world or tries to narrowly define things that are better off left up to the GM--particularly in the case of generic, non-setting specific RPGs (like D&D to a certain extent is technically supposed to be)--properly made art can greatly enhance most players ability visualize the world, inspire them, and help hook them on a game.

Some people simply do not want to slug through long written descriptions in order to get the intricacies of the world, but an image can help them get a glimpse in an instant. And the more setting-specific the game, and more original the setting is, the more that good art can become essential to properly conveying that world.

A great example of this is Dark Sun, which basically rode in the coattails of Gerald Brom's art, which ultimately helped inspire some elements of the world while it was still in development, and brought it to life. As excellent as Dark Sun is in its own right (except for the later supplements), it would've never been the same without Brom.

I do think that not all art has to be in the book, though. Particularly color art. A lot of it could just be promotional material mostly found in the web, and you could dedicate an entire site to the game, with a lot of color illustrations in there and use only minimal art in the book, perhaps entirely black and white.

Where did I advocate for long written descriptions? I didn't. Your argument is based on a strawman.

The necessary information to run a setting is the concrete details, like names, stats, maps, and so on. You need that, and it can't be conveyed through art. But you don't want too many details, because it's a lot harder to memorize someone else's work on all kinds of topics that might or might not come up in your game, and keep every detail of that straight, than it is to remember what you, yourself, came up with in the course of a game. That's why RPGs work best with an extensive improvisational component. Give the GM specific details for game stats and the necessary setting elements, but leave the rest open. Tone, trappings, and so forth don't need to be extensively detailed, they can be primarily defined by reference and allusion, allowing the GM to come up with the specifics only when needed.

Setting bibles are bad for that same reason -- while they're good for maintaining setting consistency when dealing with numerous authors, it becomes a lot of work ensuring every new element is consistent with the entire previous body of work, and it limits many stories. But that cross-consistency is simply not an issue in a single campaign run by a single GM, where the setting unfolds as the players engage with it. The GM doesn't have to vet everything for consistency with an established canon, because whatever the GM presents to the players is the canon. The setting bible for a new campaign starts out as just a few pages, and they're all in GM's head. That's much easier to work with.

Inspiration is useful, but it doesn't have to be art. A few words, or references to TV shows, movies, novels, or legends work just fine. And when it's art, it works best when it's detached somewhat from the setting. (Which is why I argued it doesn't have to be part of the game.) Because that way, you're not bound by it; it's a launchpad, not a prison. Conversely, by portraying it, you're limiting the world. You're creating the visual equivalent of an exhaustive setting bible, and forcing the GM to maintain some level of consistency with all kinds of extraneous, non-essential details.

Quote from: GeekyBugle;1134717What I find sad is that Pterosaurs and T-Rex didn't live at the same time and also -Rexs had feathers.

Bah. Next you'll be telling me that cavemen and dinosaurs never lived at the same time.

Quote from: Mistwell;1134732If UBI replaced all Government benefit programs (except those you pay into, like Medicare and Social Security) I think it could work well.

That'll never happen, not in this world. Government programs don't just go away like that. You'll have UBI + everything else as well.

And you don't pay into Medicare and Social Security. The money taken out of your paycheck is just a tax, that goes into a general fund. What you withdraw isn't what you put in, because that was spent long ago. It's just payment based on some arbitrary rules, which is funded by taxes on the people who are currently paying taxes.

Quote from: Pat;1134692Do you expect tons of full-color pictures in your Encyclopedias?

Though textbooks are a fairer comparison. They might have some pictures here and there, but mostly it's diagrams, charts, or graphs -- which aren't pictures, and RPGs have plenty. That's why I don't understand why people feel the need for all these illustrations, especially full color ones. They're not picture books or coffee table books.

When I talked to professors about what cell biology or immunology text they were going to adopt (in my last job) their big concerns were
1: Website support
2: Illustrations, and not just tables and charts. Pictures.

Quote from: Omega;1134346That being the damn push for colour art and usually lots of it and the mania that this actually sells the book. Not the game. Kill this fad off and book prices would drop. But as long as publishers keep believing this lie then the books are going to cost alot more.

Many of my friends, who are really into RPGs and play at least once a week, will not look at a book unless it is in full color. The biggest complaint my friends have about Savage Worlds is the lack of fully illustrated bestiaries.

I firmly believe art sells books more than the system or even the writing. Our copies of Overlight can attest to that. Good systems and content is how you grab a niche audience large enough to fund the art needed to make a popular game.

Quote from: Pat;1134736Where did I advocate for long written descriptions? I didn't. Your argument is based on a strawman.

The necessary information to run a setting is the concrete details, like names, stats, maps, and so on. You need that, and it can't be conveyed through art. But you don't want too many details, because it's a lot harder to memorize someone else's work on all kinds of topics that might or might not come up in your game, and keep every detail of that straight, than it is to remember what you, yourself, came up with in the course of a game. That's why RPGs work best with an extensive improvisational component. Give the GM specific details for game stats and the necessary setting elements, but leave the rest open. Tone, trappings, and so forth don't need to be extensively detailed, they can be primarily defined by reference and allusion, allowing the GM to come up with the specifics only when needed.

Setting bibles are bad for that same reason -- while they're good for maintaining setting consistency when dealing with numerous authors, it becomes a lot of work ensuring every new element is consistent with the entire previous body of work, and it limits many stories. But that cross-consistency is simply not an issue in a single campaign run by a single GM, where the setting unfolds as the players engage with it. The GM doesn't have to vet everything for consistency with an established canon, because whatever the GM presents to the players is the canon. The setting bible for a new campaign starts out as just a few pages, and they're all in GM's head. That's much easier to work with.

Inspiration is useful, but it doesn't have to be art. A few words, or references to TV shows, movies, novels, or legends work just fine. And when it's art, it works best when it's detached somewhat from the setting. (Which is why I argued it doesn't have to be part of the game.) Because that way, you're not bound by it; it's a launchpad, not a prison. Conversely, by portraying it, you're limiting the world. You're creating the visual equivalent of an exhaustive setting bible, and forcing the GM to maintain some level of consistency with all kinds of extraneous, non-essential details.

You need to look up the definition of "strawman", cuz you seem to make a fast and loose use of it.

Just because you disagree with the framing of a single sentence that doesn't make the entire thing I said a "strawman". Specially when you come out and bring up stuff like "names (which I'm assuming means cities, regions, etc.), stats, maps, etc." which by necessity requires lots of information, and by extension would make my usage of the word "long" in the context of descriptions not a strawman. So my statements stand in their entirety.

