$1000 bucks, a system, a vision

[Matt Machell]

I think he's realised he can either have fun writing and posting games, or spend a lot of time and money trying to get people to pay for them.

I agree with that statement so very much. Ask yourself why you're doing it? Why is "publishing in print" so important? Is it the games design, people playing your games, fame and fortune or having a book for the shelf?

You can get the game design and people playing it for free, any number of people on this board can vouch for that. And Fame and fortune were never very likely in this industry anyway.

So you do it because you want to publish a book.

Me, I'm happy that people play my games and people enjoy them. If they really like them they can send me some dosh via paypal, but I design games because I like games.

That's not to say that I don't want to publish a book, just that I'm not blind to why I want to.

I'll stop gibbering now.

Matt

PS if you really wanted that $1000 to publish, then getting it probably wouldn't be as hard as you think. You'd just have to forgo that new computer or similar. You have to think which one you'd prefer.



_________________
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Home of Lost Gods, The Agency and other tat.

[ This Message was edited by: Matt on 2001-11-09 12:04 ]

[unodiablo]

True, true.

But you initially invested enough to print the hardcover (more than $1k to begin with). And you had everything set up beforehand; completed, playtested game, with an excited core audience, people actually playing and discussing Sorcerer, industry contacts, an agent, a distributor.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but a big chunk of your profits will go to a table at GenCon next year as well. Or possibly a trip to Origins, etc.

If I would have continued, I would have added; In fact, Ron's Adept Press is an excellent example of a thriving vanity press. With a sustainable business model even! :smile:

I was responding more to Nathan's post, more like "make a living" money, as far as "making money" goes.

[Ron Edwards]

Sean,

"Vanity press" and "sustainable business model" are incompatible terms. Adept Press is a private business, not vanity publishing, just like Aardvark-Vanaheim in comics.

Bluntly, TSR's practices in the 1990s look more like vanity publishing to me. Ditto for West End Games. Being corporate rather than private/personal is one thing; being vanity press or profit-driven press is another.

None of your observations about the startup funds are especially relevant either. "Sustainable" applies to defined time-chunks, which for my purposes are the taxable portions of the year. Furthermore, in the bigger picture, following the publication of Soul, and looking over the course of 2002, I expect that ALL the red will be accounted for.

I agree with you about the role of the PDF product and the fan base and all of that. I agree with it so strongly that I think the [$1000 and the vision and the system] has a very easy and simple next step: generate a SHARED vision among other people, which they are backing up with their wallets. It's not the money itself which matters (even at its best, the PDF Sorcerer barely brought in train money), it's the commitment and the interest in participating.

Best,
Ron

[unodiablo]

OK, use "small" press instead of "vanity"... What I mean is Adept is a small publishing company that isn't intended to become your sole or even major / minor income source. It's intended to release Sorcerer material, and if I'm not mistaken, other projects you're working on (perhaps a printed version of Elfs), and to sustain related activities. It's also a low overhead business, no office, warehouse, not even an Adept Press Hotline.

Vanity isn't a good word to use. I use the terms indie / underground / small / vanity interchangably. My bad.

Can you give me an example of what you mean about TSR or WEG in the 90's? Tho this should probably go in a new thread, I'm interested in that statement... I wasn't paying much attention to the game industry at the time.

My mention of startup funds wasn't intended as financial advice. Lawd knows I'm not the person to be giving that out. :smile: I used it as a rough estimate of what you'd need to start printing your line, and then continue getting books out and continue in day-to-day operations while you're waiting for distributor money. i.e. A lot more than 1k. Cash flow is often the biggest problem game companies have, I read about it all the time in newsletters from places like Eden Studios and Pinnacle even.

I agree with you about the role of the PDF product and the fan base and all of that. I agree with it so strongly that I think the [$1000 and the vision and the system] has a very easy and simple next step: generate a SHARED vision among other people, which they are backing up with their wallets. It's not the money itself which matters (even at its best, the PDF Sorcerer barely brought in train money), it's the commitment and the interest in participating.

And that's big part of why you're successful with your small press. You're good at creating that commitment and interest thru expression of your ideas. And your ideas are such that they make those interested let others know as well. Look how many people are just itchin' to get the updated Sorcerer & Sword!

If everyone created such high quality game products, I'd be broke! Instead, I'm stuck waiting for Bloodlust!, and I have to hope that it's as good. :smile:

Sean

[Nathan]

Ron, I absolutely go giddy over the "shared" vision approach. I think it is an awesome thing, and the fact that you did it with Sorcerer and it worked is a testament to its coolness....GMT Games also does it with their Project 500. Once a product gets 500 "pre-sales", they produce the product and send it, all printing, distribution, fees paid for.

Really cool stuff -- I would imagine that if more companies took that sort of approach, maybe we would have less grumbling? Imagine your fave game company saying, "Which book should we print next? The Mexico Sourcebook or the Canada Sourcebook?" Gamers pay about $16 and they get a free rough electronic version of the book. The book with the most pre-sales gets printed first, and gamers get sent a signed copy hot off the press....

Cool idea..

Nathan

[Ron Edwards]

Nathan,
The trouble with that idea is that one might be killing the chance for book sales via the original PDF sales - which, even if it's not true, is PERCEIVED as true by most distributors and retailers.

I also think that counting on any unified-market fan support as a basis for POLICY is very, very unlikely to succeed.

Sean,
I've had your point about Adept Press not being my primary income repeated to me many times before. I fail to see its relevance. Always have. Since there is no obligation to make a "business" the same thing as a "career" (source of livelihood), I can't imagine why so many RPG designers or companies seem to think that they are the same thing.

I will even go so far as to say that the DESIRE to make one's role-playing publishing business into one's CAREER is ... at best, chancy, and less politely, fairly stupid.

(Oh yeah! Don't give me Ryan Dancey as an example. Dancey's career is a marketing exec, and he's good at it. Please note that he has been quite clearly disconnected from any dependency on the actual, long-term marketplace performance of anything he's worked on.)

Best,
Ron
(edited because z and c are close to one another on the keyboard, and it is probably some kind of Mythos thing to misspell Ryan's name)

[ This Message was edited by: Ron Edwards on 2001-11-17 21:50 ]

[unodiablo]

Sean,
I've had your point about Adept Press not being my primary income repeated to me many times before. I fail to see its relevance. Always have. Since there is no obligation to make a "business" the same thing as a "career" (source of livelihood), I can't imagine why so many RPG designers or companies seem to think that they are the same thing.

I will even go so far as to say that the DESIRE to make one's role-playing publishing business into one's CAREER is ... at best, chancy, and less politely, fairly stupid.

I didn't mean to repeat it 'to you' so much as to emphasize your second point to others considering this. :smile: Cuz no matter how many times you say it, obviously a lot of people don't get it.

Can you elaborate on the TSR / WEG / vanity part of the above?

[Laurel]

Most of my friends at White Wolf don't have "writing as their career" either: they answer phones, design web pages, work in distribution, attend cons, keep the company going and try to write on the side... their White Wolf paychecks have very little to do with writing and game design.  Instead, they scramble for writing contracts, competing and negotiating with each other for word count, and in the end, have no ownership over their own work.  Its not glamorous, and I made the decision that it was not personally the way I was going to live.

That there are people on this list who've successfully created RPG companies and sold their work after creating games people like to play, and remained not only authors but owners of the games they designed- that's the real accomplishment. I'm impressed regardless of whether or not if game design is their career and only source of income.

[Ron Edwards]

Sean wrote,

"Can you elaborate on the TSR / WEG / vanity part of the above?"

Essentially, it's a matter of throwing good money after bad. Both of these companies continued to publish games for several years after profit-based revenue was no longer coming in. They were able to do so simply by pouring in money from other sources.

That is vanity publishing - maintaining production based solely on external funding. It's vanity if you're a single self-congratulatory poet, and it's vanity if you're a big company with stock statements.

Best,
Ron

[JSDiamond]

Why is "publishing in print" so important? Is it the games design, people playing your games, fame and fortune or having a book for the shelf? You can get the game design and people playing it for free, any number of people on this board can vouch for that.  

I design games because I like games.

Forgive me for jumping around topics since many are covered in this thread.  Starting from the quote.  The last bit I agree with (I am) total.  As to the first, also all true.  In the space of a month and a half I had nearly 200 people download a 100-page 'quick-play' version of my own little magnum opus. Burning out their printer cartridges and all, no doubt.  But they did it and that suggests to me that a book will be even more popular. Yes I want other RPers to have fun like I do playing games.  And I want fame & fortune (read: 'acknowledgement') for my good work.  Naturally I'll also accept flak for any crap.  

$1000?  Easy.  It can SO be done if you are willing to do the work (or most of it).  Don't ask about where or how much it will cost to burn cds or print 200 hardcover books. Do it yourself.

Do it YOURSELF because you CAN.  
Do it because your game is worth it.
Do it because 99% of all gamers are now, as many of WE here at the Forge once were, consumer snobs with a big fat requirement for legit status in the gaming universe: Simply put, "If it's so great, where's the actual book?"  

On a deeper level, "Where is your commitment?" How much faith do you have in your own work? (and by the way, for myself and many others here the term is 'work' not 'hobby')      

Ron did it with .pdf  But guess what?  He had only begun.  Don't think he didn't have plans for a printed version way back when gaming sites with black backgrounds were the kewl thing to do. He must have. Because he also knew the quality of his games (and from a business stance, the oft-forgotten 'value' of them) and we all know where that led: A very good game, hardcopy and nice sales.