It doesn't matter that you personally don't consider that information long or believe you could somehow cram a meaningful and compelling description of a world into a relatively small amount of text. The reality still remains that for people who're not uber-nerds or dedicated TTRPG gamers, but casual players that don't want to read anything and see books not as "games", but as homework, any amount of text is too "long". But an image is instantaneous.

It doesn't matter that the nerd GM actually bothered to read the text, you still need to convince them to play the game. And the thing that does that is usually pictures, not descriptions.

And GM creative license or edge cases is not a compelling reason to not attempt to visually define a world, like that somehow prevents GMs from making up their own stuff, or like the same "problem" doesn't exist if you resort to using other media for inspiration or visual references instead. You still have the same issue of being "constrained" by images that might not 100% conform to the special snowflake scenario that you're trying to present, only your pulling from a dozen different sources with no clear art direction or direct relation to your world.

Quote from: VisionStorm;1134750You need to look up the definition of "strawman", cuz you seem to make a fast and loose use of it.

Just because you disagree with the framing of a single sentence that doesn't make the entire thing I said a "strawman". Specially when you come out and bring up stuff like "names (which I'm assuming means cities, regions, etc.), stats, maps, etc." which by necessity requires lots of information, and by extension would make my usage of the word "long" in the context of descriptions not a strawman. So my statements stand in their entirety.

It doesn't matter that you personally don't consider that information long or believe you could somehow cram a meaningful and compelling description of a world into a relatively small amount of text. The reality still remains that for people who're not uber-nerds or dedicated TTRPG gamers, but casual players that don't want to read anything and see books not as "games", but as homework, any amount of text is too "long". But an image is instantaneous.

It doesn't matter that the nerd GM actually bothered to read the text, you still need to convince them to play the game. And the thing that does that is usually pictures, not descriptions.

And GM creative license or edge cases is not a compelling reason to not attempt to visually define a world, like that somehow prevents GMs from making up their own stuff, or like the same "problem" doesn't exist if you resort to using other media for inspiration or visual references instead. You still have the same issue of being "constrained" by images that might not 100% conform to the special snowflake scenario that you're trying to present, only your pulling from a dozen different sources with no clear art direction or direct relation to your world.

Strawman n
1. A weak or imaginary argument set up only to be easily confuted
2. Exactly what you did in your previous post.

In your attempt to deny your strawman, you just made an even bigger one. Not only did you repeat that whole fabrication about my imaginary preference for long descriptions, but your attempt to justify it is completely specious. Because all that name stuff you listed? None of it -- none of it -- can be conveyed through art. That information is necessarily presented via text, if it's going to included in a setting. So you're going to end up with the same name-related stuff in your text, whether or not it's accompanied by art. So you can't say that long descriptions are an inherent characteristic of settings presented via text, but are not an inherent characteristic of a setting presented via art plus text.

I think your argument that GMs may be convinced to play a setting based on the art is interesting. It's not how I think; I'm not going to be sold on a setting because of a few pretty pictures, because that will have nothing to do with the play experience. But it could explain why so many publishers push art-heavy books on the market --- though I suspect it's less that, and more that pretty art can catch the eye. Which, on a crowded shelf with many options, can be a difference between a sale and no sale. In other words, the art didn't convince the GM, but it got the GM's attention and that allowed the other merits of the product shone through.

Your argument that art doesn't restrict creativity is false, however. Imagery is powerful; once we see something, it's hard to erase, and pretend we didn't see it. It gives us a set of conceptions and preconceptions that restrict how we'll be able to imagine things in the future.

You're also drawing a false comparison between art depicting the setting, and art that serves as loose inspiration. They're not the same; art that reflects a setting is a type of canon, or a visual equivalent of a setting bible. You have to conform your ideas to it, to some degree, or you risk conflicts between what you say and the images. Art that's inspirational but not directly related to the setting does not face that limitation, because you're not constrained by it. I made that point in my previous posts, and it's why I don't mind weird and oddball art. I'm drawing a distinction between that and trying to visually present a setting via a relatively consistent art style.

Quote from: Pat;1134756Strawman n
1. A weak or imaginary argument set up only to be easily confuted
2. Exactly what you did in your previous post.

Dang bro, your a freaking genius at setting up strawmen yourself. Its like layers within layers.

Quote from: Shrieking Banshee;1134763Dang bro, your a freaking genius at setting up strawmen yourself. Its like layers within layers.

No, I supported all my points. You're just continuing to be an asshole.

I like art that's meaningful to the game/setting in some manner.

I agree that great covers do sell games. That's foremost in Palladium's business model. Brom was worth every dime for the Nightbane cover.

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Quote from: ArtemisAlpha;1134654I was in the industry more than a decade ago, first as a writer, then as a publisher.

What did you write? What did you publish?

Quote from: GeekyBugle;1134670Or publish your own stuff instead of writing for others, of course that has way more risks than being a paid drone but the fruits will be yours and yours alone.

My buddy is a one-man game design shop. There's lots of non-creative skills necessary to make self-publishing work, and you have to be manage your stable of artists, editors, printing houses, etc.

We had a playtest day today and he took me through the workload for a card game expansion project and its the kind of turmoil and toil that you can only succeed at if you enjoy all of the not-gaming processes. Fortunately for him, he loves the autonomy so much that the process is worth every struggle.

Quote from: oggsmash;1134688Ah, I remember him as basically being the beginning of crazy power creep in Rifts  (Mercenaries ( or south america cant remember) I think was the first I had where guns got BIG).

I might be the only fan of CJ Carella's South America books!

My favorite Rifts campaign used only South America, Russia and Atlantis. Love to run that again.

Quote from: Mistwell;1134732If UBI replaced all Government benefit programs (except those you pay into, like Medicare and Social Security) I think it could work well.

Mistwell, your presentation of UBI is worth a thread of its own in RPGPundit's forum. You bring up some very interesting points worth discussing in more detail.

Why is it that claims of strawmanning and dictionary definitions never seem to be convincing arguments to me?

I guess it must be because I am an arsehole.  Yeah, thats why.  :cool:

Quote from: Shasarak;1134773Why is it that claims of strawmanning and dictionary definitions never seem to be convincing arguments to me?

Great, another asshole.

I can mock you with a fake dictionary definition as well, if you like.

90 per cent of the points raised by Stephens are true of every other creative or writing job. I've never understand why people in creative work express that kind of self-pity. It can't be healthy to resent your industry and job that much. Like the part about being 5-8 years behind in his career because he didn't hang out in bars with insiders at cons. People who don't get along with others always look for reasons why they're passed over in the workplace. But the truth is if you're really good at your job, you'll be recognized and promoted even if you don't schmooze with colleagues. And there are plenty of people who get hammered with colleagues all the time and never get choice jobs.

QuoteFantasy and scifi art has sexualized women for decades, so many pro artists assume that's what you want. Explaining otherwise takes more words that describing the art piece. I had to go with "No skin should be exposed except on the face." It was 75% effective.

I expect the only time an artist drawing women is given the instruction that "no skin should be exposed except the face" is if they're doing a catalogue for the Amish.

Excuse me, it is arsehole.

Dictionary warriors should be able to respect the distinction.

arsehole n
1. Like an asshole, but more puckery.

Quote from: Pat;1134756Strawman n
1. A weak or imaginary argument set up only to be easily confuted
2. Exactly what you did in your previous post.

1. That's not the actual definition of "straw man".
2. You're the only one "fabricating" things here by impugning my motives and reframing my points as some sort of malicious attempt to mischaracterize what you said, as opposed to expressing my OPINIONS on what I consider the inevitable end result of what you're suggesting.

And all after you went off on Shrieking Banshee a couple posts ago about how ridiculous a standard it would be to have to add an "IMO" disclaimer to every statement made in a forum conversation. Yet here you are, descending into idiocy cuz you can't tell the difference between my opinion and me putting words in your mouth that you never said.

But sure, let's play this game...

Quote from: Pat;1134756Because all that name stuff you listed? None of it -- none of it -- can be conveyed through art. That information is necessarily presented via text, if it's going to included in a setting. So you're going to end up with the same name-related stuff in your text, whether or not it's accompanied by art. So you can't say that long descriptions are an inherent characteristic of settings presented via text, but are not an inherent characteristic of a setting presented via art plus text.

OMG! Where did I say that a setting presented via art plus text was not an inherent characteristic of long descriptions? That statement appears nowhere in my post! Your argument is a straw man!

Your entire post is invalid, because straw man!

But, no. Your argument is invalid because you're dismissing the notion I presented that all that "name-related stuff" necessarily leads to long descriptions, not on the basis that it doesn't (which is a given, despite it apparently being a straw man), but on the basis it must necessarily be presented through text regardless, so that additionally including art would make the presentation even longer--which is not a dismissal of anything I said, therefore not an argument that refutes any of it.

And yes, contrary to what you assert you absolutely can convey at least a portion of that name-related stuff through art. Assuming that by "names" you mean stuff like cities, you can include an image of a city in order to illustrate its architecture and portions of its cultural makeup by displaying the way that people dress, their skin tone and facial features, and other characteristics that hint to their ethnic makeup, what their markets look like, the types of decorations they use, etc. All of that can help convey new players the types of places their characters may visit or originate from faster than a description. And the fact that you still need a written description to get the in-depth details does not refute anything I just said.

Quote from: Pat;1134756I think your argument that GMs may be convinced to play a setting based on the art is interesting. It's not how I think; I'm not going to be sold on a setting because of a few pretty pictures, because that will have nothing to do with the play experience. But it could explain why so many publishers push art-heavy books on the market --- though I suspect it's less that, and more that pretty art can catch the eye. Which, on a crowded shelf with many options, can be a difference between a sale and no sale. In other words, the art didn't convince the GM, but it got the GM's attention and that allowed the other merits of the product shone through.

OMG! I never said that GMs may be convinced to play a setting based on the art. More straw man!

I was talking about new people and potential players. Though, I suppose it could apply to GMs shopping around for a setting as well. But here you go on about how that's "not how I think", etc. and try to rationalize how the cover art simply attracted the GM as a marketing scheme rather offering any meaningful contribution to "convince" the GM (despite "convincing" them enough to buy it), which kinda goes back to Shrinking Banshee's earlier statement about you presenting your opinions as fact. It's not how you think, therefore art can't possibly play a role in helping convey a setting enough to convince someone to buy or play it.

Quote from: Pat;1134756Your argument that art doesn't restrict creativity is false, however. Imagery is powerful; once we see something, it's hard to erase, and pretend we didn't see it. It gives us a set of conceptions and preconceptions that restrict how we'll be able to imagine things in the future.

You're also drawing a false comparison between art depicting the setting, and art that serves as loose inspiration. They're not the same; art that reflects a setting is a type of canon, or a visual equivalent of a setting bible. You have to conform your ideas to it, to some degree, or you risk conflicts between what you say and the images. Art that's inspirational but not directly related to the setting does not face that limitation, because you're not constrained by it. I made that point in my previous posts, and it's why I don't mind weird and oddball art. I'm drawing a distinction between that and trying to visually present a setting via a relatively consistent art style.

The fact that imagery can be powerful does not mean that therefore art compels you to play the game only a certain way or that you can't imagine things beyond it. Not every scene that exists in a world can be presented through art--at least not in a way that would be feasible to accomplish and fit into one book. There's too many possibilities to illustrate everything. "Preconceptions" sounds like a personal failing, not a problem that's intrinsic to art.

All you're really telling me is that you personally can't let go of an image in your head or look beyond it, therefore art depicting a setting shouldn't exist.

Quote from: Spinachcat;1134765I like art that's meaningful to the game/setting in some manner.

I agree that great covers do sell games. That's foremost in Palladium's business model. Brom was worth every dime for the Nightbane cover.

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Every thing that Brom does is worth every dime. He brought Dark Sun to life and is one of the greatest RPG artists ever.

Quote from: VisionStorm;11347891. That's not the actual definition of "straw man".

It is the actual definition of a strawman. A strawman is when someone doesn't respond what was actually said, but instead replies as if the other person made a different argument, which is usually a variant on the real argument, but weaker, or transparently flawed. It's an example of putting words in someone else's mouth. You should be able to figure out on your own why it's considered a logical fallacy. It's also a conversation ender, because it's impossible to have a discussion when one side is ignoring what the other side says. It's like talking to an annoying wall.

Quote from: VisionStorm;11347892. You're the only one "fabricating" things here by impugning my motives and reframing my points as some sort of malicious attempt to mischaracterize what you said, as opposed to expressing my OPINIONS on what I consider the inevitable end result of what you're suggesting.

I didn't say anything about your motives, nor did I reframe any of your points. I pointed out you based your argument on something I never said.

Quote from: VisionStorm;1134789And all after you went off on Shrieking Banshee a couple posts ago about how ridiculous a standard it would be to have to add an "IMO" disclaimer to every statement made in a forum conversation. Yet here you are, descending into idiocy cuz you can't tell the difference between my opinion and me putting words in your mouth that you never said.