If I had $1000? Ha! That's the EASY part.  "If I had 1000 hours" now that's the trick.    

Jeff Diamond
 




[ This Message was edited by: JSDiamond on 2001-11-09 18:39 ]

[Ron Edwards]

Hey,

"Shudder" black backgrounds. I only managed to get my site into the modern day a few months ago (thanks to Clay D).

Let's all back up and take a look at Laurel's first post on this thread. Basically, what Sean, Jeff, and I are saying in our separate ways is this:

Under the proposed circumstances, the "vision" is what matters, most especially a vision and a game which is any good. Vision, to ME, means you have already done your level best to get the game into usable form.

- pirated photocopies via your stoner friend at the local OfficeMax, c. 1:09 AM.
- set up a website using your free student space at the university.
- sent HUNDREDS of emails, all customized per recipient, to every damn site with a conceivable connection to yours you can imagine.
- played. Played. Played.

In other words, when I see "vision," I also see sweat, and a thing you can point to. It may be a record of downloads, or a saved bunch of emails from a mailing list. It may be one torn manila envelope with a deposit slip recording the total of $18.50 donated during the last demo. The game may be a PDF file or a spiral-bound sheaf.

But it's an RPG that's being played, and it's commerce. THAT'S vision.

Do you realize how much vapor is out there? "Oooh, Earthdawn second edition." Sure it exists, but it's STILL vapor. The fucking thing is 1st edition with a couple of edits and a new cover. "Oooooh, I hear Champions 5th edition is coming out at GenCon." Yeah, uh huh. As if it matters.

The same goes for Mr. Indie who knows that HIS game would be the biggest new thing, and HE'D be appreciated (and embraced by "the industry," with tears of joy on their faces), and so on and so forth. Where's the game? "Oh, I can't show it to you, it's too original and not ready for release yet." Screw that - if anyone comes up with an RPG idea more original than James' The Pool, or the level-down idea just proposed by Damocles, or Soap ... then I'll be impressed.

$1000, a system, and a vision. If you have that, going by MY definition above, then you do have a game, it is being played, and some pennies are changing hands.

The next steps are as follows. They all aid one another, so they're not in any special order.
- Build a fan base. Make use of their energies and volunteer talents to the utmost.
- Purchase nothing new. No Acrobat, no graphics software, no business cards, no business license, no nothing.
- Establish lemonade-stand commerce. It won't make you much, so don't worry about the copyright or the licenses or any of that stuff.
- Divest yourself of parasites. Your enthusiastic friend who keeps saying "we" and "our game," and talking about being "big as TSR" ... lose him.
- All this time, you've been selling the weenie copy of the game (which in Sorcerer's case was a TXT file, if you can stand THAT idea). Now, design and plan and MAKE it into the "real" version. Stop at nothing.

If you're going to take the whole thing to book, then that's another 30-page essay right there. I'll wait on that for now.

Best,
Ron

[James V. West]

I'm probably a day late and a dollar short on this thread, but I just read through it for the first time. Wowzers.

Great stuff.

One thing I wanted to echo is the fact that it can be done. Regardless. Its just a matter of what you want to do, and what you're willing to do.

In my time doing small press comics, I never spent more than $30 at a time on any kind of printing. Usually much less--sometimes nothing at all (ah those lucky days of being an office manager...). In a 5-year period I published 10 comics (ok, that's not too damn impressive...don't rub it in) and probably spent less than $300 doing it.

Of course, I got much, much less than $300 in returns, but that's not the point!! I did what I wanted to do: publish my comics. People read them, I traded like a madman and have a HELLPILE of cool small press stuff to show for it. A friggin treasure trove. I got great reviews and I met some of the most incredible artists I've ever seen.

So now I'm focusing on making games and I'm loving it. I have ideas for putting some things in print and I'm borrowing on my small press experience to help me do it. You can have a webpage or pdf online for virtually nothing at all, if that's what you want. But I really crave that feel of holding it in my hand, this thing I made. And for mygoals, I don't need 1K to do it. Hell, I dont' even need $100. You can do a very nice looking black and white book (digest sized, 80 pages or so) for beans. Make about 50 copies for 50 bucks and send them out to those folks you particularly want to see it. Don't ask for cash, just send it (ala Lumpley's Kill Puppies For Satan). Its a great way to get it out there.

I think this goes back to what Ron and others are saying about lemonade-stand startups. Think cheap. Cheap as hell--but make sure the game does what it's supposed to do and looks good doing it. If people like it, word will spread. If word spreads, you'll be encouraged. If you're encouraged, you might just surprise yourself.

As Lemmy said in The Decline of Western Civilization Part II: "If you think you got something, run it up the flagpole and see who salutes."