Shrieking Banshee, out of nowhere, decided to attack me. I responded, proportionally. No idea why Banshee did that. It was out of the blue. And I know what part of your post is your opinion, and which part was putting words in my mouth.

Quote from: VisionStorm;1134789OMG! Where did I say that a setting presented via art plus text was not an inherent characteristic of long descriptions? That statement appears nowhere in my post! Your argument is a straw man!

Your entire post is invalid, because straw man!

You should follow your own advice, and look up the definition of strawman. That's not even close.

You've alluded to the idea that I dismissed your entire post, because of your strawman, several times. You're mistaken, I dismissed your strawman, and addressed your other arguments. You should realize that, because you responded to the points I made. For instance...

Quote from: VisionStorm;1134789And yes, contrary to what you assert you absolutely can convey at least a portion of that name-related stuff through art. Assuming that by "names" you mean stuff like cities, you can include an image of a city in order to illustrate its architecture and portions of its cultural makeup by displaying the way that people dress, their skin tone and facial features, and other characteristics that hint to their ethnic makeup, what their markets look like, the types of decorations they use, etc. All of that can help convey new players the types of places their characters may visit or originate from faster than a description. And the fact that you still need a written description to get the in-depth details does not refute anything I just said.

... this is responding to one of my points.

You're correct, you can convey some of those specific types of details in art. That's fairly obvious. But those details aren't necessary. They're not essential to running the setting. That's a distinction I've been trying to make: Those are the kind of details that can be easily made up on the fly, and in fact the game works better when they're made up on the fly.

Also, art is often terrible at presenting that kind of information. Yes, you can pick up some general ideas of style, complexions, and so on; but art tends to be unrepresentative, inconsistent, can be hard to interpret, and is usually focused more on things like showing action than on conveying concrete information. And to give a good overview of any of those topics, the art really needs to be presented in a more diagrammatic form, say a line of figures separated by sex, age, and social class, showing different styles of dress. Even then, some (textual) discussion is almost necessary. Architecture probably works better, because cityscapes can show a lot; but crowds where a wide variety of people can be easily distinguished are rarer, probably because drawing that many human figures can be an enormous amount of work.

Quote from: VisionStorm;1134789I was talking about new people and potential players. Though, I suppose it could apply to GMs shopping around for a setting as well. But here you go on about how that's "not how I think", etc. and try to rationalize how the cover art simply attracted the GM as a marketing scheme rather offering any meaningful contribution to "convince" the GM (despite "convincing" them enough to buy it), which kinda goes back to Shrinking Banshee's earlier statement about you presenting your opinions as fact. It's not how you think, therefore art can't possibly play a role in helping convey a setting enough to convince someone to buy or play it.

This section is completely irrational. The phrase "that's not how I think" was a caveat that marked the whole section as an opinion. It's literally got an "IMO" built right in, but you're interpreting the IMO as a statement of absolute fact. That's upsidedownbackwards.

And I'm not rationalizing anything, I'm explaining my reasoning. Which is more or less the point of having a discussion. Would you like me to start using loaded and dismissive words in every sentence? It might be a fun exercise.

Quote from: VisionStorm;1134789The fact that imagery can be powerful does not mean that therefore art compels you to play the game only a certain way or that you can't imagine things beyond it. Not every scene that exists in a world can be presented through art--at least not in a way that would be feasible to accomplish and fit into one book. There's too many possibilities to illustrate everything. "Preconceptions" sounds like a personal failing, not a problem that's intrinsic to art.

All you're really telling me is that you personally can't let go of an image in your head or look beyond it, therefore art depicting a setting shouldn't exist.

I never said it was impossible to imagine things beyond a piece of art, or that it compelled a certain type of play. The word I used was "hard", and I talked about "conceptions" and "preconceptions", which are tendencies or biases, not absolutes. You're not reading what I said, you're substituting very different words and responding to that.

Quote from: Haffrung;1134777I expect the only time an artist drawing women is given the instruction that "no skin should be exposed except the face" is if they're doing a catalogue for the Amish.

I've never much cared for excessive cheesecake in fantasy art. Nudity doesn't bother me at all though. There's a difference. I generally like the art in the LotFP products... where most females are depicted in period dress, and when there is nudity it's not 'sexy' (IMO).

But I'm also pefectly happy with no art at all... if the text is designed well (Classic Traveller) and not too bloated (D&D 5e).

Quote from: VisionStorm;1134790Every thing that Brom does is worth every dime. He brought Dark Sun to life and is one of the greatest [strike]RPG[/strike] artists ever.

Fixed that for you.

For me, the most interesting thing about the first thread (I'm not going to bother with the second) is how few ENWorlders actually understand that a publishing company cannot pay you money it doesn't have. There is no higher authority to appeal to. A union won't help. It's simple mathematics: The pie is this big. And that's that.

I've been in industries where incomes have dropped. I've been in industries where incomes have increased. Guess where I focus? I'm 51 now and I can remember having conversations with Dad in high school about what fields interest me and which of those fields were better than others. Those sorts of conversations are a normal part of growing up.

I don't understand why the Owens of this world simply cannot grasp that the field they have chosen does not pay well and cannot pay well and that, therefore, the wisest course of action is to take your skills (or acquire new/improved skills) and go somewhere else. Even a beggar soon learns to move from one street corner to another if his plastic cup is getting filled.

Quote from: Ratman_tf;1134737Bah. Next you'll be telling me that cavemen and dinosaurs never lived at the same time.

  Uhh, they were not Cavemen, they were Alien Astronaut humans with lasers and Cyborg right arms that rode dinosaurs.  Is that not common knowledge?

Quote from: Pat;1134797It is the actual definition of a strawman. A strawman is when someone doesn't respond what was actually said, but instead replies as if the other person made a different argument, which is usually a variant on the real argument, but weaker, or transparently flawed. It's an example of putting words in someone else's mouth. You should be able to figure out on your own why it's considered a logical fallacy. It's also a conversation ender, because it's impossible to have a discussion when one side is ignoring what the other side says. It's like talking to an annoying wall.

A straw man is an intentional mischaracterization of what someone said with the purpose of attacking a weaker but superficially similar argument. It's not just responding to a different argument (which I disagree even happened), but specifically intentional, rather than just a honest misunderstanding of what the other person was trying to say, for example. Which is why...

Quote from: Pat;1134797I didn't say anything about your motives, nor did I reframe any of your points. I pointed out you based your argument on something I never said.

...yes you did. The fact that you called my argument a "straw man" then doubled down by accusing me of "fabricating" thing (which also implies intentionality) means that you did impugn my intentions and reframed my points into a different type of message than what I was actually trying to convey. You retard.

Quote from: Pat;1134797Shrieking Banshee, out of nowhere, decided to attack me. I responded, proportionally. No idea why Banshee did that. It was out of the blue. And I know what part of your post is your opinion, and which part was putting words in my mouth.

Banshee pointed out a contradiction in your argument and made an observation about you framing your opinions as objective fact. All accurate assessments and descriptions of what you were saying, IMO. Then you went off on him like a raving lunatic. You truly are an oxymoron.

Quote from: Pat;1134797You should follow your own advice, and look up the definition of strawman. That's not even close.

You've alluded to the idea that I dismissed your entire post, because of your strawman, several times. You're mistaken, I dismissed your strawman, and addressed your other arguments. You should realize that, because you responded to the points I made.

I was being sarcastic and imitating your style of argumentation by clinging to an insignificant portion of your post that wasn't exactly what I actually said (or even mentioned in my post at all) and calling it a "straw man". You mongoloid.

Quote from: Pat;1134797You're correct, you can convey some of those specific types of details in art. That's fairly obvious. But those details aren't necessary. They're not essential to running the setting. That's a distinction I've been trying to make: Those are the kind of details that can be easily made up on the fly, and in fact the game works better when they're made up on the fly.

Also, art is often terrible at presenting that kind of information. Yes, you can pick up some general ideas of style, complexions, and so on; but art tends to be unrepresentative, inconsistent, can be hard to interpret, and is usually focused more on things like showing action than on conveying concrete information. And to give a good overview of any of those topics, the art really needs to be presented in a more diagrammatic form, say a line of figures separated by sex, age, and social class, showing different styles of dress. Even then, some (textual) discussion is almost necessary. Architecture probably works better, because cityscapes can show a lot; but crowds where a wide variety of people can be easily distinguished are rarer, probably because drawing that many human figures can be an enormous amount of work.

You're still missing the point that the purpose of art isn't to convey concrete information or replace text descriptions, but supplement them by providing visual examples of what the world is about to fill the audience's imagination and inspire potential players who give zero fucks about reading the damn thing. The vast majority of people are visually oriented, not a tiny subset of uber-nerds that prefer to get their descriptions from written material. And from a business standpoint, which is part of the purpose of publishing game books to sell them, you want focus on the common denominator, not just a tiny subset of the population that will never be large enough to return your investment, much less make you a profit.

And most of these "limitations" of art that you're mentioning, like sometimes being inconsistent, are issues of art direction, or potentially limits in the skill of individual artists, rather than fundamental issues of art itself.

Quote from: Pat;1134797This section is completely irrational. The phrase "that's not how I think" was a caveat that marked the whole section as an opinion. It's literally got an "IMO" built right in, but you're interpreting the IMO as a statement of absolute fact. That's upsidedownbackwards.

And I'm not rationalizing anything, I'm explaining my reasoning. Which is more or less the point of having a discussion. Would you like me to start using loaded and dismissive words in every sentence? It might be a fun exercise.

You've been doing great so far.

Quote from: Pat;1134797I never said it was impossible to imagine things beyond a piece of art, or that it compelled a certain type of play. The word I used was "hard", and I talked about "conceptions" and "preconceptions", which are tendencies or biases, not absolutes. You're not reading what I said, you're substituting very different words and responding to that.

No, I am responding to what you said. You're just clinging to words and phrases that you take issue with and missing the forest for the trees. As you tend to do every time you accuse people of "straw men".

Quote from: Zalman;1134866Fixed that for you.

Accurate. Though, it took me a while to notice you used strikethrough on "RPG". But yeah, Brom's greatness transcends RPGs and moves across the entire fantasy genre and illustration as a field of art itself.

Quote from: VisionStorm;1134891A straw man is an intentional mischaracterization of what someone said with the purpose of attacking a weaker but superficially similar argument. It's not just responding to a different argument (which I disagree even happened), but specifically intentional, rather than just a honest misunderstanding of what the other person was trying to say, for example. Which is why...

...yes you did. The fact that you called my argument a "straw man" then doubled down by accusing me of "fabricating" thing (which also implies intentionality) means that you did impugn my intentions and reframed my points into a different type of message than what I was actually trying to convey. You retard.

Not true, there's nothing that says a strawman has to be intentional. In fact, defining it based on intent would be creating a new fallacy, because it would involve ascribing motives to the other person, instead of addressing what they actually said. And arguments based on the supposed internal state of the other person aren't good arguments.

And while fabricated does imply a deliberate action, it doesn't follow that that all the results of the creation were intended by the creator. Saying something is fabricated and responding to it, as I did, does not require saying anything about the creator's intent, and I didn't. So that doesn't support your argument.

Also, I have no way of knowing what you're "trying" to say, except via the words you used to express them.

So no, I did not saying anything about your intentions, nor did I reframe anything you said. I addressed what you actually said.

Quote from: VisionStorm;1134891Banshee pointed out a contradiction in your argument and made an observation about you framing your opinions as objective fact. All accurate assessments and descriptions of what you were saying, IMO. Then you went off on him like a raving lunatic. You truly are an oxymoron.

There was no contradiction, and reading what I said as a statement of absolute fact was ridiculous. Since he Banshee was using a nothing argument as a vehicle for a few indirect jabs like "yapping", I called him out for it. I don't believe in passive-aggressive sniping. If someone's being an asshole, I try to show them respect by saying it to them directly.

Note you're doing the exact same thing here, making nonsense arguments without even a pretense of a supporting argument, and mixing it in with phrases like "raving lunatic", and the way you used "oxymoron". And you've been doing it non-step for several posts. So you're an asshole, too.

Quote from: VisionStorm;1134891I was being sarcastic and imitating your style of argumentation by clinging to an insignificant portion of your post that wasn't exactly what I actually said (or even mentioned in my post at all) and calling it a "straw man". You mongoloid.

No, I pointed an actual strawman argument you made. You did not.

And you haven't dropped the argument. If it's so insignificant, why are you clinging to it?

Quote from: VisionStorm;1134891You're still missing the point that the purpose of art isn't to convey concrete information or replace text descriptions, but supplement them by providing visual examples of what the world is about to fill the audience's imagination and inspire potential players who give zero fucks about reading the damn thing. The vast majority of people are visually oriented, not a tiny subset of uber-nerds that prefer to get their descriptions from written material. And from a business standpoint, which is part of the purpose of publishing game books to sell them, you want focus on the common denominator, not just a tiny subset of the population that will never be large enough to return your investment, much less make you a profit.

And most of these "limitations" of art that you're mentioning, like sometimes being inconsistent, are issues of art direction, or potentially limits in the skill of individual artists, rather than fundamental issues of art itself.

No, I didn't miss that point. It's a separate point, which I made earlier. I also made the marketing argument before you did.

BTW, the part about "you want to focus on the common denominator"? I've never talked about what publishers should be doing. I've only talked about how people think and react to art, and what I find important. So that's another instance of you putting words in my mouth.

Quote from: VisionStorm;1134891You've been doing great so far.

Nope. When I call someone an asshole, I call someone an asshole. I don't play games like that.

Quote from: Scrivener of Doom;1134871For me, the most interesting thing about the first thread (I'm not going to bother with the second) is how few ENWorlders actually understand that a publishing company cannot pay you money it doesn't have. There is no higher authority to appeal to. A union won't help. It's simple mathematics: The pie is this big. And that's that.

Everything you said was factual and correct, thus Cancel Culture mobs will be descending shortly to punish you.

What we're seeing is the result of two generations who received progressive/communist indoctrination in school and no economic education.

I'm sure there will be no negative repercussions for society. Zero. Nada. None.

Quote from: oggsmash;1134885Uhh, they were not Cavemen, they were Alien Astronaut humans with lasers and Cyborg right arms that rode dinosaurs.  Is that not common knowledge?

Sadly, most people don't know Kung Fury is a historical documentary.

"It's the Viking Age. That explains the Laser Raptor." is my favorite line.

[video=youtube;bS5P_LAqiVg]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bS5P_LAqiVg[/youtube]

Quote from: Pat;1134897When I call someone an asshole, I call someone an asshole. I don't play games like that.

This is true regarding Pat.

But I'm mysterious. When I call someone an asshole, I might secretly think they're a dickhole instead.

A community service announcement from Spinachcat.

Quote from: Hakdov;11345331981 Sears Christmas Book

https://christmas.musetechnical.com/ShowCatalogPage/1981-Sears-Christmas-Book/0664

Those hardback prices dont jibe with that was seeing in game stores and department stores way back.

Quote from: oggsmash;1134885Uhh, they were not Cavemen, they were Alien Astronaut humans with lasers and Cyborg right arms that rode dinosaurs.  Is that not common knowledge?

Now you're just giving me an excuse to post Dino-Riders art.

(https://picfiles.alphacoders.com/233/233241.jpg)

I rest my case.

Quote from: VisionStorm;1134790Every thing that Brom does is worth every dime. He brought Dark Sun to life and is one of the greatest RPG artists ever.

He is good, but he is no Elmore.

Quote from: Pat;1134897Since he Banshee was using a nothing argument as a vehicle for a few indirect jabs like "yapping", I called him out for it.

Perhaps I shouldn't have said yapping, I should not have dismissed your preferences in such a way and perhaps in such a way, I made the conversation more aggressive.

But I stand for everything else I said, I still see your beliefs as oxymoronic and you are trying to frame your preferences as objective, and while demanding merit to the views that you self describe as subjective, you then put no merit to the preferences of others that would also be subjective, and under your own logic would not need an 'In my opinion' tag.

Quote from: shasarak;1134929he is good, but he is no elmore.

That's it! Let's nuke the kiwi!!

Quote from: Spinachcat;1134950That's it! Let's nuke the kiwi!!

We both know that most Americans could not find NZ on a map.

Lets give it a try with this IKEA world map:

[ATTACH=CONFIG]4582[/ATTACH]

The bad news is we have enough nukes to be within 2000 miles and you are still probably nuked

Quote from: Shasarak;1134990Lets give it a try with this IKEA world map:

That's awesome

Quote from: Shasarak;1134990We both know that most Americans could not find NZ on a map.

Lets give it a try with this IKEA world map:

[ATTACH=CONFIG]4582[/ATTACH]

Ha! Nicely done, clearly NZ is a stealth country

Quote from: Shasarak;1134990We both know that most Americans could not find NZ on a map.

Dude, we both know that most Americans could not find the USA on a map!!

But your map was fun. Our old gaming group had a Kiwi and he was indignant about American's lack of knowledge so we always joked that NZ was located in the center of Australia. That's why its new. Some Aussie named Zealand founded it. Kinda like New Jersey. And Maori are tall pygmies.

Quote from: Shasarak;1134929He is good, but he is no Elmore.

You're right.

He's better than Larry Elmore. Who's definitely one of the top RPG artists ever, putting Gerald Brom on top of that field. :p

Quote from: Shrieking Banshee;1134947Perhaps I shouldn't have said yapping, I should not have dismissed your preferences in such a way and perhaps in such a way, I made the conversation more aggressive.

I probably biased on this, but I'm pretty sure I was respectful in the post where Pat accused me of "straw manning" him (which I still reject the notion I ever did), and had even agreed with at least some portion of what he said till that point. So I really don't think that the problem lies with you. He (she, it? "It's Pat!") is just being obtuse and lashing out over simple disagreements, while trying to have his cake and eat it too. And any "dismissal" that could be argued exists in your post pretty much goes both ways, cuz if you were being "dismissive of preferences" then Pat was definitely being dismissive of preferences as well.

Quote from: Shasarak;1134990We both know that most Americans could not find NZ on a map.

Lets give it a try with this IKEA world map:

[ATTACH=CONFIG]4582[/ATTACH]

I'm pretty sure it's that thing on top of Australia.

Wait a minute... where's Australia? Is it that gigantic blob below Europe? :confused:

Quote from: Haffrung;1134777But the truth is if you're really good at your job, you'll be recognized and promoted even if you don't schmooze with colleagues.

This claim of yours is false. Just patently, absurdly even, false. I don't know why you think it's true. I suspect you're just using your personal experience and applying it to all freelance creative work. But, it's just total bullshit. It's always been bullshit throughout the ages, and remains bullshit today. Shmoozing with people absolutely gets you more freelance jobs. We call it networking these days, but whatever you want to call it, drinking with people after hours will in fact get you more freelance jobs no matter your talent level. There was a time there where smoking cigars (when they were trendy) also got you more freelance jobs.

Quote from: Spinachcat;1134996And Maori are tall pygmies.

Or short Giants.  The science is still out.

Quote from: Shrieking Banshee;1134947Perhaps I shouldn't have said yapping, I should not have dismissed your preferences in such a way and perhaps in such a way, I made the conversation more aggressive.

But I stand for everything else I said, I still see your beliefs as oxymoronic and you are trying to frame your preferences as objective, and while demanding merit to the views that you self describe as subjective, you then put no merit to the preferences of others that would also be subjective, and under your own logic would not need an 'In my opinion' tag.

I respect being able to escalate and deescalate.

What's really strange is I started posting because I don't get the popularity of coffee table RPG books, so I wanted to explore what other people thought, in order to clarify my own thinking on the subject. Which is why I explained my reasoning, including how people react to art. That's all it was. So your entire reaction seems nonsensical to me.

Quote from: VisionStorm;1135002I probably biased on this, but I'm pretty sure I was respectful in the post where Pat accused me of "straw manning" him (which I still reject the notion I ever did), and had even agreed with at least some portion of what he said till that point. So I really don't think that the problem lies with you. He (she, it? "It's Pat!") is just being obtuse and lashing out over simple disagreements, while trying to have his cake and eat it too. And any "dismissal" that could be argued exists in your post pretty much goes both ways, cuz if you were being "dismissive of preferences" then Pat was definitely being dismissive of preferences as well.

Go back and look at the early posts. It started with your strawman, and I pointed it out. You denied it. I further clarified my position, and so on. At this point, we were both presenting our cases strongly. We definitely did not agree, but it was civil. That's when Banshee intervened in an inflammatory manner, and I called the wailing spirit an asshole in response. Note that wasn't aimed at you. But it seemed to be the tipping point, because your next post was definitely not civil, and you're still doing it, by making inferences about me in a post to someone else, instead of addressing me directly. You won't find any examples of me lashing out, but you will find cases of me responding in kind.

The strawman is still a sticking point, because I'm not going to defend positions I don't hold. That means we can't really continue the conversation, but we can move on.

Quote from: Pat;1135010Which is why I explained my reasoning, including how people react to art. That's all it was.

Its because of general grognardism on this forum. While I value allot of old value stuff, I sometimes feel like everything hated is lumped onto 2e (Or AD&D even) or above, as reason how the hobby failed, or died as an industry, or whatever, even if pravalent in 1e or whatever else or not even a good explanation for todays current problems (Like how people attributed dark elves to D&D 3e even though they existed as early as basic).

And again, I made claims based on 'Its inspirational for me', you countered with 'It doesn't have much to do with the text or the game', and then extra followed with 'Its worse because it defines the world'. Its either negatively impactful or unimpactful but it can't be both.

It is also countering my preference with a statement of desire of how games SHOULD be. In essense telling that I should not be inspired. And if that was not the intent are you saying that my interest in an idea that wen't from 0%->50% because of intersting artwork I saw is illegitimate inspiration?

Like Modrons from Planescape got me much more interested in them with updated art as opposed to text, giving a much clearer impression of weird organisms of not flesh or machine as opposed to just abstract ideas. That to me was a net benefit. Unless your saying that net benefit is illegitimate at best your argument could be 'I prefer art not be defined for me as I prefer it to be up to my interpretation 100% of the time'.

Quote from: Pat;1135015Go back and look at the early posts. It started with your strawman, and I pointed it out. You denied it. I further clarified my position, and so on. At this point, we were both presenting our cases strongly. We definitely did not agree, but it was civil. That's when Banshee intervened in an inflammatory manner, and I called the wailing spirit an asshole in response.

Except that the post that you mischaracterized as a sTrAw MaN happened immediately after you went off on Banshee. You hadn't even replied to me at that point, and I had commented on another post of yours prior to that. Which really brings into question your recollection of events.

Quote from: Pat;1135015Note that wasn't aimed at you. But it seemed to be the tipping point, because your next post was definitely not civil, and you're still doing it, by making inferences about me in a post to someone else, instead of addressing me directly. You won't find any examples of me lashing out, but you will find cases of me responding in kind.

The strawman is still a sticking point, because I'm not going to defend positions I don't hold. That means we can't really continue the conversation, but we can move on.

It was not a straw man. I was only speaking on generalities and I never claimed that you said you wanted long descriptions. I was merely commenting on people's preferences in my experience, and wasn't even exactly debating you or debunking your points in that paragraph, which is the only type of situation where a "straw man" normally applies or would even be used. Your mischaracterization of my post however, is a straw man.

Quote from: Scrivener of Doom;1134871For me, the most interesting thing about the first thread (I'm not going to bother with the second) is how few ENWorlders actually understand that a publishing company cannot pay you money it doesn't have. There is no higher authority to appeal to. A union won't help. It's simple mathematics: The pie is this big. And that's that.

I've been in industries where incomes have dropped. I've been in industries where incomes have increased. Guess where I focus? I'm 51 now and I can remember having conversations with Dad in high school about what fields interest me and which of those fields were better than others. Those sorts of conversations are a normal part of growing up.

I don't understand why the Owens of this world simply cannot grasp that the field they have chosen does not pay well and cannot pay well and that, therefore, the wisest course of action is to take your skills (or acquire new/improved skills) and go somewhere else. Even a beggar soon learns to move from one street corner to another if his plastic cup is getting filled.

Having known Owen for quite awhile, I would say it's symptomatic of his generation in a way. He, and many like him, are prone to Utopian thinking. In that if they imagine it can be so, it should be so. However reality doesn't really track that way. He mentions being chided for his weight online, and while that is unkind and rude, it's not surprising considering that he is morbidly obese. That's a statement of fact, but once again in his utopian ideal, you'll never be challenged for your failings, and only be lauded for your successes and accepted for everything else, whether in your control or not. I don't say this to get down on Owen, because he is a good person and excellent creator, but it is a sad reality for many that find the world doesn't live up to their unrealistic ideals. I am not even saying we shouldn't try and do better, but it is pointless to become bitter at reality, and then again, that may be why a "make believe" hobby appeals so much to some people.

Quote from: Shasarak;1134990We both know that most Americans could not find NZ on a map.

Lets give it a try with this IKEA world map:

[ATTACH=CONFIG]4582[/ATTACH]

This is humorous, though I can't figure out why a Scandinavian map is being used here to lambaste Americans.

Quote from: Mistwell;1135003Shmoozing with people absolutely gets you more freelance jobs. We call it networking these days, but whatever you want to call it, drinking with people after hours will in fact get you more freelance jobs no matter your talent level.

I've got friends in high end sales. "Booze and schmooze" gets you contacts, sales, jobs and promotions. Why? People get to know each other on a more human, less corporate level and its 1000% natural that you want to engage more with people you consider fun and feel you know more personally.

Quote from: Zalman;1135090This is humorous, though I can't figure out why a Scandinavian map is being used here to lambaste Americans.

I only recommend lambasting Razor 007.

Quote from: shuddemell;1135072Having known Owen for quite awhile, I would say it's symptomatic of his generation in a way. He, and many like him, are prone to Utopian thinking. In that if they imagine it can be so, it should be so. However reality doesn't really track that way. He mentions being chided for his weight online, and while that is unkind and rude, it's not surprising considering that he is morbidly obese. That's a statement of fact, but once again in his utopian ideal, you'll never be challenged for your failings, and only be lauded for your successes and accepted for everything else, whether in your control or not. I don't say this to get down on Owen, because he is a good person and excellent creator, but it is a sad reality for many that find the world doesn't live up to their unrealistic ideals. I am not even saying we shouldn't try and do better, but it is pointless to become bitter at reality, and then again, that may be why a "make believe" hobby appeals so much to some people.

These are all good points.

I think it's particularly difficult for many Americans to grasp that their nation stands on the edge of utter failure. This has nothing to do with LBM (that's a minor symptom) and everything to do with a failed economy that has been completely hollowed out - and then an illusion that "all is well" has been created by unlimited debt funding mindless consumption. (My own country is about a decade away from the same place.)

Owen is a seriously talented guy. There is no doubt about that. And being mocked his weight - especially when he's American and thus statistically likely to be obese or worse - is mindless cruelty. That said, 200-odd kgs or 400+ lbs is a level of morbid obesity where he is effectively committing suicide. That makes even less sense if he doesn't have a job providing health cover (or however this works in the USA). That's another poor lifestyle choice. It's also none of my business. However, how do you find another job when your sheer size means that, in many workplaces, you are a safety risk? Will health insurers even cover you?

As I posted at ENWorld, "get a haircut and get a real job." And, yes, "haircut" is code for something else. I wish him every success at turning his life around and living a life that is more healthy and fulfilling.

You final point about the attractiveness of a "make believe" hobby really sums up the problem.

Quote from: Spinachcat;1135146I've got friends in high end sales. "Booze and schmooze" gets you contacts, sales, jobs and promotions. Why? People get to know each other on a more human, less corporate level and its 1000% natural that you want to engage more with people you consider fun and feel you know more personally.

Do I trust you?

Once you reach certain levels in business life, it's all about trust. Do I trust you? Why is the old school tie network (or its equivalent) so powerful? Because it's about having reservoirs of trust.

I don't drink so I have had to come up with alternatives to the booze'n'schmooze culture (fortunately, most of my adult life has been in Asia so I learned basic singing techniques so that karaoke is not embarrassing for me), but these sorts of extra-curricular activities are all about building trust and, if you pardon the expression, esprit de corps. This is even more important in the current cancel culture and faggotocracy where anything you say can and will be used against you.

If you want to make money in RPGs, don't become a staffer or freelance writer. The only reason to be those is to live in the fantasy that you're somehow an "RPG industry professional" and independent writers/publishers aren't. But they're going to be making more money than you.  Assuming they're actually talented of course, which is another reason some people go the other way.

Quote from: VisionStorm;1135002I'm pretty sure it's that thing on top of Australia.

Wait a minute... where's Australia? Is it that gigantic blob below Europe? :confused:

em... off topic... but thats Indonesia and New Guinea above Australia.

New Zeeland should be a large boot-shaped landmass to the south east of Australia. Its actually not on the map.

Quote from: RPGPundit;1136643If you want to make money in RPGs, don't become a staffer or freelance writer. The only reason to be those is to live in the fantasy that you're somehow an "RPG industry professional" and independent writers/publishers aren't. But they're going to be making more money than you.  Assuming they're actually talented of course, which is another reason some people go the other way.

whoooo boy have I seen this one many a time over on BGG. "You are only a "hobbyist" if you self published your game. You arent a "real professional" like us."

Quote from: Omega;1136700whoooo boy have I seen this one many a time over on BGG. "You are only a "hobbyist" if you self published your game. You arent a "real professional" like us."

BGG is garbage. Noticed how 9/10 users carry "game designer" badges?
Just like Pundit said, if you're good you make money. While I match all criteria
of a industry professional, I rather stick around with the general public because I don't let my skills get to my head.
Where are the haters now? Once they saw those dtrpg medals stacking up they went under their rocks, never to be seen again.

It used to be that at least there were a lot of very talented designers who did work for big companies, back when that was viable and talent was catered to. Even back then, you had people with no real talent or ability who got off on the second-hand prestige of being associated with guys who actually could design that worked for some of the same companies. But now, anyone who has any real ability is going to be making more money producing their own stuff.

Quote from: RPGPundit;1138399It used to be that at least there were a lot of very talented designers who did work for big companies, back when that was viable and talent was catered to.

Those guys have been working for videogame companies for at least the last 25 years.
AFAICs the talented designers in TTRPGs now are all doing it as a labour of love, usually as a hobby, and aren't in the employment of a TTRPG publisher.

Quote from: S'mon;1138423Those guys have been working for videogame companies for at least the last 25 years.
AFAICs the talented designers in TTRPGs now are all doing it as a labour of love, usually as a hobby, and aren't in the employment of a TTRPG publisher.

Thank you. Some people still claim to make a living off of it. Thought I was going crazy for a sec.

From my perspective lots of color art in an RPG book is a gamble.  The right, good color art is a huge selling point. The wrong, bad color art costs almost as much, drives the final cost of the book up almost as much--and often indicates editor or director or management issues that likely also contribute to problems in the text.  Though I suspect that most color art is somewhere in the middle of those two extremes.  Which says to me that the decision to use color art is one that needs to be considered carefully, and then you either go all in to do it right or you don't do it at all.  It's a swan dive off the 10 m diving platform.  Your landing choices are mostly correct or mostly face plant.

But what do I know--most of the color art choices that make it into print leave me cold and are thus a huge negative price point consideration when I go to purchase.  That is, the art is not only not inspiring, it's an actual detriment to my enjoyment of the game.  Maybe where my imagination goes with the text is so weird that the color artist can't hit it.  Something like the image you have of the character in your head is nothing like the actor selected for the role when they make the film.

My advice would be to spend as much as you need on cover art (the more unique the better)
Not so much on layout, and a fair amount in between. You don't need to have illustrations on every single page!
I normally put one or two on every 4 pages, depending whether it belongs there or not.

My free piece of advice for 2020...